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  1. @rachelds106

    final project summary

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    Hey guys, we’re almost done with this class, I can’t believe it!  I got the inspiration for my final project from the movie “I Am Legend”, starring Will Smith. In short, the basis of the movie follows Will Smith as he tries to survive a “zombie” apocalypse and searches for a cure.   I’ve decided to go through each of the storytelling elements that I used in this project, category by category, and explain my thought process, editing if there were any, explanations for each, etc. Audio:  I knew I wanted to start off this project using audio because I felt it was the best way to begin providing information about the plot of my story. I could have used video, but I think audio created a mental picture that I would then continue to add on to as I went along with the story. I used audio clips from Youtube, such as the newscaster clips you hear, a few clips from the movie “I Am Legend”, where you hear at the beginning a woman talking about her cancer “cure”, and recorded my own voice as well as my sister’s voice towards the end in a conversation. The music I played in the background was also from Youtube. I put everything together using Audacity and it took about two days to get all the clips […]
  2. @rachelds106

    final project plan!

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    Idea: “I am Legend” approach but 80’s style Hey everyone, so one of my favorite post-pandemic/apocalyptic movies ever is “I Am Legend” with Will Smith. For my final project, I decided to take this movie and put a couple of twists on it.  First, I’m going to try my best to include an 80’s decade theme to it. For example, in the writing and audio parts of the story I’ll try to include typical 80’s slang that is used, and also maybe talk about items that were typically used in this decade (such as a walkman) as well as make references to movies, icons, or political figures or events that someone from this decade would use.  Spoiler alert!  The story I’ll be following is my character (I haven’t chosen a name yet) will be the last survivor in the pandemic, and she is trying to discover a cure for the disease. Those who were affected by the virus are now zombies, but similar to the movie I Am Legend, they only appear at night/can’t be exposed to sunlight. The story will follow the character as she goes about her life and her struggle to find a cure (she’s a scientist), her hopes that other people may be out there, and reflections on her past life. Elements I will be using (that I know of […]
  3. @rachelds106

    week twelve

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    This week was a lot easier than the past two weeks, which I’m super thankful for. I’ll start by talking about my mashups! So for the first mashup, I combined an audio I created weeks ago and added video clips to it to make a sort of music video/video aesthetic. The audio is the sound of rain with piano, meant to be relaxing. It’s the type of audio I would listen to while reading or writing, or even studying. I really like all the clips I put together and the overall general aesthetic of the video I wanted was to create was a rainy autumn day.  The second mashup I created was an 80s Movie Scene. I used the ending scene from The Breakfast Club and the boombox scene from Say Anything. I edited it using PicsArt from my phone and then emailed it to myself. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, I think both the pictures fit well together!  I also did an Emoji Mashup, in which I took a picture of my sister imitating her favorite emoji. This assignment was rated 4 stars in the course but I felt it was really worth only two, so I ended up doing the video/audio mashup afterward since I felt the Emoji mashup and 80s scene mash-up weren’t really worth the 8 stars […]
  4. @rachelds106

    remixed poetry art

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    I sort of kept to the 80’s theme by including a poet who was around in the 80’s! Charles Bukowski is a German-American writer. I’ve seen a lot of his poems and short quotes on Pinterest and I love his writing. It’s very raw and straight forward, and he talks a lot about serious topics, such as alcoholism, poverty, and relationship issues.  The remix I chose was to do an assignment that you wouldn’t want your parents to see (parental advisory card). I had already created poetry art a few weeks ago and it was one of my favorite things I did, so I chose to go with that similar assignment. I tried to keep to the similar minimalistic theme as my previous poetry art assignment. I kept the pinks and greens of the paintbrush strokes and wanted to keep the elements of the bottle and hands similar to the lines I created around the person in that picture.  I found the quote and pictures on Pinterest and edited it using Canva, instead of through PicsArt like I did originally. I edited the images in Canva using an effect called “distorted”. I think using this effect provides a visualization of how someone’s reality is distorted when they drink or take drugs, and especially when they do both at the same time. The background I […]
  5. @rachelds106

