Another week has gone by in DS106 and i’m stoked. As we all know, last week was Audio and this week is Visual. I’m crossing my fingers that week 6 is Scent. Get it? Because it’s one of the five senses? Yes, it’s been a long week if you couldn’t tell. The transition from audio to visual is significantly different. To me, it wasn’t about which one is easier or more difficult but rather the process itself. Instead of having to listen for things, this week i had to look for things. After this week, i now use audio and visual together. For example, i listen for cues in the change of music to how the scene is also changing and how they compliment each other. This all adds up to the big picture of creating the scene. It involves both audio and visual. This week, i’ve been focusing more on visual but i’ve been listening for some audio as well. Now, this doesn’t mean i was successful because i’m still confused. Give another month and maybe i’ll know what i’m talking about. Maybe.. So let’s get down to business. What Exactly did I do this week? Well, after watching the Week 5 video, i started to work my way through the list of tasks here. I’ll be honest here, I didn’t start working on this week technically until Tuesday. I suppose i didn’t procrastinate too much, right?
Daily Create
Like the video said, I had to complete 2 Daily Creates. Funny story there.. I started my daily creates on Monday. I assumed that Monday would count for Week 5 rather than Week 4. WRONG. I saw Groom tweet about it so i was forced to complete another Daily Create. There’s no harm in posting this daily create in this weekly summary! So i’ll be posting 3 daily creates with only 2 counting. Let’s go!
Monday:
For Monday’s Daily Create, i had to listen to my favorite song and take a picture that captures that song. One of my favorite bands since i was about 7 years old is Green Day. My blog post on this daily create is right here. Now, here’s my picture!
Friday:
This Daily Create made me laugh from the title alone. “Y U NO DRAW JIM GROOM” hahaha. That meme is my favorite…. Well, the whole “Y U NO” meme. Anyways, i could already tell that i would enjoy this Daily Create. My drawing skills aren’t the best, if you couldn’t tell already, so you have to cut me some slack. It’s still a cute picture! For a little more detail, check out my post about this daily create here.
Saturday:
My final daily create! This assignment asked me to record the sounds round me. Pretty simple. I turned on the recording on my laptop and uploaded it to soundcloud! What you hear in the background is the TV show Law and Order:SVU. Here’s my post about it and the audio is below!
Visual Assignments
The idea of completing 12 stars worth of assignments freaked me out a bit. I know audio assignments were time-consuming and i assumed that visual assignments would be worse! Thankfully, the work was manageable. Aside from the actual editing, choosing the assignments was pretty difficult. I didn’t want to go the easy route and do 12 1 star assignments or do 3 4 star assignments. My goal was to 4, 3 star assignments. That didn’t sound too bad to me! Here they are!
Wiring Mirror Scenes: 3.5 Stars
This assignment captured my attention through the title. Since i just finished live tweeting about The Wire, it should be easy to find mirror scenes, right? No. When we were doing the live tweeting, Groom mentioned one mirror scene. It hadn’t occurred to me that said scene was a mirror scene so i chose that scene. Finding another mirror scene was more difficult. I originally chose D and his mom talking through the phone’s and then him being killed. I tried to connect the scenes but it wasn’t very strong. Groom noticed by commenting that he didn’t really buy it. I figured i should redo the second scene. I didn’t feel good just slapping my name on that visual assignment knowing it wasn’t my best work. I didn’t come back to this assignment until after i watched another episode of The Wire. Thankfully, in S2E7, there was a scene where Stringer and Avon fist pound through the glass. Well, that’s exactly what D and his mom did. BOOM! A mirror scene! At least to me it was. This was A LOT better than my original mirror scene. Here’s my post about the assignment. Now here are the pictures!
Unit Discussion & Prison Gatsby Talk
D’Angelo and Mom & Stringer and Avon
Historical Selfies: 3.5 Stars
This assignment was great. I like the idea of putting old famous people in modern settings. Maybe that’s just the troll inside of me coming out. Either way, this was fun! I originally was only planning on doing 1 selfie but it took me such little time that i decided to have fun with it and do another. I chose my 2 favorite presidents: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (in order of my favorite). The only difficult part of this assignment was picking the background so is tuck with natural disasters. The whole process of this was fairly simply since i was already familiar with cutting and cropping. I put up a tutorial for it on the blog post so check it out. Here are my historical selfies!
