First class project: Edit this photo!

This will be a useful exercise on the importance of FRAMING, as well as a chance to interrogate the idea that photography is somehow a "neutral" and "immediate" image of the world.

First, everyone should vote on which photo we'll edit. Just vote in the comments to this post. I'll announce the photo NEXT MONDAY (February 4). The edited photo is due next Wednesday (February 6).

Some quick replies to questions you haven’t even asked yet…

1) Does this count? Will it affect my grade? Ah. Any teacher’s favorite question. Yes, it will affect your grade if you DO NOT DO IT. But if you submit SOMETHING, you’ll get full credit for the project. (It will be part of the 10% “Project” line in the grading rubric.)

2) Do I have to do this? Yes. But make of it what you want. Five minutes or five hours. Of course, we’ll all think you’re lazy and uncreative if you don’t come up with something cool. But you can live with that, right?

3) What photo are we going to edit? Let’s vote. I put three photos that I thought were pretty rich in potential (they hadn’t been edited much, they had lots of foci, they were interesting…) on the blog (see the link above). We'll choose one.

4) But I don’t have the software! Oh, come on… Download a copy of Photoshop for a trial, or use the free program Picasa, or find a computer on campus with editing software… Or type “edit photos” into Google and you’ll find sites like http://fotoflexer.com/. Or, be REALLY radical and do it the “old-fashioned way”: paper, scissors, another camera (photos of photos!), pebbles, construction paper, matches (hey, Vertov did it!)…

5) How do I submit my entry? On the blog, of course: http://kino-studies.blogspot.com/. You’ll have to have posting privileges – just send me your preferred email address, gmail account, or blogger account. (Students in Elementary Russian should use the same account they use in Russian language.)

A few videos to demonstrate ideas from Part IV (Film Style) of Film Art

A little slow paced, but a good demonstration of various mobile framing devices in the film vocabulary:


A great example of rack focusing:


A tutorial on three-point lighting:


The classic long take, mobile framing from Touch of Evil (see p. 287ff in your book). Start the video around 1 minute. You'll see most of the repertoire of framing -- tracking (dolly) shots, crane shots, pans and tilts, rack zoom, and lots of interesting angles, and shifting distances (from long shots to close-ups). There are a number of joins/editing cuts, starting around minute 4. But otherwise, it's a classic of the long take, though we'll see a far more interesting and better use of the technique (I think) in I Am Cuba (Я Куба/Soy Cuba):


For the classic, more or less first use of cross-cutting, watch the last three or four minutes of The Battle at Elderbush Gulch by D. W. Griffith. Notice also his clever use of framing at 18:23 (the dilating iris of the camera) as the cavalry arrives. The cutting back and forth among the menfolk inside the house, the womenfolk, the injuns, the cavalry... Great, un-politically correct fun.

Smileycam!

Here's the "pinhole camera" smileycam I mentioned in class...

What photograph are we going to edit?

You pick Use the comments section to vote. These are all from Flickr, all of them with Creative Commons licensing. I'll send the class a full-sized, higher-resolution version of the photograph for editing -- don't use these small formats.

Oh, here's a pretty straightforward and practical overview of all the things you can do with Photoshop. (Other photo-editing programs have the same or similar functionality.)