For my final assignment of the week (which also happens to be one of two five-star assignments I did this week) I decided to create a supercut video. I’ve seen many supercuts, because they seem to be a popular thing on YouTube. I was curious as to why this was labeled as a five star assignment, because it didn’t seem like that much work. I was completely wrong! A supercut video looks simply, but is actually very complex. First I had to come up with something to supercut. At first I considered a continuation of my western theme from last week by making a supercut of every time someone says the word “plan” in Red Dead Redemption 2. I then lowered the bar slightly to focus on one character, but soon discovered I don’t have the time to go through hours worth of cutscenes. I also don’t have anything to record screen-capture on my PS4, so I quickly ditched that idea. But that doesn’t mean I won’t come back to it later! Maybe when I have some free time I’ll continue this idea, but with the semester winding down I have too much going on. My second choice actually came to me as quickly as the first: Supernatural. More specifically, every time Dean Winchester says “Cas” (or “Cass”) or “Castiel.” Castiel is, of course, another character in the show. For anyone unfamiliar with Supernatural, it’s a show about two brothers (Sam and Dean Winchester) who hunt all the supernatural creatures that go bump in the night. You’re introduced to demons as early as Season 1, and then the angels make an appearance in Season 4 with the onslaught of the Apocalypse. The angels turn out to be just as bad as demons, except for one that chooses to hang around the Winchester brothers named Castiel, the Angel of Thursday. There’s a bit of subtext to be talked about in the relationship between Dean and Castiel, especially since the angels in Supernatural can literally appear out of thin air and Cas always shows up when Dean calls. I actually stopped watching the show sometime around Season 9, but I do know it ran for 15 Seasons. I plan to watch the rest one day to finish off the show, but for now I wanted to create a supercut containing the many, many times Dean says Castiel’s name. I discovered immediately that this assignment was a lot of work. Thankfully I didn’t have to scour YouTube for videos because I own the seasons I used on DVD. This was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I had everything at my fingertips. A curse because I had to go through each disc individually and record my screen for the clips I wanted. I used Screen-Cast-O-Matic for this, because I don’t know of any other software that lets you record your screen other than Zoom, and Zoom hasn’t been working good for me lately. Little by little, piece by piece, I recorded clips I wanted to use. Once I did this I laid them out in OpenShot in an order that I though worked well. Some are in order by how they appear in an episode, others are not. Since it’s a supercut I did not think it needed to be in any chronological order, and just ordered it however I wanted. Afterwards I added a title and end screen, before taking an extra step and adding music to the intro and outro. Supernatural contains a lot of rock’n’roll, and “Carry On My Wayward Son” by Kansas is sort of the unofficial theme song of the show. It plays during every season finale so I thought it was a good fit. Thankfully I have the Kansas album this song is on and didn’t have to hunt it down either! I simply ripped the track from the CD, sliced the audio so it covered the intro and outro, and finished the video! I managed to do this all without OpenShot crashing on me, which I consider a miracle in and of itself! After I uploaded it to YouTube and it thankfully didn’t get blocked! So, without further ado, here is my supercut! I hope you enjoy! Please tell me what you think in the comments down below!

For my final assignment of the week (which also happens to be one of two five-star assignments I did this week) I decided to create a supercut video. I’ve seen many supercuts, because they seem to be a popular thing on YouTube. I was curious as to why this was labeled as a five star assignment, because it didn’t seem like that much work. I was completely wrong! A supercut video looks simply, but is actually very complex. First I had to come up with something to supercut. At first I considered a continuation of my western theme from last week by making a supercut of every time someone says the word “plan” in Red Dead Redemption 2. I then lowered the bar slightly to focus on one character, but soon discovered I don’t have the time to go through hours worth of cutscenes. I also don’t have anything to record screen-capture on my PS4, so I quickly ditched that idea. But that doesn’t mean I won’t come back to it later! Maybe when I have some free time I’ll continue this idea, but with the semester winding down I have too much going on. My second choice actually came to me as quickly as the first: Supernatural. More specifically, every time Dean Winchester says “Cas” (or “Cass”) or “Castiel.” Castiel is, of course, another character in the show. For anyone unfamiliar with Supernatural, it’s a show about two brothers (Sam and Dean Winchester) who hunt all the supernatural creatures that go bump in the night. You’re introduced to demons as early as Season 1, and then the angels make an appearance in Season 4 with the onslaught of the Apocalypse. The angels turn out to be just as bad as demons, except for one that chooses to hang around the Winchester brothers named Castiel, the Angel of Thursday. There’s