ALICE 2.2

Problem solving skills would be the correct terminology for Alice 2.2.  Let me just say this has by far been one of the most frustrating projects I have worked on thus far in my Instructional Technology program.  I began working with Alice early on because I had a feeling (due to the prompting of my professor) that this project would be a little more frustrating/confusing than others I had previously attempted.  Good thing I did.  Even so, I lost my work numerous times, changed things around, and had to search the Internet continuously for prompts.  Although this has been difficult, I would like to be able to have my students use it in small amounts to create short videos.  I think it would be really neat to have them create a short conversation and record their own voices to go along with the video.

I started first by looking at all of the available props.  I found the spooky Halloween type gallery.  Since Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year, I choose to go with a cemetery world.  I started looking for people.  I found a "jock" so I thought he could be turned into a werewolf.  I wanted to incorporate a little music so I though, "why not use Thriller?" The hardest movements were having the werewolf "attack" the jock and making the jock fall down.  

After working for two weeks off and on, I sat down today to complete the project and realized my video would not work.  Luckily I had saved it in my Dropbox and a previous version was still there.  I didn't have to start over per say, but the previous version was far from finished.  I will just count that as extra practice.  Of course it went quicker this time, but still I have been working on it all day.

Another difficult part was actually exporting the video.  When it exported, some of the timing was off.  After exporting and changing things about ten times, I finally got it as close to the original as possible.  I used iMovie to finish up the project by putting a title page and credits.  I figured this was important considering I was using a short clip of music and I wanted to give the artist credit.  

There are still many aspects of Alice I do not understand.  I did create my own movements but they were not very fluid.  I would like to know more about creating movements.  Also, I attempted using a billboard to create a title page.  It would have worked, but it would have also messed up my timing on my music, as the title page was an afterthought.  My biggest and most exciting success was figuring out how to make the music play during the entire video.  Believe me, this took me hours to figure out.  As a side note, I created the mix in Garage Band.  I just received a new Macbook and I am learning how to use all of the software available to me.  

Although the project was incredibly frustrating, I pressed on.  I wanted to conquer the assignment.  I wouldn't say this is wonderful by any means, but I did try very hard.  I constantly tweaked and worked to find the best movement possible and tried to add in little details to show care with the video.