Above is a fan made music video to the song Assassin. It is a fantastically made video. The added graphics as well as position of John Mayer in some of his scenes are great. (Note: John did not pose for this in any way). Judging by the comments on the page, people loved it, and with good reason. Whoever made this movie must have experience and talent making movies like this. Timing was on, as well as the storyline of the music video to the lyrics of the song. If you watch closely he uses clips from “Where The Light Is,” John Mayer’s live DVD released a few years ago. Also, there are some scenes from Gone In 60 Seconds. This clip bears some similarities with my own. Obviously whoever made the vid must be a fan of the song or artist to create such an extensive video. The video also takes pieces from the same video that one of my clips came from (the final cip in mine). Also, we share the same broadcasting method (YouTube) as well as we both tell a story. However, this vid tries more so to tell a story rather than convey any sort of persuasion. My video was meant to inform people of the guitar prowess of John Mayer, this is just a sick music video with a storyline.
I tried to insert the video from Vimeo for my second piece but I guess WordPress is not compatible with Viemo yet. here is the link
This links to a video that John Mayer shot himself. It is pretty much like the title, a day in the life of John Mayer. Of course everyone who sees this video are probably fans of John’s, so they post on the video that they love it and think it was great and put together well. Or it could just be that John’s artistic abilities don’t just lie in music. This is almost nothing like my video. We share the same topic, and while it is broadcasted and can be searched and found on the internet, John uses Vimeo for this and posts on his blog as well (I guess blog posts are the same?) Anyways, this video is a very artsy demonstration of what John does on the day of a concert. My video shows no such preparation. Also, all of John’s work is original, shot by him with production being done by someone else I assume (it says Copyright MMK). Nearly all the work on my video I took from clips ABOUT John or clips that were shot of him, not by him.
Above is yet another YouTube video. This is a compilation of some of John’s solo’s in songs. All the replies seemed to be in German, so I couldn’t really tell if it was accepted well, but there were some smiley faces so I’m guessing it was at least somewhat of a hit. It is a simple video. Audio and video (still image really). Does not tell a story or try to be persuasive like my video, but does show off John’s guitar talent by having samples of his sickest solo’s. Once again we use the same medium (YouTube). His does not incorporate much of the background that my video does on John Mayer. It just shows the audience how good John can sound on the guitar.
Now here is a good example of a compilation video. Once again most likely done by a fan because of the tremendous amount of time you would have to hear the song in order to create this video. All the comments show that this video was well accepted by it’s audience. It is a compilation of 16 videos that show John Mayer singing his song Clarity. Now, we both use the same networking (YouTube), and we both have the same base topic (John Mayer) but that is where the similarities end. He doesn’t seem to be making a point, and does a great job of having the video (one of John’s actual music video of the song and the rest of live and other times he has played) and audio flowing seamlessly. When John is singing in the different videos it really moves along great with the audio. A simple fan vid that probably took a good amount of time to make. Once again, it shows John’s music ability, while mine showed what John has done to get to playing the blues and how good he is at it.
First and foremost this was the most enjoyable project of the semester. The ability to show people something you love in a way that you hope they’ll take something away from it is something most musicians do (such as myself). Even better is showing people that John Mayer isn’t this soft acoustic guitarist, but can really play the blues. That being said i’ll move to the errors in my work first. I found myself trying to choose between showing and telling. I wanted to let my audience know WHY John Mayer was a brilliant blues guitarist, but also wanted them to see for themselves, and in all honestly this is something I couldn’t do in 10 minutes, or even 30 minutes if I had the time. There is just too big of a trade off explaining the methodology of John Mayer as well as letting someone see it on their own. Maybe they wouldn’t get it as I did just by listening, maybe my voice distracted them from what I really wanted them to hear.
On another note, I was not limited by content or broadcasting ability. According to Danah Boyd, we have moved away from broadcasting and into networking http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/Web2Expo.html
This is a big part of my project. I am not CNN, MTV, or any sort of broadcaster so in order for me to get my story out I needed networking ability. Thank you YouTube for allowing me to make my own content available to a larger audience.
I also firmly believe that my project is in the genre of Web 2.0. http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume43/Web20StorytellingEmergenceofaN/163262
It has a beginning, middle, and end (no matter how raw they may seem) and serves a singular purpose. To spread the gospel of the blues (not really but you get the picture). I used microcontent in the form of voiceovers, tags (titles of songs), pieces of songs, album art, pictures, and bits of video. I used YouTube for the social software aspect of Web 2.0 storytelling which also makes it easily search able thus easier to find than just keeping it on my personal computer or server.
While undertaking this project I started to think more and more about juxtaposition. Here we have two franchises that have made their mark on cinema, espescially in the field of science fiction. Star Wars: The 6 episode epic that was made into 2 separate trilogies to cater to 2 different generations. Star Trek: The quintessential story of exploration and freedom. Most people who truly love these epics are seen in a cult way, or really in a nerdy way. But if you take away the deep love of the franchise (people dressing up in costumes and going to conferences) and focus on the storyline and cinematics, then the movies really become an enjoyable event.
