Studio 303

Hello and welcome back.

Stop motion is the first project to kick off the third quarter of the year.

Stop motion is defined by Wikipedia as  - “Stop motion (also known as stop action) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own.”

Here is a scene from The Matrix – animated with Legos.

For more information and to see the behind the scenes of Lego Matrix Trinity Help, go to www.legomatrix.com. The film’s producers have the scoop on the entire process on their site. Be sure to watch the side by side, frame by frame comparison of the two films.

Do you like Jelly Belly jellybeans? How about 288,000 Jelly Bellys? That is what they used in the making of In Your Arms, the music video by Kina Grannis. Watch it!

Here is the behind the scenes video-watch and learn.

For the stop motion project you will create FOUR posts on your blog.

POST #1 SAMPLES (Due 01.13.12)

Post number one is to be links or embedded video from stop motion samples you found on the interwebs. For each of the three samples write a short summary of some of the things you liked or disliked about them and any elements you might be able to use in your project. You will share one of your samples with the class.

POST #2 PRE-PRODUCTION (Due 01.20.12)

This post will include -

• a short summary of the project itself – storyline, the production process and details you feel will give a total picture of the final project
• equipment and materials list – anything you will need to produce the project
• storyboards – scan or photograph your hand drawn storyboards and post them to your blog
• ten second test clip – post the test clip and a reflection on the process used to create it – how many photos – photo timing – things you will do differently in the final project, etc

POST #3 PRODUCTION (Due 02.03.12)

Here are a final few reminders as we head into midterm exams and Christmas Break 2011 -

But first, another quality multimedia story from Bob Self of the Florida Times-Union…

Read more »

THE GOAL: to create an informative, visually entertaining promotional slideshow/video about Bishop Kenny High School.

REQUIRED TOOLS: video/still camera, tripod, script, voiceover, Final Cut, Audacity, Photoshop, one partner and your creative talents

TO BE POSTED ON YOUR BLOG: your final assembled project,  your shotlist and/or storyboard and 5 of your best photos/video clips

REFLECTION (on your blog): What did you find to be challenging about the project? What would you do differently to improve the final product? Why is keyframing an important part of photo/video editing? What compositional elements did you use in your shots to help add visual interest to the final product?

 THE SCRIPT

Welcome to Bishop Kenny. I’d like to tell you about my high school, a 4 year Catholic college preparatory school established in 1952 and operated by the diocese of St. Augustine. The school is located in Northeast Florida on the Southside of Jacksonville, a metropolitan center with a population of over 1 million people. Approximately 1,300 students are enrolled in grades 9-12.

We have the opportunity to get involved in numerous extracurricular activities ranging from service organizations, to fine arts clubs, to honor societies. School spirit abounds during Homecoming week each year and at athletic contests both home and away. Lunch in this courtyard is a highlight for many students as they enjoy the Otis Spunkmeyer cookies and Wednesday’s Fiesta Bar! Without a doubt-Bishop Kenny is THE place to be this fall.

The school has served young people for more than 50 years. Since its founding, Bishop Kenny has earned a proud reputation not only for academic excellence and a winning athletic program, but also for the many ways that we reach out in service to the community. We are proud of our history and traditions, but, more importantly, we celebrate our commitment to the Gospel values that are the cornerstone of all that happens on our campus each day.

Fully accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Bishop Kenny provides a challenging and innovative college preparatory curriculum for honors and average students alike. 28 credits are needed for graduation. The media center serves our students’ information needs and offers us access to 28 computers for word processing and research in addition to more than 14,500 books and 28 periodicals.

Bishop Kenny’s athletic program has enjoyed a fine reputation in Jacksonville and throughout the state. The Crusader athletics program has teams in every sport sanctioned by the Florida High School Athletic Association. Athletes train and compete at BK’s unparalleled facilities under the direction of the school’s professional coaching staff. In 2004, 2006 and 2008 the athletic program was named the Program of the Year for Florida and has previously been ranked in the top five programs for several years.

