Author: digitalmedia_yx2b7t

Explore the parameters of prefabricated design templates to customize, just-in-time, a product which transposes form and content from the internet.

Reread the short excerpt from Sianne Ngai on the Cute, the Zany, and the Interesting, here. As you read, hone in on a particular sense of one of these aesthetic categories to develop in a custom product design. Pick a product to customize from sites like zazzle or (the wonderfully titled) discount mugs.

For your design, you will use/reuse content you’ve developed in an earlier project this semester. Think of the object as a new (half-digital, half-material) medium for this content. Also, think of the object as a prop for action, not just as a blank canvas to customize.

Because there’s not time left in the semester to actually order and receive the customized product, your “final” will be the virtual rendering the website gives you when you’ve uploaded or selected your design.

Create a youtube tutorial. Tutorials have an interesting genealogy in the design discipline. Formulating clear instructions has long been part of the activity of design, as designers had to communicate their specifications to manufacturers and printers. Instruction manuals often accompany designed objects as well as software. And DIY cultural production has often published how-to production guides for a variety of subjects, from furniture to punk rock tours.

In the first part of the project, we will survey the youtube tutorial scene, trying to get a sense of the range of aesthetics which organize the instruction, as well as the sorts of things being taught. As you review the landscape of tutorials, think about the possibilities for graphics, voice, point of view, cutting/montage, music, etc. As you conceptualize your own tutorial, think about both content and form. What action will you teach? How will you teach it? Your tutorial should be new — make sure there isn’t already one on youtube.

Develop a strong graphic dimension for your video. Imagine the graphics as well as the soundtrack as neither ancilliary wallpaper nor side commentary but as equal audio / visual partners to the video content in the total cinematic experience you are constructing. Consider intros and finales.

Make a 2 minute long video which thematically curates and combines multiple found video clips. Think of the supercut as a hyper-condensed, fast-paced mash-up montage. What you montage is up to you. Supercuts typically show repetitions of cliched actions in films, but you’re not bound to this. It’s

a simple concept: a thematically unified video montage. Think of a theme and begin to compile clips. Use short clips so your video won’t get taken down for copyright infringement.

Your supercut could be about something you already know a lot about (many supercuts are compiled by superfans), but don’t feel limited by your own zone of geeky cultural knowledge. There a bunch of tools for finding specific content within movies and tv shows. The supercut should not just be a greatest hits sampler. It should make us see the cultural phenomenon in a new way. It should humorously, critically expose a cultural formula we may not have been aware of before.

Content: the theme you come up with.

Form: how you sequence and pace the clips.

research tools

a history and overview of the genre

https://www.fastcompany.com/1682740/a-modern-genre-how-to-make-a-supercut

an archive of media tropes

http://tvtropes.org/

search movies and tv series for particular phrases

http://www.subzin.com/

further reading

The blog post that supposedly came up with the name for this youtube genre (plus a list of many supercuts).

https://waxy.org/2008/04/fanboy_supercuts_obsessive_video_montages/

some supercuts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4TIaWE5Bx4

David Caruso’s one liners

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sarYH0z948

Cage does Cage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKdeNv3Rlv0

phil collins, oh lord in the air tonight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojalRKu2kaI

mirror scares

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tjoqhx_dwk

make a supercut and upload it to youtube.

clip converter

http://www.clipconverter.cc/

online video editor

https://filmora.wondershare.com/video-editor/

http://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-online-video-editor

https://www.youtube.com/editor (going away sept 20)

http://www.videotoolbox.com/

From the five GIFs you developed, pick two of your favorite/most interesting, and develop them one step further by adding an aesthetic category to each.

Additionally, write one paragraph for each of your two final GIFs, which explains (1) how you made the GIF, (2) what aesthetic categories you investigated with the GIF, and (3) what’s interesting about the GIF. 

Post the final GIFs to your tumblr, and your paragraphs (each paragraph in a different place) somewhere on the web. Post the link to your tumblr.

Curate a set of 5 animated GIFs from the web and post them to your tumblr. Capture a range of styles and rhetorics. Aim to collect a varied set: each GIF should uniquely demonstrate a different aesthetic or technical feature of the image format. Bonus points for thematically unifying the set (they could all be Bowie, or cat, or abstract, or eye-roll, or architecture GIFS.) Find GIFs that reflect different stages in the history of the format — both contemporary and historic ones. At least one should have a text component.