Sunday, April 12, 2009

Found III

Here is the third installment of my "found" video.

I received alot of feedback on Thursday and here are two things I plan on doing:

1. Creating a Blog with all of my found material...keeping it hush hush at the moment.

2. Keep the main video short with some changes.

I am pleased with the progress so far and I look forward to refining the video and working on a blog to share the creative process.

I am taking some advice I recieved in class and I am not showing everything I have done from this point on, maybe little bits but the majority is hush hush. Until next time...


Friday, April 3, 2009

Production Video CLip

I figured that since I was making a movie, I needed a production company name and since I now have a name, I needed a catchy video to promote my work, so here goes!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Final Project II

Okay...here is the second attempt:



I used the JPEg image from Shannon kind of like a sticker to place over the blurred NCOW image in my original movie, however, the image is a little different each time and the image seems to pulsate...did anyone notice? I think that I may have to re-do the images, making sure there is no flash screwing things up. I have also been thinking about adding another title slide right after the still shots with a caption that says "So what have we been writing?" then show casing a few individual cards and their messages. So my big question is what does everyone think? Should I redo the images? Should I make a title slide with the what have we been writing question? I will hopefully post again with a third attempt soon...with individual shots and better footage for the last shot.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Free Culture and the Project

Free Culture

I finished reading the first section of Free Culture and I just want to say Love It! I have never quite understood the big deal about sharing music et al? In the 80's we made mix tapes and taped songs from the radio, in the 90's I did the same thing just with cd's...is it really different then finding it on-line?

The Project

I will be working on manipulating images tonight and tomorrow before class...hopefully with better results to show-off.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

First Attempts- The Found Project

Here is what I wanted to show everyone in Class.


Okay, now that you've seen it...there is still a lot of work to do.

Here is my list at present:

I plan on going back in and superimposing a picture of the We Want Your Story! poster to each of the still pictures.

I want to add music to the segments before the stills...the first three frames.

I want to have voice over in the stills section.

I want to retake the end footage with out shaking the camera.

I want to add still photos of individual found comments.

I have bloopers...maybe I will post those later.

What I hope to accomplish by Thursday:

Superimposing the We Want Your Story Image.

Taking and adding the new end footage.

I think that sounds fairly reasonable...who knows what I may run into!

Monday, March 23, 2009

Neglect and New Ideas

Okay, I admit it, I have neglected my blog for the sandy beaches of Commerce, TX... actually I took a little time to reflect on my project and I wanted to give everyone the heads-up here. I want to begin my movie with video of me putting up my found boards, and then move in a different direction for the filling-up of the boards. I am going to take a little creative license and using a digital camera to make still shots of each paper placed on the board, filling up one board as a representation and placing all of the images in movie maker and speeding them up...Does that make sense? I am hoping to have these images by Thursday. I have a few ideas for the beginning and the ending but I will keep those veiled for now.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Video Sentence

Maybe more of an exercise in random thought...

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

My Project

I basically just copied and pasted the e-mail request for my project...look for it on a hall near you!

Hi, Sal--


Below, please find a request from JP Sloop for permission to use a small portion of the bulletin board on each floor of the Hall of Languages for the duration of the semester as communication point for a documentary project.

Using Found Magazine (www.foundmagazine.com) and the National Conversation on Writing (www.ncow.org) as inspiration, JP would like to set up a “found” space for found writing to be displayed/shared in the Hall of Languages. A writing assignment will emerge from this, as well as a video project documenting the experiment and the resulting artifacts/conversations. The video will be shared with the National Conversation on Writing, to be found in the NCoW archives and, we hope, featured in future NCoW campaigns.

Here’s JP’s request. Thanks, Sal!

---Shannon


Drs. Attardo and Carter,

I recently watched a video interview from the National Conversation on Writing (NCOW) website, in which the author made the claim that we are all writers. I agree, and from this premise I would like to suggest the following project. I think one of the inhibitors for people seeing themselves as writers is the lack of a space to present their writing. For my project, I would like to use a portion of the bulletin boards on each floor in the Hall of Languages, providing a space for writers to display their work. I will be keeping a type of video journal of the progress of the bulletin boards. I hope to turn the footage into a short video looking at who and what is being written about when a space is provided.

Yours,
JP Sloop


Monday, February 23, 2009

Video, Video, and more Video

Over the weekend, I played around with movie maker. I made the following short movie, which probably infringes on copyright laws, but it is for educational purposes, and John Lennon is dead so...What I wanted to do was talk a little about my rhetorical choices, what I thought worked well and what I think are the weaknesses in the video.



Now that you have seen the video, I will attempt to explain what I was trying to do. Thinking of audience, I used images from WWII, Vietnam, and Iraq, I was hoping to appeal to a wide range of viewers. I chose black and white, because i think it adds a nostalgic quality. I wasn't going for the same nostalgia as grandmas cookies, but nonetheless a connection with the audience. I choose "Imagine" because it has become an iconic mantra for any peaceful protest. Besides the recognizably of the song, the song itself has powerful lyrics that help to tell the story along with the pictures, Lennon has a poignant, calming voice in this song, and the tone of the music is sombre. I chose to add words in title screens to make very specific points during the flash of images. I chose not to distract from the images with flashy transitions (I used the same transition. I also extended the amount of time that each image stays on the screen for better viewablity.

My favorite part of the video is when we see the word imagine and then a picture of John holding up a peace sign. i think this is the most effective because John's symbolic hand gesture stands in for the text Peace, and adds a little reverent moment for Lennon himself.

