Projects | Moving Image Art

Project 1) Phosphenes –externalizing your own internal imagery

ASSIGNMENT: Create a moving image composition that reveals a visual phenomena that cannot be recorded by camera. You will draw and animate a moving image composition that makes visible for others what you see when you close your eyes. Your own perceptual system creates visual effects. What do you see? How does it move, change, or evolve over time? Those blobs, lights, shapes, sparks and patterns you see when you close your eyes – especially when you rub them while closed – are real. “A phosphene is a phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye. – more info on Wikipedia. (Links to an external site.)Remember to create a title for your project and add that to your movie, including credit for yourself. Consider the style, timing and placement of your title within your movie. This is a visual project only, no audio.

Your final composition should be rendered at 1280 x 720 square pixels (HDV setting) at a minimum time of 60 seconds, maximum 90 seconds. Copy your properly compressed movie file into the folder titled “PROJECT 1” on the instructor computer before class starts on the due date. If your movie file does not play smoothly on the class computers, you need to re-render it with more compression.

Techniques: Start with drawings of what you see when you close your eyes. These could created on paper and scanned into the computer, or created directly in a raster or vector program. These will be animated in Adobe After Effects, using scale, position, rotation, opacity, layering and effects.

This project is 10% of your overall grade

Project 2) Remix, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle

Digital tools are ideal for sampling pre-existing media elements and remixing – or transforming – them into new creative works. With these tools we have the ability to hybridize, collage, combine, cut, paste and duplicate infinitely. Another strategy is to erase, or relocate elements in order to point out new possibilities or relationships. Consider repurposing existing media in surprising ways to create a personal statement, an alternate reality, a political statement, a poetic statement, or a joining of the past with the future.

Techniques: montage, collage, masking, layering, transitions and effects in After Effects and Premiere, plus basic digital audio.

Source footage/media/audio: You can generate some of your own, but you must also use at least one type of pre-existing media element. Please read this guide to finding interesting public domain works online (Links to an external site.). Archival movies can be sourced legally from Prelinger Archive (Links to an external site.).There is also a meta search tool here: Let’s cc (Links to an external site.)that will help you find Creative Commons (Links to an external site.) licensed media across multiple sites. You must keep track of your media, sources and licensing so you can add the information into your end credits.

You can make use of work that has a certain types of Creative Commons (Links to an external site.) licences, as long as you are following the licence restrictions and you are making significant creative work of your own with it. Consider licensing your own work (Links to an external site.)so you can contribute to the creative pool in the way you chose. It is free. You are permitted to use copyrighted material in your artwork, only if you can explain to me how it falls within the Fair Use Principle (Links to an external site.). We will follow these professional guidelines: College Art Fair Use best practices (Links to an external site.)http://www.collegeart.org/fair-use/best-practices#MakingArt (Links to an external site.)

Please note that “Educational Use” does not apply in this class, because we are making artwork for display, not just educational videos.

Related readings: Remix Theory (Links to an external site.)

What to turn in: Your final movie should be rendered at a minimum size of 1280 x 720 (square pixels) and maximum 1920 x 1080. Running time should be between 1 and 3 minutes. Copy your properly compressed movie file into the folder titled “PROJECT 2” on the instructor computer before class starts on the due date. If your movie file does not play smoothly, you need to re-render it with more compression.

The source media files that are not created by you must be documented in the end credits of your final movie. You must cite exactly what type of licence the media file has, ie. public domain, Creative Commons Attribution, No Derivative Works, Share Alike, etc. (Links to an external site.) or copyrighted. Be prepared to defend your use of copyrighted materials under Fair Use principle.

You are also required to have an accessible backup of your files – in the cloud, or on external hard drive – in case of file error problems.

This project is 15% of your overall grade

“The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.” – G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist