Here are the Daily Creates I completed:

#tdc2290 I’m floating along, having fun, but also I have no clue what I’m doing pic.twitter.com/BBoE7XSOSI

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 17, 2018

’nuff said

#tdc2296 I can’t limit myself to one person so here’s Checkers, who’s been with me for over half my life (ft. @simpsonlibrary) pic.twitter.com/uPl7rtHQ6P

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 24, 2018

I found out that drawing with a picture for reference is crazy hard, also nothing can be as cute as my dog was 11 years ago!

Here’s my first attempt at putting a GIF into a picture using GIMP- my ice cream flavors are all 4 states of matter (liquid, gas, plasma, solid). If I had another hour I’d clean it up and make all of them GIFS #tdc2297 #ds106 #theend106 pic.twitter.com/sRZgotHZxH

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 25, 2018

It took me a long time to figure out how to insert just part of a GIF into a different picture, and even then the final product wasn’t gorgeous. BUT, I forced myself to leave it and not spend hours working on it.

#BeastsOfTheSouthernWild touches on natural disasters/climate change and humanity both as a whole and individually and it’s so beautiful please just watch it #tdc2300 pic.twitter.com/dKY2MKPeAl

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 27, 2018

Such a great movie. Also, the fantasy/fiction aspect was what really drew me in. Actually, what made me first watch the movie was listening to the AMAZING film score on Spotify.

Chiphog? Hogmunk? #tds2301 pic.twitter.com/CUayk7e6Pd

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 28, 2018

When you mix a chipmunk and a hog, what do you get? Something that looks more like a brown skunk than anything.

My word was “affinity” and I have an affinity toward playing with words (thanks, Riverby Books) #tdc2303 pic.twitter.com/ixQSbd4Lcg

— Katie Hartraft (@KatieHartraft) April 30, 2018

I could have stayed there all day making sentences out of these magnetic words.

The Culmination of Our Entire Semester

For our final project, my group and I decided to make a video attempting to explain all of the crazy stuff that’s happened this semester. It’s a compilation of evidence, analysis, images, and found footage that together tries to solve the DS106 mystery. It’s pretty crazy what we found, check it out:

We created the video using various tools. Initially, we made the timeline of all the evidence, and from there we wanted to dive deeper.

All of us together wrote a script using (what else?) Google Docs, expanding and combing through until we finally landed on three solid theories to use in our video. Our goal was to make a video much like this one that took evidence, analyzed it, and gave possible explanations. We didn’t want to give a fool-proof, 100% confident answer, so we decided to leave it open ended.

Cypherpunk recorded some dialogue and Chris did an AMAZING job editing the piece of audio that we found in one of Martha’s video. I personally created some images (like the rate my professor reviews) and dug through a few hours worth of videos to find the good bits to use in ours. Finally, Cypherpunk did most of the (really well-done) editing and brought it all together.

I couldn’t have asked for a better team, I’m so happy with everything we accomplished! I think we worked really well together, even if there were both times when we were working and times when we were just going insane (but at least going insane together).

Thank you to everyone who worked with me and helped me this semester, you know who you are. Digital Storytelling has been an amazing experience and the skills I learned here will help me immensely in no matter where I go next!

I noticed that he mentioned a student who was on the slack but not in our class. I dug into it and found the student, “Neo-Rev”, posted twice at the beginning of the semester (once in January and once in February) and then never again.

Her February post, Heed the Call, is the spookier of the two. At one point, she claims to “sense the approaching end,” whatever that means. This could be a major connection to the E.N.D. virus or simply our class, The End.

So, what happened to Neo-Rev? I looked on our Slack and found a second name associated with the account, “Shannon”. I then looked up the email and found Shannon Hauser under the campus directory. Apparently she is a Technical Services Specialist at the Simpson Library? How does that connect to our class? Let me know if you have any ideas!

Neo-Rev also mentions working under the “Reverend”. Neo-Rev speaks here about the Reverend:

He always pointed to something bigger than himself and he called for action.

The word Reverend itself was linked to a site called “bava tuesdays”. I scrolled through some of the posts, of which I couldn’t quite understand the content, but then I saw a face I recognized.

Look familiar? Take a look at Millard A Rausch’s ID card that was found by cypherpunk.

Crazy right? I did a little more investigating and came upon a twitter account of one Jim Groom, with some pictures that looked exactly like the man who came into Martha’s video in Week Five. While his name isn’t Millard Rausch, the connection is beyond eerie. I even found one tweet that solidifies the connection with Groom through Reclaim Hosting! (Sepcifically: take a look at the third photo!)

