Alan Levine shared out this very cool suite of text/photo editors the other day called Picture to People, and this morning, after making a flag as part of the YouShow’s “The Daily” — a fun “make” activity each day on Twitter — I decided to see what I could do to my flag by putting it through a few of the image generators.
Peace (in the tinker),
Kevin
I’ve been posting these over my Tumblr blog — Got Some ‘Splaining to Do — but I also periodically collect them here, too. This is a project in which I am trying to use comics to share out and show what I know about apps.
Peace (in the “why is he doing that?”),
Kevin
After sharing yesterday’s post about using Vine to make a multimedia poem about Vine, Terry suggested that maybe a collaboration with Vine might be something to consider. Yep. We jumped right on that, with each of us shooting our 6 second segments and then pulling them together into this video story:
Director’s Notes
Script:
Terry set up a Hackpad for us to write collaboratively. He started with the beginnings of a poem about snow, and even linked to some published poems. That would have been great, but reading Terry’s poem and thinking of the snow falling outside, I hit on the idea of a short narrative about the stories of snow. The script came together quickly (helpful, when each scene is only a line or two long at most).
Video Shoot:
Terry, in Kentucky, and me, in Massachusetts — we each took our phone or device outside for a little walk. I went as far as my backyard, and had to time my shots with the sounds of the city plowing crew. Terry has more room to roam, although you can just glimpse the cat and hear the famous rooster crowing in the soundtrack. That rooster made my day. I don’t know about Terry, but my shots went pretty smooth. A few retakes but nothing too bad. The most difficult part is that Vine requires you to hold the screen with your finger and getting yourself in a shot while doing that is tricky. Terry has a few shots where the last word gets either clipped or cut, particularly in the last shot. I suspect the six second rule was challenging for him. But he took some beautiful footage of the snow.
Sharing of Files:
I suggested we use Dropbox for him to send me his files. Terry set up a shared folder and invited me in. He could have emailed them to me, too, I suppose.
Editing:
Here’s where it got tricky for me. Terry’s files were in an odd format that my iPad did not want to accept as I tried to transfer the videos to my camera roll to use in the PicPlayPost app for a media collage. So, I had to get on my laptop, figure out the right file format and convert all of his files to something my iPad would like (which I first did as .mov but that didn’t work and then converted again to .mp4). I had to straighten out a few of his video files, too, which were taken with the lens on its side (although I thought about keeping them, just to add the odd effect). Then, I had to upload those back into Dropbox, then open my iPad and try again. (It worked).
Now I had all of the files — Terry’s and mine — on my iPad and in PicPlayPost, I began to discover another difficulty: the labels of the video files are not visible when importing into PicPlayPost, so you have to go through each one and figure out not just which video to import, but the sequence of the import (so that the overall collage will run in order). Terry sent me a lot of files of winter, so that took some time.
Publishing:
PicPlayPost allows you to publish directly to YouTube, so that was a snap. I decided to try out an alternative version with the Storehouse app, too, just so I could use more of Terry’s winter footage as buffers between the “story” we were telling. I still like the PicPlayPost better as a more seamless narrative, but Storehouse allows you to scroll through the story with a bit more agency. One drawback is the viewer has to allow the sound through, or it seems muted. Odd default setting that I can’t figure out how to change.
Peace (in the snow, with more on the way),
Kevin
I am not a newcomer to using Vine, but I still wonder about how to best utilize the restraints of its six seconds. Here, I wrote a poem about Vine, recorded it in pieces in Vine and then used an app called PicPlayPost to coordinate the Vine videos together as a collage.
Interestingly, the first time I uploaded to YouTube, I had the settings wrong, and it was set to run all of the videos in the collage at the same time. It’s a bit of cacophony, and yet …. it’s interesting, too. Your mind tries to grasp at the words, and the last sound heard is in the first video, a little “uttt.”