And that’s our school in a nutshell! Welcome to Bishop Kenny. It’s four years of learning, life-long friends and long-lasting memories. Bishop Kenny – Preparing young people for college and for life!

I was wandering through the shark encounter at Sea World this past Friday and I saw an opportunity to have my daughter Allie pose in the jaws of a shark. Take time to “see” your world, you never know what photo ops you might find!

PHOTOGRAPHY

1) READ posters must be completed this week and on your blog.

2) Travels Of …. number three for the quarter is due on your blog this week!

3) Your next project is… a photo story/documentary about BK – details will follow in class and be explained in the next post.

TV PRODUCTION

1) Complete your Terry Parker Volleyball story package if you have not done so – details are on last week’s entry.

2) Answer the review questions on page 167 using complete sentences in a Google Doc.

3) Define the following terms in the same document and submit the assignment to TurnItIn.

• actors
• documentary
• drama
• interview
• lecture
• lecture demonstration
• magazine
• montage
• music video
• nod shots
• Public Service Announcement
• script
• storyboards
• talking head
• visualization

I am always on the hunt for good storytelling pieces. This week, courtesy of Kelly Jordan of the Florida Times-Union, I ‘d like to share this story of Jacob Martin, a Yulee football player. I hope that you not only see the power of good storytelling, but that you also see the courage in the young man who is the subject of the story.

If you really want to see another story of someone with unimaginable courage, watch this story of Emmanuel Kelly.

On with the show….

PHOTOGRAPHY

This is production week for your “Read” poster project.

There are three components to your final product

1. the background
2. the image to be cutout
3. the text “Read”

This, my students, is why I ask that you be aware of your surroundings when working athletic contests.

This poor photographer got blasted at an NFL game today.

See it here.

Ouch.

Happy October Crusaders!

It was a great homecoming week! The best part was, it was capped off by a great victory over Ridgeview in the football game 34-7. Congratulations to Bobby W and Katie T on being selected as the king and queen!

Check out the article from Hays Carlyon and multimedia piece (below) by Kelly Jordan of the Times-Union detailing the victory.

Now we get back to the business of classes and wrapping up the first quarter.

It is hard to believe we are in the last week of the quarter. For you seniors, this year is going to fly by. Next thing you know you will be walking across the stage and shaking hands with Bishop Estevez!

Here are the week’s assignments -

PHOTOGRAPHY

• 15 images from homecoming week in a folder and submitted to my public folder on the MBP
• 4-5 images from your homecoming shoot posted to your blog with brief captions and comment/critique – don’t forget to resize and tone as necessary for the web
• Travels of…#7 posted to your blog with caption
• find a tutorial online of a skill/technique you would like to learn in Photoshop / share the URL here in this Google Form.
• be prepared to share the procedure with the class

TV PRODUCTION

Homecoming week at Bishop Kenny. Lots of color. Lots of smiles. Lots of activities to keep us all busy. And best of all, there are a lot of visual opportunities for video packages and great photographs. This week we will keep busy with a small project assignment and a daily assignment of gathering photos and video clips to create a montage for Crusader Coverage. WIth over a hundred of you in all my classes, this ought to be a great montage!

Here is what you need to get done this week and onto your class blog/portfolios -

PHOTOGRAPHY

Be sure to shoot each and every day this week. There are lots of candid and grip and grin photos ops with all the theme days and the creative outfits our students wear! From your shoot this week, submit 15 of your best shots resized to 720 px by 480 px 72 DPI and renamed as we discussed in class. I will share with you the procedure for submitting photos on Monday.

On your blogs – Do not forget your Travels Of…  photo #6 on your blog this week and select 4 or 5 of your best shots from the week and post them along with comment/critique on each.

TV PRODUCTION

This week you have two items to complete.

Item one is to go out on your assigned day and collect video of the outfits and activities going on that day for homecoming. Your  10 to 15 clips should be 5 to 10 seconds long and be representative of the theme of the day across all classes and grade levels. At the end of the week, we will collect all the clips for Multimedia Production to use in a video montage for Crusader Coverage. I will share with you how to submit the clips on Monday.

