Preserving The Elements

Digital Identity: 5 Lessons

I’m not as active as I once was on social media, but I do understand the opportunities it can provide if executed properly. Here are some of the pages I viewed: Footprints In The Digital Age, Personal Branding In the Age Of Google & McClurken.

1. Find users/bloggers that post meaningful content that you are interested in or can relate to. Follow them and respond to their posts. That person will more than likely follow you back.

2. Be cautious of the content you post online. It might cost you your job, future employment, or an arrest. All it takes is a Google search.

3. Educate the younger generation on how to use social media and other online platforms properly.

4. Network with like-minded individuals who share the same passion as you. Hashtag technology brings people together. Always use hashtags in your posts.

5. Aside from blogs and social media, it is crucial to have an online portfolio/resume site for professional opportunities that displays your work and accomplishments.

Digital Tools: Timeline & Map

Story Map

Timeline

These tools bring back memories from past digital courses like DS106 and Intro to Digital Studies. It was cool getting familiar with them again, but I was a bit disappointed that I could not embed my work on my blog (I even installed the iframe plugin). Other than that small issue, it was pretty straight forward and easy to use as I remembered.

Both my map and timeline are based off the captures/escapes of the notorious drug kingpin, “El Chapo”. Each tool allowed me to add the necessary text and media to present my topic visually and clear.

For my groups project, I think we want to incorporate similar elements on our website, such as a timeline, maps and good quality photos with clear and precise text. Our aim to have a nice clean layout with no clutter.

Digital Tools & Website Feedback

Between these three platforms, I am more familiar with WordPress and it’s capabilities. Whether it’s used as a blog or a full blown website, you have the ability to customize to your liking and add various media content with ease. Zotero is new to me, and other than managing online references quickly and easily, I’m not sure what else it could be good for. Omeka is new to me as well, but seems to a good platform for my groups project. We will be digitizing diaries from the Civil War and Omeka will allow us to add each item with metadata into collections with a clean display. There are some cool plugins as well.

9/11 Living Memorial Digital Archive

The page is clean and is not flooded with a bunch of tabs on the side panel. It has a featured at the top and it changes every time the page is refreshed. Good metadata and photos (which can be enlarged). The search tab is cool if you know what you want to look for. There is no home tab, you have to click on the top banner to get back to the homepage (not a big deal).

Imagining The Past

The layout could use some work and the About page was a bit plain (only one sentence). I did not like the way the tabs/links within each different page were displayed (it was kind of al over the place in certain areas). Exhibits were cool and content was text heavy.

Guided Age Murder

Love the interactive maps and photos that enable you to explore the city. Great content throughout. Nice addition of the Home button, we look to add one as well to our site.

Emily Davis Diaries

I like the feature and comment sections on this page. The keywords/tags at the bottom was tacky and I would have put the About section on a separate tab.

How Did They Make That?

Nothing really positive to say about this blog. It’s obvious that it is a WordPress site and flooded mostly with text and links. Really boring and needs some updating (although it is used as a personal blog).

Intro (Digital History)

I signed up for this class to meet the capstone requirement for my Communication/Digital Studies major. After reading a brief introduction about the course last semester, it became more appealing. To be honest, History was never my favorite subject in grade school, but I look forward to learning more about the transformation from then and now (analog to digital) and apply some of my digital skills throughout the semester. Being that the class is half history and half digital studies minors/majors, I think it’s a great opportunity for everyone to learn from each other and produce some quality projects.

The Making Of “A Gangster & A Gentleman”

For my final project, I knew I wanted to step out of bounds and construct a story around a genre I was not too familiar with. Instead of a more modern approach, I chose a character from the Film Noir scene. Humphrey Bogart was one of those guys who dominated crime/drama/gangster genre back in the early to mid 1900s. After viewing many scenes/clips from his numerous films, I knew I wanted to focus on him in that era. No one will ever fill his shoes, or the love connection he shared with Lauren Bacall (the two actually got married in real life, just after a year of meeting on set).

