Last and Final Forever Summary

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Final Project

My final project was so much fun to make! I think what made it the most fun was that I was able to decide what I wanted to create, in all respects, so I got to choose to do whatever I wanted, however I wanted. I didn’t have to follow anybody else’s parameters but my own. This is a story of Jason Mraz and the journey through his most recent album, and recent tour through some parts of Europe. I hope others get to see the physical, as well as spiritual, mental, journey that Jason Mraz took through this album and tour. I hope the viewers get to see how much Jason Mraz loves making music and that through his music, he is able to make a difference in the world and inspire others along the way. To learn more about Jason Mraz, his music, and the non-profit organizations he’s involved with, or simply to find his next tour datese (which I’m constantly stalking), go to his website here.

Storytelling Relooked

This week, I went back onto my Week 3 Summary describing what I believed the definition of storytelling and digital storytelling to be. We were asked to reflect about this definition and if and how it has changed over the course of this semester. Looking back on my definition of digital storytelling, I think my concept of it has altered a bit. It is still college students, or in fact, anybody else in the world, no matter the age, sitting around by their computers, being encaptured by the stories that are being told through this form of technology. It’s a little different because now I totally understand how a story can be told digitally through different forms, such as audio, visual, or video. Before completing the Five Sound Story assignment, I never would have imagined how an entire story could be told through just a few simple sounds. But now I can!

Stuff Created

One of the most thought-provoking parts of this final week was to create new Daily Creates and assignment suggestions for future students and participants of this class. This was a cool experience because I got to think about what kind of Daily Creates and assignments that I really would have enjoyed making and what future students would also like to do. I created assignments and Daily Creates in different categories so as to provide some variety and give students different options to choose from.

Best Work

I couldn’t remember at first if I had put anything into my Best Work category. So while I clicked this button, I held my breath, hoping there was something there that I could work with. And, thankful, to my happiness, there was something there. And something great at that! I have two selections in this category: Character/Genre Mashup and a poster for How I Met Your Mother, the television show. Character/Genre Mashup was definitely one of my favorite assignments that I have completed this semester. It took one of the longest and required the most efforts, but in the end, I was super happy with the product. I combined romance scenes from all different varieties of television shows and movies. I used some of my favorite couples of all time, like Eric and Donna from That 70′s Show and Noah and Allie from The Notebook. I also got some feedback on this assignment, which rarely happens!

Advice To Future Students

Here is my video where I give advice to future students and participants of Digital Storytelling.

Final Reflection

Overall, this was a really interesting class that required lots and lots of time. It wasn’t just something you could sit down at a desk and be done with in 10 minutes. You had to give yourself at least a couple of hours to complete the assignments, especially if you wanted to do them well. I really enjoyed the idea and concept of this class but when you really got down to it, it was a lot of work. And if you’ve never done anything with programs like GIMP or Windows Movie Maker, etc., it takes a lot of time, practice, and effort before you really get a handle on any of those programs. But once you have it, it’s pretty easy to manipulate and there are resources alll over YouTube to help you figure out if you do run into any issues. Finally, it was a great class! And I’m so glad I got to complete my Arts: Process credit using this course. Cause Lord knows what would have happened if I actually had to draw things…. Let’s not even think about it.

Paying It Forward

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Here is my video of advice to future students and participants of Digital Storytelling, or affectionately known as ds106!

Good luck to whoever endeavors in this class in the future! It’s an interesting class but definitely requires a lot of work and is just as much work as a normal class (just a little different in the ways you do it because it is an online class).

 

Tour is a Four Letter Word

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Here we begin our journey through Jason Mraz‘s most recent album, Love is a Four Letter Word, and follow him through his recent tour of Europe, ending in London, as he travels back across the pond to play at Madison Square Garden with other artists in his final show in 2012.

Jason Mraz is touring across Europe and playing shows everywhere, this was his first full-scale world tour and this was just part of it. Dubbed “Tour Is A Four Letter Word” as a spin off of the album title that was most recently released. The simplicity and cleverness of the title ties in with Mraz’s outlook on life portrayed through his upbeat, carefree music: to live simply and be happy.

Tour Poster

Just to give an idea of the cities and countries he played in, you can view my simple map of Europe and follow the path from one city to the next. He starts off in Paris, France, and ends his trip around parts of Europe in London, England before he returns to America, in New York City.

European Tour Directions

To keep a documentary of the places he had been and the beautiful, magnificent things he had seen, he created a Pinterest account specifically for this tour that showcases everything he did and everything he saw. From boards labeled “London Calling” to “New York, New York,” he pins pictures of places he visited while on his tour and what inspired him for the album and for this tour.

Jason Mraz Pinterest

Arriving back in New York City in Madison Square Garden, he performed his final concert in America of 2012 along with several other artists. On his plane ride back to the continental U.S., he created a new song that combined different parts of some of his songs from his new album. He had a little fun with it and even made sure that the song had rhythm and flow and the lyrics made sense all together in one piece. He enjoyed listening to this because it played some of his favorite parts of his songs in just one place!

