From PowerPoint to ViDeo

Converting PowerPoint into Video
*I will include this little snippet on how to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a video*
Pre 1. Now, I do this for every PowerPoint animation that I want to change into video format, not just this one...
1. I highlight all the slides in the presentation and save them all as individual pictures into a file.
2. I pull up Windows Live Movie Maker and drag all the pictures of the slides I just saved from that file into the box that will allow me to upload pictures or video clips.
3. I use formatting on Windows Live Movie Maker to change the durations of the pictures into the desirable lengths. (This way, parts with dialogue between characters will stay onscreen for a longer time than scenes where it's all just movements.)
4. I then add the necessary title slides (in the case of the most recent video, the last black part where it says "to be continued..."
5. The project is pretty much finished at this point, but to save it, I use the save as and click what's recommended because usually this format makes it pretty compatible for when it needs to be uploaded or saved

Steps for New Animation

As might already have noticed, in my last video, the background and the characters were all hand-drawn (by yours truly). But the drawings were all put together on Microsoft PowerPoint and Windows Live Movie Maker (it's not shown, but I assure you that you can take my word for it).

Preparation Steps
1. First, I drew the background on an app called Sketchbook Xpress. Then I saved it to my camera roll and emailed it to myself. I then went onto a desktop computer and saved that picture to said computer. I opened up a new page on Microsoft PowerPoint and pulled the picture up on a slide.
2. I went back to the sketchbook app and drew up all the characters. I made sure they were all drawn on a white background so that when I put it back on the PowerPoint slides, I will be able to clear the entire white, leaving only the subject. I did the same thing with the characters as I did with the background (I drew it on the app, saved it to my camera roll, emailed it to myself, saved it to the computer, opened it back up on a slide in PowerPoint, and then cropped and took out the background.
3. For every scene, I went back into the app and altered the characters just slightly to make them appear to have moved a bit. Then I sent the picture to myself and put it on the PowerPoint.
4. As a result, I used PowerPoint to animate the way I always have, but I actually drew all of the scenes.

An Example Film

Here I have embedded a video that I created that will give an example of how our movie will appear.
But please keep in mind that the real movie...
-Will be done more cleanly (because this is a preview, I did not do my best on it. As long as I felt it fit its purpose, I decided that it would be enough)
-Will have better graphics (there is a VERY GOOD reason why I am not the one who will be drawing all the artwork in the film...)
-Will be longer...(by hopefully a lot...)
-Will have a better plot. This is stupid, somewhat cheesy, and bad...but I thought it up on the spot and that is NOT going to be what our really movie plot will be (...hopefully...)
-And we might use real audio dialogue instead of word bubbles (if we have time)

Advance in Decisions on Mode of Animating (Cont.)

The way that I saw the Bananaphone animation was that the characters themselves didn't look like organized shapes, but more like someone drew them by hand either on a device or by hand. But then these drawings were then plugged into some sort of program that organized them into an animation (like Windows MovieMaker).


Now I will proceed to explain (to the best of my ability) how I will bring Shannon's drawings to life... I will COMBINE the art of flip books WITH the art of digital animations!
I haven't yet proposed this idea to Shannon (seeing as I can be a bit scatterbrained and forgetful sometimes), but I will ask her for her opinion as soon as she gets back.
Shannon will email me the pictures of the characters on a white background so that I can eliminate the background entirely on PowerPoint. Then I will arrange the characters the way that they should be on the slide of the PowerPoint and email her back with a request for another view or position of that character. Shannon can use a sketching app and alter that character just a little for me and send the second picture back to me and so on.
So in other words, Shannon will be drawing everything in the movie (but the task will not be way too taxing with the help of the Sketchbook X app and others) and I will be arranging the pictures and putting them on slides of Microsoft PowerPoint to make the animation factor of it.
Sorry, if this is still a bit confusing, but hopefully, things can be clarified more after I've begun and there are examples of it.

Advance in Decisions on Mode of Animating

So, lately I have been trying to figure out how to convert Shannon's artistically talented drawings into animated pictures. We thought about flip books with post it notes, but it would then be too small. One day, as I was walking to eighth period with Lily, we were talking about YouTube videos and the Potter Puppet Pals (if you haven't yet watched "The Mysterious Ticking Noise," then you've most definitely been missing out...). She told me to watch "Bananaphone," so when I got home from school that day, I did.
Here's the link:
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELhtdUNlafM
After I watched it, I put two and two together and realized how we would be able to animated Shannon's sketches!

