Editing Video

I found the video editing assignment to be fairly simple and straightforward. I had prior experience working with Windows Movie Maker from making lame YouTube videos when I was twelve with my friends. The application is extremely user-friendly, especially since they have updated it to Windows Live Movie Maker. I prefer the older version because adding multiple effects on was not as complicated. The only issue I had was saving/publishing my video after I finished editing it. It could be my laptop’s fault, but the program kept crashing. As a result, I had to redo my work on the campus computer. Because I had everything already recorded and analyzed, it didn’t take me long. I am looking forward to the Midterm Project and the given flexibility for our video editing.

Years ago, I was a big time gamer, but college has sucked the fun out video games for me. Rarely do I find myself playing and enjoying a game without stressing and feeling guilty about my productivity. One of my favorite action role-playing games was the Fable series where you play as a hero with impressive magical and combative abilities. In the third game of the series, you are to overthrow your tyrannical brother and become the new king or queen to rule the kingdom of Albion. When you acquire the throne, you then have to make ethical decisions for the people of Albion and each decision comes with heavy consequences. Ironically, this particular game is my least favorite of the series for a variety of reasons, but mainly because you are left with this responsibility. I enjoy being a rogue character, but this game touched upon my own morals and I actually questioned what kind of ruler I want to be.

I have friends who have played the game and for giggles, they ruled just as oppressive as their fictional “brother”, which resulted in the kingdom despising them. I felt a sense of pride that I was able to keep my people happy, considering the effort I put into achieving the throne. This is as close as I would get into politics, so it was a fairly interesting experience to see myself stimulated in such a high position.

Week 5: Audio Editing

It has been a long while since I began and last did audio editing, but it feels good get back into it. I had made a podcast back in freshman year of high school; however, I had never been a fan of listening to my own voice. I listen to podcast frequently when I am traveling between classes and commuting to work, my favorite being “Freakonomics”. I am familiar with the format of podcasts and how music plays an important part of keeping a steady flow. I didn’t find it too difficult to edit the songs and voice recording together because I understand Audacity so much more than I did six years ago. The songs I chose also had a similar tempo, so cross fading the two was a smooth transition.

After class, I started to mess around on Audacity, downloading a numerous amount of MP3s and editing tracks over each other. In my previous post, I provided a song and video that I experimented with in hopes of drawing some connections to this week’s class lesson on editing videos.

The video I watched was “The Nerd Crew: Episode 2” from http://redlettermedia.com/. The hosts all have full and animated personalities with a very sarcastic and patronizing way of talking to each other. The camera they recorded the video on give excellent quality and the microphones they talked into gave clear output. Their set up has a strong podcast feel, but being able to see their faces and reactions make it intriguing. Even in the midst of a conversation, the camera switches to whoever is talking at eye level, allowing the viewer to follow the conversation and engage as if they were included. Because they were on the topic of Disney’s announcement of the new Star Wars title, they included the graphic for the viewers to see. Toward the end of the video, the camera angle changes from showing the hosts to facing down to a crate they were “unboxing”, switching between the hosts and the crate objects.

Editing Both Audio & Video

Hey fellow bloggers! After class, I got into the audio editing mood and I decided to mashup two of my favorite songs, “Stan” by Eminem and “Handlebars” by Flobots. I used the website listentoyoutube.com to get the audio tracks and Audacity to edit. After I created the mashup, I decided to edit the music video to “Stan” to go with the rap. In all, I cut out some lyrics and parts of the video to make it the length that it is.

Below is the finished product that I’d like to call “Standlebars”

These are the original songs and “Stan” video that I used:

Editing Audio Podcast

Audio Editing

Audio editing can be used in many aspects in my life. For educational reasons, I have used voice recordings to listen to previous lectures when the instructors did not typically post their notes online or I just was not in the mood to take notes for that day. I usually choose the difficult method of writing down the time of each recording where something important is mentioned. If I had thought to use an audio editing program, such as Audacity or GarageBand, I could have easily make snippets of the recording and cut the insignificant seconds out.

Throughout middle school and high school, I typically used Windows Movies Maker to edit audio because video editing was a pastime of mine and I was most familiar with the program. With just the audio files and no videos in the program, the project would save as another audio file.

The only instance outside of this class that I have used Audacity for was in high school for an AP Biology podcast project. I edited snippets of audio of my group mates and I reporting a news outbreak. It was a cheesy as high schoolers could be.

In the future, audio editing may not a significant part of my career focus, but I believe it will be helpful. I plan on majoring in Information Technology and Informatics. If I ever decide to concentrate in media, there is a good chance I may have to use audio and tweak a few things about it. For my current job, I am a marketing consultant for small businesses within the city of Perth Amboy. These businesses may need me to edit audio for their websites or podcasts.

In my head, I tend to mash together popular songs with similar beats. I am no musician or DJ, but I was always curious to try and see what it may actually sound like. I attempted to bring together “I See Fire” by Ed Sheeran and “Am I Wrong” by Nico & Vinz on guitar, but it was a complete failure. I still have hopes of making that mashup a reality, hopefully when I develop the skills to in Audacity.

Image Editing

My experience with editing images is more advance than the average person’s skills. I have always been technologically savvy and I questioned a computer’s ability to create what I imagined. Nonetheless, I had begun with editing images on the very basic of computer applications, Paint. Working all the way zoomed in with my magnifying glass tool, I rearrange photos pixel by pixel. There was no magic wand tool that Adobe Photoshop offered. No, using Paint to “photoshop” pictures was far more tedious, but I enjoyed the labor of it. Since I was only a child when I discovered the uses of Paint, I typically just cut out different cartoons together to create a montage of my favorite shows.

As I got older, MySpace was just coming alive and editing your photos with stickers and filters was all the craze. Photobucket.com was my outlet to keep up with cause and I was able to add more effects to my already edited pictures. The upbringing of Facebook and Instagram transformed the use of filters to compliment selfies. They offered a user friendly platform in which anyone (even your grandparents) can learn to use. But I was not so fascinated the bandwagon form of editing, so I decided to open my mind to the art of image editing during my first high school class of Adobe Photoshop. I learned just about every tool, practiced exercise after exercise from the books, and even entered in various graphic design contests, three of out five in which I won.

I had been a while since I have used Photoshop. From time to time, I use Paint to edit a quick fix on an image because I don’t have any Adobe programs on my current laptop. With my passion of art still breathing, I hope to find my uses of my past skills with image editing.

Though my work isn’t too impressive, internet trolls do seems to have a grand ole time messing with those who can tell the real from make believe. I, for one, have been fooled many times by edited images that skew the truth in celebrity pictures and even of people I know. The ability to mold reality to whatever your mind please can be very powerful, especially when you see no reason to think otherwise. Coleman (pg. 110) refers to how the famous hacker group, Anonymous, otherwise known as trolls, “trolled the Church of Scientology after the church attempted to censor an internal video featuring Tom Cruise that had been leaked.” Though it was seen as trolling at the time, the skewed truth was being protest against.

http://chromeins.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/onfire.jpg

Image photoshopped on Manga Studios by Kaylin Nguyen

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