There are issues; I think I could have used more current protest images, I think the music could better sync-up, and I wish I had down the beginning quote in black instead of white lettering.

There is my brief attempt at video and justification for the video, for fun I am putting up the first video I made in class, it has a lot of issues that I won't get into here...Okay the first video will have to be a later post...you tube is being slow.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Ooops, forgot one

The Smiths / Girlfriend in a Comma

Thinking of Video, well music videos...

In the spirit of our upcoming video lectures, I thought it would be fun to post some of my favorite music videos. Here goes:

The National / Apartment Story


Kings of Convenience / I'd Rather Dance With You


Bright Eyes / First Day of My Life


R.E.M / Fall on Me
early REM video, which I couldn't embed, but Micheal Stipe is really interested in photography and video and thier videos usually show it...he directs a few, I'm not sure if this is one of the ones he directs or not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVx3Qv1Q6PU

Bright Eyes / Easy/Lucky/Free
Wow!! it isn't my favorite song but what a concept.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Attempts at a Multimodol Rhetorical Model


Okay so here goes, I am thinking throuhg this idea of how our choices in adaptation are in reality rhetorical choices. Here is my example.

1st lyrics / Written Composition
The glove compartment isn't accurately named
And everybody knows it.
So i'm proposing a swift orderly change.

Cause behind its door there's nothing to keep my fingers warm
And all i find are souvenirs from better times
Before the gleam of your taillights fading east
To find yourself a better life.

I was searching for some legal document
As the rain beat down on the hood
When i stumbled upon pictures i tried to forget
And that's how this idea was drilled into my head

Cause it's too important
To stay the way it's been

There's no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it's gone it's like it wasn't there at all
And here i rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night

There's no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it's gone it's like it wasn't there at all
And here i rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night (up all night)
When i'm lying awake at night.

2nd Lyrics and Pictures / Photo Essay


The glove compartment isn't accurately named
And everybody knows it.
So i'm proposing a swift orderly change.

Cause behind its door there's nothing to keep my fingers warm
And all i find are souvenirs from better times
Before the gleam of your taillights fading east
To find yourself a better life.

I was searching for some legal document
As the rain beat down on the hood
When i stumbled upon pictures i tried to forget
And that's how this idea was drilled into my head

Cause it's too important
To stay the way it's been

There's no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it's gone it's like it wasn't there at all
And here i rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night

There's no blame for how our love did slowly fade
And now that it's gone it's like it wasn't there at all
And here i rest where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night (up all night)
When i'm lying awake at night.

3rd Audio
Unfortunatley I haven't figured out how to post just audio

4th Video


Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Logophile


I just read Taggs article "Reading Sounds or An Essay on Sounds, Music, Knowledge, Rock & Society" umm that really is quite an ambitious title. At any rate I was interested in some of the terminology that he brings up, so this post has some of my favorites in the form of a top 5 list with visual adds:

1) Soundscape









2) "Sonic Property Ownership" Okay, its Sonic Youth, but I couldn't find a picture of sonic property ownership...










3) Wall of Sound











4) Acoustic Horizon








5) Sensomotric

Saturday, January 31, 2009

First Attempts at Audacity Parts I & II

Part I

Okay, last week we worked with the Audacity program and a million free sounds. I loved it!! I am attempting to post my sound bite from class. I titled the sound bite 'waking up' I spliced a microphone tapping to begin, then a coffee pot perculating with some blues underneath, which eventually fades into a group of people talking. I played around with the multple layers for effect as well as fading in to certain parts. It is not Mozart but really fun to mess around with.

Part II

Okay so I couldn't figure it out, but I saw that "Silver" had a sound bite on his blog, so I will be asking him how to post sound. But in the attempts to figure this out, I had an idea for a class that I wanted to pursue. My vision is to teach an entire semester around composing with audio This American Life(sque)and then have the University radio station play them or at least the best ones, um contest style or something. I think Angela and I are attempting to pilot a "New Media" class, keep your fingers crossed.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Later that day

I think I want to start with a little background info. Both my BA and MA are in literature and there are a lot of new concepts, etc. for me to learn while focusing my PhD work on Comp / Rhet. During my last semester at Pittsburg State I needed to take a final seminar class and by cosmic circumstances I took a class on computers and composition. The class mainly dealt with the influence of computers in the field of composition, but it was in this class that I first read some of Cythinia Selfe's work, whose name is ubiquitous in the New Media field. I really enjoy her work and the first chapter of our text sets up a good theoretical base for the exploration of new media. Here is one of my favorite quotes: "The more channels students ( and writers generally) have to select from when composing and exchanging meaning, the more resources they have at their disposal for being successful communicators" (Selfe 3). In other words, ignoring the importance of "more channels" is essentially depriving students / writers of all the tools they need to complete a task. This leads me into the ideas that are expressed in the Daley article. I think that she makes a great argument for the use of multi-media projects in the class room. Daley says that "the tools of keying, compositing, and morphing are more than ways of misrepresenting the truth. They enable the construction of higher orders of meaning, nuance, and inference" (Daley 36). I am attempting to post a video that I think is funny, but also illustrates this point, enjoy.

Ummm...

Okay here is a short, hello I'm here post. I have started reading and thinking about the articles...more to come later. I will blame my lack of blogging to 650 pages of The Innocents Abroad, and its satiric travel log nature.