.@reclaimvideo has snazzy new carpet, a glass showcase, posters, and a video camera pointed right at you! pic.twitter.com/4nrP08eMYY

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) March 21, 2018

If anyone has anymore evidence connected to this, please don’t hesitate to let me know!

“For example, I had been through ‘Citizen Kane’ at least 30 times before I took it to the Savannah Film Festival, and someone noticed a detail I had never seen before.”

All the details that many people put in the production of a movie need lost of other people to pick up on all of them.

In my poetry class this past Thursday, we got into a long debate whether this series of photos in Matthea Harvey’s collection of poems and images “If the Tabloids are True What are You?” counted at poems or not. Eventually, I reached the understanding that whether or not you call them poems, you can still view the images under poetic terms. This fits perfectly with viewing movies under photographic and design lenses.

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The short videos I chose to watch were examples of editing techniques, camera angles and techniques, top 20 amazing cinematic techniques, and one-point perspective. My favorite were the latter two. The top 20 techniques gives a lot of names to shots I didn’t know existed or I had heard but total forgot about (like the dutch tilt). The one-point perspective compiles many examples of the same shot (one focus or fixed point in the center with all surroundings pointing to it). Besides the art of the shot itself, I loved the composition of the video, making all the scene line up with the music.

The movie that I watched was The Night of the Living Dead and I chose it because it’s a classic that I’ve heard so much about but I had yet to see. I tried taking it seriously, but there were some parts I couldn’t help but make fun of in my commentary.

Knowing I was going to make this commentary helped me watch the movie closer. I started editing using Movie Maker, since my other programs weren’t cooperating. The final product isn’t exactly what I had hoped for it to be, but after finally using a Mac and putting the video together, I was glad to be done.

Gif It Good: a post about how my addiction to gifs is never-ending ? #theend106 #ds106 https://t.co/jhnQe4DlO0 pic.twitter.com/ebMKOIaKSa

— cypherpunk106 (@cypherpunk106) March 5, 2018

The production of my radio show was both fun and tedious. Writing the show was great, adding in every detail we could and creating the plot was exhilarating! The recording of our show was exciting since I got the chance to act, which I don’t normally get to do. Getting into character and making the story sound all the more real was a challenge that I truly enjoyed.

Once that part was over, however, the hours of editing weighed me down. I already knew I was the person who would spend four hours editing a two minute clip (no exaggeration), but when this fifteen minute monster came knocking on my door I had to buckle down and get to work. We got sounds from all over, whether they were from free sound websites or sounds I had recorded for different projects or recordings we made ourselves. I usually get super obsessive over projects I am passionate about, so the hours editing flew by. At one point, I was ready to stop listening to my own voice, especially in places where I thought I could have said my lines better.

After everything was said and done (or, said and edited) I was, and still am, incredibly proud of our final radio show. The effects, acting, and story all came together seamlessly and I am endlessly satisfied

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Paula Scher’s Ted Talk “Great Design is Serious, Not Solemn” touches on something I often have to look at: keeping my work fun and created not just for the sake of meeting a deadline. Her speaking on how popular styles (regarding anything) make the artist start to churn out works not for themselves but for others. Once continuous creations start basing themselves off other popular creations, the actual thoughts and process behind it are turned bland and impersonal. I will try to use this idea to influence what I make in so much that I don’t wind up doing things begrudgingly and instead seriously (but also enthusiastically!).

David Carson’s Ted Talk “Design and Discovery” was packed with both smarts and humor. While I liked his designs a lot less than Paula Scher’s (to me, his are more erratic and less clear than hers), I did like what he said about putting your self into your work, using your experiences, and not being afraid to experiment. I would like to focus on this idea to be as original and true to myself in my work as I can be.

David Carson said “don’t mistake legibility for communication.” But, in his work, I can hardly make out what is trying to be said at all. It is the same thing to me as abstract expressionism in art. I have a very hard time understanding it, and almost any meaning I give the work feels self-imposed and not true to what I should be getting out of it (though maybe that’s the point? still unsure).

While the two videos expanded upon what goes on behind design, Canva helped show me the actual fundamentals of design. The interactive nature of the tutorials helped me grasp concepts MUCH quicker than I would have just reading and looking at picture tutorials. The Harnessing Hierarchy and the Canva Shortcuts/Tips and Tricks were some that I found most helpful. However, my impatient side got the hold of me when Canva took a long time to change selections (I would click on an image or text multiple times until it finally loaded, and then it sometimes was not what I wanted). This could just be because I’m new to the software or that I’m expecting it to work differently than it does, but I won’t quit using the website just yet.