    aesthetic audio/video mashup

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    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5d-2PbL348&feature=youtu.be Hey everyone! So I created my own mashup assignment (maybe I didn’t but when I was looking I didn’t find one like this) but I’m sure there’s something similar to it out there. Basically I just combined my audio from this assignment a couple of weeks back, and some video clips I found on Pexels.  I tried to match the clips to the aesthetic of the sound I had created. For example, you’ll see in the video that the first clip is of rain (of course) and then followed by a clip of someone playing the piano as those keys chime in from the audio. Surprisingly, if you look closely enough, some of the keys that are being played in the audio seem to match up with the person playing in the video. It’s not perfect, but there’s a bit of synchrony there and that was a stroke of luck for me because I didn’t try for that! I also color edited a few of the clips, such as the kids playing in the rain, the picture of the plants blowing in the wind. For each clip, I increased the temperature and saturation a bit and brought down the brightness a little. I wanted to create a fall, rainy day vibe.  As the audio got quicker I made the clips shorter to match […]
  6. @rachelds106

    emoji comparison

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    ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (I’m rating it a 2 personally) Hey guys! So this assignment was very simple and easy to do. I just had to take a picture of a friend doing something in the moment that looks like one of the emojis on a phone. My sister was with me doing her homework when I found this assignment, and I asked for her help. She told me her favorite emoji was the one smirking with sunglasses on, so she found a pair and I took a picture of her! These are the results:  Since this assignment was very easy and done in two seconds, I chose to do a third assignment to do, so that will be my next post!  What is your favorite emoji? 
  7. @rachelds106

    80’s movie scene mashup

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    ✰✰✰✰   For this assignment, I chose to combine two famous 80’s movie scenes into one picture. I’ve seen this picture of the scene many times, just in pictures and references on blog posts, etc., but I’ve actually never seen the movie itself (Say Anything). Maybe it’ll be the next quarantine movie I’ll watch! I tried to make it look like these two were jamming out to music together and trying to get someone’s attention. I got both pictures from Pinterest and edited it using PicsArt on my phone. I think the lower part of Bender’s body up until it reaches his arm looks pretty realistic. It was hard to crop his arm and the head, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I chose these two scenes because I figured it would be easier to make it look like one whole picture with people who were presenting in similar positions (standing), wearing similar clothing (the coats). To me, they honestly look like they could be friends! I had thoughts at first about putting the guy with the boombox (not sure his name) in Bender’s end scene (on the football field) but I thought that background with the car might’ve made that more difficult to do.  Let me know what you think!  If you’ve seen both of these movies, which do you […]
  8. @rachelds106

    week ten

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          So I was really looking forward to this week. I thought it would go a lot smoother than last week but since I had a lot more going in my other classes this past week, it ended up being a lot harder than usual. I was able to create more content last week and didn’t end up meeting the criteria for the 10 stars this week (I got to 8). But by the end of the week, I was absolutely exhausted. I’m sure a lot of other people are feeling this way! I’ll start off with my favorite video I’ve ever created!! I asked my family their opinions on pineapple on pizza (there’s 7 of us, and three of them are kids under 10 years old!). I sent the video to a lot of friends and family, and they all seemed to love it. I was really proud of the work I did with this video, especially for it being the first video I’ve ever edited from using my own footage. I think my favorite parts of the video are the subtitles/captions and then the funny intermediate clips! The second video I created was a video about my dream life. After experiencing Filmora9 with the first video I mentioned, I wish I had used that app with this video as well […]
  9. @rachelds106

    pineapple on pizza?

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    4 Stars This is one of my favorite videos I’ve made in this class so far! It even tops last week’s “All About the 80s”. For this video, the assignment was to ask people their opinion on something. The first idea that popped into my head was: “pineapple on pizza!”.  It’s pretty cliche and basic, I’ve seen a lot of “arguments” about it on Twitter, and I thought it would be a fun and easy topic to do. What was not easy, was the editing process. It’s very different working with your own footage, compared to using someone else’s. I paid way more attention to the details this time, and since it was my own footage I was able to be more creative with it.  I tried out a new video editing software this week called Filmora. I like the Windows Movie editor but it’s extremely limited in what it can do. Filmora is incredibly user friendly, and I am super happy I chose this one. For someone who’s a beginner, I was able to quickly pick up the elements, yet it still has many advanced features that I still have yet to master! Here’s a screenshot of my editing screen (Filmora9): And here’s the video! (all credits are listed in the video description):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Eo5u7_CBM
  10. @rachelds106

    my dream life

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    The first video assignment I did this week was a trailer for my dream life. The assignment was rated as 2.5 stars, but personally I believe it’s worth 4 stars! I think the rating is lower because it’s only supposed to be a 30-second video, but mine ended up being a bit longer than that. I also had to download a bunch of apps on my phone in order to create the intro to this video. The intro to the video was a template that someone created for others to use, and I added the text through certain phone apps as well as other effects, such as the stars. This would’ve been a lot easier if the apps were available like this in my computer of I could see a tutorial on using apps for windows on how to do this, but since the apps were only on my phone I went with that. I’m currently working on another video for this week and I’m using a different video editor (Filmora) in which I didn’t have to use the iPhone apps in order to get the intro detailed to how I want!  I edited the main part of the video using a different app this time, called Animotica. I wanted to try something different than the generic Windows video editor because I believe I […]
  11. @rachelds106