Director’s Notes:
I kept the poem rather simple. Four lines, two couplets. Each line had to be around six seconds long, of course, to fit into a single Vine post (I wonder what my Vine followers were thinking as I posted one after another.) I added a fifth intro video when I realized that the poem might need a little context.
With Vine, your videos also get posted to your Camera Roll, which allows PicPlayPost app to access them for a multimedia collage. I really like PicPlayPost for the way it can use various media. As noted above, you can also sequence the playback of videos. I did it rather linearly here, but I didn’t have to.
The shots themselves were simple, too. I did try to move the lens a bit for each of the posts, to give a bit of variety to the eye. As it is, the collage looks strange, with all of my faces looking at you. Sorry about that, but it will lay the grounds for a joke in my “how to” comic coming up for my Got Some ‘Splaining To Do Tumblr.
I wrote a new song this week called Tell Everyone You Know.
Then I asked Terry Elliott to Zeega it up, as he has done in the past. He did.
Before I saw Terry’s final version, even as he was working on it, I thought to myself, what if I used Mozilla Popcorn Maker to do my own video version. How would my digital work compare to Terry’s? What would he focus on for the visual? I found myself thinking of phones and dancing ..
So what choices did we make?
Where the pieces converged:
Obviously, the music. I uploaded the song into Soundcloud so that he could use it in Zeega. Both Zeega and Popcorn have search functions within Soundcloud.
There’s a line about holding hands, and I think we both heard that as a visual cue. My hand-holding scene goes a bit longer than his, and he instilled some humor while I went for the emotional scene.
We both used mostly animated gifs. Actually, that’s all I used for mine. While Popcorn allows for videos to be edited and used, it seemed like the gif was the way to go. Terry sprinkled some static images in his.
Both videos conveyed the theme of the worlds, of coming together to change the the world for the better.
Where the videos diverged:
- Interestingly, Terry went very political in his, right from the first shot. He tweeted me about it, saying that the song coming out near to MLK Day had him in a political frame of mind. I was moving into another direction, choosing a lighter theme — with the dancing, and the phones. The tone of each piece is different due to those choices.
- Zeega and Popcorn are similar as video construction tools and yet, not …. particularly from the experience of the viewer. In Popcorn, you (the viewer) follow my editing trail, so I was very careful in where gifs started and ended, trying to sync ideas directly to the music and words. With Zeega, the reader has more agency. You (the viewer) click when you want the image to move on. Terry is thoughtful in the sequencing of images, and there is even a rhythm you can achieve with Zeega, if the viewer plays along.
Now here is where it could interesting, if you want to play along. Both Zeega and Popcorn allow the viewer to remix a project. If you have a Zeega account, you can hit the “reply” button on Terry’s project and it will bring you to a platform to remix his media in a multimedia reply. When you remix a reply, it gets tacked on to the end of the original project, which is interesting and disruptive in itself, right?
So:
In Popcorn, with a Mozilla Webmaker account, you can also remix any project. Just find the “remix” button at the top of the screen, click it and begin. So, if you go to my project, you can use your own vision for the song.
Think of it as an invitation. If you do remix, be sure to leave us a note. I’d be honored …
Peace (in the muse),
Kevin
(This is part of Slice of Life, a regular writing activity facilitated by Two Writing Teachers. We find small moments to write about. You come write, too, OK?)
Our video production budget would make the penny pinching budget dudes in Hollywood very proud: seven cups of hot chocolate and a overflowing plate of nachos as pay for the acting team. The creative energy that is going into the filming of my son’s second feature film? Priceless.
As the script for Robbers on the Loose 2 (a sequel to his last film, shot three years ago and featured at a local film festival) took shape in the past few weeks — written with friends, with advice from his parents and brothers — the excitement of shooting a movie took hold. Organizing the schedules of nearly 10 kids (all nine and ten years old) has been difficult, and we have about one-third more of the movie to shoot.