As far as the storyline goes, I did not really have one developed when I started. I just began downloading several clips from youtube and imported them into iMovie. From there, I started to cut different scenes, and slowly developed my story as I went along. The length of the video was not even on my radar, I just kept going with it until it seemed fitting to me.

The silent film idea just came naturally, so I muted all the audio in the clips. I was going back and forth from editing and writing the narration of the story in Word. Once that was complete, it was time to add some text here and there so the viewers could follow the story line with ease. I thought it would be a good idea to add some still images in between scenes, along with text to switch it up a bit. For the title and credits sequences, I found some real cool early 1900s font that fit perfect with the theme. Lastly, this story needed a soundtrack. I watched the three different scenes over and over until I finally decided which instrumentals to use for each. I wanted theme music that would capture the feeling of each individual scene, and I think I did a hell of a job on the selections.

All of the digital elements that were used for this final project were ones that I enjoyed creating over the semester. In my original post for “A Gangster & A Gentleman”, you will notice that besides the narration/text, I have added a video (which I edited) that plays along with the story, a soundtrack (audio) that fits the story wonderfully, some GIFs from scenes in the video in between the narration, and two movie posters I re-designed in Photoshop. I honestly had a blast working on this project, thanks for viewing.

A Gangster & A Gentleman (Final Story Project)

Poster 1

Humphrey Bogart was born on December 25, 1899 in New York City. He grew up to be a well-mannered kid, until the death of his father at age 17. His mother tried to cover up the truth about his death, but Bogart Jr. eventually found out the real reason from the kids on the street. From that point on, he was never the same.

Within a year, he was kicked out of prep school for smoking and drinking. He had so much built in anger due to his father’s passing, which led him to act out and become involved in street activities. The gangsters on the block eventually took him under their wing, throwing him cash to do side jobs. He quickly became obsessed with the lifestyle, working up the ranks and becoming a man that people respected and feared.

Over the years, he was known on the streets as “Bogie”. Men feared him, but the ladies adored him. He was a real smooth talker, and it seemed as if he had a new lady every week. Attractive women were his weakness, and it showed. He would quickly transform from a tough guy into a gentleman whenever gorgeous women were in his presence. Deep down, beyond his gangster mentality, all he wanted was a partner who was loyal, and would accept him for his true identity as Humphrey Bogart Jr.

It wasn’t until the age of 44, when he met the stunning Lauren Bacall. The two hit it off and made an instant connection. Bogie was not one to fall quickly for any woman, but within the first hour of conversation, he knew she was the one. Although she was 20 years younger than him, it did not bother her one bit. As time progressed, Lauren overlooked his dark side, and appreciated the good qualities he had to offer. If any one could make Bogart Jr. leave the “underworld” lifestyle behind and walk a straight path, it was Ms. Bacall. Their love and loyalty for each other was indestructable. The two lovebirds ended up getting married about a year later, and are expecting their first child.

Poster 2

Weekly Summary (13 & 14)

These past two weeks have been my worst, as far as completing assignments. This will be my first weekly assignment where I come up short on a few assignments. I’m really agitated about this matter, because I have been very consistent each week (grade wise) and completed every task. But I’m not going make excuses, I will display what I have accomplished and keep it moving.

9 Stars

What Is Remix?

Anyone is capable of making a remix, whether it is a form of audio, video, or image. Remixing is re-creating original content and incorporating your own original content as well. In audio for instance, people take samples from popular songs all the time. Although it may be a small section of a song, it is best to try and make it as unrecognizable as possible, adding your own twist on it. If you fail to do so, you could find yourself in some serious heat. Even if you are producing these remixes strictly for hobby, it is still a good idea to reference and give credit where it is due.

As Kirby Ferguson stated, “Everything is a Remix”. Those videos he made are considered remixes (great videos by the way). He used other people’s images, video, and audio to support his claim on remixing. Aside from media, engineers are capable of remixing. They can take original ideas of existing components and combine them to form their own vision (The Basic Elements Of Creativity). Copy, Transform, and Combine are the elements responsible for why we are able to type this blog post on a computer right now. Iphones, TV’s, and automobiles are all prominent examples.