    week ten

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    In short — this week was a lot of work, but it felt the most rewarding to me and it has been my favorite week so far, and I’m actually really looking forward to this coming week. Let’s start off with sharing my daily creates: #tdc2994 #ds106 grabbed this picture from the website, and decided to use it in an advertisement poster! Did everything using Canva. let me know what you think! pic.twitter.com/5fIxTeDfT4 — Rachel Tafoya (@rachelds106) March 24, 2020 #tdc2990 #ds106 pic.twitter.com/eiUhaMBUBZ — Rachel Tafoya (@rachelds106) March 20, 2020 The first one was my favorite! I thought it was a clever idea and I really like the colors that are used, I think they complement each other well. Now let’s talk about the assignments I created. I’m pretty proud of myself with every video I made, but by far my favorite was the video about the 80s. I feel I captured the essence of the decade well, and although there was much more I could’ve included, it’s already a bit lengthy at 3 minutes. Also when I came up with the idea for how I wanted to end the video I was so excited because I thought it was neat! My second favorite it the movie trailer for a book that I read called The Hunting Party. This was the video that gave […]
  12. @rachelds106

    Karate Kid Video Essay

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    I have a much better appreciation and respect for those who decided to take on careers (or even just a hobby) in cinematography. I thought the Youtube videos that we were recommended to watch were full of amazing information. My favorite video was the one about the chairs. Who knew that something so simple could have such a huge effect? But I guess that really is the whole take-home message from this experience. There are so many details in the cutting, angles, movement, environment and much more that truly go into making films than I could’ve ever imagined before, and it’s not easy work! I also thought the video that showed the scene from the Avengers was interesting…it really is a bland scene!  I took notes from the sources provided and typed them up in my Google Docs and used those notes to apply them to this video. I tried to watch for every aspect of the things that I learned from the videos and readings. I narrated the things that stood out to me the most, what elements I thought were being used, and what grabbed my attention, but I still struggled a bit and feel like there was much more I could’ve said about this scene.  The whole process of making the video was similar to my others. I grabbed the scene […]
  13. @rachelds106

    the hunting party

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    https://youtu.be/h13NoU4kmxw The second video project I decided to do was to create a book trailer. It was much harder than anticipated for a few reasons…Unlike my first project, Youtube failed when it came to providing the types of clips I needed for this, so I resorted to Videvo and Pexels, and even finding clips from there was difficult. Secondly, I had to create my own background audio which took so much more time than I thought it would. I had to figure out the exact times when certain audios were to be played for certain clips, trim the audio I downloaded and tried to make it flow smoothly, which was the most frustrating part. To be honest, I am only about 85% happy with how it sounds, but since I’m in a time crunch and also have to juggle other online courses, I decided to stop fiddling with the audio and leave it where it’s at. Despite the struggles, I am still proud of my work. I wish the overall video was longer and I could’ve found clips that would’ve suited it better, but I believe I captured the novel well.  In the description for the assignment, it said not to give any spoilers away, and even though it looks in the video like I did, there is much more depth to the story […]
  14. @rachelds106

    all about the 80’s

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    Hi! So I chose option 2 for this week (do 10 stars worth of video assignments) and I chose to create a mash-up trailer. At first this task seemed super daunting, and I admit it was a bit challenging at first because I’ve never done something like it before, BUT…..it ended up being my favorite thing I’ve ever created so far for this class. I decided to take my own twist on the project, and instead of a movie trailer, I created a short film/”trailer” all about the 80s.  Here’s a list from my notes about what I chose to include in the video: Historical events Popular movies Popular musicians Fashion Technology/arcades/games This project was super time consuming, especially trimming and splitting the videos to show the exact moments I wanted. I pulled the videos from Youtube, which also was time-consuming because I had to watch a lot of things, and pick/chose which videos I thought would fit best. To download the videos from Youtube, I used “4k downloader” and it did the job perfectly, great app. To put the clips together, I used the generic Windows Movie/Photo app on my laptop, which is super basic (perfect for beginners). I wish it had more features, such as more available background music or a way to transition the clips in cool ways, but overall I’m […]
  15. @rachelds106

    let’s revisit!

