Cazenovia Cuisine Documentary Video Self Reflection

For our final Time Movement Narrative project, it was to make a documentary in a group of 3 people, so it was me, Annabel Margolis, and Thomas Pfisterer. Our topic of choice was on Nutrition of the food in the dining hall at Cazenovia College. Some of the techniques we used to emphasize the quality of the documentary as being informative and trustworthy was we got some interview from students, staff members in the dining hall, and an interview with Thomas’s dad who is a food services director of over 40 schools, about what he thinks of nutrition in food, as well as small pop interviews from students about what food they prefer in the dining hall. We also made sure to line-up clips that went together topic wise so there would be a compare and contrast different peoples opinions on what makes a good school lunch healthy and delicious for the students. We also included some facts about nutrition, as well as clips from the documentary Fed Up. To help support our argument that nutrition can be healthy and safe for students at Cazenovia College, and schools in general.
In the group, I was the one in charge of editing the video, with suggestions from my group members as well, I also did a little bit of filming too. In the end some of the things I was most proud of in our video was the way we transitioned from each clip and each key point in the video, I thought all the pop interview clips we had were very good as it helped strengthen our topic more. I also thought adding the clips from Fed Up, and the interview with Thomas’s dad really helped out too. If I wanted to improve anything from our documentary, it would be possibly getting better clips from some of the students, and staff members as some interviews were outside, and the wind got in the way. Also a few more staff interviews, and student interviews would have been nice too, and also more filming inside the dining hall would have been great too, but we were not allowed to do that, lastly I felt some clips saying the next question in an interview, and name slates for people were sometimes either too long or too short. But in the end, I think my groups video turned out very nice, and you can tell a lot of work and effort was put into it.

Here is a link to go watch it:

Group documentary project proposal

Our group is going to be do a documentary on nutrition with in the college, and outside. Each of us is going to be putting a lot of work in collaborating on the film. Thomas is going to be doing the script writing, Tyler is great at editing, so he is the director in post production and editing. Annabel is the director of film/photo production. Our take on this topic is informing students that being healthy/safe is possible, through ways that we present such as interviewing people that work in the dinning hall, and at Tops, as well as research.

Dream video Rlection

For our next video project in class, we had to make a video focusing on dreams, and how they can be portrayed, in my dream video, I decided to take a nightmare approach with a Nightmare on Elm Street vibe to it, where I a dream gone nightmare, and I end up being chased by a Freddy Kruger like character with chainsaws for hands.

When shooting, I mostly used the green screen for the dream sequence and shot still videos, but when I put them into Premiere I made it look like they were filmed at different positions. There also were a few scenes shot in my room; I used a panning and zoom technique for those scenes. Like I said before I made my dream prompt into a nightmare inspired by the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Some techniques I used in editing to make the video look dream like is using tint to change the colors of the subjects in the video as well as the backgrounds too, I also had a scene where the killer uses mind powers to pick me up and throw me.

My narrative through my video is about me having a nice dream, but it quickly turns into a nightmare where I’m being chased by a killer. During the making of this video some things I was very proud of was the lighting effects I was able to do in the video as in the scenes with the boiler rooms, I was able to make the characters dark and have very little light on them, kind of like how it is in Elm Street. Also I am very pleased to how the scene with me being picked up and thrown turned out. Finally I also liked the adding in of puffs of steam in the boiler room scenes to help add to its creepy and scary factor.

Even though I thought this video turned out very nice in the end, I still have liked to improve a few things, such as possibly re shooting some scenes as they really weren’t to my liking and in the scene with me being picked up, my feet were cut off, and I didn’t realize it before it was too late. Also some of the moving images used for background could have moved a little smoother. I would have also liked to improve some of the green screen footage quality wise, as there are still a few hiccups in the shots. Some sound in the video could also be adjusted, and I felt some scenes were not timed very well and could have gone on a bit longer such as the opening credits and THE END? In the end I thought this video I made turned out extremely well, and I’m very proud of the end result, as I put so much time and effort into making it look great, and professional, and I feel as though it looks like a real mini scary movie.