I think what I really tried to do is see if anyone got what I was doing. I myself am an avid fan of movie soundtracks, but not everyone is, and not everyone would understand that I used a Star Trek soundtrack in conjunction with the Star Wars Episode III movie. Also, I used the soundtrack from the newer Star Trek movie, so even fans who loved the old Star Trek but not the new one would perhaps not even notice. Pretty much anyone could spot a Star Wars movie, I just hoped that it looked good enough to be one complete piece regardless of the juxtaposition.
I did have a few problems though. I was limited to the technology of my Apple MacBook, so I wasn’t able to completely modify the audio the way I wanted it. Most audio I used from the Star Wars movie was scratchy and still had some background noise/music that conflicted with.
Despite my errors, I wanted to show that, what I believe, the true definition of a Mash-Up is the ability to put two opposing pieces together in a way where they look as 1.
As more sites start forming that allow us to be networked closer than ever, and technology and software evolve to allow media to be altered with greater ease, more users will begin to use new ways to tell stories. As of a few years ago you could log onto Facebook or Myspace and upload an album. This was your story, still image after still image with nothing more to add. One dimensional. A couple years later YouTube came along and changed the way we tell stories digitally. Now using video we were able to add a second dimension to our stories: Motion. As PC and and Mac offer downloadable software to manipulate media we are able to add our final dimension: User Configuration. Users are able to form digital media in almost any way. The way I chose to do my project was to utilize still images and turn it into a video by adding motion (ken burns), and manipulating the still images. I used Comic Life to make my still images look like a comic book, and used a template in iMovie to add some more comic feel to the movie. A difficult part of this was the actual accumulation of photos. I couldn’t take just one photo for each frame or shot, I needed multiple photos from multiple angles to make sure if one shot didn’t work I had other ones to use. Also timing each shot so that the voice-overs would match up was another problem. To fix this I did a voiceover and see what shots I could elongate. After adding time to different shots I would manipulate the voice overs as well to make sure it matched with the right shot.
I may not have had a story in the sense that there was a definite beginning and end, but the reason for that is that the Digital Comic book went meant to be part of a larger series. The cliffhanger at the end was meant to keep people guessing what was happening next in the mini digital series, and so that it would just be a continuation of the storyline. This was done to peak interest and keep viewers, and not make it just one viral video.
Still don’t know what it means. Steven Johnson talks about thinking about it not as a top down hierarchy but as a bottom up sort of way of thinking of things. Apparently there are 4 stages of emergence
1. “People working on the problem without realizing they were working on the problem”
2. When whatever you’re studying becomes a field of study in itself
3. “People actually go out understanding the laws that run through these systems and start building things in a conscious awareness of those laws”
4. “Computer networks get to actually start having kind of a mind of their own”
Still don’t know what much of this means, maybe class will help sort this all out.
On another note, I did like the idea of a mash up and it seems like it would be fun to do. Get some friends together and dance to music while trying not to get sued for Copyright infringement.
The two jumped into a Ford Escape 4X4 and headed into the dense jungle. Here Brett sat quietly pondering his recent traumatic events as Mrs. Jones blasted down ancient dirt roads. Brett could hear the loose gravel and earth beneath the tires and the twigs and branches that trashed against the car. Brett was finally still, and started to rationalize. All he wanted was to get back to society, civilization, a home cooked meal. “Where are we going?” he turned and asked Mrs. Jones
The world wasn’t what it once was. Corinne realized the grass would not be greener on the other side. But she knew what she had to do. This was her moment. It’s easy to put a bullet into a mangled, rotting piece of meat that wants nothing but to use you as a side dish, but to do it do your own flesh and blood, that was tougher. There is history with family, no matter how dismembered they are, and that kind of history causes hesitation. Hesitation gets you killed in this world.
Brett posed another question in class today. He asked the class if blogs were dying out, why, and what will replace them. Well, blogs stemmed not only from the first web logs, but from little girls with diaries, which stemmed from people keeping records of their lives in leather bound books and so on and so on….
Blogs aren’t dying but rather evolving, like it has every time a new medium is pushed into society. Micro-blogging, such as Twitter, is becoming huge-Rather than reading a whole story, you can let everyone know how you feel in 140 characters or less. People can use UStream to broadcast live. Imagine…your own show, your own thoughts, just free flowing. You could even archive someone’s Facebook status updates and have a pretty detailed blog of their life.
Blogs are not dying out, they are just taking advantage of new ways people communicate.
As a student at a liberal arts college, I usually get my hands into some pretty cool things, especially in Brett Boessen courses. I learned how to Tweet long before any of my other friends, and the media studies genre is interesting to say the least. That being said, this semester I am to keep up with a blog, so I’m going to keep it simple and hopefully interesting.
Most blogs are just used as a digital diary, which is what I’ll be doing. A collection of the days events, thoughts, and complaints. An elegant way to tell some one off hours later without them knowing, or a place to vent where, seemingly, you’re talking to no one, but in reality everyone will be reading this. A lot of celebs use their blogs as a megaphone, a place to voice concern about a cause, or a chance to raise money and awareness for a disaster. This is great, except for the few celebs, I have one in mind, that just b!tch, moan, and complain all the time. If you want the latest bathroom gossip about your favorite celeb who just went to rehab after an all nighter at the Chateau Marmont, then by all means pick the whiny cheerleader who knows everyone and runs their mouth like a stopped up toilet. Perez Hilton, I’m talking about you.
