videoassignments

Bridge Jump

By mbransons in ds106 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

Six great bridge jumps from six films. My personal favorite is the Blues Brothers jump over the Calumet River.

This was a fun little supercut started for my class a couple weeks ago and finally finished. I can’t remember how they helped me choose this topic, but it turned out to be a fun one. The 007 jump is probably the craziest, as it’s a legitimate stunt that turned a car 180 degrees over a river. Crazy.

The final ‘rocket car’ bridge jump as clownish as it appears is actually an homage to stunt drivers in the action/comedy film ‘Hooper.’ Car jumping had its moment at this time, pre-CGI, destroying car after car.

The Dukes of Hazzard was probably the zenith of car jumping documented on film, so its intro music makes for a perfect soundtrack for the many film jumps.

 

Yo Adrian!

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , ,

While talking about ds106 this summer with my teacher ed students, I described how I wished to complete the five seconds five films one archetype assignment with a mashup of Rocky’s distictive ‘Yo Adrian’ across the six Rocky films.

I’d recently re-watched Rocky which was released in 1976 when I was age five. I somehow watched that film in the theatre (no VHS yet) probably at a 99 cent showing. But I vividly remember going the see the sequel for a Thanksgiving showing, waiting two hours in the rain to see Rocky II.

There were probably a few hundred people in the theatre (yes movies did attract real crowds, imagine that) and when the open titles started with the end of fight from Rocky, the audience literally erupted in cheers. Can you imagine that now? An audience applauding a movie as it starts?

I originally expected this mashup of Rocky’s ‘Yo Adrian’ to be a comical rendition. But in retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised that it turned out to be so sentimental. The best of Stallone as Rocky is ultimately about his relationship with Adrian. Yes the fights and winning and winning and winning are fun (expected), but it’s his relationship with Adrian that really changes through the films.

In Rocky I, it’s so much about their courtship which is frankly goofy. Remember when Adrian’s brother Paulie throws the Thanksgiving turkey out the window for no apparent reason? It leads to the first, ‘Yo Adrian, it’s me Rocky’ moment as he talks to her through the door. And the sentimentality continues in Rocky II with probably the most famous ‘Yo Adrian’ after defeating Apollo Creed.

In Rocky III (Clubber Lang – I pity the fool) and Rocky IV (Drago – I must break you) there’s no ‘Yo Adrian.’ They’ve become a celebrity couple with money so such expressions are crass I guess.. But Rocky still looks to and needs Adrian more than ever. The almost comical standoff between them on a beach in LA in Rocky III may hammer the nail too hard, but it’s really classic ‘Yo Adrian.’

The finale of the Rocky series which carried too long for sure, cover Rocky’s decline. In Rocky V (Tommy Gunn – I’m nobody’s puppet) he’s a punched-in-the-head-to-many-times pantomime of himself from the first two movies. All the sophistication that came with wealth in III and IV is literally stripped away (is it so impossible to imagine a superstar athlete would piss away their fortune). And in Rocky VI (Balboa) he’s trying to live a life without Adrian. In these films ‘Yo Adrian’ returns as a sentimental statement, remembering the goofy loving couple they originally were.

Though Rocky is of course first remembered as a boxing movie about a ‘puncher’s chance,’ it’s really a schmaltzy love story. Creed, Clubber, Drago, Gunn, and whoever the hell Rocky fought in VI are fun, but ‘YO ADRIAN’ is 4LIFE.

Five Big Fish In Their Little Ponds

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Finding five ‘obstructionist bureaucrats’ proved too difficult a task in class yesterday for my second one archetype five films in five seconds video assignment. Also the keeping it to five seconds has been next to impossible. I think Kat’s Five High School Bullies is the best really short one I’ve seen. But I don’t think the exact length matters so much as long as you do your best to use the minimum amount for each clip.

