In one of my more successful MOOC outings, BonkOpen2012 with Indiana University’s Dr. Curt Bonk, I picked up the idea of the Eight Noun Introduction. I really liked it and proceeded to riff of of it a little, using Wordle to add some visual flair to the idea. This is what resulted.
An Eight Noun Introduction
While I love the idea as an introductory activity and use the task with online students, I wanted to riff off of it again, spinning a new version for #ETMOOC. So here is the new #ETMOOC-styled version 3.0 riff on the concept, complete with some motion and sound. It is definitely a little different than some of the Intros I have watched, but I wanted to tinker.
Making this video version was a bit of an experiment, really. Consequently, it took longer than I expected to make, as I played around a lot trying different ways of putting things together. Since the original image was the product of the algorithm used by Wordle, I ended up having to kind of deconstruct it. Trying to figure out what font was being used was actually one of the more time-consuming efforts, certainly more time and effor than I expected. For those wondering, it is Coolvetica, which I had to download.
Here is how I built the rest DS106-style.
I opted to use Keystone on my MacBook. Truthfully, after years of using PowerPoint, I am still getting a bit used to Keystone. I like it but can get frustrated easily at times. However, there are some clever features that I am growing to like more and more, namely the Build Inspector. Considering what I was hoping to create, it seemed like a good opportunity to practice too.
To begin, I pasted the Wordle image onto a blank slide to use as a template. Then I recreated the words with an individual Text Box for each one, matching the color by eye as best I could. After rotating and placing all of the individual text boxes in the proper positions, I could delete the original template image, essentially having recreated it as a slide with movable parts.
The next challenge involved all of the moves. For speed and sanity sake, I created a separate slide to use as a staging area for each word, crafting each move. To get the final placements exactly right, I did have to map each word’s placement on the original reconstructed slide. One bonus is that all of an object’s moves in the Build Inspector are preserved even when cutting and pasting the object into another slide. So once all the movements were set, I could paste it back on its individual slide, just to keep everything separate and organized.
Once each word and set of moves was finished on a separate slide, I created a new blank slide to serve as the foundation for all of the animation. This slide would become the only one needed once built. At that point, it was simply a matter of copying and pasting each word on the new blank slide in the order of appearance.
With everything now assembled on a single slide, I tweaked the timing of each word’s movement in the Build Inspector to make everything flow a little better. All that was left in Keynote was the export, which required a small adjustment in the frame rate, because I knew I was going to use iMovie to merge the video and audio together. I probably could have done the whole thing in Keynote, but iMovie offers a little more specific video control than does keynote.
It seemed necessary to use some music to score the video so I did a quick search for some royalty free tunes. I wanted something on the jazzy side, then found my way to The Underscore Orkestra’s “Devil with the Devil” track. Using Audacity for speed’s sake, I trimmed the opening 40 seconds of the tune and exported it as an mp3 file.
With all that prep work it was quick work in iMovie. Import the video. Import the recut tune into iTunes, so it is easily accessible in iMovie. Then merge the video and audio together. As a timing consideration I did have to split a freeze frame at the opening, so that I had a blank white screen that I could manipulate to delay the opening move and make it work better with the music.
There were a few small obstacles along the way that I could foresee that could cause many people trouble. Exporting out of Keynote or importing into iMovie there will always be a frame rate issue that has to be resolved on one end or the other. My advice is to alter the fram rate and export from Keynote at the highest quality. That will guarantee better result when it is imported into iMovie. The aspect ratio needs to be 4:3 with no theme when importing into iMovie. Also, as mentioned, audio needs to be imported into iTunes or GarageBand to be easily accessible in iMovie. The fading can be done iMovie as well but the controls are a simple. A main issue is matching the audio clip length with the video length, which was one of the reasons I dropped it all in iMovie. I find it easier to wrestle with all the timing in iMovie.