Finally, for personal and documentary purposes, he created a video that combined his experiences that he had over the last few weeks. This video combined live video from his European shows, interviews with various reporters, and music videos from songs from this album. He really enjoyed making this because it wrapped up the past few weeks for him and gave him an easy way to look back and enjoy the memories created and all the good times had.

Tutorials Created

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Something Is Wrong Here Tutorial

I wanted to create a tutorial for this assignment that I created so that future students will know how to create this assignment, quickly and easily.

The first thing I did was to choose an image for the scene. I went onto deviant art and searched “winter snow scene” and many results came up. If you wanted a summery scene, you could search for “summer scene” and you would get results from summery things.

Here is what came up when I searched for a winter scene:

Winter Scene Snip

Next, I wanted to get a picture of something that would never happen in the winter. So my first thought was the pool and then my next thought was a barbecue or cookout. This time, I went onto Google to search its Images for cookout because deviantart didn’t have anything that I liked.

Here is what came up when I searched for “summer cookout family”:

Summer Cookout Snip

Next, to put everything together, I opened up Paint on my laptop. I first pasted the winter scene just simply by clicking Paste and uploading it from my file. Next, I also pasted the summer cookout scene that I chose. At first, the cookout scene was big and up to the right, blocking most of the scene.

First Step Snip

To fix this I covered the mouse over the corner and pulled it inwards, causing the photo to shrink. I next dragged the picture to the place that I wanted and voila! It was complete!

Watermelon in the Winter

Your Favorite Favorites Tutorial

The second tutorial I wanted to create was about the first assignment I created called “Your Favorite Favorites.” This process took me a bit of time so I wanted to create a tutorial for this so that future students would have a better idea of how to do this.

First thing I did was to go to YouTube and search for videos of the two songs I wanted to use. I then went to Video2mp3 to convert the video files into mp3 so that I could manipulate these two songs. I next opened Audacity, which is an audio editing program, and clicked ‘File’, ‘Import’, and ‘Audio’ to import the two songs I chose. This is what your screen should look like once you have imported the two songs:

Two Songs Imported Snip

Next, I would listen to the songs and decide where I wanted to add and delete which portions to make the song flow as one piece, which was the objective of the assignment. If I wanted to delete the last 30 seconds of a song, I would highlight that portion and then click the ‘delete’ button on my laptop. To move a segment of the song to a later part, I would use the icon with an arrows pointing in opposite directions to slide the audio track left or right (earlier or later).

Move Tool Snip

Once I had everything together, I would run the audio all the way through to make sure it sounded the way I wanted it to. Here is what my example looks like once it had been completed.

Final Product Snip

Tada! You just completed an awesome audio assignment!

Assignments Created

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Your Favorite Favorites

The first assignment I created for this week was called Your Favorite Favorites. This was an audio assignment that I created that required you to choose a few of your favorite songs (however many you choose is up to you) and you edit and combine them using separate parts of the song and try to create one fluid piece. This was an interesting experience because it was difficult to copy, paste, and delete portions of each song and try to keep them in order with what was what. I really liked the idea of people using some of their favorite songs and trying to create one song out of all of them. I hope that people like the assignment and try to complete it and hope they think it’s fun!

Something Is Wrong Here

The second assignment I created for this week I called Something Is Wrong Here. This was a visual assignment that I created. It required you to choose a scene from any season of your choosing and to incorporate another picture on top of that of something that would NEVER happen in that particular scene/season. For the example, I used a picture of a town in the mountains covered with lots and lots of snow and used a picture of three kids eating watermelon to put in the middle of the road. I liked the combination of this because whenever you think of winter, you would never think of watermelon.

Daily Creates I Created

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For this week, we were asked to create two Daily Create ideas and submit them as suggestions. It was interesting to think of ideas for this component of DS106. Whenever I was completing Daily Creates throughout the semester, I always thought about what kind of ideas or suggestions I would have for future Daily Creates. So this was my opportunity to do this!

Prompt 1: Make a drawing of one of the first memories you have.

I thought this would be an interesting thing for people to do. I thought it would be cool to see what people remember as being one of their first memories. My early memories consist of playing at recess in kindergarten and running around and just having fun. It would be cool to see how people would recreate their first memories in a drawing.

Prompt 2: Make a video telling us what your favorite song and why it is your favorite, is there a story behind it?

I love music! So I thought it would be cool to hear what other people’s favorite songs were. There are some stories behind why my favorite songs are my favorite songs so I thought it would be a cool assignment for people to tell their story and talk about their favorite things.

