Still to Moving

STILL TO MOVING IMAGE ASSIGNMENT

Shoot a 1-5 minute moving image piece to screen at our next critique on 3/23. Your video can range from very lo-fi to highly technically refined, depending on your interests, technical skills, and available equipment. We will use our 1-on-1 sessions for post-production and exporting final videos, including additional sessions for students who choose a more involved/complex workflow. Following are some parameters and suggested approaches:

• LIVE ACTION OR ANIMATION: Your piece can be made using your DSLR’s or smartphone’s video feature (live action), or via animation techniques (smartphone time lapse, manual frame-by-frame, or DSLR intervalometer).
• SINGLE TAKE or NON-LINEAR EDITED: Your piece can be made in a single take (paying homage to the relationship between video art and durational performance), edited only in camera and in real-time, or, if you are interested in editing in Premiere, you can focus more heavily on post-production and cutting.
• SILENT or SOUND-BASED: Make a silent film, or use your camera’s built-in mic to record sound (being conscious of its limitations). You may also choose to record non-diegetic sound to combine with your video and animation footage in Premiere during the editing/post-production phase. Smartphones can be a great way to record additional diegetic or non-diegetic sound to be used over video or animation footage. If you choose to record with your smartphone, you can email the files

Some tips:

1. Remember that standard HD video has a 16:9 aspect ratio, and is scaled at 1920×1080. If you use your DSLR for stop-motion animation, don’t forget to crop your images to 16:9 before exporting JPEGs.
2. If you record diegetic sound using your smartphone, use a CLAP SYNC.
3. If you are doing significant color adjustments in Premiere (using the Lumetri color grading system), do that BEFORE you start choppig up your clips. This is not mandatory but will likely save you time later.

As current MassArt students, you all have access to the full Adobe Creative Suite this semester. If you have not downloaded them already, following are programs you should consider installing, prior to our next individual work session:

• Adobe Premiere: Everyone should download this application, if only to transcode raw footage into an .mp4 file for our critique.
• Adobe Audition: If you plan to record sound, you should download Audition. Premiere and Audition have a great relationship and line of communication (like Lightroom <> Photoshop), and audition can “clean up” and refine sound recorded on your smartphone so that it sounds like it was captured on a professional mic or recording device.
• Adobe After Effects: If you plan to shoot time lapse or stop-motion animation using your DSLR, After Effects is a must for quickly converting your JPEG stills into video footage. It acts as a bridge from Lightroom to Premiere.

Consider your file organization / drive layout (click example screenshot below to enlarge):