Quentin Tarantino’s Star Wars?

In Quentin Tarantinos’ Star wars it explains how the internet has changed the way we consume media using the popular movie legacy of Star Wars. The visibility of these series has changed in fan culture. Amateur film makers now have a “new powerful distribution channel.” On the internet they are allowed to reach the public faster and easier. The fans “generated new sounds, new artists, new techniques, and new relations to the consumer.” The internet is just a huge way to reach out to many people all at once basically for free. Anyone with a computer and with internet can had more material for the audience to consume this media.

There is a no clear division between producers and consumer since this is a folk culture. These relationships are not fixed. If looking for a  distinction it is best to look at interactivity and participation. Interactivity deals with the “new technologies have been designed to be more responsive to consumer feedback”. Participation is “is shaped by the cultural and social protocols.” The fans are the product owners in a since. They enjoyed the Star Wars franchise so much that they wanted to contribute to the already existing culture.

Fan culture has changed over the last three to four years that films created, that were inspired by things such as Star Wars, are more like parodies. There fan websites and stories created from original ideas like Star Wars. Also that fans can built a career from their fan culture if it is recognized enough by the public.

The amateur movie scene has this bottom-up momentum. They gain profit from the fan culture and sometimes they just film in their room with a very low budget. If it wasn’t for the fans of this particular film those amateur films wouldn’t make any type of profit

Reflection

After my group overcame some issues with distribution of work and who will do what we had to get all the shots done, audio, and divide the paper. Me and my group have gotten all our filming done. It was all done in one day. It didn’t take more then 2 hours. It was easy because we had the storyboard and script all done.  After some feedback we had cut out a good chunk of stuff from the original storyboard. The script was made after the new storyboard was approve and everything was ready for filming.

We used my room and the front of the career services office. Bringing it down to 2 scenes made it easier to film and plan. I was so happy with the lighting to. It was a bright sunny day and my room was super quite.

We divide the paper up into who is doing what. I will be taking about of anything that is related to the filming, programs used, and audience. My other group member(s) have their work assigned as well. We plan on having everything down within a week, max 2. This will include revisions and such.

One hurdle I anticipate to have is the audio. The separate records we had with out actress talking were trashed because the microphone keep rubbing against her shirt so we are going to have to dub everything. Luckily she doesn’t have much dialogue. However the  narrator’s voice has not been recorded yet and that is the going to be awesome…..

The second hurdle I expect is putting everything together. That will definitely take a whole day to get all the editing down and have the video complete for revision. I have taken the liberty of putting the video together so I expect this to be the worst part of the project for myself but I know I will do a good job like I did on my midterm video. I took into consideration the critiques I got from it and plan on using them for this one.

Legal Borrowing

This week in class we learned about copyright and what is the legal way to use/ borrow published or produced material. For our final projects, our videos will includes series of shots, music, and some images. If they aren’t original material then we have to give credit to the creators or owners of that material. Here are some forms of media that I feel my group and I can use for our video project.

http://careers.rutgers.edu/events.cfm

This photo I would crop to just show the two woman shaking hands. This can represent the appointment between the student and the career counselor. The picture can be used when the narrator is speaking to the student about making the appointment. It would play as what the student is imagining the appointment will go.

Some of the footage in this video I would like to use. For instance the speeding through the office clips and the mock interview portions. My group would use the speeding through the office parts to represent the student entering the office and going to there appointment/ mock interview.

This song can be used as background music for a part of the video. We plan on using at least 2 songs. One for when the student is using the website and another for the appointment. I think this song will work well for the appointment because it is chill and has a moderate tempo. We want the audience to understand that the appointment shouldn’t make them nervous and they should feel comfortable because it is to help them plan their future.

In regards to the Lessig piece, it is stated that “anyone can take images, sounds, video from the culture around us and remix them in ways that speak to a generation more powerfully than raw text ever could. That’s the key. This is just writing for the twenty-first century”. I find this very interesting because remixing is a pretty modern thing because of the internet. There is more material available to use to express oneself. However, the copyright law regulates culture by what can be copied and what can be copied and produced.

Storyboard process and copyright

I think what changed during our original storyboard to the concrete one was that we introduce the idea of the speaker and student relationship. The original storyboard plan was to just follow a student that is using career services and the steps they take up until there meeting with someone from career services. However we felt this would be too boring and we wouldn’t be able to do much with the videos recorded when it came to the final editing. I believe one new element we should introduce is making the speaker and student dialogue like that of the comedy  series “Scrubs.” I think it would make the video cool and really funny to watch. The process of storyboarding was relatively easy. We began storyboarding in class and came up with the scenes. The first scene will be with a frustrated freshman student wanting to figure out what to do for a career after college and this is were the speaker is introduced. Then the student is instructed to go online to the career services website and make a meeting for the health services’ career advisor. Next scene will be the meeting. Then finishing off with a happy student. In “REMIX: How Creativity is Being Strangled by Law” by Lessig. L., they speak about plagiarism and how “In my view, plagiarism is the only crime for which the death penalty is approipriate. So long as you cite, you can take whatever you want and use it for your purpose in creating.” Meaning that if we want to use any outside material for our video we just have to credit were the material is from. Depending is there is a copyright law we can use a small amount of the material and credit it.

