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To do this assignment, you’re first going to need to find some distressed looking letters. You could do this in your editing software, but that would be pretty difficult and advanced. I like FreeImages for my stock photos. I’m using GIMP for this tutorial. Open up the program, and open the letter template you’re using. […]

The first thing you need to do for this assignment is to find the video you want to use on YouTube. Open up QuickTime. Click ‘File’ and ‘New Screen Recording.’ Select the area of the screen you want to record, and click start. Save the clip. Now, open the clip in iMovie, and click ‘Create.’ […]

For this assignment I recommend using iMovie. iMovie’s timeline is easy to manipulate, and there are tons of great sound effects already native to the program. Create a new project (choose movie, even though we’re just working with audio here). Listen to the sounds they have, and start to piece together your story. Drag the […]

For this assignment, first download the videos you want to use from YouTube. I installed the SaveFrom plugin for Chrome, which makes this super easy. When you go to YouTube, there will be a little download button below the video: Open iMovie, and import your videos. Now, select the sections of the videos you want to […]

Historians don’t know a lot about Mary Washington. Here’s the basics of what we do know: She was born in Colonial Virginia, and orphaned at young age. She grew up wealthy. She married a wealthy man, had 6 children, and was widowed early. Her eldest, George, was 11 at the time. From there, she went […]

I started off the week by reading Roger Eber’s guide to reading films, which was very enlightening. Like the other resources we’ve looked at in the course, this piece showed me how to critically view an art form I was familiar with. He gave me new eyes with which I viewed the rest of the […]

For this assignment, I ended up picking a scene from the Godfather. It’s the opening scene from the first movie in the series, and one that I’m assuming a lot of us have already seen. I used to love this film, but haven’t watched it in years so I thought it would be fun to […]

How to Read a Movie: In this piece, famed film critic Roger Ebert outlines his universal approach to analyzing films; an approach that requires no knowledge of the film’s production or context. He developed the technique teaching his film classes, as he implemented stop-motion in his film screenings. Anyone could call out ‘stop!’ to stop […]

Mashups? Ummm, yes, please. As a hungry hungry pop culture consumer, I love seeing my favorites all smooshed up together. For this video assignment, I put together the Downton Abbey theme and Beyonce’s music video for 711. I loved Downton Abbey when it was on, and I have to admit that just hearing the theme that plays […]

So apparently, my day revolves around the chickens I’m looking after. At least, that’s what I learned doing this assignment. The first thing I do in the morning is open up their gate, the last thing I do is make sure they’re locked up safely for the night in the coop, and I do a […]

I grew up without television, and with a lot of public radio. In fact, actually still don’t subscribe to television- although I do have the internet and a computer, and that allows me to stay culturally up-to-date. I don’t listen to that much radio anymore, but I do listen to a lot of podcasts. My […]

I listen to podcasts all the time. While walking to school or work, lounging on the porch, travelling, in the bathtub… Between all the music I listen to and all the podcasts I try to keep up with, sometimes I wish there were more hours in the day. I listened to the first minute or […]

  I’m a huge Ira Glass fan (and NPR lover in general!), so I really enjoyed listening to him talk about his methods of storytelling. I listen to the This American Life podcast all the time, but have never really paid too much attention to all the details. Hearing him lay out his techniques gave […]

This assignment was to take a song and slow it down to get an ethereal/ambient effect. After listening to the example the assignment linked to, I decided I had to try it out for myself. Here’s the inspiration for my work. First, the original Justin Bieber song ‘U Smile’: and then the song slowed down […]

If you’ve been following this blog, then you probably know I’m pretty into pop music. This audio assignment was appealing to me because I thought it would be fun to pick one of my favorite popular songs and see how many people can guess! Here are some hints: This song is near the top of the Billboard Hot […]

I’ll be honest, this was a really hard week for me as I received some bad family news on Tuesday. Tragic things happen in life, and they don’t usually happen at convenient moments, and you just have to deal with it. I haven’t, however, taken a creative class like this in years and so was […]

After reading Vignelli’s Canon, I had a lot to reflect on. Before I read it, I was expecting the author to approach the topic of design as if it were an art. I was surprised to find that Vignelli treats design as more of a science. For Vignelli, there is little room for sentiment or […]

I’ve been known to be just a little sarcastic. When I saw this GIF assignment, I instantly had the urge to put my own sarcastic twist on the project. There are some scenes from movies that just stick out in your mind. The one I chose to make a GIF out of comes from the […]

So obviously I jumped at the chance to watch a lot of Beyonce music videos make a Beyonce GIF. She was my first favorite musical artist (I was an OG Destiny’s Child fan; even back then, we all knew Bey was queen), and she still ranks in my top five. Yes, I’m one of those crazy fangirls […]

This season, there has been an unusual amount of deaths of Mt. Everest climbers. Five people have already died climbing the world’s highest peak. Mt. Everest has never been on my bucket list, and it definitely isn’t going to be on it now. If faced with the choice between hot vs cold, I will always […]

I’m a total pop music junkie, so this design assignment (1.5 stars), to take an image from The Big Picture and overlay it with a Top 100 song, seemed like an obvious choice for me. I picked the number one song, which just happens to be my number one song of the moment: One Dance, by Drake. Like pretty […]

Do you ever find yourself listening to pop radio, and being amazed by the pure poetry of the lyrics? Yeah, me neither. I actually find it relatively mind-blowing that this song, Panda, is at #2 on Billboard’s Top 100. It’s not terrible- kind of catchy after the fourth or fifth time you’ve heard it, but the […]

For me, living in the Pacific Northwest means a lot of hiking. It also means facing my fears, namely: mountain lions. Unlike black bears, which I am used to encountering on the East Coast, mountain lions can be aggressive and are known to stalk hikers. I already know what it’s like to live in fear […]

I’m a huge U.S. history nerd, so this design assignment  (four stars), was immediately appealing to me. I read through the list of criminals that the assignment page linked to, and picked Belle Starr. First, she has an awesome name, and I loved that her nickname was “The Bandit Queen.” Second, I just can’t resist the […]

Minimalism: I saw this sandwich board sign on the sidewalk and was instantly intrigued by its minimalist design. The monochromatic color scheme (black and white) and simple design really drew me in. All I that I could decipher was an interlocking G and C. In all fairness this design might be a little too minimalistic in that […]

Whew! That was a long week! Just like everyone else, I read and reread the warning email, convinced myself that this class would still be totally doable, and decided to stay registered in the course. And, I hope (??), just like everyone else, was totally shocked when the course went underway and was faced with […]

I’m a point and shoot kind of person, guilty as charged. I suppose this is just my general feeling of impatience, creeping its way into my photography. For whatever reason, I’ve never felt confident with my photos. Other forms of art always seemed to come naturally to me, but photos, not so much. This week was […]

As a vegan, I get a lot of questions… Well, what do you eat?! My answer: a whole lot, actually! I looooove food, and I’ll be real- if I found this diet to be annoyingly restrictive or devoid of delicious food, I would’ve bailed a long long time ago. My favorite form of advocacy starts with a conversation […]

If there’s one thing in the world I love, it’s travelling. I grew up all over the country, and have relatives on every coast. My I took my first plane ride alone when I was 8, and my last one about a week ago. Being in different biospheres, eating new food, learning about new cultures… […]