DKC Training Site

Tag: Spring 2025

  • The FNAF video.

    Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Most Concise Timeline You’ll Ever See – Youtube

    Heres the FNAF video! I couldn’t get it to embed for whatever reason but it’s fine.

  • Learning to Hack with the DKC

    Since starting this project, I think the most important thing that I learned is that I do not enjoy being on video, and that made this project pretty difficult. BUT!!!! I made it! Many thanks to Angela and Jasper for agreeing to be the actors here by the way, y’all deserve awards. Anyway, onto the process of it all.

    It all started with a graphic:

    The main purpose of the whole project was to come up with an April fools workshop idea. It took me a little while to come up with something that was funny, and I may or may not have been a little inspired by Zoe’s character “Mayday” (is that how it’s written? or is it “May Day?”) from our mock consultations. I thought the ongoing classroom rivalry between the characters in our mock consultations was funny, and ran with that. The idea? What if Mayday learned to hack from a DKC workshop and took that knowledge and ran with it. She could hack in to her rival’s project and take it down. Obviously this is not the kind of thing we typically teach here at the DKC, so I figured it wasn’t a bad choice.

    The next thing I had to tackle was the video. I really am not super comfortable working with video. I can do it, I have a good amount of experience with it, and I’m not awful at it. But I don’t think I like it. I started with a story board. I used the story board partially as a brain dump space, partially as a script, and partly as an actual storyboard.

    Overall it was a good experience, and I’m glad I powered through it, despite my struggles.

    Happy (day after) April Fools!

  • April Fools Video

    Story Board describing a video plan that is very messy.
    Part 1
    Second part of a story Board describing a video plan that is very messy.
    Part 2

    Write about what you learned since starting this project and feel free to include any other details on how the project went:

    I learned how to green screen with Clipchamp. I had assumed that it would be a mask similar to other editing software, but it was an effect. I think it was a lot of fun to make, and it felt goofy to record the skits with Addy and my friend Cyrus. I also did not realize how big the free audio library was on Clipchamp.

  • April Fools!!!

    My most recent project consisted of making a graphic and video of a fake workshop for April fools. I started out with the graphic, taking the template for DKC workshops, and designed it to advertise “printing anti-dkc propaganda in sticker form!” The graphic was fairly simple to make, and I had lots of fun with it. I tried to get creative with it and add some cool effects. I think it turned out well.

    Next, I was tasked to make a short trailer for this workshop. I started with a story board. My aim was to make it short and sweet as my last video was quite a bit longer than it was supposed to be.

    Next, I had to make some props. The easier part was drawing a bunch of “anti-dkc propaganda” with markers and notebook paper. However, to make my propaganda stickers I needed to use the Cricut, and so I got trained. I was happy to learn how to use another resource here in the DKC, and I was able to create my stickers for my video! (The design was hand drawn on procreate and then imported to Canva)

    Finally, I was ready to record! I got Addi to be the star of my video, and we shot relatively quickly, then I used the mics to record a separate voiceover audio. I feel like I better understand how to use the audio sets now which I am happy about. I used Clipchamp to edit my video and found it easy to use and more advanced than Canva which was nice. I finished up my video and uploaded it to YouTube for the captions. Here is my final product!

    Overall, I found this project very fun, I was glad I got to use the video and audio kits more, I feel like I have a better handle on that now. I am especially glad I got trained on the Cricut because I like knowing how to use more of the technology we offer around here.

  • 3rd Mock Consultation Reflection

    • What parts of the consultation made you feel confident, and why?
      • I think I did a good job asking for help and trying to find work arounds for scenarios to figure out possible options. I feel like while the solutions were not the best, they did what they needed to as far as wordpress could.
    • Was there a moment during the consultation that felt tricky? How did you handle it?
      • I was stuck for a little bit on some of the formatting and struggled with that. I tried my best to find work arounds, but wordpress isn’t the greatest for formatting.
    • How did you go about figuring out what the student needed and wanted?
      • I initially asked what they needed help with, then followed along each of the things they needed. When I hit a standstill we skipped that and came back to it after.
    • What did you learn about your own consulting style from this experience?
      • I learned that I try to figure out it alongside the student rather than only trying to help them, to give them a visual as well as prevent myself from computer hogging.
    • What would you change in your next consultation based on what you learned this time?
      • I think I would explain the limitations of wordpress more so they can be aware of it when formatting.