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In his other video, “Digital Shamanism and Old-Fashioned, Newfangled Storytelling Magic“, Abumrad mentions the magic in storytelling, both in person and now over radio. Listening to another person speak builds a greater, more empathetic connection to the story being told. Where writing has a disconnect where all organic elements are removed in the transmission of the story, audio/radio maintains one of the most prevalent ways of primary communication: speech and sound. I am really intrigued by the idea of connecting to the past with something so high-tech, and I would like to look more into the subject, though I’m not sure exactly where to start.

Niels Smeets

My only previous experience with audio comes from working on an audio essay for my creative nonfiction writing class last semester. I made my recording and taught myself Audacity through trial and error (it took a good amount of hours, which I could have shortened with looking up tutorials but playing with the software myself was much more entertaining). I’m now teaching myself much more comprehensively about the program so that I can help others as well.

The tips and links on the Audio Resources page were a very helpful read. I have this specific page bookmarked already so I can use it on future assignments. “Finding Sounds” and “Additional Resources” were the most interesting sections for me to look through. Namely, the What is Foley Sound video was so cool to watch. I think I might have seen this video before a while back, but watching it again I have a whole new respect for the people that did (and do?) this.

La Jetée is told through photographs splits the difference between movie and written story. We are given visuals to enhance the experience, but the physical action going on in the plot is played out in our heads. Terry Gilliam took my attention by making me look at what he included in his photos. For the most part, the background of the photos is uniform and thus my attention was forced onto the subject. Gilliam also uses different angles and also the amount of photographs to draw out a scene (such as when the main character and the woman are in the museum–the longer the scene plays out, the deeper of a bond is felt between the pair). The use of images rather than video also allows for Gilliam to play with time more, both in the movie-progression sense and the in-movie temporal sense.

The lighting was altered for the time period that the main character was in. In the (his) present, people are clearly seen, but backgrounds may be a bit blurred or even too dark to see. In the past, everything is well lit and easily seen. Lastly, in the future, the background is completely dark and the people themselves are nearly half obscured. This correllates with traditional understand of these time periods: we know the most about the past, the present mostly but it can be a bit confusing, and the future is mostly unknown.

I’m probably breaking the rules here but I have three GIFs. I just loved Train to Busan so much that making only three is limiting myself.

This set-up for the next scene prepared me for the awesome zombie-fighting. Yong-guk, Sang-hwa, and Seok-woo have geared up and are fully motivated to get through five train cars of zombies to get to their loved ones. I loved this scene’s look, as they go in and out of train tunnels, but the only thing I couldn’t capture in the GIF was the music, which worked perfectly with the scene. The loop in this GIF wasn’t seamless, so I gradually decreased the brightness on the last few frames to make the transition/replay smoother. Also, because I loved this scene so much, I made another GIF of it.

This GIF follows the forward motion of the train and the survivors’ push to move onward. Namely, this shows Sang-hwa being a zombie-kicking badass(using only his hands!). In he beginning of the movie, Sang-hwa primarily exhibited some less badass more asshole traits about him. But, as the story progressed, he didn’t become a whole new man, but I saw him grow as necessary and I learned so much more about him that gave me a holistic and more appreciative view of him. After seeing this new psychological side of Sang-hwa, this fight scene is the physical manifestation of his progress.

This scene showed to seconds where Seok-woo realizes Su-an is in immediate and life-threatening danger. The film goes into slow motion, making the suspense rise tremendously. Seok-woo’s facial expressions show just how much he cares for his daughter, despite being outed by her as selfish not a minute beforehand. There is desperation and then the beginning of disbelief and registration of loss.

I also love the view Su-an holding her backpack and standing still, framed by the guard rails, with people and zombies running behind her (and of course the zombies running FOR her). It evokes the same protective worry Seok-woo is feeling in me, and I thought I would keep that going and leave a constant state of suspense by ending the GIF where I did.

It took me a while to figure out how to slow down the GIFs since when they were saved they played faster than the original video. This is important because timing matters just as much as scene and character expressions in the playing out of narrative. Everywhere I looked up how to change the speed on GIMP online told me I had to edit each individual frame, but with my last two GIFs having around 300 frames I needed a quicker way to alter speed. I eventually found two different methods, one during import and one export, that both worked nicely.

This movie was amazing in everything from plot to cinematography to character development. I haven’t been so invested while watching a movie in a long time (my roommate was confused on why I kept gasping, jumping, and sometimes angry-whispering at the screen). Many of the characters were very well-rounded in that they had both good and bad characteristics particular to them. I have already started recommending the movie to people and I plan on watching it again sometime.

