I Am Amazed and It's Been AMAZING!

The experience of creating a music video for the song, "I am Amazed," with my best friend has been a fun and enlightening experience. Not only did we have fun working on the video but we also learned a lot about the video making process.

One of the biggest problems that we faced in the making of our video was finding availability on days with good weather to video our artist. It seemed as if his schedule and ours did not fit the way we would have liked but I'm sure thats a problem that most directors and producers run into.

Once we found the availability to work with our artist the rest was nothing but making magic. When we accumulated footage the video fell into place even the transitions were easy to place due to the artistic and wild vision we had for the video.


Not only did we have a good time but the man who we made the video for has been overjoyed by what we did saying;
"This is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

Why I Still Want My MTV (Chapter 5)

In the book, I Still Want my MTV, there discussion about what a music video portrays to an audience. Chapter five of this story is about the style in the world of these music videos. The chapter expresses that music is not the same as literary expression but it still has meaning in its own way in its own right with its own meaning even if it does not aim to have one.

"Indeed, we can sat that music video rejects traditional narrative, condenses images into stimulating pulses, and rejects prose and writing. However,.... We can also say that music video institutes a new narrative structure, reveals the workings of condensation and speed, teaches us about stimulation and rhythm pulsation, and presents to us a musicality of the world."

The chapter then looks at the audiences roll in this meaning as the receptor of the communication. With many signifiers being sent through everything from video to concerts. Overall looking at how the style of the videos and arts shapes the interpretations places by the audience viewing them.

Three Point Editing

Final Cut Pro!

Three point editing is by far the best way the best way to do your editing on final cut pro. Three point editing is the best way to accurately place a clip into a sequence. This is because it allows you to use the source clip and specify the in and out points of the video. 

When doing a three point edit you must select the in and out points and specify what part of the source clip you want to place in the sequence. You then must determine the duration of the edit and define where to out the video in the timeline. After defining these points its then time to choose the tracks and drag the clip onto the canvas to overlay the clip. 

Main keyboard shortcuts include:

F9 - Insert Edit

F10 - Overwrite edit

F11 - Replace edit

F12 - Superimpose edit

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"How to Love"
Lil' Wayne

The music video produced for the Lil' Wayne song "How to Love" is a video that is a great example of the mode of visualizing music called amplification. When first listening to the song it seems like a love song to a woman about being mistreated in relationships, "You've had a lot of crooks try to steal your heart never really had love couldn't ever figure out how to love," but the video gives the song a whole new meaning.

The video starts in a hospital and takes you through the life of a young girl who's life has been nothing but struggle.

Did Video Kill the Radio Star?

Could video kill the radio star? 

With the amount of things the average person has to do in a day how could it?

 The idea of the music video is great, waking up for school in my teens I immediately turned to MTV channel 55, and got ready for school jamming out to the hits from all of my favorite rap, hip hop and R&B artists. The videos that I was watching was the perfect way to start everyday and was truly when I first started caring about the music industry. Some videos have a sense of inappropriateness but most of the videos came with fun and exciting interpretations of the music I was listening to. It seems that if anything the videos have been helping the radio star making songs come to life and bringing creative dances and sex appeal to the forefront. The only problem is you have to seek out videos unlike radio which comes to you. 

 In reality how often can you sit in front of a computer or television searching for the hottest new videos? For me never, the only music videos I see are the most popular ones that my friends show me or the videos that people tag on Facebook. Not because I don't like videos but I don't have time to search for them and MTV doesn't even play music videos the way that they used to. The "Music Television" channel is filled full of so called "reality shows" and competitions between drunken goons and sex obsessed teenagers. 

Radio has now and will be a huge way to obtain music. Not only do people listen to the radio everyday at work and in there cars but now even cell phones have applications that stream radio stations. There are applications that stream music videos such as VEVO but watching a video while doing things is much more difficult than just listening and multitasking. 

photo © _dorothy_

I am Amazed

When first joining the music video class my partner and I had no idea what song we wanted to use for our video. My partner is a beautiful singer who has produced many of her own songs but we know a plethora of Shepherdstown artists who have songs that we would have loved to feature. After much thought we made the decision to use a song titled, "I am Amazed" by one of our "Towny" friends. When dividing the song we plan on using videos of the artist during guitar solos and videos of children playing when he is singing the chorus. The children is what we had envisioned for the song from the time we started. Hopefully we will do the song and the artist justice with our portrayal of his lyrics.

KIDZ BIZ

After much thought about my life and what interests me it didn't take long for me to realize that my passion lies with my job at The Little Gym of Frederick.  I'm lucky enough to play all day with princesses and superheroes in a land they like to think of as "Gymdalasia". I get the enjoyment of hearing that when my students go home rather than playing house they play "Little Gym" and pretend to be "Miss. Danielle" while teaching their parents and siblings gymnastics skills. This is why when assigned to make a twenty five page website on a topic of my choice, I knew my first step was to talk to my boss. 

After talking the new owner of my company we decided to make the webpage focused on Kidz Biz, the Frederick locations branch of the International Franchise, The Little Gym. This will include descriptions of what our facility offers as well as information about the new location that we will be moving to. The site will also give the parents of the children we teach information about the Kidz Biz family. Starting with information about our new owner, our director, and each of the teachers in our staff. We will be taking pictures to show our facilities as well as the equipment that we use to grow skills and confidence in the children we teach.