Two versions of the work "The Medium Is The Message" have been made available for you to download and read on the course website. You may read either one, although only one is listed in our calendar as the assigned reading.
We will incorporate some of his writings into our next video assignment. Pay attention to favorite passages, things you thank might be true, or concepts that are extremely important. You may use one or more of those passages as source material for our video assignment, which will be introduced later today.
For a "Top 10" list of montages - try this one! Montage is an editing strategy that uses abstraction as a way to explore presentation of time, space, reality, narrative, and more.
A vocabulary reference page is available for you this semester. As we get started in our work with video, we will refer to some of these terms and put them into practice as much as possible.
A blank storyboard template pdf can be found on the links page or by clicking on this link. You should get in the habit of using storyboards to help visualize what you intend to shoot. This is true no matter what the video project is. For an example, an interview might not need a lot of storyboards, but they will help establish how you want your shots to look, the camera position, and other important details. This, in turn, will help you to know where to position lights, cameras, and how to mic the scene. Notes can also be an important part of a storyboard. Storyboards are part of pre-production and usually indicate project planning and organization.
Using the cameras made available within the department, we will look quickly at some of the common characteristics, capabilities, and general processes. Each camera is slightly different, but act fundamentally in the same way to view and capture visual information. To help with this, we will move to the digital photo video room where our equipment is stored as well as our additional studio space.
Using our very basic and introductory level investigation into our equipment, the rest of the class session will be spent putting those skills into practice. Our first assignment will give us a way to explore video and create a montage. You are welcome to work with each other, but each person should make their own short video of about 1 minute. This means you can capture footage together and/or share footage that has been captured, but you should all edit your own video. You are encouraged to find/create specific types of shots and camera movements and may refer to the vocabulary reference page for some ideas.
There will also be time available to develop your assignment during the next class session, in addition to whatever time is available in class today.
At the completion of this assignment, you should have one video that is approximately one minute in duration.