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    Hey everyone! The posts I’ve decided to revisit were the Bucket List inspiration and the Dance Camp poster. I thought it would be fun to revisit the first because I had added new ideas in my phone notes, and figured this would be perfect to add on to it. I also got to cross off “learn to skateboard” on my original list because being stuck at home gave me some time to go outside and learn, so that was a cool little thing and I felt a tiny bit of accomplishment. I also added more places I want to travel to the list, as well as a few more activities and things I want to learn.  For the dance camp poster, I had the idea to rework it and make it more of a poster that fits our class theme. I kept the original wording and everything, but redid my design and added more elements using Canva (because I like it better than the original app I had created the first poster with). I thought it would be cool to tie it to our theme and maybe create some poster about this like you would’ve seen in that decade! Let me know what you think! 
  16. @rachelds106

    daily creates get connected

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      one of the best songs ever, change my mind!!! (you won't). this song makes you feel like you can do anything, the lyrics are so creative, it's a catchy tune, and everyone can relate to it in some way#tdc2986 #ds106https://t.co/YpLMEDgMF3 — Rachel Tafoya (@rachelds106) March 17, 2020 #tdc2990 #ds106 pic.twitter.com/eiUhaMBUBZ — Rachel Tafoya (@rachelds106) March 20, 2020   an air hug is the new greeting, but 6ft apart!!! 😂#tdc2985 #ds106 pic.twitter.com/kLBokSsvrU — Rachel Tafoya (@rachelds106) March 15, 2020 I smiled as I turned up the volume on my favorite songs. The weather was finally starting to get warmer, and I could feel my mood elevating as I breathed in the fresh air that blew in from my car windows. I was excited about this semester, even though I knew it would be tough.  Suddenly, the music cut out. I frowned and fiddled around with the radio, still paying attention to the road ahead of me. A loud alarm blared through my speakers, and soon a monotone voice took over the radio: “This is not a test…The CDC has now announced its recommendation that every state goes into a federally mandated lockdown.” Pause. Repeat. Pause. Repeat. “Do not panic, this is not permanent. Please only make necessary trips outside of your home. More information is listed on the CDC’s website, as well as your […]
  17. @rachelds106

    future project ideas

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    So it’s time to start thinking about our final projects, which is scary yet exciting to me because that means this semester is coming to a close! Here are a couple of general ideas I’ve come up with so far: 1.) Some sort of show (video/audio/podcast) that goes through the biggest plagues/epidemics/pandemics our world has seen. We could create some design elements about how to prevent the spread of disease, create commercials advertising medications and even audios or fake news videos about current “Breaking News” for each pandemic covered.  2.) 80’s Influencers – this was one of the other ideas I had for the radio show from week five I believe, and I still think it would be interesting to do this theme in which we talk about some of the biggest influencers, but then go into more detail about how they’ve influenced our current world in the 2020’s. We don’t even just have to include pop culture influencers, but scientists/researchers, inventors, architects, political leaders, doctors, activists, etc. There’s so much that could be done with this! Let me guys know what you think of these ideas or if you think of other ways to really hone them in to be more specific or even broaden them! I’m open to any suggestions 🙂 Stay safe and healthy!
  18. @rachelds106

    What’s Their Damage?

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    Hey everyone, I hope you’re staying healthy and safe! I’m really excited about the radio show my group put together. After meeting in person the week before spring break, we came up with a plan about how we were going to tackle the show. Most of our work was done in Google Docs (such as gathering the information on the criminals we’d be covering, figuring out what type of commercials and design elements we’d make). We all made our own logos/stickers/posters in Canva (mine is shown above) and we created our own bumpers and commercials for the show as well. I created a bumper about self-defense classes since and advertised for self- defense against criminals like the ones we discuss! For all the audio I created, I used Audacity (which by this project I finally feel very comfortable with). Since we, unfortunately, got sent home, we weren’t able to meet in person and record the show together as we had originally planned. Instead, I recorded my main part of the project (the information about Jeffrey Dahmer) at home, using my sister’s high tech microphone (she likes to sing/record music so that’s why she has it). Here’s a picture of it if you’re curious to see what it looks like! It looks pretty simple, but it was very sensitive and picked up so much background […]
  19. @rachelds106

    week seven

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    Happy Spring Break everyone! This week feels like the calm before the storm because I know when we get back from spring break everything is going to start picking up speed, not even just in this class but my other classes as well.  This week consisted of making progress with my radio show group, creating some audio clips for it and a poster as well. I had the most fun creating the poster because I love designing things. I think creating the audio assignments this week for the show will make the workload a lot less for when we come back and actually start recording (which I am a bit nervous about because I’ve never done something like this before) but I think it will be a great learning experience.  My favorite audio assignment I did was the radio commercial, which talked about signing up for self-defense classes. The only trouble I had this week with the audio assignments was finding free music that I think really fit the audio; that’s what I spent the most time on. I think the Spotify playlist will also come in handy when we want to add music to our show as well. My favorite daily create I did this week was the first one from Sunday:  this made me think of a quote from John Green's book […]
  20. @rachelds106

    audio for our show!

