cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Andy Rush, resident DTLT expert, creator of our video resource site just showed me a helpful tip for MPEG Stream Clip. I’ve previously suggested using the Export – MPEG-4 option … Continue reading →

A few weeks ago Jim Groom and I watched Rear Window, a classic film on many levels- you cannot go wrong with picking a Hitchcock film to analyze. I hardly consider myself a film critic, and what I write below comes from my own perspective, not having read any reviews or Wikipedia entries. The goal for a ds106 assigned bit of work was to try and read a movie in light of the concepts outlined by Roger Ebert, looking for the nuances of character placement, motion, etc. The “window” is that which James Stewart’s character, stuck in his apartment with a broken leg, has become fixated looking out at as he reads the stories of his neighbors, going as far as convincing himself (and his girlfriend) (and his nurse) that a neighbor has murdered his wife. The thing that caught my attention was how much telling Hitchcock creates with just ...

In which I open a blog post with the worst grammatical title of the… wek? cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by stevendepolo In the ds106 classes here at UMW, we’ve just moved past week 8, and one of the grueling stretches for students in their projects to produce 30 minutes of an audio show. This time around, we shrunk the final show from 30 minutes to 20, but asked groups to do a 10 minute documentary or sequence of out takes. Twenty is still a lot of content to produce, as I hope our students learned, plus the dynamics of group coordination, and challenges of using new tools. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by alexkerhead On my class blog, I’ve just posted a summary of the six groups from my section and Jim has half of his student’s work collected too. It helps to ...

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Victory of the People This week we are going to get more into the creation side of video, starting with a next step project with your analysis last week … Continue reading →

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by alexkerhead The radio show projects were played this past week live on ds106 radio and in class. All the groups made major achievements for mostly going from zero audio experience to … Continue reading →

So much going on lately, so little blogged, time to re-train this blog dog. The activity on the Daily Creates seems to have dovetailed a bit, likely as other people are hitting this same stretch. Yet, I want to practice what I say in that while the challenge is daily, there is zero reason to talk about guilt or sorry for not doing them- it’s your practice without obligations. (there is some exception for my ds106 students, who are still obligated to do 3 per week, and summarize them). So this past week… TDC 69: You have three hours left to live, what would you do, where would you go, and why. I would not try to cram a bunch in, but go to my favorite spot in the Coconino National Forest, near my Arizona place. It has a sweeping, ranging view off of the Mogollon Rim, and has been ...

cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by KayOne73 While this week we are are broadcasting the products of the audio shows (all shows and content are listed on the class wiki), this is also our transition into … Continue reading →

During my hike today to see Dark Hollow waterfall (in Shenandoah National Park), I did some more experiments with doing some rapid sequence shot of the water detail. It was cloudy, but ay ISO 200 I set the aperture open enough for fast shutter speeds 1...

I’ve been a month in Fredericksburg, living just around the corner from locations of major Civil War battles 150 years ago. On Friday, I took a stroll down Sunken Road, a place where the Confederate Forces held a commanding position on a hill, and some 15,000 Union soldiers died trying to charge it. That’s war, what is it good for? This wall, likely reconstructed (?) is part of the original wall that existed here, when ti was the major road to Richmond. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Tonight I came across a stunning set of 48 photos in The Atlantic, part of their series commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, in this piece, showing photos of the locations. What’s remarkable, is that the war coincided around the time when photography started to be viable, and this was the first war (I am guessing) ...

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Rafael Kage Spring break is just about year, and if you are up to date on your work, it should be a BREAK. Some reminders for what needs to be done … Continue reading →

After coming across this brilliant redo of Star Wars in the Silent era form, I created the ds106 assignment “Return to the Silent Era” The dawn of cinema had no audio; silent movies created an atmosphere with music and the use of cue cards. Take a 3-5 minute trailer of a modern movie and render it in the form os the silent era- convert to black and white, add effects to make it look antiquated, replace the audio with a musical sound track. I just found an insanely fun shortcut- The Artsifier “Make any YouTube Video Award Winning”. You simply load any YouTube URL, and it renders it in old styl black and white, and it adds a sound track (boo, it looks like every one you try gets the same sound track, let’s make it RANDOM!). You get a little track, and you can add captions (as well as ...

I can never remember any jokes in English much less another language. But a challenge is a challenge, so I have an effort for the ds106 Make ‘em Laugh assignment, submitted by my pal Darren Kuropatwa: Find a good, brief joke in a language other than your mother tongue; if you don’t know any other languages this might be a good way to start learning. Record your voice telling the joke focusing on pronunciation and try to make it sound as natural as you can with appropriate vocal inflections. Add a (cc) music track underneath (maybe from jamendo.com) and a laugh track (soungle.com is a good source) at the end. Languages. Hmmm. I don’t know any. I thought it might be fun, in honor of my Mom, to try something in Yiddish. I searched a bit, and found some bad videos, but eventually found this joke, which is funny enough ...

