This week was focused more on the assignment of storyboard creation rather than lollygagging about the qualms of purpose and life. We had to create a story that captured a personal experience of our lives. Since I am terrible with last-minute storytelling, I took my time each day of the week to develop segments of what would become a poem. Most examples shown from the class dwelled on simply creating a narrative of the events that transpired in their story, but I thought that would be pretty boring. Poems are an artist's choice of weapon when a literary theme must be delivered, and I took this assignment as an opportunity to practice that. I thought about the overall theme of my story, and I chose my disturbing case of insomnia. Speaking of which, it is really hard to tell when insomnia is the root cause for some nights of sleep deprivation, but as mentioned in my last blog, it is a pretty horrible experience to deal with. With my story, I wanted to share sadness and tragedy rather than the generic optimism of most Hollywood stories. I took inspiration from Dune to construct a cynical story path that would resolve to a pessimistic ending. With a poem, I can create ambiguity in words so that they are more interpretive by the reader - taking inspiration from Cthulhu and the idea of universal perception.
After I finished recording myself speaking, I had a surprisingly difficult time finding a free video editor that did a good job splitting and splicing audio and video clips. I was extremely annoyed by the fact that all the free software that I have used in the past was unavailable and far better than the paid ones that I tried using to edit the final assignment clip. Unbelievable how we have let people abuse this market to gatekeep good video editing software that should really be a standard rather than a premium.
Take Microsoft's video editing software as an excellent example of turning gold to gunk like
billionaire founder bill gates likes it.
They took a great video editing software and, over the years, simplified it for the sake of design to compete with apple's success in simple UI.
Take a look at the original legacy video editor that was originally on windows vista/xp...
The image may not look like much of a video editing software to you, but it has features that are not available in the latest video editor from Microsoft. Yes, believe it or not, the splitting and audio overlay outmatch Microsoft's current video editor. Let's take a look at Microsoft when they were still on the right track and developed something far more powerful.
This was the peak of their video editing software. I believe it went par-to-par with some of the more powerful ones on the market (at the time) ex: Sony Vegas Pro, Adobe After Effects. Although it does not have the capability to create "CGI and 3D vision effects/VFX," this was the most robust video editing software at the time that was useful to almost* anyone. You could make any video you want using this software. Notice how the tab is opened on "transitions"? The software had a full suite of video effects you could use for any of your videos, FOR FREE. Splicing and overlaying audio was effortless and fun, and additional tools allowed you to overlay videos together, something that was very difficult to achieve at the time. I can't believe that I have to look back and think of this as a delicacy compared to video editing software now. The internet is a censored treasure trove after all.
This is where
Bill Gates decided poop energy is a great idea , because Microsoft starts reinventing the same wheel for absolutely no reason. This version of Microsoft's "video editor" takes the most fundamental features of video editing and turns it to its only functionality. They shifted the video timeline to be on the right and forced some kind of "Microsoft Office" panel for actions that you would like to take for a given video clip. You can't preload video clips in a folder (like you were able to do with the original), and you can't tell where you are in each video as easily as in the original.
This is where we are now, almost 5 years later. With Windows 10 - came the ultimate Windows Movie Editor - being none at all. They removed the video editor altogether. At least they had "a" tool to use for video editing, but instead, the closest thing to a "video" editor that they left is one that's integrated into a newer reformed version of Photos called, you guessed it, "Photos". Finding no other suitable video editor for the assignment, I had to resort to using this software to finish. Editing/using this software made me sick to my stomach. Not only was I not able to transition any of the clips, but I could not drag and drop audio files to the video! I had to use a separate interface to add custom "music," and even then I had to time the clips with the audio so that they are synced correctly - I had to do this manually and it was extremely frustrating.
For the cherry on top, Microsoft decided that having a video editor installed by default into the operating system was much worse than having an
AI system steal all your data , so they made it a separate app that you had to download through their bloatware-spyware app store. I have already conformed to mobile phone's mass surveillance and I don't think this was a smart approach to get people to use their app store. You may have noticed from the previous screenshot that I was using the "legacy" version of Photos, because they removed it on the newer version to entice people to getting the one on the app store. In conclusion, Microsoft is becoming more transparent in being an NSA survellience playhouse by bringing its operating system closer to a consumer's data-farm than being an actual application to develop and innovate new things.
Anyway, I think that after painstakingly scrubbing through each segment of the video and overlapping the audio clips correctly, I created my storyboard video for the assignment and am finally done with the technical disaster.
Thanks for reading this through.