Bradbury’s story really drew me in since there aren’t any actual humans in it. The writing focuses instead on the actions of a technologically advanced house in such a way that I sympathized with it at the end of the story when the house was nearly destroyed. The house is personified throughout, especially when “the house began to die.” Even the fire that destroys the house is personified: it “lay in beds” and “stood in windows”. Through this, I see the telling of a human-on-human war.

Two sides battle it out, leading both to become extinct. The five places on the west wall that weren’t charred depict a family going about normal outdoor activities. You could call them a traditional nuclear family, and their demise possibly being a nuclear bomb of sorts, due to the (albeit inverted) flash burn shadows.

A sense of dread showed through when the house keeps up a clockwork routine with no family to receive its benefits. The only real sign of life comes when the dog, sickly and alone, is let in the house. Once inside, however, it finds none of its previous owners, and the robotic kitchen tortures it literally to death with the smell of cooking food that goes uneaten.

A electronic voice in the house recites a poem by Sara Teasdale to a “Mrs. McClellan”. It turns out this poem has the same name of the short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains“. The last two lines read:

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

This evokes the idea that were humans to be extinguished one way or the other, nature wouldn’t so much as notice. (In Bradbury’s story, the only exception to this is the dog that relies on its owners to survive.) The house eventually collapses and all the belongings inside are buried, presumably never to be seen again.

King’s story has an apocalyptic story recounted after the fact by a man who is running out of time to write (and live). The speaker demonstrates awareness of his limited time during his recount of the events leading up to the destruction of humankind. This reads as if I were searching through an abandoned house and found these writings lying alone next to a type writer.

Towards the end, King slowly starts bringing in misspellings and fragmented language to show the speaker’s rapid descent in health. This helps show the decline almost in real-time. The last line “sinned (for the wurld)” plays on the relation between the intentions of man and their outcomes.

The overarching theme behind this story is the unwillful destruction of humanity that began with good intentions. Bobby wanted to quite literally achieve world peace, but due to his time bomb (time volcano?) he didn’t have lengthy research enough to notice the adverse effects of his miracle water. Bobby earnestly wanted to help humanity, but nature didn’t produce the effects he planned. Interestingly, this relates back to the message in “There Will Come Soft Rains” of nature not being inclined to serve humans above the rest of the world.

The first chapter of Bryan Alexander’s work got me thinking about what makes a story a story. There are simple elements needed for all, such as character(s) and emotional engagement of the audience, to give me a basic checklist I can use for my stories. Moreover, the definition of digital storytelling is nearly nonexistent, as its reaches spread throughout much of all media but can also be concentrated to, as Bryan Alexander puts it, “stories ‘born digital’ and published in a digital format.”

In the Routledge article, I was surprised to see just how affected science fiction (namely apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic fiction) was by political and social climates. Especially interesting was the article’s wondering how long catastrophe fiction will stay popular. In referring to an “end” of the genre, the Routledge article says that it would

“signify that political conflicts had ended, and social ills been cured; for others, it would mean that society has stagnated into a static, one-dimensional utopia. The continued imagination of the apocalypse suggests that it might not have happened yet.”

I personally love the stories for the pure human aspects like redemption and survival, but I can see how global climate can alter content dramatically.

The BBC Horizon special End Day gives slightly cheesy takes on possible apocalypses that could strike Earth. I thought the depictions were actually plausible (though I tried not to take offense at the flippant reactions of the New Yorkers when the tsunami was preparing to make landfall). Despite their lower-grade quality, with minor details such as the European license plate at Yellowstone, I had to remind myself this was made in 2004 and was probably really good for the budget they were given. The situations themselves were quite scary when I considered how it would be should one (or more) of the events happen for real. Whenever there was a child getting lost or separated from their parents, it made me think of if that happened with my little brothers and I did not like that at all.

On a different note, I couldn’t help but relate the central character of the film to the internet famous VlogBrothers duo, possibly being an evil third brother (Dave Green?). Maybe it was the airports, or the light hair and glasses, but despite the similar traits, the apathy he displayed toward people and the planet was insurmountable.

The novel excerpt I read came from World War Z. I actually bought this book last fall, 2017, at a local bookstore and have only read a few chapters of it just over winter break. During my reading, especially that of the provided excerpt, I had to remind myself that this didn’t actually happen because the writing felt so genuine and vivid. I’d love to continue reading this book to get a take on zombie apocalypses I normally don’t see: viewing from many different lenses rather than following one group/person around. This book also covers stories from around the world, not just one town or country. I’d love to keep reading and see where it goes!

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