Before the Storm: Pre-Storyboard

brainstorming

I think my group and I are heading in the right direction. In our last class we had a meeting were we split out ideas of how the video should go and what we plan on doing. We are going to have it based on a freshman student look for career advice in the health sciences. The video will begin with the student being frustrated and confused about how to start planning for their future outside of college . Then there will be a speaker who only talks to the student in the video. the student is the only one who can hear and speak to the speaker. The speaker will act as the guide and direct the student to career services and explain what they can do to help plan out their future. This will result in the student having a meeting with a career services adviser. During that time there could be some commentary from the speaker on what occurs during these meetings. The group all agreed that this would be a good direction to go with for the video. Since we want to have some room to make it corky. We feel that the conversation between the student and the speaker can be used for that.  I think with this storyboard it will make the video funny and fun to make.

Top 5, My Creative Ending, and Upcoming Final Project

“Top 5 Midterm Blogs”

https://lovelylilkitten.wordpress.com/

I have always been interested in drawing on tablets because the animations you can make on them are so cute and fun. The video was well edited and easy to understand. The step by step guide with demonstration could have very well been a popular instructional video on YouTube. The website was simple and did not distract from what it was made for. Her first blog post is very welcoming and includes one of the artist’s personal drawings which make it so much more intimate.

https://shadeswithshar.wordpress.com/about/

I like the topic of this blog. It is a socially informative blog on shadism in the African-American community. The blogger’s goal is to distinguish the origins of this negative paradigm, why it originated, how it’s presented in the media as well the community, and the effect that it has on African-Americans regarding treatment. The video define shadism and how light skin is considered “better” among African American communities. I love history and I enjoy the historical facts and information in this video. These is a positive message that comes with this blog and video.

https://sororityscene.wordpress.com/

This blog is very girly and pink. There is a clear theme and you understand that it is for girls in a sorority. There are arts and crafts there that I assume help girls who are in a sorority to make their things with letters. The step by step written instructions are very clear. I like how neat and organize the blog is. The topic is obvious and consistent. It stood out to me because of how the whole blog stay with the main purpose of it.

https://journeytofitdom.wordpress.com/

There were a few being fit websites but I felt this one was the best. It has workout options and a video on a diet called the Ketogenic diet. The theme and pictures all go well with the purpose of the blog. It feels like a real blog. It has an instructive and personal vibe to it. The blogger explains some personal experiences and gives advice on what to do. There is also a sense of motivation when it comes to this blog.

https://singleguysurvival.wordpress.com/

This one I like for its interesting topic. The single guy survival blog was cool to be on. The layout and color choices are very good. It really speaks “dude” to be. Nothing to crazy, something simple, and out there. One if not the best videos I saw. The music was fun and the editing was fantastic. Feels like a real cooking tutorial. He looks like he is enjoying himself as well. The videos are clear and the captions as well. Made me want to try out the recipe.

At the end of the midterm I ended up enjoying my final project. I topic was something I have always been passionate about which made it easier to create. Also I had recently planned and went on a trip with my best friends. I have noticed that people outside of the course have stopped by and looked at my page which shows that I achieve the “real” blog look. The idea for the blog made it easy to continue to work on and sometimes pleasant too. However my biggest worry with the final project is that the topic has been decided for us and I’m not crazy about it. We will be creating an informative video for career services and I honestly think that it’s going to be boring and hard to make interesting. I have faith in my group to complete the project but I think the video is going to project that went weren’t in love with the topic for the final. I am a personal friend of one of my group mates and my other group member seems like he will take whatever his given to him and want to make sure it is done early and correctly. I’m not concerned on how we will distribute the work. This week we already started assigning who is going to be working on the paper more than the video and who will be editing more. In Hyde’s “What is Collaboration?” he explains collaborationism as “as collaborative action can have more than one intent, it can also have more than on repercussion. These multiple layers are often a source of conflict and confusion.” This is stating that the group has to make sure to stay on one topic because with different people working on one assignment it is easy for differences to appear. As a group we must be aware of what our main goal is and to stay on it.

