Today’s Plan:
- Rule of Thirds
- Syllabus
- Homework
First Day: Rule of Thirds
I wanted to open class with an exercise to give you a sense of the kinds of things we’ll be working on this semester. So, first, a mini-lecture.
I consider the sentence to be the most fundamental, stand alone, unit of writing. It identifies a character and describes their action, often providing context along the way.
What is the most fundamental unit of video? The shot. The shot, of course, comes from photography. A quick definition might be how we line up, or frame, the camera. Framing a shot means identifying a subject. And the way we line up a subject starts to tell a story about them. It obviously isn’t as clear as it is in writing a sentence; but the angle, the lighting, the positioning we choose informs the action, provides context, and/or establishes mood.
The most common shot, the most basic photographic syntax, is the rule of thirds. A quick video.
Quick Assignment:
- Find a partner
- Learn their name
- Go outside and take their picture. Practice lining up your shot using the rule of thirds
- Submit your photo to Canvas
Syllabus
Let’s take a look.
Homework: Intro Video Assignment
Two things:
- Complete the First Day Survey
- Shoot some video (see below)
For your first night’s homework, I want you to shoot and edit a very short video of yourself. Introduce us to something you can do, or something you like, something that you feel makes you unique. This is meant as a low-stakes, diagnostic assignment.
Teaching writing is always tricky, because you never know someone’s previous history with/relationship to writing. People come into a class with widely divergent experiences. I find this is even more so with video. My guess is at least a few people in the class are aspiring or experienced filmmakers and a few people in the class have never shot more than a few seconds of video (we can talk about the differences between film and video later). Some of you probably have experience multi-track editing in Audacity. That sentence probably makes some of you feel a bit panicked. Don’t panic. As I said in the syllabus, this course assumes no previous experience with video. I’ll walk us through every step of the process. But, before I do that, I want a sense of where to start. That’s what this mini-assignment if for.
I want you to shoot three different ten second clips of yourself talking or doing something. This can be eating your favorite food, playing a video game, petting a dog, walking, lifting, running, whatever. I want to be able to work with those clips in class on Wednesday–so I would like you to upload those clips to a Google Drive so you can easily access them in class on Wednesday.
This project might require help from a partner if you do not already own a tripod, because I DO NOT WANT YOU TO BE HOLDING YOUR CAMERA WHILE YOU SHOOT. That is the only strict rule for this assignment.
TL;DR: 3 clips of yourself. 10 seconds each.
