T351 Week 2 (Wed) Summer 2013

Agenda/Announcements/Reality Check::

• Today: Cover Continuity & Graphics. You will have time to fine-tune Audio/News/Reflector projects.
• Share Art Video & Interview Feature Story ideas
• Review Audio/News projects and any issues with shooting or editing
• Graphics lab / Photoshop demo / In-class exercise
• Drama/Storytelling Pitch Session

• No Lab Thursday - This class time is dedicated for you to shoot your Art Videos
• Next week we'll cover lighting & you'll shoot your interview/feature stories.

Readings:

• On-line notes (this page)
• Graphics2.html
• Jim's Graphic Tips

Editing 102

Editing can be fun or torture. It can be done efficiently or waste an incredible amount of time & money.

You need two things:

• Understanding of the process & tools. This allows you to focus on having fun and being creative. How to get more familiar with the tools? Do the tutorials (again) Edit a lot in your spare time. Make sure you understand where your media is stored. Read the on-line manuals. Go to creativecow.net and read the forums. Spend a lot of time doing it and you'll become proficient. The only way you can get better is to spend time with the tools.
• Your ducks all in a row! Know what you want to do in the edit room before you ever get there. Have your script, footage logs, graphics, and music etc. Minimize the time you spend in an edit session trying to figure out what shot comes next. (This is what should be done in pre-production or at some corner cafe with a mug of your favorite beverage.) When you edit, you should have a plan, or you are wasting your time or someone else's money.

Continuity Editing techniques (See cybercollege 50, 51 & 52):

Transitions - Do you know when to use these?

• Cut - the default transition. Happens in the blink of the eye.
• Wipe
• Dissolve
• Fade

Editing techniques

Continuity editing refers to arranging the sequence of shots to suggest a progression of events. This is a simplification. In continuity editing we try to tell a story with many different shots. These shots can come from multiple camera angles in a studio or from multiple segments taken in the field. The idea is to assemble these shots together to tell a story while preserving the illusion of time and space- or manipulate it as we see fit.

Acceleration Editing

In film and video production time is routinely condensed and expanded. (When you are telling a story, cut out anything that doesn't develop the story or character.) Someone gets a phone call asking him/her to meet. How much do we have to see before he/she meets his/her date?

Expanding Time

Occasionally an editor or director will want to drag out a happening beyond the actual time represented. Expanding time can heighten the suspense. (Think action/adventure movie- A timer on a bomb is counting down to 0. Someone is working furiously to defuse the bomb. We might have 15 seconds left on the timer but the scene can take 1 minute! If the bomb does go off- we see it happen 4 times from different angles)

Causality & Motivation

This aspect of continuity editing addresses cause & effect. As viewers try to figure out the story they look for answers.

Imagine we see a bomb being placed underneath a table in one shot. This is followed by two men sitting down to a picnic table in a park. We cut to a shot of a kid looking up just as they hear an explosion.

While we assume that the two men have been blown up (causality), we still want to find out why (motivation).

Good storytellers will string us along for the length of a movie so we can determine cause and effect.

Relational editing

In relational editing scenes which by themselves seem not to be related take on a cause-effect significance when edited together in a sequence. (Pudovkin's Man in chair intercut with: corpse, bowl of soup, child playing)

Thematic Editing

In thematic editing (also referred to as a montage) images are edited together based only on a central theme. In contrast to most types of editing, thematic editing is not designed to tell a story by developing an idea in a logical sequence.

Many different types of montages have been identified and studied. Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin) identified various types of montages. Perhaps the best discussion can be found in Zettl's text, "Sight Sound Motion". Zettl identified three types of montages:

• Metric - related or unrelated images used at equally spaced intervals. This can be sped up into an accelerated montage
• Analytical - an event is displayed through thematic and structural elements
• Idea-associative montage - Two possibly unrelated elements are brought together to create a third principle or concept.

One underlying theory that has been applied to montages (and especially related to the last type) is the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Juxtaposing two separate elements can result in a more powerful third meaning.

Parallel Cutting (referred to sometimes as cross cutting)

Parallel action takes place when the segments are cut together to follow multiple story lines. These don't necessarily have to happen at the same time.