The bureaucrat is a pretty interesting character type in films as you need the person who’s not really a villain, yet is constantly getting in the way of the protagonist(s). And they are really hard to search for too! It’s not a particularly popular archetype, as I was only able to find a few examples on the TV Tropes website (I actually didn’t see the examples at the bottom of the page until I was finished, I discovered two they listed but will have to edit the page and add my three.)

Here’s the list in order:

Ghostbusters (William Atherton as Walter Peck) He forces the shutdown of the ghost containment unit at the Ghostbuster’s firehouse wreaking havoc on the city as thousands of ghosts are freed at once. There’s a great subsequent scene in the film in which Dan Akroyd calls him ‘dickless’ for shutting down the system. The mayor asks Bill Murray if this is true, to which he responds, ‘Yes it’s true, this man has no dick.’

The Incredibles (Wallace Shawn as Gilbert Huph) The diminutive boss of the Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) realizes that Parr is helping insurance claimants navigate the bureaucracy, and is ‘not happy.’ Later in the scene Parr tosses his boss through five walls for not allowing him to rescue a mugging victim they both observe through the office window.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (Charles Napier as Murdock) Rambo was supposed to only document whether American POWs are alive in Vietnam, but disobeys the bureaucratic order from Murdock to not rescue them. After fighting his way out of camp with one POW and reaching the extraction point, rescue helicopter hovering overhead – Murdock kills the mission leaving Rambo to be captured. Later while in captivity, Rambo is tortured into admitting crimes via radio broadcast to Murdock – instead Rambo indignantly utters while clenching the microphone, ‘I’m coming after you Murdock, I’m coming after you.’

Die Hard 2 (Dennis Franz as Captain Carmine Lorenzo) As the head of police of an airport, Lorenzo epitomizes the obstructionist bureaucrat again and again bringing John McClane’s efforts to go after the bad guys to a standstill. McClane finally convinces Lorenzo after shooting him with machine gun – filled with blanks.

Jaws (Murray Hamilton as the mayor of Amity Island) A mayor can’t help but be a bureaucrat, it’s the nature of the job I guess. But allowing a few of your citizens to continue to be eaten by a great white shark is political suicide!

What’s been interesting about this assignment was how it revealed archetypes are often employed in similar ways across movies. The obstructionist bureaucrat was consistently condescending, dismissing the knowledge of the protagonists. And despite having a position of power, the bureaucrat always must eventually be publicly exposed and/or humiliated. If only that could happen in real life – trips to the DMV would be so much shorter and our license pictures would be prettier.

Dollhouse of Nerd Girls

By mbransons in Digital Identity, Digital Storytelling 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We did a video blitz assignment in today’s class that I’ve turned into an assignment called, One Archetype, Five Movies, Five Seconds. The assignment asks you to create a five second video of one archetype from five different movies cutting together one second of each. The exercise gave everyone the opportunity to experiment with downloading YouTube videos as well as working with a video editor such as Final Cut Pro or iMovie. We looked at the UMW links to a lot of great video creation resources, a few of which we will need today, such as: Handbrake, MPEG Streamclip, and Video DownloadHelper.

I drew ‘Nerd Girl’ for my five seconds and used the following films:

Welcome to the Dollhouse (Heather Matarazzo)
Napoleon Dynamite (Tina Majorino)
Superstar (Molly Shannon)
Sixteen Candles (Joan Cusack)
Square Pegs (Sarah Jessica Parker)

Admittedly I exceeded the five seconds by quite a bit, for the sake of action, dialogue and the use of the ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’ song. But the spirit of the assignment I think is still there.

Here’s a grab bag of character archetypes for you to choose from (or pick your own) for the assignment:

Prisoners, Thieves, Beauty Queens, Kings, Robin Hoods, James Bonds, Bank Robbers, Assassins, Bad Boys, Kung Fu Masters, Femme Fatales, Sports Heroes, High School Bullies, Rogue Police Officers, Brainiacs, Pregnancies, Principals, Mean Teachers, InspirationalTeachers, Gunslingers, Gangsters, Monsters, Bartenders, Warrior Princesses, Swordsman, Knights, Mad Scientists, Nerd Girls, Obstructive Bureaucrats, Sidekicks, Wise Old Men, Hardboiled Detectives, Tough Coaches, Swooning Ladies.