Your other project this week is to record the voiceover for the story on volleyball. Your VO should be well paced, enunciated clearly and be appropriately enthusiastic.

Before you record your final VO, practice the script out loud several times and make one or two recordings on a Flip camera for me to review. Once I have had a chance to comment/critique your practice VO, you are clear to record the final version using the Snowball mic and Audacity using the procedure demonstrated in class. The final MP3 is to be posted on your blog/portfolio by Friday afternoon.

Do not delete your VO file as we will use it to start the next class project.

MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION

Alright guys. This show is almost ready to go. The stories are finalized. The anchors have been shot. All that is left to do is complete line production, have a final review and it is time to go on air!

We will do a thorough comment/critique on the entire show to help you understand what you are doing well and identify areas you need to improve on to make the entire show better. It is important that you use the c/c time to see the big picture in producing video packages so that over time your skills improve and your story packages become stronger.

Make sure this week to cover your assigned events for homecoming and get quality video clips to produce a great homecoming show. Remember that the photography and video classes will be providing material for a photo/video montage as part of the show.

Have a great week and GO BIG RED!

Photography

Last week we learned how to use the LEVELS tool, the CURVES tool, the SHARPEN tools and the CROP tool in Photoshop. These tools are used to help enhance the photos that you take by enhancing the color, clarity, lightness/darkness and composition of a photo. The key point to remember is use the tools sparingly and in small increments so your photo does not appear to be overly enhanced in post production.

The real key to being a good photographer is get the image right straight out of the camera and not have to become a post-production expert.

This week make sure you take at least two of your images and use some of these tools to enhance your images.

Post two before and after photos (properly resized) to your blog and provide a brief description of the tools you used to create the final image.

We will review all of your blogs in class and discuss your work so far.

By Friday, your blog should contain 5 Travels of… assignments, two images showing before and after using the tools from Photoshop, your Photo Safari and your photographer research project. Please remember to include a brief description of the project, what you learned from the assignment and how you completed the assignment on each post.

We are not just button pushers, but storytellers too. Be a storyteller.

09.21.11 UPDATE – vocabulary list for 09.22.11 X, C and F mods

Vocabulary list – aperture, F-Stop, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, zoom, bracketing, tripod, exposure, Sunny 16, rule of thirds, photography, diaphragm, depth of field, bokeh, aperture priority, CCD, wide angle lens, zoom lens, prime lens, macro lens, hot shoe, resolution, SLR

TV Production

Over the last couple of weeks we have been learning how to correctly compose and shoot a series of video clips based on a shot list. From there we took that footage and using Final Cut Express, sequenced the clips, placed transitions between the clips, placed lower thirds text on the clips and exported the final project for our blogs. Did it seem like a lot of work?

I hope so. Video production is not for the faint of heart nor those who do not have at least a little bit of patience.

Make sure that your final project is up on your blog along with a few brief comments about the  new skills you acquired while completing the project.

Just to name a few – here are some of the skills you learned -

• tripod setup and breakdown
• video composition
• pre-roll and post-roll requirements
• the Final Cut interface
• creating DV clips from AVI clips with MPEG Streamclip
• rendering audio and video
• trimming clips to required length
• adding transitions
• adding lower thirds
• exporting the final sequence
• preparing your movie file for web presentation

For this week, make sure your composition and editing project is up on your blog along with the necessary comments.

Complete all the activities in chapter 3 of your workbook and define the following terms in a Google Doc and submit to TurnItIn-

• aperture
• auto-focus
• camcorder
• camera head
• charge coupled device (CCD)
• dolly
• fluid head
• focal length
• focus
• friction head
• F-Stop
• iris
• lens
• pan handle
• studio camera
• target
• tripod
• tripod camera head
• viewfinder
• zoom in
• zoom out

Have a great week!

If you are not learning, you are not living.

That may sound a bit geeky, but if you do not continue to learn these days, all you are going to do is fall behind.

Check out Light Stalking.

You can learn a lot about photography here.

Be a LIFELONG learner.