Category Archives: SPRING 2016

Perpetual Trails

 

Well project 5 is complete, and if nothing else it was a huge learning experience.  For myself I tend to dream very big, and the hardest part of those dreams is bringing them to reality, or something tangible.  My overall goal for this project was to take a beautiful day hike at the coast from Haceta Lighthouse to Cape Perpetua, with 5 points of interest in mind.

The adventure started early and ended pretty late. With minimal food, water, and a little hitch hiking. While on the journey there were so many beautiful sights along the way.  Blooming flowers, streams, muddy bogs, coastal raging winds, beautiful sun rays, and an amazing friend to experience this with.  My friend Laura was my talent, so to speak, for this adventure. And my directing skills were honestly off the seat of my pants, and with a fairly over exceeding coffee buzz in tow.  Perhaps next time I will preplan a little better,  let my talent know what my intentions are before we break trail.

Anyways, I think that was the hardest part for me.  Just to spend such a great day out with a friend, but also be able to get dynamic shots. Running ahead on the trail to see other view points, stop  the marching, and make her walk back to do it again.    That part I believe was the hardest for me and especially for her.  She started out with such a bright spirit and beautiful smiles complimented by our environment, but by the 10th mile I could smell the resentment and bitterness building.  Her tolerance to my creativity and relentless spew of ideas were taking its toll, and her trust of  our future endeavors were wearing thin.  But hey, she is a trooper and in the end I feel proud of this project, as its my first video ever, and really can’t wait to do more!

Song Credit: “Her” by Vincent

Soaring Over Oregon Park’s

*Watch In HD For Better Image Quality*

Soaring Over Oregon-

What does 5 mean? To answer this question myself, it could mean many different things. A lot of different types of ways to express this ran through my mind, I had no idea what I was going to do. With the help of my friends I decided to use my drone. I really haven’t filmed with it, but used it has a FPV (First Person View) with my gopro. It’s funny because I have two different types of camera mounts for it. Ones a “fixed” mount, and one is “2-axis Gimbal” mount. Not ever using the gimbal mount before, I decided that I would use it for this project.

 

Filming:

Doing the film part of this video wasn’t too bad. Didn’t really know what I was going to film with the drone, but all in all it worked out. Luckily I was using the “gopro app” on my phone, I was able to record and stop recording while the gopro was in the air. The gimbal really helped out for keeping the camera sturdy while flying. Because to be honest I’m still a beginner and I did crash it the first time I flew it. So I believe I succeeded since I flew over water haha.

 

Music:

I took note in this class that choosing the music first really helps you while making videos. I decided to go with “Soarin’ – By: Jerry Goldsmith, because viewing the clips that I have shot reminded me of the ride in Disney’s “California Adventure-Soaring over California”. I tired to make the clips resemble it from my experience from the ride, but in a different way of the 5th dimension.

 

Editing:

Editing was pretty good. I like editing videos for fun, and this project was fun for me. Even though I had no idea of what I was going to do to resemble the “5th Dimension”, but I think it worked out along with the process of viewing the videos. I used iMovie as my tool for all my editing along with titles, filers, and transitions. This project took me two nights to edit.

 

Filming Equipment:

For the most part of this project, the equipment involved a 350-size drone caring my gopro controlled by the transmitter. My phone also controlled the drone. I believe that the last recorded flight I have in my phone was 368ft from ground to sky. The rest of the making of this video contained a place to fly, and a computer with editing tools.

 

Over All Thoughts On P5 Image Editing:

I really enjoyed this project. It honestly took me a while to come up with something to resemble 5, but it was also helpful to have friends along to help me out with the ideas. Especially if you use what you like to do for fun as a tool to use for a project. Most of all, I liked doing this for fellow class-mates to view, and for my YouTube channel so people can get similar ideas.. Hope you all liked it!

The Five Buck Lunch

This is my “five” video for this video project. I wanted to capture a story within two minutes, instead of just displaying the top fives, or something. As you can probably tell, it’s more of a comedy skit than anything else. This is how I pictured “five” might be. Story time!

The story is basically about Athen, the main protagonist, wakes up from his five hour nap, only to find that it’s five o clock and he’s hungry. He’s so hungry, that he jolts out of the house and goes in pursuit of some food. The quest takes him down I5 and into the fifth city known as Springfield. Five Guys was originally his first decision, but he later changes his mind about it.

After a while longer, he comes across the holy fifth restaurant known as Taco Bell. Here, he decides to get his five buck lunch, a big box, with his five sauces, and proceeds to go back home. Luckily, nothing interrupts him on his journey back.

