http://www.wac.ucla.edu/Bishop

jbishop@ucla.edu

Tiff Graham TA

This course presents an overall strategy for making a video program using small format video. Inexpensive video is treated as a serious production format with its own strengths and characteristics; however, the concepts and techniques covered in this course are applicable to other media. The course covers the fundamentals of field recording (camera, lighting, sound), basic approaches to editing (organizing raw footage, constructing a program, presenting the finished work), and conceptualization.

Grades in the course are based on attendance, turning in assignments on time, demonstrating through your work that you are actively thinking about the subject.

Requirements and Expectations

Each student is required to complete a video project of 3-5 minutes duration. This includes a one page typed proposal due 10/16, screening the final product in class 12/8, and turning it in either as a DVD or Internet video stream. EVERYONE MUST PUT SOMETHING UP ON YOUTUBE IN THE FIRST THREE WEEKS.

In addition there are two in class exercises, four short assignments, and two mandatory on-line tutorials (in Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro).

Class attendance and participation are also required.

Everyone needs an email address!

My website contains articles about video, a page of links related to camcorder production and Final Cut editing, and lots more.

This is not a class in Final Cut Pro. You are expected to learn the basic operations of the program on your own. The FCP tutorial is a good place to start. There is on-line help on the computers, and a variety of FCP How-to books in the lab. The keyboards have been replaced with FCP specific ones that have all the operations labeled which simplifies using the program. The more time you spend fooling around with the basic operations, the more fluid you will become in using FCP to express your ideas.

The same is true for cameras. Every minute you spend shooting makes you better.

Schedule (subject to infinite variation) It is very likely that we will do one or more multi-cam shoots of garden theater performances during class.

Week 1

The short film. Resources. Lens, image, and video lexicon

Film language. FCP Tutorial Quiz First assignment—camera vocabulary & edit

Week 2

Movement Footage exercise in class. Second assignment— edit to music

First assignment DUE, screen first assignment. Editing to music, visual fits sound

Week 3

Sound- what it means and how it works in video. Mike placement, ambience.

Second assignment DUE, screen second assignment. Editing sound.

Week 4

Person on the Street Day. Third assignment—edit street clips

DVDSP Tutorial Quiz Talk about street shoot, ethics and legal issues in video

Week 5

Video, DVD, streaming. Video as performance versus video as literature

Third assignment due Watch Street edits. Editing speech.

Week 6

Degrees of Freedom

Film style versus multi-cam for performance. Dealing with music

Week 7

Genre and style, implicit meaning of form

Still images and titles Fourth assignment—moving a still image

Week 8

Fourth assignment due screen still image moves Filters, effects and transitions

Thanksgiving

Week 9

Sound mix and color correction

Week 10

Whatever is left to be said

Eat donuts and screen final projects