Digital Media — Concepts and Production

My video is called Save the Everglades.  I wanted to bring attention to the fact that if we continue along the lines we are going, the everglades might vanish… or not

SAVE THE EVERGLADES

I used Sony Vegas Movie Studio.  All photographs came from Flickr, and have a creative commons license.

The date was November 22, 2007, Thanksgiving Day and the day before our Dad’s birthday.  My older brother, Glenn Allen, left this world to go onto a much better place that day.  Being the holiday season, this anniversary would be very difficult to bear for the next few years.  However, this year on November 22nd, instead of being consumed with loss and grief, we were celebrating the new birth of my son, Reid Allen!

For my digital story, I used Windows Live Movie Maker.  I used 30 seconds of each of the four songs for my sound, along with my own voiceover, which falls under the Fair Use guidelines.  I used personal pictures for the imagery in my project.

Hidden Garden is a story about self-reflection and
about how one’s life may be grouped into seven year parts or
units. The life measurement aspect is meant to come to a next chapter in my
life where I consider bringing my two young sons to a place that impressed me
as a child.

I used voice over narration by using Audacity first and
imported it into Windows Live Movie Maker. My media assets included all still
photography from various Creative Commons Flickr users and 13 photos from my
personal collection as well. The musical score is by CCmixter user Joshua
Hults.

When I began this assignment I had high hopes for telling a story, and using my creative writing skills. What my project taught me was that less is sometimes more, and that one interview, one picture, one article can dramatically alter your course & make you rethink your story completely.
Ronnie’s interviews took my long winded writing, and made it unfit to mesh with her folksy ways. I created most of the script as I went. I hope you enjoy this story. I feel making it has taught me a lot about my community, my coworkers, and also myself.

How I Became a Superhero

My digital story will outline how I considered many different professions while I was growing up: astronaut, forensic scientist, teacher, and ultimately a SuperLibrarian. Obviously fictional and overblown, the purpose of the story does not go much beyond the entertainment of the making of a SuperLibrarian. It is told from my point of view and presented as fact. I take my job as SuperLibrarian very seriously following a long line of past SuperLibrarians.

I worked on creating the titles separately and the drawing of the girl. Most of the media came from flickr.

I used Prezi to create my presentation.

My Digital Story is about an event in my life that pushed me to give up my car and commute via bicycle.

All images are from the creative commons except the first image with the christmas tree, the photo of the bike with the cat and the video at the end.  Those are from my personal collection.  The audio clip is mine as well.

All video editing and audio recording was done in iMovie ’09.

Disney Princess…A Good Role Model

(Please click the title to see my digital story)

I recorded audio using Audacity and attached it to pictures through iMovie for the purpose of added sound to Prezi, which doesn’t import audio by itself. The photos that include children are shot by Nick Vandewalle (my father) and I have obtained permission to use them. The music is from the musical Once Upon A Mattress performed by Carol Burnett and is from the 1959 Original Cast Recording on CD.

I created the digital story using Prezi. I inserted pictures, shapes, text, and videos to convey my story. Audacity helped me to record and combine music and audio as well as amplify my soft speaking voice. I overlaid pictures with the audio I created by using iMovie.

The gist of my story is that some say disney does not provide good role models for young girls. I try to prove otherwise with a personal anecdote and a different perspective on the characters in question.

Synopsis:

This is the story of my life, and how growing up with an artist father during the tumultuous 1960′s influenced my life.  I adored my father, loved spending time in his studio, and was molded by his artistry.  This video shows exactly how the events of the 1960′s happening when I was in my most formative years, combined with the security, strength, and passion for life I gained from my dad helped create the person I am today.  I also describe how while watching the March for Civil Rights on Washington in 1963 I formulated my dream at the very young age of 4.

Software:

I used Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 to create this video.  I combined photographs, digital reproductions of graphics, and Media slides within the Vegas Movie software project.  The audio of my voice was recorded in Vegas Movie Studio, and the audio clips were placed into Vegas Movie Studio sound strip.  The whole project was composed, embedded into a video strip, a voice strip, and a music strip within Vegas Movie Studio as a video project.

Media Assets:

All personal photographs and my father’s graphics were used with permission. (I own those copyrights as his daughter).  Photographs with other people came from my cell phone camera, and I had  permission to reproduce then as I needed by the various families or individuals depicted in them.  The covers of Life magazine, The Daily News, the Ed Sullivan Show Logo, and the Beatles photographs came from Flickr and indicated they had a creative commons license.  The photographs from the March on Washington, the button logo, and the photographs of the violence in the South came from the National Archives which indicated they had a “no known restrictions” label or were in Public Domain because they were government photographs.

All music clips were mp3 clips used as ring tones for cell phones.  To be safe each clip was 30 seconds or less to assure no copyrights were infringed upon.

I Had A Dream is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Synopsis

Food is a unifying aspect of all of our lives and yet, each of us has a unique, very personal relationship with food.  This story describes the motivation behind and the experience of a one-year sabbatical that I took to research different people’s relationships with food. I used an oral history methodology and audio-recorded over 60 interviews with people across theUnited States. My sabbatical was a way to explore my personal relationship with food by learning about others’ relationships. My hope is that people will leave the story with a sense of wonderment and awe of the richness and complexity of one of the very few aspects of life that we all have in common.   And as such, will better appreciate the roles food plays in our lives. 

Editing Software

I used Audacity to stitch together my 7 narration clips and to edit the narration.  I used Sony Vegas HD Platinum software to edit the video.  I used the basic stuff but would like to spend more time figuring out how to use many of the special features.