Some of the remix examples I viewed like Star Wars Call Me Maybe were pretty creative, but time consuming as well. The possibilities are really endless. From what I have learned and completed this week, I’ve come up with so many remix ideas that I want to try out. The future will be a better place because of remixing, improving all aspects of life and creating new opportunities, jobs, etc. If we didn’t remix, we would be stuck with the same old things day to day, life would be boring. I urge everyone to expand their minds, share and combine ideas, and progress together.

Actor Transformation

Original Assignment (4 stars)

Actors/Actresses change roles and characters all the time. It’s always cool to see them progress and grow throughout the years (if they make it that far). Some make it, and some don’t, that’s just the way Hollywood is.

I was originally going to use Mark-Paul Gosselaar as an example for this assignment. He is most known for his role as Zack Morris in Saved By The Bell, and is still acting to this day. I had to switch actors because I could not find any decent clips of the show on youtube (they have all been remixed). My next choice was Tommy Chong, most known for the classic stoner duo, Cheech and Chong.

I picked him because I recently saw him competing on a show my mother was watching, called Dancing With The Stars. It’s crazy to see someone his age still busting moves on the dance floor. I kept thinking to myself, “I wonder if he gets high before every live televised dance”? After viewing some more of his dances from the show on youtube, I must say, he held his own for someone who has no dancing experience.

Editing in iMovie

After searching through clips from both shows, I picked what I needed, and downloaded them as MP4 files, thanks to KeepVid. After importing into iMovie, I cut out certain clips and meshed them together to display the past and the future. The video starts off with a clip of Chhech and Chong smoking in the van, and then dissolves into a dance routine with Chong and his partner on the dancefloor (Cheech was actually a part of the routine at the beginning). This assignment reminded me of that show, “Where Are They Now”? Enjoy the final clip below.

Talky Tina Headswap

Original Assignment (2 stars)

This is the first I have heard of Talky Tina. Either way, This little girl is creepy looking. The goal for this assignment was to find an image of her, chop her head off, and place it somewhere (monument, object, etc). Pretty simple task, nothing fancy.

So I stumbled upon a bunch of creepy images on Tina on Google and just snagged one. When I was working on this assignment, I was pretty out of it, but had the image of her head on a dinner platter in my head. So boom, I searched for a waiter or a servant carrying a platter or tray. It took me a while to find one that wasn’t tagged up by companies trying to sell the images. By the fourth or fifth page on google images, I finally found one that seemed to work.

As usual, I opened them up in Photoshop and began editing. The waiter with the tray image didn’t need much work. I just had to erase some text at the bottom of the image. Chopping Tina’s head from the rest of her body was a breeze. The image I found of her was huge, so I resized the head to my liking and placed it on the tray. I think i placed it just right, making it look as real as I possibly could. Easiest two stars all semester, but I had fun making this creepy image.

Consumer Mashup

Original Assignment (3 stars)

For this assignment, the objective was to pick a store that we frequent visit, and edit their original logo (using text, images. etc). Although I dislike the Macy’s here in Fredericksburg (kind of limited than other locations), I still visit from time to time to purchase garments. I usually browse through their Ralph Lauren Polo collection and see what they have to offer. I never pay full price, because frankly, their prices are ridiculously high. In the fall/winter seasons, I like to scoop up some Champion hoodies/sweatshirts that they carry. So those are mainly the two reasons why I shop there.

For the logo, I grabbed the original one off google images in high quality. I did not want to add any additional text, just a couple images. Next, I grabbed the Polo and Champion logos and it was a wrap as far as what I needed for my logo makeover. All 3 images were opened in Photoshop. For the Macy’s logo, I grabbed the eraser tool and got rid of the letter c. I used the Champion “C”. resized it, and put it in it’s place. Lastly, I cut out the Ralph Lauren pony logo and placed it in the red star after resizing (it just felt and looked right). It was a pretty simple task and straightforward, probably the easiest assignment this week. To sum it up, I guess this logo states that I shop at Macy’s because I am a Ralph Lauren and Champion addict.