Week #6- Mini-Art School: Working with Videos and Moving Images

Creating a Storyboard

I confess that as I thought about creating the storyboard, I had to put the 'storyboards' together in my head first.  As I work to catch up, I knew I wanted to use a subject that was readily available and one with which I was fairly familiar.  During my day light time at home, which is really such a rarity, I had the opportunity to watch the newest addition to our family, Rogue, an 18 month old really sweet cat, who is just bounding with energy, adjust to her new environment. Since we have been training her to be an inside/outside cat, I have really enjoyed watching her fine tune her stalking ability.  She is so very slow... and cautious... And everything around our house is just soooo interesting to her!  During my time off, I read that cats have hearing so sharp they can hear a bottle cap three blocks away!  That would explain why she will suddenly perk up; as if an alarm had just gone off!   

For these reasons, she seemed like the perfect subject.  I did (physically) have a hard time getting down on the ground to gain her perspective on the world... but she really was a great co-worker!  She nuzzled up to me and almost on cue, listening to the birds around her, decided the sparrow in the bush was a great target!  (For those of you for whom this  may be an issue, she was unsuccessful, as she is most of the time!)  

Let Me Introduce You to Rogue...

Rogue

(For whatever reason, I was unable to embed the video into the blog)

                                  

As for the contents of my video, I thought I hit the one minute mark, but alas, when it was uploaded to YouTube, it was marked at 58 seconds.  I confess that after 6++ hours of work (mostly spent on trying to clip and add music to the project) I left it at 58 and called it a day.

And so much work to make try to make it exact!  I used my iPhone for the videos and iMovie for the project.  For the most part, since this wasn't my first iMovie, I didn't struggle with the project parameters except of course for the exact 1 minute mark.  Tweaking the transitions and the clip lengths was, for the most part, tedious because the software wouldn't always let me change a clip from 4:37 to 4:02.  Somehow, presets often made the clip longer instead of shorter.    As for the video itself, Hagen & Golombisky(2013) provide us with ways to make our work more interesting.  The infusion of text, transitions, and 'The Ken Burns Effect" were used to pace and balance the presentation.  I attempted to become one with Rogue's line of sight as well as her conscious mind-reader (from the above shots) in order to change the focal length and perspectives as much as possible.

I tried something new on this project: I added music.  I confess that I liked the video better when it was silent, but I pushed myself to add music for the simple fact that my knowledge of music, in general is poor, but I didn't think that should cause me to limit my skill in adding it to a media piece.  I tried to add music that would give some comic relief to a video about my cat; not perhaps the  most universal subject but one that was my most knowable subject.  I also confess that I like using sites like Animoto, because the theme determines the music and the transitions and it ulitmately makes a more sophisticated looking presentation because the 'glue' behind the pieces wasn't designed by someone with limited skills (like myself), but I pushed myself to include new techniques.

Blog Post #5: Mini Art School: Working with Digital Images

Exercise #1

Cropping

p. 193

These pictures are of my grandchildren on a hike in a State Park in Massachusetts

First set of photo editing, with cropping. Krause (1962, p 192) says that depending on what the designer/editor has in mind as her intended focus will make the determination of the many ways in which a photo may be cropped.

This is the original photo.

This is the photo cropped at just the bottom right.

This photo has been cropped from the top left only.

This photo was cropped with the subjects balanced by each other as well as the colorful fall background.
 Proper cropping allows the subject to be the focus of the photo without extraneous backgrounds.

This is the original photo, above.

 This is the original photo with a white/matte edging, without cropping.

Border variation (shown below,  p 197) provides
a softening of the edges in this and the photo below.
I think that the softening makes the subject broader.
Instead of only focusing on Dalton, I think it brings the viewer's
eyes to notice all the color surrounding him as well.

This last photo has been cropped to place Dalton in the forefront at the foot of the lake framed
by the green bushes on his left and the colorful fall foliage at the top.

It is easy to see how cropping must be done with the awareness of the balance of the subjects and elements in the photo.

  Exercise #2:  

Color Echo

p. 219

(I did this one before but I didn't realize until just now when I typed those words...color echo...)
 Krause (1962, p 218) says that when building a layout around a particular photo/object, create a palette that will complement the image by borrowing colors directly from the image itself.

In this initial image, the Christmas ornament caught my eye because it contained shades of cranberry, silver on the chain, cheery green, and the text was already on the image.  I thought the variety of colors would make it easy to find multiple ways to complement the image (Krause, 1962).

(Above) I confess that I would have like to make the border a shade to complement the ball, but I was unable to get the palette for the frame to offer me the proper color.  In some way,  I was fortunate that default color was somewhat similar to the one I had wanted to achieve.

For the second image,  I used a photo I'd taken at my husband's aunt's 87th birthday.  One of her grandchildren had sent her roses.  The roses were so pretty that I just had to take a picture of them.  This is the picture embedded in the background.  I thought the pink in the roses was a pretty complement to the Christmas ball.  Although the color isn't exact, the sentiment evoked in the giving and receiving of roses is similar to the sentiments evoked with the giving and receiving of thoughtful Christmas gifts.  Using the software to reduce the saturation of the photo enabled me to use it as a background for the image.

In the third image, above, I was able to successfully overcome the challenge of the first; that is, to make the borders of the star and the frame similar in hue.  The star itself is a background layer with the object in the forefront. 

I used iDraw for these images ($24.99).  With the theme being 'color echo' I downloaded a jpeg from www.dreamstime.com  that I thought had potential to be singly visually attractive but could withstand additional muted additions.  The Christmas ball and the words "Merry Christmas" are part of the initial jpeg.  Learning how to work with the graphics program was the biggest hurdle.  I'm not even close to having mastered the early stages of the program but with the help of YouTube, I was able to squeak out these images.  The cranberry christmas ball and lettering is reproduced in a complimentary shaded background with the edges of the star being as close to echoing the green ribbon on the ornament. 

Disappointingly, I didn't know how to upload the vector files (as if I know anything more about that than they are math based images and not graphic based images...) so I had to take a screen shots of each idraw item and upload them to the page.

Exercise #3

Conveyance Exercise

p. 299

This is the third part of this project.  I've completed two words (to the best of my ability using the program iDraw, a vector based program that I think  is like the Pagemaker program, one I was very familiar with from my years developing my own marketing material.  That said, these aren't my finest works, but I think demonstrate the learning curve this program has.

 In my mind's eye, I could clearly see the word 'pillow' stretched into an arch around a pillow shaped form.  I also envisioned it in block letters filling up a pillow shaped object.  Unable to accomplish those, I settled for the two versions of 'pillow' included above.  As for the 'GAS', it was my best attempt to  illustrate the dissipation of gas.  As my frustration grew, I searched youtube for more instructional videos.  I discovered that the tool I really needed was Adobe Illustrator which, of course, is on my mac at school with my substitute teacher.  I fully expect to re-tackle this part of the assignment because I know it can be done; I just have to get to my tool box.

These are my follow up attempts to construct additional models.

 

I took these photos of the word 'SHRED' drawn in pencil

and then cut as though it had been passed through a 

shredder and reassembled.  To get the pieces to stay together,

I taped them to a prism base.

 

I thought this was a clever way to demonstrate 'Candy Corn'.

These are my other attempts to demonstrate 'jump', 'down', 'pillow' (again....) and 'circles'.