Media Assets

I used three different Creative Commons-licensed songs from CCMixter. I am not convinced they are the right ones.  Many of the  photos came from my collection from the sabbatical. I was surprised how many I had to find from other sources (all are Creative Commons-licensed from Flickr users).  But after viewing some of my fellow students’ videos, I now think I may have too many images in my video.  The interview clips were recorded in 2006 using a cassette tape recorder and I had to convert the analog recording to digital.  I recorded the narration on an Olympus DVR.

My Prezi      <– Check out my Digital Story here!

Hello all, my digital story is about the process of rescuing pets. The purpose of this video is to show one personal story of what it mean to rescue an animal.  I hope my story will make other families consider rescuing animals without homes.  I see this Digital Story being used for a library program titled “My Kid Wants a Puppy…but Should we Rescue?” or some other catchier title.

Media: My Digital Story was created with the help of Windows Live Movie Maker and Prezi. I recorded my narration with Audacity.

Credits: The bulk of the video images from “My Family of Mutts” were from my personal collection, and the  narration in the video was voiced by myself.  I did use a few Flickr images and they are given credit in the video credits.

The video “Milkyway Running” was posted by my sister on Youtube and she gave me the permission to use the video.

Synopsis:

My digital story is about life and fate.  It’s a quick story on how you can plan for something almost your whole life, but at the end life might have something better for you in mind.  The key is to just go with it and have a little faith that everything will work out.  As an example, I tell the story on how a medical scar changed my career direction.  How that situation went from scary and unknown to amazing and bright in the end.

Media Assets:

All titles, text, and credits used in the video were created by me using After Effects by Adobe.  The narration for the video was recorded using my Apple iPhone 4S voice recording application.

Software Used:

I created this video using Adobe After Effects, Apple iPhone 4S Voice Recorder, and Apple Final Cut Pro.  I recorded my audio using my phone and sent the audio file via email to myself.  I used After Effects to create the title, text throughout the video, and for the end credits.  I imported both the audio file and the After Effects files to Final Cut Pro.  Using Final Cut Pro, I edited everything together and exported the file as a .mov file.  After the video was exported, I uploaded it to my YouTube account.

I often get asked the question, “why are you a teacher? It’s a difficult profession (which seems to become even more difficult every year) you work countless hours beyond what you are supposed to and you are paid very little.” I plan to tell this story through my point of view. The story will answer the question, “Why do you teach?” I will start the story by discussing why I became a teacher.

I created my video using iMovie. I recorded the narration using Audacity and added the background music, which came from CCMixer. The photos in the video were taken primarily from the Creative Commons portal of Flickr and I also sprinkled in a few personal photos.

Synopsis:

This video is to honor my father who died in 2010 at the age of ninety-five.  I hope to show my point of view of a man who was appreciated by friends, family and strangers alike. He seemed to live to connect with people.  He was renowned for recounting stories, telling jokes, offering prayers, leading the Sunday school classes in a song and cheering on the Pittsburgh Steelers football team.  Later in life he developed a severe hearing impairment and then dementia but this did not impair his sociability.

Editing Software:

Video created using iMovie ’11. Uploaded to YouTube under a standard YouTube license. I shared the video with YouTube directly using the iMovie software. iMovie considers the video as medium, 640×480. The resolution is as follows: H.264, 30 fps, 1.7 Mbps, and 29.3 MB.

Media Assets:

Digital images from my personal iPhoto library, digital images from my cousins, older photos converted to digital images, short MPEG video converted from VHS tape, text on iPhoto titles and music used with Fair Use.

Synopsis:  This is the story of my Grandmother and her struggle to be a working professional woman during a time when women did not have many rights.  She had many obstacles from society. Over time, she achieved a remarkable career where she founded and automated a library that was one of the world’s largest aerospace/scientific collections. However, she was not recognized for this achievement in this country.

Editing Software: I created my video with Adobe Premier Elements. I used Audacity to mix the music. I softened the crescendo and moved some sections of the music. For instance, I decreased some pauses in the music for timing.  I also increased the tempo in the middle of the song to add drama.  I used Adobe Premier Elements to record the narration. I cropped all the images to fit video aspect ratio  in Adobe photo shop before importing. I also changed the images color to make the new images blend with the older images.  I added Cleo to the identification photo. Within Adobe Premier Elements, I added special effects so some of the images would have motion to emphasize aspects of the image. I added some fades to the images to help add to the passage of time.

Media assets: Images from Flickr users all had a Creative Commons license. Images from the Library of congress had a “no known restrictions” label or were all in public domain due to their age.  Images from Wikipedia were in public domain because they are U.S. government photos. The song has a creative commons licenses from soundcloud. I wrote and narrated the story.

My digital project is an attempt to capture some of the thought processes that propel me through my hobby, distance running (marathons).  My family and friends don’t usually understand this—they see the looks of pain, the soreness, the time lost to training, and while that is all definitely an issue, they don’t experience the fleeting moments of a feeling close to euphoria that come with such endurance tests. This project is an attempt to capture and demonstrate that duality, providing a better glimpse into the psyche of a marathoner.

The project was created using Windows Movie Maker.  I had originally started the project on my own laptop using Sony Vegas, but my machine kept crashing so I switched all my resource over to my wife’s computer.  Thanks to the prior planning and collection of materials, this didn’t create too much of a problem.

The videos and images are all from Flickr, Youtube, or from my personal collection, and all have CC licenses.  The audio music is from CC Mixter, the sounds are from Freesound, and my narration was recorded in Audacity.  All components were edited and published as an mp3 from Audacity, then imported into WMM.