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Naming Convention: 02_Connections_2024FA_Your_First_and_Last_Name
Due: February 15th – [counter date=2016/02/15:08:00:00] [remaining-dhtimer] left before this assignment is due.[/counter]
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In the next few classes, we will be talking about change and juxtaposition and how they affect the structure of a piece of time based art.
We will be experimenting with connecting images in different manners to see how they will affect your audience’s perception. We will do this using still images and the techniques described below.
In this assignment you will create a 60 to 90 second piece where you will explore the how the interaction of different emotional images affects the viewers perception of whatʼs going on.
Segment 1 – Hitchcock’s Pure Cinema part 1
In the video above Hitchcock describes “Pure Cinema” the act of changing a single shot drastically changes how the viewer see’s the character in the sequence.
In the second segment you will edit together:
- An image of a character looking at something.
- A shot of what the character is looking at.
- A reaction shot of the same character.
Segment 2 – Hitchcock’s Pure Cinema part 2
Repeat the above shots but change the shot in step 2 so that the audience has an entirely different perception of the character than they did in the first sequence.
Segment 3 – The Kuleshov Effect
In the experiment which would eventually bear his name Klueshov inter-cut an image of Mozhukhin, a well known actor at the time, with three separate images: a bowl of soup, a woman in a coffin and an enticing woman. The audience believed that the actor was experiencing a different emotion for each of these separate images even though the shot was the same in all three scenes.
- You will need to either record or capture a neutral image of a subject.
- You will then add another image that is heavily charged.
- Return to the original neutral image.
The idea is to make our perceptions of the neutral image change with inclusion of the strongly emotional image.
Segment 4 – Pudovkin’s principle of contrast
Placing two different shots next to each other that are vastly different in some way. This could be visually such as a changes in brightness, saturation or shapes, of it could be in subject or emotion – happy to sad, rich to poor for example. These drastic changes often make the narrative part of the brain come up with an idea or opinion to justify the change.
Cut together two images that have a high amount of contrast either visually or symbolically to create a third idea in the viewer’s mind.
Segment 5 – Pudovkin’s principle of Parallelism
Here an image or idea is used to bridge to separate scenes. Graphically you could cut from a moon being sliced by clouds to an eye cut by a razor. Both of these share the visual of a circular object being cut by a thin line. This could also be done with an object or idea such as a shot of cows grazing in a ranch to a juicy hamburger both share the idea of a cow and viewers make the connection between the two in their minds.
Find two or more images that share a similar subject that, when cut together cause the audience to see that subject in a different way.
Segment 6 – Pudovkin’s principle of Symbolism
Cutting between two scenes with the intent of creating a symbolic link between the two. For instance a shot of ants from over head cuts to a helicopter shot of a city. Here viewers will make the symbolic connections of the worker ants to the people in the city going to their jobs and think about how insignificant we are. If instead, the shot of the ants is replaced with an animation of electricity traveling through a circuit board the viewers will connect the precision of the circuit’s engineering with the order of city.
Find two images that are somehow similar visually that when cut together create and idea in the viewer’s mind.
Segment 7 – Scott McCloud’s Non-Sequentor
In our previous reading Scott McCloud talked about six different transitions from panel to panel. The last was non-sequentor or two images that are unrelated in some cases so much so that in some cases they seem ridiculous.
Create three separate sequences of 4 images each of images that have nothing in common. Separate each sequence with black and title each one in Premiere Pro with a random word or group of words that also has nothing to do with the images.
Other Notes
Since music is such an emotional stimulus these pieces will be silent – allow the images to do all the work. Please experiment with neutral as well as emotional charged images to see how the sequencing changes the overall feel of the pieces.
The point of this piece is to begin to understand how the juxtaposition of images changes our perception as a whole so please experiment and continue to experiment through out the time you have to work on this project to create the most effect examples of each segment.Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Five techniques of editing
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Your 60 to 90 second piece consisting of the best examples of the 7 segments above which can be played on the instructorʼs computer.
Remember: Please focus on how the juxtaposition of different images affects you an other viewers intellectually and emotionally.
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By next class: Please bring your hard drive and a selection of about 50 or so images to start working on.
Due date: Your final piece in the form of an exported mp4 on your external hard drive to copy over to my drive at the beginning of class.
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You will be graded on the following items please make sure you pay attention to them.
The piece must be 60 to 90 seconds long and contain at least 20 different images and no sound.
You should reuse at least one image multiple times to see how it is re-contextualized depending on what comes before and after it.
You will need to collect the images you would like to edit together using the resources which we will go over in next class (Do not use only google image search for this project).
Use images that have varying degrees of emotional impact not just incredibly emotional and plainly neutral.
You will also be graded on the craftsmanship of your work
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