UNCW English 496

A few of you have asked about the ability to edit existing video clips to get something better suits your needs. Poking around, I’ve found the following options, none of which I’ve tested so I can’t promise they’ll meet your needs:

• Editing Within Movie Maker 2 (A tutorial on how to remove unwanted material from video clips within Movie Maker.)
• YouTube Remixer (This may or may not meet your needs, but does let you do some editing to YouTube videos.)
• Jumpcut (An online video editor.)
• AVS Video Editor (The free trial version will add a text ad to the video. If you go this route, do a short, quick trial run to see how big the text ad is. If it’s small, I’m willing to pretend the ad isn’t there if this video editor will let you do what you want to do.)
• Xilisoft Video Editor (This has a free trial download option. You’ll want to check to see if there is a catch–is it like Dreamweaver where it is fully-functional but only works for a set number of days, or does it not let you save video, or is it crippled in some other way?)
•  VideoReDo (Another editing program with a free trial version. You’ll want to see if/how the free version is crippled before doing serious work with it).

• Kenney Reading

The following files can be used in your practice videos. Feel free to use your own files as well.

Audio Track (Mixed by John Walter using loops 12 Str Gtr_02-01, dhol lo_02 02, and Buzz Gtr Dbl_02 01 from Salman Ahmad’s Natchoongi (Loops). Available from ccMixter.)

Other Sources: Remember to keep track of where you get files and to pay attention to copyright/Creative Commons licenses.

• Audio
  • Internet Archive: Audio
  • ccMixter
  • Frogstar.com
  • Podsafe Audio
  • Library of Congress: American Memory: Sound Recordings
• Images
  • Wikipedia: Public Domain Image Resources
  • Library of Congress: Prints and Photographs Reading Room: Online Catalog
  • Library of Congress: Prints and Photographs Reading Room
  • Flickr
  • Photobucket
• Video Capture
  • Vixy.net 

When information is brushed against information…the results are startling and effective. The perennial quest for involvement, fill-in, takes many forms.
—Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

As we discussed in the beginning of the course, McLuhan argues that electronic technology “fosters” and “encourages” us to think, work, interact, communicate, organize, construct, participate—in short, be—differently than alphabetic and print technologies. Relying much more upon juxtaposition, association, iconography, metaphor, linkage, recursiveness, and metonymy than we’re used to finding in an academic text, McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage is itself an attempt at electronic writing within the constraints of print technology.

Options
For this Visual Rhetoric Project, you get to choose between one of two options. The first option is to create a visual exhibition documenting/exploring some aspect of American culture using static images and/or short video clips. This exhibit can be presented as a book, a poster board presentation, a web site, or other medium as seems appropriate. The second option is to create a short (3-5 minute) video slide show or mashup that offers an interpretation of a literary work, addresses an issue of national or local importance, or offers commentary on an aspect of culture.

Design Justification
After completing your project, you will write a 3-5 page design justification in which you discuss the purpose, audience, context, and design of your project and explain why you believe the choices you made fulfill the rhetorical context.

For additional details, see the assignment handouts to be passed out in class.

Due date: TBA

Below are four video arguments worth taking a look at, not so much as models to aspire to but interesting examples of new media arguments. As you examine them, consider the different rhetorical situations between posting on a personal (closed) site as the Museum of Media History has done and Michael Wesch’s choice of posting his videos to YouTube.

Michael Wesch (Digital Ethnography Working Group, Kansas State University)

• The Machine is Us/ing Us
• Information R/evolution
• A Vision of Students Today

The Museum of Media History

• Epic 2015 (Epic 2015 is a revision of Epic 2014. There’s no need to watch both.)
  

Movie Maker resources:

• Using Windows Moviemaker in the Classroom (by Kena Clark)
• Windows Movie Makers’ “How to Use Movie Maker 2“
• Windows Movie Makers’ Windows Movie Maker Forums
• AtomicLearning’s Movie Maker Tutorial

Berkeley’s Knight Digital Media Center offers a number of excellent tutorials on such topics as HTML, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, digital still cameras, digital video cameras, and exporting video to the web. Definitely worth checking out.

Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton’s Web Style Guide, 2nd ed. is available online for free (it’s a $20 book). It’s worth checking out.

An third example of the kind of write-up I’m looking for in your projects, this time with the introduction to the project as well. Note how it mixes process narrative and analysis.

Remediation in Clay

For my second remediation of the “Eagle and the Arrow” I worked with clay to create a title image and a series of sequential three dimensional scenes represented in my project with photographs. For this version, I used the sequence of a man cutting down a tree, and the tree falling upon the man as the basis for the retelling. I made storyboards similar to a cartoon strip detailing what my scenes would look like prior to actually working with the clay.

The most creative way to use clay seemed to be 3-dimensional figures in sequenced scenes, although I was also interested in somehow working in a relief sculpture. I ended up using the relief sculpture into my title page, which utilizes a number of different ways to represent the individual words in the title using clay. The 3-dimensional aspect of the scenes helps in showing the interrelation between the lumberjack and the tree.

I altered the original fable for this remediation primarily with the purpose of utilizing the 3-dimensional aspect of this medium. The ability to build something for one scene (a tree) then alter it (by cutting it down) for the next, appealed to me as unique to this medium. When the tree tipped over, branches were bent, the little figure was crushed and fused to the trunk, and the overall amount of unintended physical interactions that I didn’t have artistic control over were completely unlike the act of drawing a standing tree, and then drawing a fallen tree. It seemed the 3 dimensional aspect of this remediation was a very effective use of the medium.

Like the first remediation, I modified the fable in that a human is used instead of an animal for the main character. My immediate purpose was to make the new version more relatable to the average viewer. Had I used a clay eagle cutting down a tree, it would have had nearly the same overall effect. However, viewers might have misinterpreted the eagle as having some significance. The change of the original animal to a human character in this case just helps prevent misinterpretations with this specific scenario.

The unfortunate restraint in using unglazed clay it the lack of color variety. In my case it means my tree with dense foliage look strikingly similar to a large brown mushroom. In part this is due to my lack of skill in sculpting, but it shows how harder concepts would be difficult to portray for even the best sculptors. Clay also showed a weakness in that it proved to be very poor for producing lasting copies, as within the first hour my figures were drying and cracking.

I think part of the problem in retelling a fable through clay alone, is the difficulty in transferring a lesson, or a moral to the viewer from the images alone. For example, if one were to see a clay representation of the original fable, an eagle being shot with an arrow, it would be hard to convey that the feathers of the arrow came from the eagle or that the eagle’s remorse was twofold for having recognized such. Without a narrative either explaining the original fable or the new remediation, interpretation of the viewers may vary.

Overall I am happy with this remediation, even though I’m not very good at making things with clay it was an enjoyable experience. With almost 99% of my assignments being completed on a computer these days, it’s a rare exception to work with a media form so vastly different.

To see some sample student-made videos as well as the assignment guidelines behind them, take a look at Dan Anderson’s Low-Bridge Video: A Workshop. Of particular interest might be the videos “A Blessing,” John Steinbeck, Family Farm, and The Movement. Also take a look at his post Video Rags, which contains a 7-minute long student made video composed of elements found on the web.