After coming across this brilliant redo of Star Wars in the Silent era form, I created the ds106 assignment “Return to the Silent Era”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOjzLggAKis
The dawn of cinema had no audio; silent movies created an atmosphere with music and the use of cue cards. Take a 3-5 minute trailer of a modern movie and render it in the form os the silent era- convert to black and white, add effects to make it look antiquated, replace the audio with a musical sound track.
I just found an insanely fun shortcut- The Artsifier “Make any YouTube Video Award Winning”. You simply load any YouTube URL, and it renders it in old styl black and white, and it adds a sound track (boo, it looks like every one you try gets the same sound track, let’s make it RANDOM!). You get a little track, and you can add captions (as well as title info).
I chose a video I shot while visiting the Giant Theremin in Melbourne with Rowan Peter, and added some captions to make it look like some old alien invasion movie:
Editing the Artisified video (click for full size)
And you can see my final effort at http://www.theartistifier.com/view_4600 (an embed option would nice too) (and some font choices or more old fashioned styling on the captions) (can I ask for more features?) (please?).
It is fun to play with. But it would be a short cut too easy to use for the ds106 assignment.
The generator seems a little too easy, but at least you have to add the titles. I found a great iPhone app for making videos look like the come from the silent era, the 60s, and others called 8mm. There’s even a button to create frame jitter anytime you want. I’m definitely going to do this assignment using this tool. It’s a great riff on the trailer mashup assignment. I’m thinking of either ‘Jaws’ or ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High.’