Friday, February 28, 2014

Stick to It - Ira Glass on Storytelling

Just finished my midterms and I confess creativity and expression had to take a back seat to figuring out the proper structure of the Dublin Core. So I'll be back up to speed in a bit.


Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

It is about persistence. Ira Glass knows something about persistence. This is a motion graphic of an extract of a larger video by Mr. Glass.

So yeah, the videos might be crappy for a while but they will get better.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Trip to Grand Central Market - Video Poem

Chip, chip, chip away at the stone. I had to let go of the prior idea. It just was not coming together. The rabbit got away this time.

I went out on a road trip and came up with this video:




It is a mixture of video and photos taken at the Grand Central Market of Los Angeles. There is a change between the prior version of the market and the new culinary influences that are starting to move in.

What the market has always been is a place about the accessibility of food. Inexpensive veggies co-exist with mouth watering and heart clogging food.

So this is a travel video poem about a food place.

I recorded on my Panasonic DMC -XS1. That is one accommodating camera. It did a great job in getting the recordings in a number of challenging lighting areas and types.

Editing took place in Serif MoviePlus X6.  Music from Frank Edward Nora who has graciously placed much of his New Midnight Cassette Collection in the Public Domain.

Home Page for Mobile Users

Bart's Fish Tales Fifteen Second Cookshow via Instagram

Talk about your time squeeze but he does it and you can't help but retain a chunk of information because with 15 seconds that is about as much as you are going to get. Bart von Olphen really is an author and food instructor who uses the service to share what he knows about seafood.




I've watched a few of the Instagrams and dang if he doesn't hit his mark each and every time. I tend to think there is some kind of editing going on, probably in camera but I gotta say it is a slick executions of using the limitations as an advantage.

Mashable has a post on how to create Instagram Videos in 7 Steps.  You can also review the Instagram Help page; a little dry but you might find what you need.

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Monday, February 10, 2014

Getting Lost In Tranparency Image Land

I have been foiled by ambition and a .png. I violated my self imposed rule of keeping it simple. I got lost chasing the rabbit of perfection. That and I barely knew what I was doing.

The idea was to have a video play inside of an analog television set. You first have to find that analog television that has a transparent area in the screen section. You won't find one that will look good, fits your project and has the perfect transparancy.



You will find televisions that have the look that you want but you have to fiddle with them. And by fiddle I mean lose four freaking hours of time.

I couldn't get the above image to converted to a transparency screen area. I was using Corel Paint Shop Pro.  I used the magic lasso, I tried the background erase tool all for nothing or a jacked up version I will not post out of shame. 

This is no reflection on Corel Paint Shop Pro; trying to read and perform the instruction is a bad way to go when you are long past deadline. I should have given up; gone to plan B but noooo.

I had much better luck in TechSmith's SnagIt where I could perform a transparency fill but the corners were jacked up. Which meant you have to magnify to pour the transparency fill into small, irregular spaces. Took more time than I had.

When I finally got close to what I wanted I then needed to layer it in the video editing program. It was reluctant to play nice with the video.

Hence, no video as yet.

Part of creating is making mistakes, errors, and finding out that isn't that simple. I think I can do this and I don't think you should have to have After Effects to pull it off.

The rabbit shall be mine.

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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Keep Your Viewer YouTube Numbers Clean

Last year YouTube pulled a number of videos and terminated many users accounts for goosing the viewership numbers. Not just talking about Ralphie in the bedroom. These were major companies like SonyBMG and Universal Music Group.

Google is letting it be known that they are looking for users that are artificially inflating their viewership numbers.

You do not want to be one of them. My initial instinct is that a few of the newly minted middle men/women management companies are looking for shortcuts to making a profit.

There are going to a number of well known people about to be embarrassed.

Even if you don't have a web series or financially profit from videos you should at least read Google's post on Third Party Service Providers. It will provide a background answer why that crappy video that has 40,000 views to your 30 views has instantly vaporized from your screen.


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Saturday, February 1, 2014

Using PowerPoint 2013 for Text Visual Poem

There has been so much politically stupid yakity-yak this week I could not ignore or let go of some of the idiocy that passes for political discourse. I'll go into detail on my Stoop blog. I decided I wanted to say something about the binary way we communicate in the age of Twitter.

I am not Twitter hating. Nope. Twitter can be used for good or for evil. But if you wanted to look to the source of the brevity of public communication you'd have to point a finger (and I'd suggest a middle one) toward the television news use of sound bites.




So in this video, I've reduced the pundit of the day's reaction to nouns and a verb. One verb in particular. I don't normally use the F-word in my writing or public media but you do what you gotta do. I originally had a color gradient as a background but upon export I notice some pixel blocks in regions of the video. Not sure if it was my monitor, the exported video or the compression used to export. I decided to go totally binary and go with black and white.

Creation Tools

I've used presentation slide programs for many years; often in ways that it was never intended to be used. Once upon a time I used PowerPoint as a simple desktop publishing program for an office newsletter. Scoff if you must but there was no way I was going to have access to Aldus Pagemaker.

I forget that I actual have a modern version of the PowerPoint. I can export video directly from the program without having to jump through massive hoops. I can compose, add audio and have animation effects.

Not how I used it for my third video but I'm starting to re-think the ways stories can be told. Yes, there is death by PowerPoint. I've seen it, experience it and sometimes I was a perpetrator of way too much information. This time, it might be a bit too short.

Use of Audio

For the heartbeat, I located a sound effect version from SoundJay.com that allows use in videos for non-commercial or commercial use. I downloaded the .wav file to get the most vibrant sound as possible.

In PowerPoint 2013 you can insert audio and have it play the entire video or just on a particular slide. You can add a fade in/fade out  but you will need to spend a little time tweaking it the way you want. Since the video is very short I'm using the whole thing and just ending when it ends.


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