Here is a link to the video ENJOY IN YOU DARE!!!!

Dream video inspiration

For my dream video project, I decided to do a parody of the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Aside from The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, here is another video that helped inspire me to do this project and get ideas for it. This is a scene from an episode of the TV show Rick and Morty. Where Rick invents a device in which you can enter peoples dreams, he and his grandson Morty end up entering lots of different dreams, one being influenced by A Nightmare on Elm Street, where they are being chased by a character named Scary Terry a spoof of Freddy Kruger.

Ideas for Dream video project…

In my Time movement narrative class our next project is to make a video about dreams. I have two ideas in mind, the first one is going to be a spoof of the Spongebob episode “Sleepy Time”. In that episode, Spongebob (in his own dream) accidentally wanders into his friends dreams, cause trouble for them each by accident. So in my version of it I would be dreaming, and wind up jumping into some of my friends dreams. The second idea I thought of is to do a small spoof of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, with me being chased by a psycho killer inspired by Freddy Krueger. I am still having a hard time deciding between the two, mainly because the video has to be about 1-3 minutes long so I can’t make something very heavy story driven and complicated. Hopefully I can figure something out soon…

Remix video Reflection

For my remix video, I chose to work with footage from the broadway musicals Grease and Little Shop of Horrors, I used clips from broadway productions of the shows as well as the movies too. I was able to change the meanings of the footage by comparing some clips side by side from the stage, and movie version of each musical. As well as explaining some differences each have, and talking about interesting facts people might not know about the musicals, and also adding effects and transitions to the clips making it look very interesting. The final message I conveyed in my remix video was the differences between the stage, and movie versions of Grease, and Little Shop of Horrors, as well as providing fun facts about the two musicals.
When I was first working on the video, I was not pleased to how it was coming together, but later I kinda started the whole thing over from scratch, and I think it looks much better than what it was looking like. I also liked my use of effects and transitions from each clip, I also liked the typeface I used for talking about Grease, and Little Shop of horrors. Originally when I first finished the video, it was about a little over 4 minutes, so I was happy that I was able to bring the video from a little over 4 minutes to about 3 and 1/2 minutes, so nows its not over the time limit. Some things I would have liked to improve on with this video, is possibly including a few more musicals to talk about, like Into the Woods and Sound of Music, but because of the 4 minute time limit, I did not have time to include those.

Link to the video:

Remix video series .

So theres this remix video documentary series, that I watch on youtube called, “True Facts about….” usually focusing on an animal species like Armadillo’s, or Sea Horses, providing facts about the species, as well as humor. This series is made by YouTuber ZeFrank1, I often enjoy his video, though mostly sometimes they can be too inappropriate. So thankfully I found one video that isn’t as bad, called “True facts about the Owl”.

Stop motion video project…

For my stop motion animation video, I choose to do a battle scene using these little figurines called Amiibos, inspired by the game “Super Smash bros. for the Wii U and 3DS”. In this video, it shows our main hero, and video game legend himself Mario, as he gets ready to battle it out against, Donkey Kong, Link, Zelda, and Samus. Also featuring Homer Simpson, and Peter Griffin for laughs. I had the Amiibo’s battle around knocking each other off the stage, making the last person standing the winner.

Some techniques I used when shooting and editing my video was taking pictures of each frame in the story using an overhead shot of the characters and the battlefield, and after shooting, I brought each picture into Photoshop and edited them all, cropping the picture to just have the players and battlefield, as well as making little visual effects like the tear drop, and when a character gets blasted off screen. Then I finally put them all together adding sound effects and music from the game, as well as text. Also I think the stop motion helped add a sense of suspense, as well as making everything fast paced and energetic sense it is a fight scene after all. I was definably proud that I was able to finish the whole video, because I was worried I would not get it done in time, because of all the editing I had to do with the pictures. Also that I would have to take out a bunch of pictures or shorten the video, because I worried that it was going to go over the 5 minute time limit, because of all the pictures I had. I also thought adding the sparks that appeared when the characters would bump into each other, and the dust that appears when someone gets knocked off screen was a nice touch, and I think the sound effects I used as well as music fit right in to the videos theme.

