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