CogBlogged Tagged ‘dsmayday’

Today was an epic road trip with Jim Groom- we hit Flagstaff, the tacky Flintstone Village at Valle, and then many of the viewpoints of the Grand Canyon out to the east exit, ending with an epic pile of Navajo tacos at Cameron Trading Post. This day was great, so f***ing great (f-word warning for the music in this video).

Like a flying cannonball, like a balloon full of bricks, my goal to do a digital story a day for May has flopped mercifully: I’m not going to apologize, that is for weenies. It was a tough pace I was holding, but last week’s travel did me in… and frankly, well nobody cares if I keep these silly challenges. So I wave my FAIL flag proudly. I went down blogging. Or not blogging. At least I got my cheese. cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by j.gurian

Vcasmo is one of the 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story- it offers a platform to synchronize powerpoint/presentations to video. A typical use is to have video of a speaker linked to their slides, and it works elegantly there. I decided to tale a video I shot of Bryan Alexander at his house and sync it to a series of slides that playfully suggest what might be in his mind, sort of powerpointed thought bubbles. The Story a Day May pace is killer, I am getting weak, tired… must… story… on…

For another hurry up and post story, this is an example of the flickr group Tell a Story in Five Frames, where you have to submit to the group discussion a single post with a title and 5 photos that… tell a story. It is in the vein of my Five Card Flickr stories, but of course here, you get to choose the images. This is a great exercise in being creative within constraints and making a message with mainly photos, and honestly, tough to pull off well (I cannot claim to ever have done a great one). The group moderator is pretty critical! Today, I posted what was a series of images I took form some folks doing some sort of team building activity on the Cambie bridge in Vancouver. Technically, the first shot was actually a different group of people than I observed later on the bridge. Posted [...]

I won’t apologize for being a day behind but I am so sorry I am a day behind. This is a tough pace, but certainly no race. Folks, if you think that ds106 is dangerous cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Here is proof… So here, as a quicky, I used one of the many cool flickr gadgets at jd’s flickr toys, this one allows you to turn any flickr photo (or other that you can upload) into a motivational (or demotivational) poster. Radio can do this to you: This is also tribute to one of the longest running snark worthy web sites, despair.com, which I fondly remember form around back in the 90s with their demotivator posters, but now they have a whole range of mocking products. Thanks to Mikhail for showing me his basement lair, where he is exiled in NJ.

10 days in to one digital story per day in May, 10 stories done. Still going strong. Today was a play with something I wanted to try for a while, an overdub of my own audio over a classic scene, where I change the script to say what I want it to say. My timing to the spoken part is sub par (that is really hard), which I did by doing voiceover in iMovie, reading from my updated script. Here you go, for the next time you are stuck in a boring lecture, dull presentation, deathly webinar. I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as bored as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. Well WTF? Even without audio in it, the YouTube copyright sniffers [...]

Marlon Brando could have only achieved his heightened performance in On the Waterfront with the help of his film coaches, such as Talking Terry, shown in this historic footage. (this is the Talking Larry iPhone app, a fun little diversion of mimicry; and it can record performances as video, even upload to YouTube). If you re curious if this worked out well, see the performance

Caught Checking In to Morrison Hotel cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Some of the best creative challenges in the digital story game are ones that limit the things you can do; the creativity is in working in that space. A perfect example is the Six Word Story Group in flickr: Ernest Hemingway was once prodded to compose a complete story in six words. His answer, personally felt to be his best prose ever, was “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Some people say it was to settle a bar bet. Others say it was a personal challenge directed at other famous authors. I’d like you to post a photo with a Six Word Story in the title section of a Flickr photo. Be as inventive as possible. Have those few words tell the whole tale, and let the picture be its visual interpretation. Just make [...]

I tried as hard as I can to post this yesterday, but the apps and the nets failed. I was sitting there in Washington Square park, and awash in seeing all kinds of human stories play out. There were film students doing a project, tourists being taken in by the card tricksters, breakdancers doing movies, a wedding party… At the end of a bench I sat on was an oriental dude with a banjo, and playing some really soulful blues. Some other guy walked up with a plastic keyboard and some sort of tube he blew into, and made wailing harmonica/accordion sounds. This little video was done in in Animoto on my iphone, but offers no way for it to embed. C’est la app. I have some audio I recorded that I may attach (okay it is taking too long to xfer from my phone and my flight leaves soon, [...]

I spent a few hours in the New York Public Library archives, down in the basement, combing through piles of uncatalogued photographs. In one dusty corner was a box marked “Unpublished Bay Watch Set Shots”. Leafing through photos from guest appearances, I was surprised to identify a shot of Bryan Alexander. On the back, notes said: “Alexander played part of herbert Rosenstein, a walmart sales executive who has a dangerous fall from a surfboard in which he was an encounter with a romantic seal” The script is in the box too, but it is highly damaged from what appear to be large coffee spills.