For this assignment, we went brought back the Foley assignment for a 2nd round, taking the clips that the class created and pulling it into the Chaplin video as an exercise of our video editing skills. Additionally, we took time to create introduction, layer on a new soundtrack, and modify the middle of the story.
For this assignment, I used the a collection of clips pulled from our class SoundCloud collection to create the core dialog. I download the original Chaplin clip and a Lion King clip from YouTube using http://en.savefrom.net/. I used incompetech.com to find a lively silent film score that I used as the background music. Initially, the sound was quite loud and overpowering so I used the functionality available on VideoPad Video Editor to pull the volume down 50% for the soundtrack. I used the insert Text feature to create the opening, scrolling credits and then use the same texts to create the closing story line, credits for media sources, and the final THE END.
Below is a screenshot of my VideoPad Video Editor interface.
When picking the SoundCloud pieces, I tried to chose the sound clips with the lowest background noise (lowest median wave height in the SoundCloud interface). I was surprised at how well they fit together. When I was determining how I wanted to edit the middle of the story, my reasoning (and Google key word search) was “Lion Dreaming,” literally. After a brief view of the video clips that came up with the search, I came across the scene from the Lion King where Mufasa and Simba are frolicking through the open spaces of their kingdom. I thought to myself, “what else would a sleeping lion in captivity be dreaming of?” So I decided to include that clip in the middle of the Chaplin clip, right before Charlie wakes the lion. Aside from the slightly awkward transition between the clips, the story line actually works, adding a dimension as to why the lion is mad. Simba was dreaming of a better life, free with his father, and then “BOOM” he is awakened by a human with a funny hat. After shaking off the grogginess from his nap, the anger boils over and he lashes out at Charlie, who scrambles away in fright.
Instead of adding a simple “The End” to the story, I decided to add the closure that some movies use to tell the story of certain characters in the movie. For this particular clip, Charlie and his girlfriend, Spot (the dog), and Simba are the characters who get closure slides before the final curtain (The End).
cookiesuponwhichtomunch 
Fabulous work here on both the idea of a new story for the scene (making it a dream sequence for Simba was brilliant) and the careful attention paid to the detail. The timing and sound levels work well together– had you used VideoPad before? I have had other students use it and they seem to do better with it than MovieMaker.
And using the closing credits to tie it all together make this a top quality video edit.
Thanks!
I actually haven’t used VideoPad before. I used MovieMaker back in the XP days, but thought I would go with the this program for the exercise. It wasn’t too bad. Once you get the hang of the interface and some of the functionality, it’s pretty smooth sailing. The only thing I would say is that my 13″ screen didn’t really lend to precise editing conditions. To that, I will attribute the blips and gaps in sound and video throughout this weeks work 😉
A Freesound Link to offer my feedback: https://www.freesound.org/people/sonsdebarcelona/sounds/222503/
I actually found myself clapping at my computer at the point of the dream scene. I loved it! What a wonderful thing the human mind is if we allow it to make unexpected leaps – DS106 teaches us how to do that in Digital story and in life! I hope you enjoyed it enough to join us in the open web.