Losing my screen casting virginity

Well I have to say that was the hardest easiest thing I ever had to to. The concept of just recording yourself talking and doing something may sound easy but it’s much harder trust me. As I searched to find another eportfolio like the ones given as examples I couldn’t find any. I just keep finding how to make an eportfolio. So that when I decided to just use two of the examples give. It was fun at first using screen-o-matic to record what I was doing but as I tried to record myself I keep freezing and not knowing what to say next. After writing down what I wanted to say it was much easier but I had to keep the flow going. Probably 13 recording failure later, I had my final screencast recorded. Then I had to continue onto movie maker which I am familiar with. The program was easy to use and took the shortest amount of time to work with. I still encountered an issue with uploading the file and trying to add a caption but it all worked out. I was upset that a part of my clip lost some resolution but otherwise everything was okay. It was a very mediocre video but you gotta start somewhere.

Continuing onto another discussion: how you think a game might be able to convey politics? In Bogost article “Playing Politics” he mentions a game called Civilization more commonly known as “Civ.” I personally love and have played this game and it is very popular. It goes through ancient civilizations to modern day times. You learn historical buildings, people, and public relations. He writes that “as software systems, these games can enact one or more historiographies, representing them with rules of interaction rather than patterns of writing. In Civilization, technological innovation enables military dominance, which the player must exercise to progress through history effectively. ” I love history and this game really works well with all the eras the human race has gone through.

Here is what civ looks like

Editing Audio

This week was the first time I used the program Audacity. Before Audacity, I would use Microsoft Movie Maker for my audio and video editing. Audacity at first glace may appear very intimidating but with the basic knowledge and time you get the hang of it pretty quick. The program itself does not look attractive like Garageband and is much harder to use. There is a large selection of effects and ways to alter the songs. I was required to delayed the 2nd track 10 seconds, create a fade in and fade out effect, also insert a audio recording of my voice in a music bed I created.  I had fun using it and look forward to using it more in and out of class.  I feel the hardest part was export the completed file because you have to download something, which honestly I was just worried I was going to get a virus. I also had difficulties uploading my voice over but eventually I was able to import it once I converted it from m4a to mp3 Under here is my finished product and I hope you enjoy it.

For my video choice, I choose to watch “Only Yesterday”- Chris Stuckmann on awesomechannel.com.

There was only one fixed angle and it was on Chris Stuckmann.  He had images included in his video. They had either a zoom in or zoom out effect when presented. The main video  and audio is Stuckmann speaking and the main things he added were inserts of images to that clip. He also would add an image to the corner screen, I don’t know how he did that.  The images he mainly included were from the film Only Yesterday, which was the topic of the video. He edited a few parts of his audio, I noticed because there were some chopped moments in his speech.

 

Audio Planning

Audio editing for me would be used more for a hobby. I have done some audio editing mainly in high school when it came to making a PSA for my health class. Future wise, I would probably used it for my own music. I like to write songs and have sampled beats from other songs I’ve liked. With these sampled songs I constructed instruments for my lyrics. Audacity sort of reminds me of Windows Movie Maker, which has been my premier program for audio editing. The music I plan to record in the future is mainly for me and to express my feelings. It would be a good way to see my progression with my lyrics and editing abilities. I play violin and a little guitar. With the Audacity software I would be able to put my recordings of me playing my instruments together and actually produce my own instrumental designed by me.  I really want to become a good artist and musician. This program would give me an opportunity, with practice and a good ear, to even become a producer in a way. Who knows, maybe my beats will get popular and people will use them for their own lyrics. I have always loved hip hop producers who sample older songs. Maybe I can try that too but I wouldn’t be able to rap over them or anything because I certainly don’t have any skills in rapping. In my career, which would be in nursing, I don’t think I’ll have to use audio editing at work. Audio editing the music I plan on writing in the future will be for fun and relaxation. Being able to audio edit will just make it easier and broaden my horizons on what I can create to express myself.

Jokingly this will be me in the future

Amateur Imagine Editing

My first experience with imagine editing had to be with the classic pre-installed Paint. I would just crop and use the spray paint tool to add some color effect. Then later on when MySpace became a popular media site, I learned about filters and layering on top of my photos so they could look cooler but honestly if I look back at them now they are actually pretty embarrassing. Here is an idea of what MySpace profile pic editing would look like:

But that animated chick would be me. I got this image from the old popular site Blingee.com where people, including myself, use to upload their picture and “bling it out.” It was cool back then.

I have never been professionally taught how to edit pics as you can see by my example but I always wanted to learn. I would love to know how to restore old pictures that are damaged. My parents have some photos that over the years have taken a beating and are losing a lot of the image itself. I have seen only that there is a way of scanning and editing the photo so it could look clearer and as good as new. It would mean a lot to my parents and even the rest of my family if I could do that for them.

Here you can see the amazing job done. In the past people would take so little pictures, so if they could be restored its like going back in time for them.I got this image from http://www.photofl.com/photorestoration/, which is a restoration site where they let you know the work that they do and where you can have your photos restored.

Also it would be nice to be able to take pictures and event and be able to edit them so that everyone looks amazing and “perfect.” I feel like everyone secretly wants someone to Photoshop their pictures at least once.