a bit of subtext to be talked about in the relationship between Dean and Castiel, especially since the angels in Supernatural can literally appear out of thin air and Cas always shows up when Dean calls. I actually stopped watching the show sometime around Season 9, but I do know it ran for 15 Seasons. I plan to watch the rest one day to finish off the show, but for now I wanted to create a supercut containing the many, many times Dean says Castiel’s name. I discovered immediately that this assignment was a lot of work. Thankfully I didn’t have to scour YouTube for videos because I own the seasons I used on DVD. This was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I had everything at my fingertips. A curse because I had to go through each disc individually and record my screen for the clips I wanted. I used Screen-Cast-O-Matic for this, because I don’t know of any other software that lets you record your screen other than Zoom, and Zoom hasn’t been working good for me lately. Little by little, piece by piece, I recorded clips I wanted to use. Once I did this I laid them out in OpenShot in an order that I though worked well. Some are in order by how they appear in an episode, others are not. Since it’s a supercut I did not think it needed to be in any chronological order, and just ordered it however I wanted. Afterwards I added a title and end screen, before taking an extra step and adding music to the intro and outro. Supernatural contains a lot of rock’n’roll, and “Carry On My Wayward Son” by Kansas is sort of the unofficial theme song of the show. It plays during every season finale so I thought it was a good fit. Thankfully I have the Kansas album this song is on and didn’t have to hunt it down either! I simply ripped the track from the CD, sliced the audio so it covered the intro and outro, and finished the video! I managed to do this all without OpenShot crashing on me, which I consider a miracle in and of itself! After I uploaded it to YouTube and it thankfully didn’t get blocked! So, without further ado, here is my supercut! I hope you enjoy! Please tell me what you think in the comments down below!

My first project this week is actually a bit of a crossover assignment. For this reason I created an assignment worth five stars called “Create a Short Documentary” in the assignment bank, and I will explain why. This project was originally assigned to me in HIST 471G4, otherwise known as History of Mental Health in the U.S. For this class we were told to complete a digitally enhanced research project, and were given the choice of digitally annotated primary sources, creating a digitally enhanced essay, or creating a short 10-15 minute video documentary. I choose to do the final option, and created a short documentary. Now, this documentary might be a bit upsetting to those who choose to watch it. This project is about the history of mental health, and the means I had to cover potentially upsetting topics. The project topic I choose was John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematician and Nobel Prize winner who had schizophrenia for most of his adult life. Some of the things I cover in the video are a bit upsetting, but it is meant to be a short informative video on Nash and his experiences with schizophrenia. Seeing as this was a 400-level history assignment, I did a lot of thorough research and have cited all my sources I used in the Chicago Manual of Style. Making this video took quite a long time. I have been doing research since the beginning of the semester, and been working on the actual video since Fall Break. Putting it together was not that hard, but doing the research and writing the script took me forever. We had three phases concerning this project: initial bibliography, annotated bibliography, and final project. It just so happened that the week the final project was due is also video week in DS106. Thankfully I had already written out what I wanted to say and had gathered clips to complete the video. There is not a lot of information about John Nash that isn’t in the form of interviews, videos, documentaries, or that one Hollywood movie about his life based off his biography. This is part of the reason why I decided to make a video. Most of my sources ended up being videos, so I choose the project that best reflected my sources. After I got everything together, I recorded the script I wrote for myself in Audacity. I divided the script into sections, so I was less likely to mess up and have to start over from the very beginning. I then used OpenShot to layer the audio over a blank scene so I could estimate how long the video was going to be, and if I had to cut anything. When my professor for this class said 10-15 minutes, he means 10-15 minutes. No more than 15, because he has a bunch of other assignments to grade and needs to manage his time. As a result, I had to cut some sections and decide what I wanted to keep. For instance, I had an entire section where I talked about electro-shock therapy, but cut it in favor of discussing other treatments because I had interesting clips to include about them. Once I figured all that out, the video ended up being roughly fourteen minutes long, which was comfortably in the middle of my required time frame. Next, I began taking a 2002 PBS documentary apart, because it had a lot of interesting clips I wanted to use. I isolated a lot of clips from various documentaries and interviews to possibly include. I created a title slide and lined up all the audio clips so they flowed okay. Then I edited video clips and pictures