  • April Fool’s Day Video

    I used professional video and audio equipment! Yay!! So you’re probably wondering what I mean. Well first, I need to back up in a little in my story…. The DKC hosts free workshops to teach UMW student skills such as: sewing, using Canva, building a personal brand, customizing YouTube banners, etc. Any student is able […]

  • Canva Video Editor: 3/25/25

    Cool Octoguy

    • Cite where you got any media you incorporated (both video and audio):
      • The audio was taken from SMASH on Broadway and all of the images were found in the Canva elements library.
    • Talk about what it was like to use the Canva editor. What did you like, dislike, etc?
      • Having a good amount of experience with other video editors definitely had a negative impact on my experience with the Canva editor. While the editor is a good starting place for beginners or more slideshow-like videos, for what I ended up trying to do it was maddening. I like the variety of elements offered, especially with the pro subscription. I dislike the elements and how they work. They do not merge and grouping doesn’t work well. It is just inconvenient to try to do things that would normally work fine and finding they are near impossible. I am also so upset because the octopus emoji I used changed when I exported the video. Like he was so much cuter before.
    A man in a business suit stands with his hands on his hips. Instead of a head he has an emoji of a dumbo octopus.

  • Adi learns Video

    Video killed the radio star??? Maybe… Anyway, for the introduction to video editing assignment I had a really difficult time coming up with something to do. Maybe because of the time limit, maybe because I just wasn’t feeling particularly creative in that moment. Regardless, what follows is my incredible, very well made, very not boring self introduction.

    The canva editor was really strange to use. I’ve used Premiere Pro, I’ve used Clip Champ, I’ve used iMovie. This was like all of those and yet somehow like none of them. It took me a while to adjust to where things were. I liked how smooth the interface looked and the immediate access to the libraries and everything else. I did not like, however, that you had to zoom in in the dock in order to look at shorter clips, stretching clips / shortening them was difficult too, as other buttons would pop up in the way. Sometimes you’d be trying to click a button (like the transitions or add button between slides) and it would just… disappear?? Not very easy to use, but I managed. I liked how many cute templates there were, but a lot of them were locked behind pro, with nearly all of the audio and music locked behind a paywall as well.

    Sources: (All Red titles are links)

    Music:
    John Williams, Across the Stars (Love Theme from “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones”)

    Images:
    Star Wars Images:
    Personal screenshots from prequel trilogy movies, Art by Hai Haung

    Album covers:
    Screenshots from Apple Music

    Subjects:
    Clip-art from Canva free library

    Video Games:
    Jedi Fallen Order Game poster: pulled from EA Listing
    Fallout 4 Image: Games Radar Article

  • Video Editing!

    I completed my first video editing project! For this project I decided to make a mini guide comprised of some horror movie recommendations. Due to the nature of this project, I did not really use any filmed videos, but used recorded audio, sound effects, music, images, and graphics to create my final product.

    I actually really enjoyed using Canva editor. I was surprised with the amount of features they had, and I liked the ability to build almost google slide like animated graphics and screens. I also liked the animation effects they had, although I wish you could make an item enter and exit with different effects. The customizability for all visual related things was great, but I would have appreciated some more editability for sound. Some video editing software’s that I have used before allow certain effects for audio, as well as have correctors to fix background noise, among other features. I also wish they had a more efficient way to make the editing bar with all the video splices larger so it would be easier to cut things more precisely.

    The background graphic I used was from Canva. I got the Psycho sound effect in the beginning from https://archive.org/, originally from the Psycho Original Soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann, Released in 1976. The music is by Universfield from Pixabay. The images were retrieved from The Poster Database.

    Without further ado, here is my video!

  • Round 3: Mock Consultations

    In re-watching this mock consultation, I think the first thing I learned was that I move my hands a lot when I talk. I am apparently a big fan of gestures and waving my hands around. Anyway…

    This one was a struggle! I genuinely had almost no experience with special text formatting in WordPress, mostly just cus it had never come up as something that I needed to try. Why is formatting in WordPress so hard???? Why did they make it like that???? Why do you have to find an entirely new block just to have indented text??? It truly confuses me. Regardless, I think that I did really well introducing myself and making it clear that, while I knew enough about what I was doing, I do not know everything about the wonderful little program we call WordPress.

    We talked about it after my consultation as well, but I also did well with working alongside “Mayday”, and not just relying on their screen or making them test a bunch of things on theirs. I got an impromptu training moment too! During my consultation, the WiFi went down and we talked about what we might do in case something happens during a consultation that means we can’t complete the task.

    The Suggestions:

    • Check in with them, are we close enough to done?
    • Wired computers might still work! You can go test to see if the internet works there.
    • Offer to hang out until WiFi is back if you don’t have another consultation or class afterward.
    • Get their email or write the steps down step by step / give them a guide to get the task done.

    I need to get better about remembering what to do at the end of a consultation. Things like encouraging follow up, inviting them to stay, and possibly referring additional resources if needed. I also completely forgot that there’s a survey that gets sent out about how we did in our consultation. That feels like something I should remember.