I won’t give away the story. Let’s just say, someone is on the loose. But in the script that they wrote on their own, I noticed references to the first movie, foreshadowing for something to be stolen, the use of frames within frames (done in the editing process), and the boys’ obsessions with Nerf guns (only one girl is in the acting team, as the police officer. She’s the best actor of the bunch.)
As an independent media activity, making a movie is interesting and complicated, as my 10-year-old son is finding out. He has his crew rehearsing their lines, making adaptations to the script, adjusting his vision to the reality of what is available to us, and more.
I am merely the camera operator, adding in some advice when I think it will help. (I am also taking still photos of the filming, which is where these collages came from). Seeing my son and his friends pouring over the footage of the day is such a nice sight to behold, as they laugh at the retakes, and critique their own performances.
What more could you ask for?
Peace (on the loose),
Kevin
So, it’s not that I don’t know what Tumblr is. It’s just that I never had any real reason to create a Tumblr blog site. But this weekend (Thanks, Greg!), I took the plunge and began a site called Got Some ‘Splaining to Do where I will share out comic-style tutorials for apps and technology that I use. I won’t guarantee that it will be all that regular, but as I work within Walk My World and YouShow projects, I figure it can be a resource/portfolio of some of my work.
You will see this as a recent post, as I share out using the free Make Beliefs Comix app on the iPad. It’s nifty, free (I said that, right?) and fun, with some limits.
See you on the web!
Peace (in the frame),
Kevin
The other day, Terry left a comment here about the need for more of us to show our work when creating digital compositions. It not only provides reflection points but creates a path forward for others to also make things and learn from others.
That led me to create the comic there (I guess Terry is the giraffe), using an interesting view tool in Firefox that allows you to access a 3D version of a website, and then twist and turn it.
In the interest of showing your work, here is how to use Firefox (I think it only works with Firefox browser) to explore the architecture of a site and its connections beyond.
First, with Firefox open on a site, right-click mouse on your screen. Select “Inspect Element.”
Second, there is a little 3D box in the lower corner of the screen. Click that to access 3D view mode.
Now, use your mouse or cursor and drag the screen. The perspective will shift and spin, giving you a view of links and media, and even a true behind-the-scenes views of a website.
Have fun!
Peace (in the share),
Kevin
I posted this comic yesterday to the Walk My World twitter stream because a series of tweets had me laughing.
Greg, over at Walk My World, then asked if I might create a tutorial on the comic strip app that I use quite a bit these days — Comics Head. Sure, I thought, and then realized it could be a bit subversive, too. So the tutorial is a comic making fun of making a tutorial of the making of a comic.
Head spinning? Yeah.
Then, in the spirit of the YouShow15 project and its emphasis on the Director’s Cut of making media, I used the audio feature in the app (which is a cool new function) to create a fake “Director’s Cut” of the making of the comic … I won’t do the whole recursive thing again.
Peace (in the share),
Kevin
This is another teaser for the Walk My World project. I just had to use Marc Cohn’s song, and tapped into Mozilla’s Popcorn Video Maker to create a video with animated gifs.
And I am adding some “Director’s Notes” as a sort of cross-reference to the YouShow project now underway:
I have long loved Marc Cohn as a songwriter, and this particular song from an early album has resonated with me over the years. It seems like a perfect fit for the theme of Walk My World, although he is writing more about a relationship than about media literacy. Still …. I first wanted to make a Zeega, but then could not find the song in Soundcloud. So, I went with Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker. I found the song in YouTube and layered it down, turning off the video and keeping only the audio. Then, I searched for “walking” in the Popcorn search engine, using the Giffy site as my main focus. I wanted it to be Zeega-like. I listened to the lyrics, adding in non-walking pieces where it seemed to fit (I loved the gif of the girl on her bed, reading, kicking her legs back and forth). I only used a verse and chorus (and wish Popcorn had a fade music button). I like how it came out.
Plus, here is a visual tutorial I made on using Popcorn Maker:
Now, go make yer own! Or remix mine!
Peace (in the world you walk),
Kevin