Parallel editing in the Godfather (example from Critical Commons)

The Opposite of Editing- the Plan Scene

A Touch of Evil - opening scene (Orson Welles)

The Player - opening scene (Robert Altman)

Editing Guidelines (Cybercollege 54 & 55)

Guideline # 1: Edits work best when they are motivated.
Guideline # 2: Whenever possible cut on subject movement.

Entering and exiting the frame. Following the rules of continuity if someone exits the frame on the right to go somewhere, in the next shot we'll see them entering from the left.

Guideline # 3: Keep in Mind the Strengths and Limitations of the Medium.

Remember: Television is a closeup medium.

Maintaining Consistency in Action and Detail. You usually end up with several takes of each scene. Not only should the relative position of feet or hands, etc., in both shots match, but also the general energy level of voices and gestures.

You will also need to make sure nothing has changed in the scene (hair, clothing, the placement of props, etc.) and that the talent is doing the same thing in exactly the same way in each shot.

Guideline # 4: Cut away from the scene the moment the visual statement has been made.

New verses familiar subject matter. New elements need more screen time to give viewers a chance to comprehend them, as opposed to pre-established (or well-known) elements.

Varying tempo through editing

A constant fast pace will tire an audience; a constant slow pace will induce them to look for something more engaging on another channel.

Guideline # 5: Emphasize the B-Roll. An example of this is a feature story revolving around interview. The interview should look and sound strong, but it's the B-roll that holds the viewer's attention.

Guideline # 6: The final editing guideline is: If in doubt, leave It out.

Five Rules for Editing News Pieces (cybercollege)

• Select stories and content that elicit an emotional reaction
• If you have complex subject matter, take your time with it
• While we try to match audio & video, if the video is overly complex, keep the audio simple (and vice-versa)
• Don't introduce important facts directly before strong visual elements. Put them afterwards and they will be remembered better.
• Stick to a beginning - middle - end structure.

Jim's suggestions:

• When using B-roll, don't just use one shot. Always use at least a few shots to make a grouping.
• Shoot shooting B-roll, remember the rules of continuity and shoot "mini-continuity" sequences of shots. (For example if shooting a painter, start with an artfully composed establishing shot. Stay on one side of the line and shoot close-ups of his face, his hands, and his canvas.) These mini-continuity sequences will cut together beautifully as B-roll.
• Cut B-roll on phrases or key words. Try to define a rhythmic pacing of images.

On-line v Off-line editing

• Off-line is not intended for broadcast. You can create a rough draft and/or an EDL
• On-line produces the broadcast master

FCP/Premiere Editing. Students should know:

• Use the Razorblade tool
• Use the Roll and Slip tools
• Adjust audio levels and use the Pen tool to add keyframes for fades
• Add tracks
• Assign tracks
• Add effects
• Load a clip in the browser and modify it using crop, blur, move, move, etc.
• Link/unlink audio
• Make a freeze frame
• Export a still frame
• Import graphics and audio
• Set In points and Out points
• Add black at end of project
• Export a movie

Color

Color can be objectively described in a number of ways. One of the most common methods is using the HSB model:

Hue (the actual color)
Saturation (the strength or intensity, or how far it’s removed from gray)
Brightness (how dark or light)

Color Modes

But you can also describe color in other ways- depending on what color mode you are working in. Two color modes you should be familiar with are:

Additive Color (RGB)
Subtractive Color (CMYK)

Additive Color is the color system used for computer graphics, TV and lighting design. This is the color mode used to create graphics for TV and web. It's referred to as additive since lights are mixed or combined to make the various colors.

The primary colors (think of them as light sources) are:

• Red
• Green
• Blue

Mix them together and you get white.

Subtractive Color is the color system used for printing. It's referred to as subtractive because the colors absorb (subtract) some light and reflect others.

The primary colors (think paints or inks) are:

• Cyan
• Magenta
• Yellow

Mix them together and you get black. (K stands for "key" or black plate.)

Bitmap and Vector graphics

Bitmap or raster images, use a grid or array of pixels to represent an image. The grid is made up of squares or pixels. Each pixel is given a specific color and brightness. If you enlarge a bitmap graphic, you will eventually see the grid.