 

Just Love This Quote…

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And then one student said that happiness is what happens when you go to bed on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot that you can’t even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on top of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. And then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night feels cool and when you briefly wake up, you realize that you’re almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you reach over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back off into a deep sleep. And it’s that reaching, that gesture, that reflex to pull what’s warm – whether it’s something or someone – toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being safe in the world and ready for sleep, that’s happiness.

Weeks 13 and 14

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Remix This

The first thing we were asked to do these weeks was the same as the first thing we are asked to do every week. We are to review and browse through resources of the form of media that we will be working on for that week(s). I usually enjoy this portion because you get to see various resources and their different takes on that specific form. This week we were also asked to review examples of remix assignments that had been done by previous students. I really enjoyed this part because it was really cool to see what previous students had done and many of them were really funny and interesting!

Remix Blender Time!

So one of the most interesting parts of these two weeks was remixing/mashing up two assignments. We had to follow the links and instructions to a very specific part of the ds106 website. Once there, we had to click the blender icon and it would bring up a remix assignment along with another assignment that would give a twist on the first one. The first time I clicked the blender, the assignments worked really well together. The remix assignment was to create a YouTube duet with two songs that work really well together. But the second assignment was called “The Opposer.” So in some way, it didn’t matter what, I had to do something that would go against the assignment. So I decided to do the YouTube Duet, but choose two songs that sounded horribly when put together. Go here and tell me what you think of my choices!

Recycled Media

I really enjoyed doing this assignment this week. During Weeks 7 and 8, we had to submit a few examples of pieces of media that we had planned on using in our assignment from the past, but ended up never using them. So for this assignment, we had to choose at least 7 pieces of media (had to be in at least 2 different forms, I used photos and audio) and create a story out of them. I think mine came out pretty well, go check it out here and tell me your opinion!

Remix Assignments

I completed two Remix Assignments this week. I enjoyed creating both assignments this week because they weren’t too complicated and didn’t take an extremely long amount of time. The first assignment I completed was Actor Transformation worth 4 stars and I used Dakota Fanning for this. The second assignment I completed was Recycled Media for 3 stars and I also really liked that. I created a great story about I day I spent with my daddy :) So I’m 7/7 for the week!

Reflection

I really like the idea of mashup/remix. Literally so much stuff in our world is a remix or mashup of something else that has previously been done. You can see it in all of the examples of previous work that I review in my RemixThis blog post and also in all of the other ones completed. You can see it everywhere around us. A great example in music is Pitbull’s “Back in Time” which uses a part of a song in the soundtrack of the famous movie Dirty Dancing. Remix/mashup definitely has a huge spot in culture and media. Everyone everywhere is remixing things from the past and making in their own.

Recycled Story

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I really liked doing this assignment! It wasn’t that hard to complete but it was so much fun thinking of a story to create!

To start out, I just kind of browsed through all of the pictures and the media to try and get a feel for what I had to work with. I saw a picture of a dad and his daughter by the river and that’s what jumpstarted my idea for this story! It was recently my dad’s birthday and since I couldn’t be home to celebrate with him, I wanted to make something and dedicate it to him!

So this is the story:

One day, my dad and I decide to go to the river by our house. We walk through our neighborhood with all of the colorful fall trees and get to the river and it’s a very beautiful, peaceful day as we sit by the river. It was a great day because my dad was wearing his Redskins hat (he’s a fan) and was gonna let us paint our nails together! Couldn’t believe he was gonna let me paint his nails! LOL. And so, naturally, I brought all of my nail polish with us. And they looked so pretty all painted and polished! When all of a sudden, a cat walks by us! And my dad is allergic to cats, so he sneezes! But all is well and the day is still amazing because the cat walks away and doesn’t bother us much. Now here it is in video form, enjoy!:

3 STARS

TOTAL STARS: 7/7

 

Dakota Fanning Transformed

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So I decided to do the Actor Transformation as one of my Mashup Assignments this week. I really liked the idea of showing the transformation of a famous actor through the years and through their works. When trying to think of an actor to choose, I knew I wanted to use someone who had started acting when they were young and continued their career consistently through the years and also someone who I was kind of familiar with.

Dakota Fanning popped up in my head! Movies that she had been in came up easily in my head, for example, War of the Worlds and Twilight. So I knew that she was the actor I wanted to use for this assignment, particularly because you can see her age and progress through each movie that she is in. I chose to use five movies for Dakota because I really wanted to show how she had aged in her works.

For each movie, I went onto YouTube and searched for the particular film and looked for scenes in which really showcased Dakota acting, prominent parts of the movie. Next, I would download the video I wanted in .mp4 format with Pwn YouTube. I opened this file onto MPEG StreamClip and trimmed the portion of the video I wanted where it solely focused on Dakota. Next, I would add that clip onto my Windows Movie Maker file and add a caption onto the first three seconds of the clip that said the movie/year. I did this with each movie and put them in order from earlier works to her most recent.

Here it is:

4 STARS

TOTAL STARS: 4/7