Author Archives: kfitz

Your final project asks you to work in teams of two or three to create a substantive meta-media object on the topic of your choice (which is to say, a media object that is about digital media). This project may take any of the forms you’ve worked in this semester — web pages, audio, video, Sophie — or any combination of the above. This project should demonstrate in a broad and substantive manner what you have learned in this course, both technically and critically, and its form and content should work seamlessly together.

You’ll present your project-in-process, in whatever state of completion it’s in, during the last week of class; we’ll use these presentations as a means of critiquing the project so that you can improve it. The final project will be due no later than 5 pm on Friday, May 8; you will turn in this project by posting a link on the blog.

For your fourth project, I’m going to ask each of you to work independently to create a multimedia book project using Sophie. (You can download the software here.)

I’ll walk you through the basics of Sophie today, making sure that you get the software downloaded and installed, that you can access the documentation and tutorials that are available, and that you’ve seen a few examples of what Sophie can do.

And then I’m going to turn you loose to experiment. For this project, I want you to take any of the texts that we’ve read together for this class and turn it into a well-designed, readable, interactive Sophie book. Which text you choose, and how you design the project, is entirely up to you. You may include work that you’ve created — whether your own writing, audio, or video — in the project as you see fit. The way you edit and design the book should work with the content of the text you select to elaborate and expand upon its meaning.

You should place your Sophie book project in your MyWebs space, and link to it in a blog post, by the end of lab next week (April 17). You’ll have a bit of time to finish the project during that lab, but you’ll want to reserve time to start thinking about your final project as well, so plan accordingly!

For your third project, we’re asking you to work in pairs again (again with one group of three*) to develop, produce, and post a video remix, of whatever variety you’re interested in. The art of remix lies in using the form as a mode of commentary on the source materials. Here are a couple of simple but effective examples: First, “The Last Lion King of Scotland”; second, “Shining.”

Ideally, your video should lead its viewer to think critically either about the ways video is changing — whether in distribution, or in format, or in content, or whathaveyou — in the wake of new networked technologies or about the source materials you use. All footage should be “borrowed” (and appropriately cited in the credits), and re-edited to convey the message you’d like to get across. Your audio can be borrowed and/or self-generated as can other images (visual stills, captions, credits, etc.) you’d like to include. The ultimate goal is to explore how the act of remixing can function as a form of creativity, and how it can offer a critical perspective on some of the issues explored in this course.

As an educational activity offering critical commentary, this is clearly an act of fair use – copyrighted material may be used without permission. If footage is taken from a digitally encrypted form (like DVDs), students should be aware of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention laws — using screen capture or other methods of video transfer are encouraged to avoid breaking this law, even though there is no doubt that the law itself infringes on your fair use rights.

We are going to walk you through the use of iMovie today; you’re welcome, however, to use whatever editing system you’re most comfortable with. You can produce this video on your own computer, if that’s feasible for you, or in the ITS multimedia lab, or in the IMS Production Center, in the basement of Scott Hall. I’m looking into getting you access to the Digital Arts lab as well, so that you can work there in the off hours.

Your video should be no longer than 5 minutes in length, should be encoded in an appropriate format and uploaded to YouTube** (or the video sharing service of your choice; we’ll show you a couple of them today). You should then link to the video in a post to the class blog, using the category “video.” You should provide commentary on your work in the blog post, and you should also of course comment on one another’s entries.

Your video and accompanying blog post will be due at the start of lab on Friday, April 3.

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*And again, the group of three should plan on producing either 50% more material, or 50% better material, since you’ve got 50% more labor.

**Preferred settings for YouTube uploading are available here.