together in a cohesive way that followed my narrative. This part took a long time, because OpenShot is very finicky. I couldn’t leave OpenShot open for a long time because it likes to crash when left unattended. Thankfully it autosaves most of the time, and I was able to put everything together without messing up. An interesting thing I’d like to mention is that I started this project three different times to get to this part. I first tried to use DaVinci Resolve to create this video. However, despite downloading the free version, I could not use any transitions in the video. Since I was using a lot of video clips and photos from different media sources, I needed transitions to adjust brightness and volume, and to ensure the cuts weren’t so sudden. DaVinci Resolve prompted me one too many times to pay for a basic feature and I uninstalled it. I then tried to use the Windows Video Editor, only to discover transitions do not exist in it. I installed OpenShot as a last resort. While it does crash from time to time, and lags horribly if you leave it open for too long, it was actually the easiest one to use. Plus it’s completely free and had all the transitions and effects I could have ever wanted. Once I finished the video in OpenShot, I actually exported it to use in the Windows Video Editor. I did this so I could use the royalty free music that’s available in the editor. The Windows Video Editor has a feature that automatically aligns music to the length of your video. I’ve never seen this feature in another editor, and it’s one I enjoy using a lot. I had to split my video a few times, export them, and then put them back together with the uploaded music. This was honestly the easiest part of this entire project. Unfortunately, I ran into a bit of trouble with the editor glitching out at the beginning of my video, but it was a minor discoloration issue on a black screen, so I kept it in since it didn’t really disrupt anything. After I did all this, I put a copy of my video transcript on the page I uploaded my video on. This part took a long time because I had to go through all my sources and include footnotes where appropriate. I transcribed all the video clips I used as well, keeping accessibility in mind. I also have a full bibliography linked on a second page. These were honestly the most mundane parts of the assignment, but are crucial if you are a history major like me. The very last thing I did was upload the video to YouTube. You know what the best part was? There weren’t any copyright strikes. None. The longest video I’ve ever made, and I managed to do it within the confines of copyright laws! That made me very happy. I will embed the completed video documentary in this post, but I will also provide a link to the complete project for anyone interested. Follow this link if you want to see the complete project. It can also be found under the “History of Mental Health in the U.S.” sub-tab under “History” in the header of my blog. Please tell me what you think in a comment down below! Also, a big thanks to Professor Bond for allowing me to use this for one of my assignments this week! This project is the result of weeks worth of work and I hope at least some people enjoy it!

For my final assignment this week, I created a short animated trailer for an assignment I created, called “Create Your Own Animated Trailer.” I was inspired to do this by another assignment that had you create a western trailer on a whiteboard, but I wanted to take it a step further and try my hand at animating with my iPad! For this assignment, I used an app called Procreate. Procreate is a neat artistic app that is availably exclusively on iPad, and allows you to make just about any kind of art you want. At first I thought about trying to digitally recreate a Bob Ross painting (which I still might do!) but decided to try and use the animation features for this assignment. To animate using Procreate, you have to draw each frame by hand. I wanted this trailer to have a specific western noir-esque look, so I stuck to certain charcoal looking pens. I mainly used silhouettes to enhance that noir look. I actually drew all the silhouettes myself. You can use photos as references in Procreate, so I used them as references and drew them to look as similar as possible. I took me a long time to do this. I actually started on this project Saturday night and only finished Tuesday evening. The entire project was actually roughly eleven different project files in Procreate before I combined them together using iMovie. You can download animations in Procreate as MP4 files, which made making the video a lot easier. I also created still text slides, so it appears to emulate a silent film. I cannot take credit for the text, though. It comes from the intro of Red Dead Redemption 2, the video game that in-part inspired me to make this animation. The music also comes from RDR2 intro. I thought it fitting to use the haunting music that opens RDR2, because that game does not have a happy ending. I don’t imagine this having a happy ending either. Hopeful, maybe. But not happy. Like the silhouette animations, I made the text stills by using Procreate. The writing is my own, using a Logitech stylus to try my hardest to make it look elegant and fancy. Afterwards, I compiled everything in iMovie, adjusting the zoom and hover settings before adding the music. And that’s the final project! Tell me what you think down below! I know this probably isn’t my best work, but this is my first time doing something like this and I rather like how it turned out!