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by i k o I can’t write a blog post until I wrangle with the headline. I mull that over before I even sit down to write. or that is all I have and I hope an idea flows from there. The title is key as any basic journalism or copywriting class will tell you, or as written deftly at copyblogger “Don’t Read This or the Kitty Get’s It!”: Let’s get started. What is the primary purpose of any piece of writing that you put out online — whether a blog post, a networking email, a sales letter or a tutorial? For starters, to get what you’ve written read, right? Makes sense. So, what’s the primary purpose of your headline, your graphics, your fonts, and every other part of the content? The simple, surprising answer is… To get the first ...

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I made this demo for my students to show them Audacity and basic editing for the Sound Effects Story assignment: Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at least five different sounds that you find online. The story can be no longer than 90 seconds. Mine is a tale of a quiet walk in the woods, say up in the in the forests of Show Low Arizona. All of my sounds are from freesound (http://freesound.org/): Dry Leaves Walking http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/33207/ Memory Moon Wet Spaceship Loop http://www.freesound.org/people/suonho/sounds/27570/ phaser http://www.freesound.org/people/impactuniversal/sounds/63372/ Gulls by the Sea http://www.freesound.org/people/acclivity/sounds/13564/ These are all in tracks in Audacity. For the footsteps, I copies a segment, and sped up the speed twice, to make for a sound of hurried walking, then running. I also made a copy of the ...

Long live Don LaFontaine… whose voice appeared in some 5000 movie trailers and 350,000 (? really?) commercials. You know him as soon as you hear him. Well, here is a new ds106 audio assignment for you, Use the Voice, bring The Voice to something around you: Don LaFontaine was legendary for hos deep voiceover intros to movie trailers (“In a world…”). Make a recording that uses his style that describes something ordinary or everyday. See the TV tropes listing for ideas or expressions or model it after one of the thousands of examples he left out there — see his video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPMvj_xejg If you lack The Voice naturally, use your audio editor’s shift pitch tools to deepen it. As such, I made my own example, of a trailer for ds106, The Movie: DS 106: The Movie, The Voice I made this in Audacity, and used the Shift Pitch filter ...

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by K.G.Photos Assignments for this Week Full details for this week’s assignments http://106tricks.net/2012/02/21/audio-assignments-week-6/ cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by Nite_Owl Tonight’s In Class Challenge: Create an … Continue reading →

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by jrmyst Here’s what is expected of students in UMW section 2 for our next class and the rest of the week. The deadline for all work is midnight on Sunday. … Continue reading →

This past week’s Daily Creates I seemed to have done more this week with my iPhone camera than my DSLR, and dod a bit more experimenting or playing with 2 apps – PhotoGene for editing and ToonCamera for making cartoon effects. TDC 36: Good being served or eaten in unsual way TDC 37: Toy in Action TDC 38: Something that represents how old you feel TDC 39: Photo of a Bird TDC 40: Someone else’s art in a way that makes it yours. TDC 41: Most Prized possession TDC 42: Photo representing a job Design Assignments This week’s goal was 15 stars worth of Design Assignments – my work is at http://cogdogblog.com/tag/DesignAssignments/, way over 15! ds106 Propaganda Poster(s): Get Infected and ????? DS106 and I Want You to Make Art Wait, Where’d That Guy Come From?: Bagman the Hippy Anuimated Comic Book Cover: Mad for ET Spreadsheet Animation (includes tutorial): ...

ds106 Propaganda posters– they seem to be calling from many places; I came across a great collection at Shorpy (another mint archive for visuals from the past). Hence a warning poster about ds106: This one was rather easy to work with- the origi...

BAGMAN may be running for president, but you should know of his leftist leaning ways formed from his Woodstock days Yes, even in 1969 the brown acid bagman was #4life (one more ds106 assignment Hey Wait Where’d That Guy Come From?)

Some might say that MAD magazine is not a comic, but I went for an animated version anyhow for the Animated Comic Cover ds106 assignment: I saw this cover of Alfred E Neumann and ET and felt like they might me a love match for each other, so they gaze at each other with affection and experience the tickle of that magic extra terrestrial finger. Don’t they make a sweet couple? I read a ton of MAD as a kid, and I can recall backing out the plots of movies from the parodies there- so I knew about the Godfather from he satire first, seeing it in MAD before ever seeing it on video. I think there is a future assignment related to the troubles faced by Roger Kaputnix or maybe a bit of mashup of Spy vs Spy. In this animated GIF, I used a bit of magic I ...