PROJECT #1:  MAKING A MASHUP & PARTICIPATING IN REWRITE CULTURE

40 points

DUE Sept. 14

 

 

You’ll be taking found (downloadable or ripped) visuals and piece them together (in Adobe Premiere Pro or another editing program) to create a cultural commentary or critique. 

 

  1. Think. What do you want to say? The goal is to mash at least two pieces of visual culture together, but not just for the hell of it, to make a point. It might be the Chipmunks audio mashed with video footage of the Bolshoi Ballet; it might be video of Kanye West dissing Taylor Swift mashed with Dorothy and Scarecrow audio from the Wizard of Oz; it might be a mashup between two completely different cartoons (NO FAMILY GUY, PLEASE), or two dramas: Napoleon Dynamite meets Dr. Strangelove. You might want to mash a video on Youtube that not many people have ever seen with a Youtube video that went viral. Your goal: Have a point of view. Make something smart (not crass, crude, sophomoric, personal, but smart--something everyone will "get" beyond your group of friends). It's a good idea to check your idea with Bettina before you get too involved.  Look HERE for inspiration. 

 

  1. Collect.  Download video files (we will learn to add Fast Video Download and Download Media Helper to our Firefox browsers).  If you want to be flexible in your editing (we don't have open Lab times yet in Lang 212), save your images on portable hard drives (8 gb should be enough). 

 

  1. Review Adobe Premiere Pro Tutorials.  We'll go over some of these in class, but HELLO, tutorial HELP get you oriented around the digital editing program. You will save an unbelievable amount of time if you're comfortable with the programs. Here are helpful tutorials are HERE).  All tutorials are also available in the "TOOLS" menu of the syllabus.

 

  1. Edit.  Edit your video, either in the Production House where people can help between 8am and 5 p.m., the Lang 212 Lab (if a lab monitor is scheduled) or in one of the other open labs on campus that supports editing software (Adobe Premiere Pro is on ALL CHFA computers...look here for labs HERE. 
    Remember to save your edits, often and always, on your portable hard drive.

 

WAIT: YOUTUBE Resolution...can be ICKY:  Youtube videos have pretty crappy resolution--there's nothing you can do about that. Adobe Premiere responds to the crappy resolution by resizing the video so that it's small--the resolution is "clearer" but your output will look like a frame within a frame. If you're using Youtube videos you need to fix that by Right Clicking on each clip of your video and selecting "Scale to Frame Size." The video clip will automatically rescale.

 

Your entire video project should not be longer than 1-2 minutes.

 

5. Export and Upload. First, make sure that your video images are all showing at "maximum" size, not a frame within a frame. Adobe Premiere automically detects when a video is poor quaiity (aka, downloaded from Youtube), and it overcompensates by importing your video smaller than full screen. To fix that, put your cursor over each edited clip in the timeline and double click on the corresponding image in program view. You will be able to grab the white handles and expand the screen size of the imported video. You'll have to do this for every clip. When you're done, you’ll want to export your movie File/Export/Media.  You'll get a dialog box, "Expot Setitngs" Select Format: Quicktime, Present:NTSC DV, make sure "Export Video" and "Export Audio" are both selected, and click OK. After Adobe Media Encoder box comes up, select "Start Queu" and you'll see (be patient) that your video will convert into Quicktime. It'll save in the same place as your project. Finally, with Quicktime in hand, you're ready to upload the video to:  Youtube! If you don’t have a Google/Youtube account, you’ll have to create one.  Follow the “Upload” directions…very easy!  This MAY take as long as 6 hours or as short as 10 minutes, depending on the time of day and the length/quality of your video. 

 

6. Explain on the blog assignment. Post your video on the class BLOG and answer the following questions: What inspired you? How is your video a cultural critique? What are you critiquing? What is the POINT of your mashup???