Digital photos, scanned images, and captured video frames are by neccesity bitmap graphics.

Vector graphics are made up of shapes, lines and curves that are defined mathematically.

When you draw a circle or create a piece of text with a vector-based application (such as Adobe Illustrator), it keeps track of the lines and angles that make up objects. From this mathematical data, it draws the display. We can scale a piece of vector artwork up to any size, and it will still retain its quality.

Fonts or typefaces are examples of vector graphic objects. You can scale fonts up as much as you want and the edges will never become jagged.

Anti-aliasing

You can turn this feature on and off. It produces intermediately shaded pixels to smooth out the appearance of jagged edges. Note the anti-aliasing which is apparent on the enlarged image on the right hand side.

Text

Text is the most important element used to convey information in graphics. Whether a lower third, the price of a product, stock market figures crawling across the screen, or the final scrolling credits at the end of a production, knowing how to properly use text is essential to graphic production.

It's also possible to make compelling pieces of art based primarily on text. Check out these examples:

• http://vimeo.com/3829682 ("Like, you know" written by Taylor Mali)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mnvvVi4HaI (based on Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels dialog)

Serif and Sans-serif

Serifs are small details found on the end of some fonts. In typography we can describe a font as either serif or sans-serif. (Sans means without.)

Arial and Helvetica are examples of sans serif typefaces.
Times and Courier are examples of seriffed typefaces.

Typographers generally believe that large blocks of text are more easily read by using a seriffed typeface. This is why books, newspapers and magazines primarily use seriffed typefaces in the main body of text.

Tracking, kerning & leading

Tracking refers to the horizontal spacing of an entire group of letters on the same line.

Kerning is the space between individual letters. For example you’d want to kern a small case letter “o” to fit underneath the capital letter “T”.

Leading (pronounced like bedding) is the vertical spacing between lines of text.

Terms you should know:

• Anti-aliasing
• Bitmap or raster image
• CMYK (subtractive) color mode
• HSB - Stands for hue, saturation and brightness. Used to identify a color. Hue, (sometimes thought of as tint) is the actual color, saturation (sometimes called chroma) is the amount of color present (no saturation or chroma means the image is B & W), and brightness, which is how light or dark the color is.
• Leading
• Kerning
• RGB (additive) color mode
• Vector image
• Sans-serif type
• Serif type
• Tracking

 

Review Jim's Graphic tips.

 

Outputting movies the right size for YouTube (Square vs. Non-square pixels)

Some of you have noticed that some of the movies posted to popular video sharing sites (such as YouTube) are stretched or squeezed the wrong way. This is becuase the movies have not been exported at the proper pixel dimensions. To do this you must understand the difference between sqaure pixel and non-square pixel formats.

4:3 TV is an aspect ratio, which can also be expressed as 1.333
16:9 (the aspect ratio for widescreen and all HDTV) can also be exressed as 1.778

If you want to ensure that a movie will be posted and display at the proper size (without being stretched or squeezed, or unnecessarily letterboxed) just do a little math and choose pixel dimension that equal something close to 1.333 for 4:3 or 1.778 for widescreen. Here are some that will work. Choose the size as large as possible that doesn't exceed the video sharing site's specifications.

4:3 Square Pixel Sizes (X/Y will equal 1.333):

• 800 x 600
• 640 x 480
• 400 x 300
• 320 x 240

16:9 Square Pixel Sizes (X/Y will equal roughly 1.778):

• 1920 x 1080
• 1280 x 720
• 960 x 540
• 640 x 360

Graphics Lab exercise (10 points):

Overview: You'll make a keyable graphic (title or lower third for example) for either your Storyboard/Continuity or Audio/News sequence and save it as a single-layer TIFF graphic called your username in the T351 Oncourse/Resources/Graphics folder.

Design a keyable graphic for your project. It should contain:

At least one text element
At least one shape
At least one other visual element (image, design, etc.)
Place a 1920 x 1080 (full-raster HD) single-layer TIFF saved as your IU login name (mine would be jarkraus.tif) in the T351 Oncourse/Resources/Graphics folder.

 

 

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