Once he gets back to his fifth fortress, he is reunited with his fifth evil twin. They go for a friendly high five, but it all goes wrong. Soon, Athen’s five buck lunch goes plummeting down to the ground, as he could only watch in horror. He becomes devastated at his loss and can only hold on desperately.

All hope was not lost, however, as he recalled the “five second rule.” Desperately reaching down at his torn up food, he quickly grabs it up and proceeds to eat. He cheers loudly in victory. The end.

For this video, I was aiming for a more comedic approach. I wanted it to be simple, yet funny. I was originally planning on doing it over the weekend, but life happened. I didn’t have time. Also, I’m sorry about the audio. For some reason, the audio didn’t want to be perfect while I was out recording.

I had to shoot it quickly, since people were going to get busy again. This caused for pretty poor one takes and could have gone better with more planning. You always have to plan ahead and make sure everything gets done well.

Overall, this was a very fun project to do and I would like to make more of these in my spare time. I’m excited to show this video off to my classmates, family, and friends.

 

  • By Tyler Plummer

Are You Drinking2?

Originally, I wanted to do a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, but when I came across this poem by Charles Bukowski, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for.  As soon as I read it, I thought of a song I used to love by The Presidents of the United States of America named, “Kitty”.  Luckily, the song had fallen into the public domain now that they’ve been split for some time, so I could use it in the background.  I think the most challenging aspect of using this song, however, was that it is a song that tends to catch your attention, which can be somewhat distracting to the listener (also several F’bombs at the end, which I’m particularly fond of).

To combat this issue, I tried lowering the volume of the track, but then you could hardly hear it, and that was distracting.  I tried increasing volume in isolated areas for effect, and that seems to have worked ok.  I’m still not sure this worked like I wanted, exactly, but short of dumping it and starting over with different background music, I was kinda stuck.

In the intro, I tried to approximate a person scrolling through the radio dial for music.  Don’t be alarmed if you can’t understand some of the words, because it’s foreign radio that I recorded on my iPhone, then pumped into Audacity for that “tinny” mono sound.  I like it.  I hope you do too.

By A. H. Norton

Flatbush Zombies Recap

This past friday I was given the opportunity as a volunteer photographer for the Wow Hall to shoot for the Flatbush Zombies. This crazy group out of Brooklyn that just recently started their US tour. I have been listening to them for over a year now and would say they are one of my favorite rap groups right now.

For every show I never have full access or “Yes you can be backstage” approval, so every time I go I have to sort of weasel my way back there. I learned so much at this show in particular because I wasnt denied backstage at first  make friends with other photographers, alway putting yourself out there. I really learned that a camera can give the impression of power. People just take you more seriously when they know you are the one capturing them in my opinion. Some dude shoved me because i accidentally bumped into him and said sorry. I turned around to realize he was 2 times my size and I asked him what his problem was and he replied “Sorry I didn’t see your camera, I over reacted.” I told him off and said it doesn’t matter what I have in my hands, be kind.

I had no idea this show was going to impact me so much, but I am glad it did. I am so exciting to continue pursuing photography.


Are You Drinking?

 

Originally, I wanted to do a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, but when I came across this poem by Charles Bukowski, I knew it was exactly what I was looking for.  As soon as I read it, I thought of a song I used to love by The Presidents of the United States of America named, “Kitty”.  Luckily, the song had fallen into the public domain now that they’ve been split for some time, so I could use it in the background.  I think the most challenging aspect of using this song, however, was that it is a song that tends to catch your attention, which can be somewhat distracting to the listener (also several F’bombs at the end, which I’m particularly fond of).

To combat this issue, I tried lowering the volume of the track, but then you could hardly hear it, and that was distracting.  I tried increasing volume in isolated areas for effect, and that seems to have worked ok.  I’m still not sure this worked like I wanted, exactly, but short of dumping it and starting over with different background music, I was kinda stuck.

In the intro, I tried to approximate a person scrolling through the radio dial for music.  Don’t be alarmed if you can’t understand some of the words, because it’s foreign radio that I recorded on my iPhone, then pumped into Audacity for that “tinny” mono sound.  I like it.  I hope you do too.

By A. H. Norton

Pinky Toe of Steel

I started to make a fun adventure with my kids as actors playing the roles that they always play. The two princesses running the castle which is a school of magic and normal school of cooking. But as I have found out, the wise words of W.C. Fields are true, “Don’t work with animals or children.” When I needed them to talk and be ready, no one was. When I wasn’t ready they were speaking rivers of gold. Funny how that works out that way. So I scrapped the whole improve comedy with the kids and wrote my own little skit.