For my second assignment this week, I decided to complete the “Watching Movies With the Stereo On” assignment. Since my third assignment is going to be one that is worth quite a bit of stars (stay tuned!), I decided to do a smaller one to bump myself up to the ten star mark! This assignment was very easy. Pick a clip, mute the sound, add music, and publish! However, I wanted to pick a clip and a song that fit together. So I got to thinking and remembered one of my favorite fight scenes in a movie. Bruce Willis versus Karl Urban in RED (2010) is one of my favorite scenes, because Urban’s character is surprised when Willis sneaks into the CIA. The two fight, they both end up injuring each other badly, and it’s just hilarious because it shows how an old guy like Willis can still be awesome in a fight, while Urban’s character thinks Willis won’t be that much of an issue. If you haven’t seen the movie, I’d recommend it. RED stands for “Retired, Extremely Dangerous” and features Bruce Willis, a retired CIA agent, on the run after the CIA calls a hit on him. The movie is full of action and doesn’t take itself seriously, making it an excellent comedy as well. In order to do this assignment, I had to first download the clip I wanted to use. Thankfully, YouTube is a goldmine when it comes to these things, and I found a clip that didn’t cut too much of the scene out. The old VLC-Codec trick came in handy here (basically it decodes the video and lets you download it) and I was soon free to start editing. I used the Windows Video Editor. One thing I’d like to point out is that the movie already has a song playing in this scene, Aerosmith’s “Back in the Saddle Again.” The song is faint, and it cuts out when the camera isn’t on the fight. I wanted to take that song and make it the most prominent thing in the video. Thankfully, I own a copy of the song because I have Aerosmith’s Devil’s Got A New Disguise album, which has this song on it. I simply ripped it from the CD and uploaded it to the video. I messed around with the song a bit, so the guitar would really kick in when Willis throws the table, and then tested to see how it played with the rest of the visuals. I really like how it turned out. I think it makes the scene a little funnier too, especially since the song kind of emphasizes Willis’s experience in these matter and implying Urban is a bit of a rookie. Plus the meaning of “back in the saddle” really fits the theme of the movie! Give it a watch! Tell me what you think in a comment down below!

For my first assignment of the week, I wanted to create something that people love yet is very controversial on YouTube: a lyric video. This is the “Create A Lyric Video” assignment from the DS106 assignment bank. I decided to start off with this assignment since it is worth a whopping four and a half stars and I am doing the second option we were given for the week that involved us completing tens stars worth of assignments. The song I decided to create a lyric video for is “Tuff Enuff” by the Fabulous Thunderbirds (1986). I first heard this song while driving home from work one night, listening to old reruns of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. American Top 40 began in 1970 and played the top forty hits from the Billboard charts. There are a few radio stations in Richmond and Fredericksburg that replay the 1980s countdowns, and involve Kasem telling stories about the artists on the countdown, playing long-distance deductions (that arrived by snail-mail), and taking a look back at the 1950s and 1960s at times. I listen to American Top 40 because I love 1980s music and culture, and listening to it is almost like being transported by to the 1980s. I remembered this song in particular because it was one I had somehow never heard before, and I know a lot of ’80s songs. Kasem told a story about the drummer, Fran Christina, and how the Canadian Mounties had to go find him for the band, which was amusing. Then, I forgot the song and the drummer’s name. I spent a month searching for the song before finding it again, and I plan to never let it go! To start off, I tried my hand at creating a presentation that would sync up with the music and highlight text as the corresponding lyrics were sung. I thought it was great, but it failed when I tried to record it. However, I was not deterred! I decided to try and do something with the official music video, which is colorful and amusing in itself. I downloaded the video from YouTube using the VLC Media Player Codec trick (which I won’t describe here, on the offhand chance they try and patch it) and uploaded the video to the Windows Video Editor. I’d like to point out Windows Video Editor and Windows Movie Maker are two different things, and unfortunately Movie Maker is not compatible with my computer. The Video Editor can be found within the Photo Editor, which is both confusing and surprising. I also have OpenShot, but it’s a bit finicky, and did not have the proper tools for what I did to the video. The Video Editor has split and trim tools that let you look at it down to the second. Basically what I did was go through the video, and every time I heard a verse, slit the video. I did this for every verse. This took a long time, since the Video Editor is not that precise and I had to be very precise with my mouse. The result played effortlessly, like the original video, but now I could go through and add animated text for the lyrics without them overlapping. Adding the lyrics was simple, but time consuming. I Googled the lyrics, despite knowing them by heart. I wanted to make sure I had them correct and added them one by one to each of the split sections. Plus, I had to ensure they started and stopped at appropriate times, which took some adjusting in the settings. I wanted it to look cartoonish and used a subtitle option called “Joy” that let me use the colorful subtitle fonts. I personally think it makes the lyrics look more alive as the video plays. A final thing I did was tint the video lightly, using a filter called “Sunset” to make the colors pop out a little more to compliment the lyrics. Now all that was left was to upload it to YouTube. As I’m sure we are all aware, DMCA takedowns can be a pain, meaning videos you upload to YouTube can be blocked, taken down, or have segments removed if they infringe copyright. You are supposed to be able to use copyrighted media for educational use (like in this class), but YouTube doesn’t allow you to identify whether or not your video is educational or not. I seem to remember there being a place to identify that, but I couldn’t find it when uploading this. Thankfully, YouTube let me leave it as unlisted without removing any of the visuals or audio, despite it being blocked just about everywhere. If this is no longer the case at the time of anyone watching this video, please let me know. I can always upload it to Vimeo if something happens. Please leave a comment down below and tell me what you think!