FDR vs. Pompeii
JFK Vs. Twister
My Favorite Lyric: 4 Stars
I was very suspicious of this assignment because it was worth 4 stars. So i was hesitant to click on it because i was afraid that it would too difficult. Well, all i had to do was find a picture that portrays my favorite lyrics from a song. Not too bad! I still did more stars to make up for the easiness of this assignment. I decided to pick a song by The Wombats. It was hard to pick which song so i randomly chose “Tokyo”. The lyrics i chose from “Tokyo” were “Back to that part in Tokyo, where the demons from my past leave me in peace”. I had fun with this but i really wanted to make it pop. I looked up some tutorials on how to make text layers cool but nothing worked out for me. Groom commented on my picture telling me what i could do i figured i will try that out next time! I had a whole process on how i chose the lyrics so view my post about it here. Now for the picture!
Splash The Color: 3 Stars
Out of all the assignments i did this week, this one was by my most successful piece. I came across this when i saw a fellow classmate do it. It looks freaking cool and i had to take a stab at it. As i mentioned in my separate post about it here, choosing the right picture is key. I have a poster in my room that is of a double-decker bus in London that is black and white except the bus. What i really like is how the double-decker bus stands out. I wanted to do something similar so i landed on an iconic British phone booth. The process was overall easy because i followed a video tutorial that i linked in the post. I’m pretty proud of what i did even if there is a mistake. But if Groom can’t find the mistake, is there really a mistake? Hehe. Here’s my master piece!
Before:
After:
Before:
I ended up doing another edit for fun so i might as well include that also, right?
After:
you can tell i had fun with this assignment.
Photoblitz:
This assignment was a little confusing. When i clicked on the link provided, there was a lot to look at, at once. I ignored the time and read the directions about twice until i fully understood what i needed to do. I then looked over the pictures i had to take which almost half of them were impossible so i clicked for different ones. The new tasks were a lot better so i began the assignment. It only took me about 15 minutes which wasn’t too bad. I could complete all of them except on, which was difficult anyways. Instead of posting all 7 pictures, which would take up a lot of space, i’m going to post my assigned picture tasks and i’ll give you the link to my blog post about this right HERE !
Now here are the assgnments!
Live Tweeting:
Again, live tweeting an assignment for this week! Aside from the daily create i did on Monday which i thought would count, this is technically the first assignment i did for week 5! Not too hard, just enjoy and episode and live tweet. Ah, but yes, there is a catch. A big one if i might add. No audio! I’m basically switching around my brain from last week. As i mentioned in my blog post about it HERE , watching the show without the sound can be very distracting. How am i suppose to look for visual details if i’m not hearing anything? Basically, what’s the point? As i watched this episode, i listened to whatever shuffle was playing on my itunes. I mean, i had to keep myself interested and focused somehow, right? We all know Dominic West (McNulty) is attractive but not THAT attractive to keep my full attention. By listening to itunes, i was able to pay attention to visual details a lot better. Even though i viewed the episode prior to the live tweet with sound, it gave me an advantage. I didn’t have to be clueless to what’s going on and spend my focus on trying to figure out the scenes. I noticed a lot more with my eyes without audio than i did with audio. What i put most of my attention to were colors, specifically Omar and the courtroom’s attire. My post goes into a lot more detail so click the link and enjoy. If you’re not up to it (which you’d be missing out greatly) then here are some screen shots of my tweets OR you can go to my twitter account and look for some. We used the tag #wire106 this time.
Tweets:
Video Discussions:
Ah…. yes. I have yet to do ANY video discussion. I’m just a little nervous because i don’t want to sound stupid IN FRONT OF EVERYONE. But next week i plan on signing up for one. I mean, all i have to do is discuss a tv show, right? 
The Wire:
For this week we had to watch episodes 6,7,8. This was pretty fun. I didn’t make any separate blog post for this because it was difficult for me to catch many visuals. At least any pertaining to what Groom posted under the weekly assignment. The show is progressing in a positive way, especially now that McNulty is back and the two groups (drugs and dock workers) are merging. I’m thrilled to see the connections and where they might lead!
Comments: (Hopefully have been moderated by now)
Commenting has become a great habit with this class. The first couple of weeks it was a little difficult to get in the groove of commenting, but now i look forward to it. It’s nice to have people comment back, which has been happening a lot more lately. So here are some the MANY comments i did this week via word press. Don’t be afraid to check my tweets here also.
-I was really impressed with Jessica’s assignment. I actually skipped this one because it was hard for me to come up with a minimalist thingy.
– Back to Jessica again, i was shocked that she completed her weekly summary before the end of the week! It motivated me to start mine on Friday.
-Melinda’s perfect day made me want to have my perfect day NOW!
–Jim Groom art is much more flattering in stick figure form than my lumpy picture.
