Welcome to the world of video, it certainly is an interesting one at that. While looking at all of the video assignments, the first one that really stood out to me was the three star Once Archetype, Five Seconds.  The reason I was so captivated by this was because I wasn’t sure how I could tell a story in 5 seconds. That certainly is the challenge of this all.

So what is the archetype that I decided to do? Cinderella of course! I think it is no secret that she is my favorite Disney princess, I can’t say why, but it’s just how I feel. While I know that spring is just around the corner, when it comes to Cinderella I can’t help but think of the snow. Probably one of the reasons that I love snow so much is because my mom and I watch Cinderella together, not just the animated film, but every copy we have Cinderella (which is at least three).

I had a few different things that I wanted to do when it came to Cinderella. I was thinking maybe I could do the transformation of the dress, but that took longer than a second. Then while I was looking for different YouTube videos I realized something that would be awesome, the forgetting of the shoe. It is such a classic movie in any fairy tale story. Girl meets boy, midnight strikes, girl leaves boy, boy is sad, boy finds shoe, boy has hope again, boy finds girl, boy and girl fall in love. We know the story, yet I watch any version of it that comes out. I even want to watch it on Broadway.

Then I realized that the shoe getting picked up by the prince is perfect to telling a story. The reason for this is because in recent remakes of the movie, cell phones or an mp3 player or dropped. So I decided to do a commentary on the way that the story has progressed into the modern world.  So check it out for yourself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksdAsDXsxsQ&feature=youtu.be

The first clip, which comes from the 1957 made for TV Cinderella starring Julie Andrews has cheap setting, poor effects, and is filmed in black and white. We then transition to the classic Disney animated version of Cinderella for the second clip which shows the animated style. Ironically, this did not have the prince picking up the slipper since his worker does, so I had to compromise for something else. We then leave the 1950s and my third clip comes from the 90s in another version of Cinderella starring Brandy, Whitney Houston and Whoopi Goldberg just to name a few. This is showing the Cinderella story in the same classic way, but with more modern effects and scenery. However, we really take a crazy turn when it comes to the fourth clip from A Cinderella Story, in which Sam (or Cinderella) drops her cell phone instead of a shoe. Of course looking at the flip phone with an antenna, which was soooooo 2000s. To wrap it up with the fifth clip I went with Another Cinderella Story in which Mary (or Cinderella) drops her mp3 player while leaving the ball. So many stories, so little time!

But I wasn’t even close to done, all I had were clips of videos and nothing else. Not even a plan on how to get from YouTube to Windows Movie Maker, or any movie making experience for that matter. However while in the search for a clip from the Brandy version of Cinderella I came across the introduction with Whitney Houston singing “Impossible”. Of course I had to listen to her singing, I grew up listening to her and I can sing almost any of her songs (just not very well). Then as I was listening I heard magic, and I knew exactly what I wanted to play in the background. Once again, I just had to figure out how to make all of this happen.

So I downloaded my YouTube clips into mp4s from Keepvid  but needed to figure out a way to go from mp4 to WMV. I went to the sound advice of Professor Levine in order to see where to get this data, and I ended up at this website. Now I could finally crack into Windows Movie Maker, which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I simply cut the clips down using the I and O keys, just like in MPEG Streamclip. This part was a bit hard since the clips were so short. Once I had the clips in the order that I wanted, and I had the mp3 of the audio I still had a problem. I did not know how to turn the audio from the clips off. It wasn’t until I saw the little plus sign under the video on the timeline and saw the audio that I figured it out. I had to mute that audio. Now I knew that I wanted the clips to start when the audio was talking, so when I added the credits in, I decided to make it a bit longer to allow that to happen.

The final trouble I had was going from what it was saved as to being upload-able to YouTube. I had to publish this and then it was able to be upload it to YouTube. It was finally a great day and I was excited!

Thanks for reading,

Princess Karissa