Silent Era Cool Hand Luke

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , ,

This Return the Silent Era video remakes the 50 eggs eating contest in the 1967 classic prison camp movie Cool Hand Luke. On a sweltering stormy night, the prisoners are dreading the closing of the windows of the barracks as it will mean a sweaty night of misery. Luke (Paul Newman) takes the bunch off guard by flippantly suggesting he can eat fifty eggs. Even his biggest fan Dragline (George Kennedy) finds it hard to believe this is possible. Soon a wager is born and the camp is again distracted from their suffering through Luke’s impishness and levity.

The contest scene takes about ten minutes in the movie and I was pretty sure I wanted to keep the silent version much shorter. So I decided to cut out most of the haggling over the rules of the bet as well as speed of the film. At times I made moments as much as 2.5x faster than the original footage, which quickened the pace but also reflected the unnaturally fast footage often seen in silent movies which were shot at frame rates lower than the 24fps standard of sound pictures.

Another hard decision was to choose which pieces of dialogue to place on title cards. The most important elements of time and the number of eggs eaten were included, as well as a number of Dragline’s colorful comments as he coached Luke through the contest. Also I hoped the Dueling Banjos soundtrack would provide an emotional substitute to a lot of lines.

I edited the film using Final Cut Pro and made the title cards in Photoshop. But I again found a good use for my iPhone as part of the process, similar to my recent discovery of using it in my designs. The 8mm app has some really awesome antiquing filters for video, including a ‘Noir’ and ’1920′ filter. I ran the video through both filters.

Bouncing a three minute video at almost 100MB in size bacj and forth between the computer and the phone and then back again is little cumbersome but the effect I think makes it worth it. There’s even an included projector sound effect.

Schadenfreude – Making Me Feel Glad That I’m Not You

By mbransons in Digital Storytelling 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

I finally had some time yesterday to make my video mashup assignment for ds106. I’ve done a few already as part of the sagas of Jim Groom and Dr. Obilivion, but wanted to do something a little less “ds106ish” this time. Though the recent revelations regarding Camp Oblivion and Martha Burtis will need some digital rehashing!

YouTube Preview Image

This mashup uses two police videos – a dashboard cam which records the tasering of a driver and a helicopter pov cam of a police chase. These are mixed with audio from American Idol audition footage. Also I used some sound effects from freesound.org.

Both police videos and of course the American Idol audition have been broadcast on television and the web. Each recorded moment of embarrassment and/or suffering of the individual(s) is packaged to create an amusing experience for the audience.

The Germans have a word to describe how people derive pleasure from the misfortune of others – Schadenfreude. It’s actually a fairly common feeling – think about how you might respond to the media mogul and conservative, Rupert Murdoch, being grilled by Parliament today, “Now that’s Fair and Balanced dammit!”

Scientists that study schadenfreude described here in the New York Times, that it’s an emotion, however contemptible, “we are programmed to feel.” A couple of illustrative experiments ask subjects to respond to the failings of individuals which have either a certain amount of status or very little. Typically the subjects took pleasure when individuals fell from grace.

So we can’t help but resent those that have more than us at times and  we seem to find a certain amount of glee in their disgrace. (Especially men apparently, so another study shows, described in this NYTimes article.) But the humiliation videos shown on Cops that portray less-fortunate individuals behaving badly or the carnival like atmosphere created on American Idol making a freak-show out of awkward individuals – doesn’t seem as forgivable  a “schadenfreude” response. Yes these individuals have made their own decisions that brought them to these degrading places, but do we have to enjoy it? Is it making me feel glad that I’m not you?