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      Hey everyone! So I chose to create a radio bumper, a commercial and a mixtape for this week’s audio assignments. Both the bumper and commercial were created through Audacity. I used music from Youtube’s Free Sound and I wrote the script for what I said in each audio on a Google Doc, practiced what I wanted to say a few times and then read off that script as I recorded (I’m still not happy with how my voice sounds in these but oh well, I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with how my voice sounds on audio!). I decided to create a Spotify playlist because I love creating playlists and finding new music. The music I chose ranges from artists that are popular today such as Billie Eillish, to artists that were more popular a while back, such as Elvis, so it’s an hour-long playlist with a wide range of songs. Most of the songs talk about crime or are generally “darker” themed songs. I think my favorite ones on this playlist are: “Jailhouse Rock”, “Bellyache” and “I Fought the Law”. I hope you guys enjoy what I found! Here’s the link to the playlist if you want to check it out. Also, free feel to check out my personal playlists as well. I know that I’m always looking for new music […]
  21. @rachelds106

    week six

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    I swear the weeks just keep going by faster and faster! I had a lot of fun with this week. Canva was my best friend, and I had a lot of fun with the assignments. I was easily able to connect our 80’s theme to this week; I felt like I could’ve done it for each assignment I did. I started out with the minimalist movie poster that was suggested, and I feel like that was the majority of my theme for this week – minimalistic design. The three assignments I connected to the 80’s theme were the charity poster, one story four icons, and the minimalist movie poster. My favorite one out of these three was probably the minimalist movie poster, I love everything about the minimalistic style of design! My other two designs, the body image cover and the alternate book cover were also pretty simple. The body image cover was very personal to me, and I was proud of what I created, while the alternate book cover I created shortly after to kind of lighten the mood after creating something a bit more serious. My least favorite part of this week was the design blitz. I’m not sure why, it wasn’t super hard, but I think I  just prefer creating and designing my own things more than examining others, but I […]
  22. @rachelds106

    design blitz

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    Color doesn’t always have to be bright, which is what I realized during this design blitz. These colors are neutral and dark, yet they still work together to create a beautiful map (I wish my iphone quality was better than it appears in all my photos).  I bought this candle today at TJMaxx, and I thought it was a perfect representation of typography. The designer used a font that really connects the scent and its name, and the color and theme of the candle. It’s a simple design for the candle, very minimalist, and captures even the wording used to describe the scent – faded suede, desert driftwood and misted musk.  This picture I found in my friends bathroom represents two things to me! First, is symbolism. There are so many different symbols and pictures that can create a theme, and of course these shells help represent the beach theme and design. I also think that it highlights a sense of proportion; all these shells are different sizes (just like they are at the beach) and they are designed in a unique way around the font.  I apologize for the poor camera quality again, but this image of a shower curtain represents rhythm. To me, this rhythm of the design creates a pattern that has a lot going on within it (within the white […]
  23. @rachelds106

    dysmorphia

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    “Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health disorder in which you can’t stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in your appearance — a flaw that appears minor or can’t be seen by others. But you may feel so embarrassed, ashamed and anxious that you may avoid many social situations.” – Mayo Clinic When I saw this assignment, I immediately thought of body dysmorphia. I personally believe that everyone has felt an instance of body dysmorphia in some sort of way (I know I have, and struggling with self-image is a super hard thing to go through). Maybe  not everyone has experienced it to the point of where it is causing significant distress and impairment in our life, but I know as humans we’ve all thought about our flaws and we see ourselves in a completely different way than others, which can be very frustrating. Since I could personally relate to this struggle, I decided to create a design for a potential book cover on this topic. I specifically chose the text, because it looked kind of dysmorphed itself, especially with the spacing in the word “dysmorphia”. I chose the red background from the text to connect with the red outlining of the picture, which I thought was simple but very accurate and eye catching. P.S. – If you are struggling […]

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