TED Talk Opinions

Ok, I realize that I have sort of been ranting throughout this entire post, but...yeah...I also realize that it may not make sense or be kind of cheesy...I apologize in advance.



I agree with what Will Richardson is saying because I truly think that these test prep classes (that haven't been changed for the longest time) are going to be preparing us for, as he put it, a world that will no longer exist. Because in our generation and the generation of our kids, there will be more problems to solve that the people of the older generation (the ones who wrote these tests) would never have thought of. Basically, it would be like teaching someone how to use a hammer to nail nails...and find out that there is a wall that needs to be painted. One wouldn't succeed, no matter how talented they are with a hammer; they need a paintbrush. A real life example right now is that many bright, young, as extremely smart students are graduating from colleges...just go home and have to live with their parents because they can't find jobs that put the subject that they've studied and majored in to good use. Mr. Richardson is right that nowadays, we can learn so much with the help of the Internet and technology; with YouTube videos and personal blogs. But if this is the case, then why do students even still need to come to school? They can just stay home and learn whatever they want to... It's true, I think, that the test scores of a district or school don't truly capture the abilities of its students because, as our teachers and parents have sort of been trying to tell us all this time, someone will never (or at least, very rarely) be good at EVERYTHING. If they're telling us this (along with all the cliché "oh, just be who you are!" "Your appearance doesn't matter, it's what's on the inside that counts!" "It doesn't matter what you got or how you did, it's the effort that counts!") then why are they still judging us by our test scores and grades? If I'm just not good at math and it doesn't click for me, and if what I want to do with my life needs only for me to know the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, then why in the world do I need to know Calculus? I don't think they understand that kids can have interests that don't require all of what they're teaching in school.
I guess teachers aren't literally restraining our creativity, but I think it is still decreasing, at least to an extent. For example, that stop motion film I posted last month? We really did present it as a grade to the teacher for the class. When we finished, I felt like we did pretty good. Boy was I surprised and disappointed when I found out that we had gotten a B on it. So, what I'm learning here is that the rubric is the most important factor of the project? I understand that the point of the rubric is to present to us the requirements for getting certain scores on this project, but no where on there was there anything about time/effort/or creativity. I think that we should be encouraged to search for different ways to present material that is interesting and worthwhile. What good is reading words off of slides and forgetting all the information the minute after the test has been taken? Exactly, there's no real point. But if we can explore these ways of doing something with the material, then there are higher chances that we'll remember more of it while we're assembling it. Creativity should be expected to spring to life during projects in which you're given free reign, but not to just slap it all onto some PowerPoint and read it all off when the time comes for you to present.

Email

I have written an email that I will send out to one of the CADD teachers this week.
With this email I will try to find out what sort of program they use here to create animations.

Step Four

4) We used the program, Windows MovieMaker Live to math up the pictures with the sound recordings
-First, we uploaded all the pictures from the camera onto the Windows MovieMaker Live
-Then we began to drag on the recordings one by one
-Based on how long each of the recordings were, we changed the length of the picture to match it
-We only took a picture of each mouth because we can copy and paste pictures on MovieMaker
•This saved us a lot of time because we could then just put the two mouths in a random order for when the food is "speaking" (this is also why the mouth movements don't quite match up to whatever is being said...but we didn't have too much time)
-In making the pictures the same length as the sound recordings, we were able to create the effect that allowed people to think that the foods were actually the ones speaking
-This was the longest and most time-consuming step because there were so many sound recording snippets that were all of different time lengths.

Step Three

3) We took all the pictures
-We stacked a pile of books and set the camera on top for a view that took in the whole stage
-We positioned the lights so that we would have an adequate amount of lighting
-We "filmed"
•My friend Bojana was in charge of the camera and I was responsible for the movements of the "cast"
•She would take a picture of the stage and then I would shift the food over just a little bit and check with her to see whether or not it was in the shot or not
•We only took shots of the foods moving on and off the scree and two shots of two different mouths on the food (this will be explained later)
-After we took enough pictures, we returned to the computer to combine the pictures back with the recordings

Step One

1) Fist, we wrote and recorded our script.
-We used the information we found and put it into script form
-Then we used the sound recorder program and recorded all of our scripts
•We saved these snippets of sound into a folder on the computer so that we could access them again later
2) Then we set up the stage for our filming.

Materials

Here are the "things" we used to make the animation:

Programs:
-Windows MovieMaker Live
-Sound Recorder

Props:
-An Ear of Corn
-A Pile of Soybeans
-A Tomato
-A Banana

Equipment:
-Camera
-Computer (with above listed programs)
-Five-Headed Lights to provide good lighting