I found this project to be really fun. I like to play with my voice when hanging out with my kids and making up silly stories. So I went with an old stand by of mine, “Radio Dad”. I use to answer the phone at my previous work with that voice while treating their issues seriously, loads of fun. With that I decided to make a spoof of “Abs and Buns of Steel”. Not that they need any help being silly but I thought I would make a go of it. There weren’t may none offensive body parts left that need help getting buff but I found one. Hope you enjoy it.

Laugh At My Pain

jeffery osborns laugh at my pain

I’ve been a big fan and supporter of the stand-up comedian, Kevin Hart, since 2003. I am the self proclaimed, first fan of Kev in the 541. True stuff. I remember going from dorm to dorm, at the University of Oregon, spreading Kevin’s name, referring everyone to his Youtube clips. Over the past 13 years, I have been listening to his stand-up hours. Not everyone gets the chance to see Kevin when he goes on tours, yet I’ve been fortunate enough to see him live twice.

When I heard that we could  create a digital story about any topic of our choosing, I knew that I was going to do some Kevin Hart skits.

My first task was to find a clip short enough to match the 1-2:30 mins criteria. The clip I chose was about the first time Kevin’s mother gave him permission to cuss out his teacher. The original clip was about 4:30 mins long, so I had to make some choices of what I would omit. I started my audio with the intro to his segment, the conclusion, and left everything in the middle out. My final audio clip is 2:50 mins.

During that first day of class, where we were assigned the project, I found the transcript of Kevin’s comedy hour. Then I collected the sound effects I wanted. I included some foley and some ambiance sounds. After I accomplished setting up my sound library, I had the huge feat of recording the lengthy dialogue. I checked out a “snowball microphone” from my instructor and recored the dialogue at home.

Seemingly, nobody enjoys hearing their own voice in playback mode, and I can now join that group. I had to overcome a lot of nerves to get the jokes how I needed them. I completed the entire 2:30 mins in one take after a couple trials, using Audacity.

In Audacity, I recorded my audio and imported my sound library. Syncing the sounds effects with the audio was tedious, but I was surprised when I completed the task in 1:30 hours.

My last objective was to create an image to relate with the audio. I chose the movie cover box of Kevin Hart’s comedy hour titled “Laugh At My Pain.” Then I had one of my art homies, @Freshness, take a head shot of me. After that, I merged the two images. The end result has Kevin’s body, mic stand, backdrop and I placed my face over his. Turned out pretty good.

I hope everyone enjoys my audio project. Had a lot of fun creating it and this project has inspired me to push my skills even further for future projects.

by: Jeffery King Osborns

 


Passages Tally-Ho

I had a few things I was trying to accomplish from this blog.  One was to demonstrate the anxiety and rage I feel when the Passages Malibu drug rehab commercial would come on every fifteen seconds while watching tv.  Along with that I planned to demonstrate a moment in my every day addiction to this food thru, “sound.”

From the beginning it has noise of me in the kitchen, grabbing a knife and chopping up some broccoli.  A gentle pause as I flick on the TV.  From there the rest of the story unfolds.  I am truly grateful of how close the soundtrack I found, emulates such an exactness to the original commercial.  Anyone who has heard this track will have an out of body experience.  Close your eyes and breath deep.  Relive the smooth sounds from the passages commercial, clinch your fists, bite your tongue, and enjoy my spin on it.

It truly does feel good, that I could take a personal addiction of mine and blend it with an every day real life issue, without really stepping on anyones toes and feelings. I hope. Anyways, the main message thru this ,from me to my viewers, is to allow yourself to be humorous and light with our everyday addictions, we all have our vices.  And we must take that first step that recovery suggests.  Admitting oneself powerless, and that our lives have become unmanageable.  So get out there, and get some.

 

The Interview

 

 

In past blogs I’ve mentioned that I wanted to be an actress. So I thought it would be fun to imagine what it would be like to be on a talk show and plug my upcoming movie. I made up a character- Abigail St. Martin, a performer who may be past her ingenue days but is still a major player.
Then I wrote a small scene where she is interviewed by the handsome and charming TV host Randolph McNaughton. A bit of fantasy. During the course of the interview Abigail and Randolph find themselves becoming instantly and increasingly attracted to each other. My husband played the role of Randolph and we had a fun time of it. Got to do a little flirting.

What I wrote came out sounding a little cheesy. But it was cute and fun. There were challenges. Getting the sound effects to match up was difficult. I had my son say a line and getting it isolated away from the “aws” we recorded at the same time into the space was not easy. But once it was done it sounds great. May be the best part of the whole thing.

One of my fears is that some of my longer speeches might be a little boring. But I think it leads into my son’s funny line. Then Randolph’s last line before announcing a commercial break is funny and helps wrap things up.

By Melissa Norton