Finally a few things I wish I could have improved would been to not edit the color and brightness settings of each of the pictures because not only did it take really, really long, but in the end each pictures brightness and color looked different from each other sometimes, but it still looked a little interesting and it gave it a little strobe effect to it. Also when Zelda appeared on screen in the beginning, her flashing in animation were a little choppy and I felt the beginning part from everyone on the battle field to it just begin just Mario and Link could have been a bit slower probably too, and a few parts were a little choppy as well. Overall I think the video turned out very nice, and i.m very proud of myself for all the work and effort I put into making this.

Here is a link to my video:

Stop Motion Animation Suggestions!!!

For those of you who are interested in stop motion animation, or want to learn more about it, here are a few stop motion videos, I saw and think are really neat!!!

The first one, is more of a claymation movie, called “Circus Tales”, made by the students and facility of the Living Resources “Carridge House Art Center” Video class. It centers around 5 circus animals named Simon the Tiger, Neal the Bear, Michael the Monkey, Leslie the Lion, and Elliot the Elephant, who all long to get outré of the circus, and thanks to Spanky the Clown for helping them escape, they are all finally able to be free and experience the real world, and get jobs, but soon realize how hard and cruel the real world can be. For example Simon tries to make it as a stand up comedian, but gets booed off stage, and Neal becomes a math teacher, and ends up loses his temper because of “bothersome” students, and so on. I thought it was a very nice claymation, with a great easy to follow storyline, music and voice acting to boot! Also fun fact I helped out with some of the animation by helping move some of the characters and taking pictures.

There also was a second movie, “Circus Tales 2” in which I helped out with a little bit of the stop motion animation, as well as providing some voices for some other characters like Willie the Wolf and Ralphie Carriage. This one might even be better than the first, with a bigger cast of characters, as well as the cast from the first movie, with an even bigger musical sound track as well. All in all I really enjoyed being apart of these projects, and helping out.

Here are links to Circus Tales 1 and 2:

“Circus Tales” Trailer

“Circus Tales 2” Trailer

The next Stop Motion Animation I saw was “Super Smash bros. Stop Motion Animation: Classic Fury”, it is based off of the Super Smash Bros. Franchise….obviously and is about the characters, Young Link, Kirby, Samus and Sonic battling it out. A few things I like about this video is that the stop motion is very well done, very fluid and not choppy at all. It also has some nice visual effects, and humor as well. If you’re into Smash Bros. or anything video game related, I would give this video a watch. The YouTuber PlotTails, has a whole series of these Super Smash Bros stop motion videos too. It’s not the worlds greatest stop motion video, but I think it was very well put together, it also helped give me some ideas for my own stop motion video involving Super Smash Bros too.

“Super Smash Bros. Stop Motion Animation: Classic Fury”

Stop motion project proposal

For my stop motion animation project for my time motion narrative class, one idea I thought of for the project was to do something inspired by Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/ Nintendo 3DS. For this video I thought of using these toy like figurines called “Amiibos”, which are compatible with the game. And possibly use them all in a fight scene, I brought a few of them with me to Caz, so i’ll just use those ones in the video.

These are what Amiibos look like

Since they are very stiff and trophy like, I won’t get much movement out of them…. so I thought of making the fight scene similar to a game mode found in Super Smash Bros.3DS “Street Smash”

Here is what Street Smash is like

So I can just take pictures from an overhead view of the characters fighting like they do in “StreetSmash”, and there movements would be very easy to do since they just move around and usb each other.