A Video Poem About Vine, Using Vine

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.

A look at Vine .. Give it a try …

Slice of Life: Our Own Little Hollywood

(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?)

Making Robbers on Loose 2 collage

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.

Making Robbers on the Loose Day2 Collage

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

Fruit Horror: A Movie Short (by my son)


I wrote about my 9 year old son being part of Apple Movie Camp last week, and here is his final short movie about fruit and a blender called Fruit Horror. I helped only with the filming (holding the video camera for him, and using the big knife). He made the soundtrack, did the editing, etc, and I had to resist the urge to do too much with him.

On the last day of the free(!) camp, we watched about three dozen short movies (true!) made during the week by kids, and most had no or little narrative structure. Some seemed to go on forever about nothing and others were just video taken of self. I am not being critical of the kids, who were making movies after all instead of watching them so that is good, nor of the Apple camp, which only ran three days for 90 minutes each day and that’s not enough time to do much (did I mention it was free?).

But the Showcase Viewing that we experienced does point to the need for us educators to still teach story and narrative and pacing, even in video production (storyboards help), and to have young people consider audience and all of the elements of storytelling that we have always taught for print media. It still have value in the digital age. It brings to mind how we can’t assume young people know what they are doing when we put them in front of a screen, or put a video camera in their hands, or a microphone, or whatever.

We still need to teach the skills that underly how they compose for the world.

Peace (in the blender),
Kevin

Bottom of the Ninth: Two Versions, One Story

Yesterday, I wrote about my son being in the free Apple Story Movie Camp, and how I was able to storyboard out a story, too. When we went home, we shot video footage for his movie (which came out great!) and then he agreed to be the actor in my movie, which is called Bottom of the Ninth. I wanted to do it all on the iPad only, with iMovie app.

Here’s how it came out:

But I also tried another version, using the PicPlayPost app, which is a video collage. I like the iMovie version better but it is interesting to see the story in this format.

Peace (in the vid),
Kevin

At the Apple Store: When the Cynical Me Met the Maker Me

Storyboards
My youngest son is participating in a free “Movie Making Camp” through our local Apple Store. The cynical side of me thinks, This is such a sneaky way to get parents and kids into the Apple Store and get us hooked on Apple products. (not that we aren’t, already). But the kinder, more generous side of me — the Maker/Educator  me — thinks, This is a free and accessible way for any kid to learn how to make movies, and how can that opportunity be anything but a good thing?

Apple Camp. Creative creatures wanted.

It’s a three day camp that goes for about 90 minutes each day, run by three energetic young Apple people, and my son had a blast yesterday as they began learning about the basics of making movies on mobile devices. Now, my son has made movies before and much of what they are telling him he already knows. That didn’t matter. He is still enjoying it.

What the Maker/Educator Me liked about it?

They began with work away the iPads completely, by focusing in on the storyboarding process. It was a neat image, all of these young kids bent over their storyboard papers, mapping out a short movie project that they will be completing in just a few days. Now, parents are required to stay in the store (Keep quiet, Cynical Me!) and the program leaders offered up storyboards to all the parents, too. (See, Maker/Educator Me?)

I was on the only parent to accept a storyboard and as the kids were drawing and planning, I began working out my own movie idea, too. I guess no other adults wanted to play. But I sure as heck did.

After the storyboarding, they (we) moved into learning how to use the Garageband App to create their own original music that will become the soundtrack for the movie itself. Making original music? (Well, as original as it is when it is constructed out of loops). I’m down with that. I always have fun with the GB app.

Their homework assignment was to shoot about four minutes of video, based on their storyboard. The final version will be about 2 minutes long, or less. My son is working on this neat idea, inspired by the Fruit Ninja game, that involves fruit, a large knife, and a blender. Let’s just say, it does not end well for the fruit. We spent about 45 minutes shooting his raw video, and then I bribed him to be the star of my movie called Bottom of the Ninth, which is based on him playing whiffle ball in the backyard. We spent another 30 minutes shooting that raw video, which I shot and then edited entirely on the iPad last night. I was curious if I could do it all on the iPad. Yes, I could, and did.

Storyboards

For a free camp, the Movie Camp is pretty nifty. I’ll keep the Cynical Me at bay here so that the creative spirit can be open to possibilities, particularly when it embraces a shared ethos of allowing kids to be creators, not just consumers, of movies. On Friday, all the kids will be sharing their short movies, so that should be a hoot. I’ll share out mine here later this week.

Peace (at camp),
Kevin

 

My Son’s Short: Chase Your Dreams

Video award (my son)
My eldest son and high school friends recently won an award from an Electronic Media Festival that took place at a local community college. He submitted a short film that he and his friends shot in the high school category, and their movie came in second place. We had a scheduling conflict, so we could not go the event itself, but apparently, they showed the winning movies on a massive screen, which is pretty neat.

And he got a neat engraved Laser Disc as an award.

Here is their movie short (the ending is a bit too violent for my tastes and the whole thing has an purposefully creepy feel to it — right down to the soundtrack). You’ll notice at the very end a reference to a larger movie project that has been in the works (and might be on hold right now for all I know) for a full-scale zombie movie that they have written together collaboratively.
Chase Your Dreams.

Peace (in the flick),
Kevin

Writing in Reverse

The Daily Create yesterday was a video create, telling a story backwards. Pressed for time, I used writing as my means for digital editing play. I had this idea of filming the writing of a sentence that could read forward and reverse, and then reversing the video so that it read reverse and forward. Or something like that. It didn’t come out exactly as I envisioned it but it’s pretty cool anyway.
And short. It’s wicked short.

Peace (in the vid),
Kevin

More Video Composition: Learning Walkabouts

I am still playing around with a new video app — PicPlayPost — that allows you to mix and stitch multiple videos together into one. It’s pretty nifty. The other day, I tried it for a short poem just to experiment with different angles and how to arrange the sequence of videos (with the app, you can have them run all at once or one after another).

Then, after some snow yesterday, I went out and used the Learning Walk/Walkabout idea to capture my yard for the #walkmyworld project. I’ve done this periodically with still images, but it was interesting to see it as a video montage.

When my friend, Molly, saw the Learning Walk, she took some video of where she lives in Florida and emailed me the videos. I then worked them into the montage as a collaborative effort — with her Florida videos mixed in with my Massachusetts video. I’m always up for a collaborative idea.

Peace (in the screens within screens),
Kevin

Vine: Crafting a Video Poem That Eats Itself

Way back in June, when I first started to use the Vine app (with its six seconds of video limit) with the Making Learning Connnected MOOC, I pondered how one might conceive of it as more than a documentation of life. I wondered if there were ways to tell a story in just six seconds. I played around with Vine and created this “story” of a letter to the future. It sort of worked. I guess.

I’m still pondering Vine, it turns out, and the #walkmyworld project (of documenting our world in social media) has brought the video app back into focus because organizer Ian O’Byrne has suggested that folks use Vine as a way to do that documenting. I’ve since shared a few Vines, particularly of my house as I wander through my day. And I have kept an eye out for pieces about Vine to help me think about its possibilities. (Check out this post of Six Second Movies and there is even a Tribeca Six Second Film Fest.)

But my friend Molly Shields has been openly mulling over  how to use Vine as digital storytelling platform. Me, too. And with the expected future shift of #walkmyworld into digital poetry (in my previous post, I stumbled on the term of “video haiku” to define Vine, and I still like that way of imagining it), I had a few Twitter-based conversations with Molly about how to go about doing that.

You have to think of the limitations: six seconds does not allow for a lot of lines of poetry. The looping effect of Vine is intriguing because it brings the end of the poem right back to the start of the poem. If you don’t consider that effect, the poem could have a jarring effect — stopping suddenly and restarting.

During the afternoon, as I was at my son’s basketball game, a poem came to me. I didn’t have paper, so I had to jot it down in the back cover of the book I was reading. I tinkered with words, trying to make it fit within the limitations and trying to make it resemble a snake eating itself — an MC Escher of a poem that wraps back on itself. I didn’t have my ipad with me, so the writing was the heart of what I was doing, even as I had a mental stopwatch in my head. The people next to me probably though I was a lunatic, mouthing the words and watching my son’s game clock to keep track of seconds. (ha)

Here is the poem:

I think in ink –
I burrow thoughts that shrink
down to the screen
when …

It turns out the writing was the easy part. Shooting the video was much more difficult , and I tried a few different ways to get at it until I decided on taking three angled shots, reading parts of the poem as I looked off into the distance. I’m not sure I like it, though. Not because of the way the video came out but because the visual lacks an important element: metaphor. I realize now that I should have lifted a small screen (iPod or something) in the last frames.

Ack.

We write. We play. We experiment. We learn.

Peace (along the vines of creativity),
Kevin

PS — In 2012, at NCTE, I gave an Ignite Talk about short-form writing. I wonder how it might be different now with Vine and other media apps in the mix.

 

 

Reading Video: What We See When We Watch

I am bit behind in my DS106 assignments (I know, that’s OK) and this week’s theme is all about “reading movies” by having us analyze video clips from films. I love that they shared out Roger Ebert’s classic “How to Read a Movie” piece, which really digs deep into the contextual and compositional art of filmmaking.

One of our assignments is to find three clips of scenes from movies and turn a critical eye on what we see. Here are the three that I chose and my analysis:

I have the sound off. I don’t think I need it. All of the emotion is in his face, or the lack of emotion, right? I turn the sound up and I hear him typing. Notice the long pauses? There are fewer and fewer of those in movies these days. But here, as the camera moves in closer, it has an impact. And normally, a shot of a computer? Frigging boring. But the decision around friending is a key part of this movie, and the shuttling back and forth of the lens is very effective. Music kicks in around 40 seconds, just as he leans back to reconsider what to do. Nice touch.  This is the final scene, so we get an update on how it all turned out. But is he happy?

Use of white space here. To represent emptiness inside of the Matrix. Lens spins, giving us and him the feeling of being disorientated.  The use of lens here is important. I know a lot has been written about his sunglasses here, but as a visual symbol, they are important. The viewer leans in, half expecting to see themselves in the glasses, right? I find it interesting that the props are furniture. And notice how the television is “old school” — showing the dichotomy between the ideas and the scene, and the plot that is emerging in the movie.

Short clip, mostly showing Ted Night’s arching eyebrows and wide mouth. Perfectly in tune to character. Turn off the sound, and you can still guess the tone of his language. The sarcasm drips. Not much in terms of filmmaking style but casting actors who can inhabit a character is critical for a film like Caddyshack. Not just Ted Night. Can you imagine this movie without Bill Murray? No way!

Peace (in the composition),
Kevin