Starting Project 1: Frames in the film

The task is to tell a story using just five frames. First I thought of Cinderella but would it go into only five frames? -- and so many people to draw. Then Jack and Jill was mentioned in passing and I had a go at that but it's too short. I found illustrations on Wikipedia . . .

This gave me the idea of looking for illustrations on the web that could be used instead of drawing the frames, so I went looking for Cinderella images, and ended up watching the beginning of a new version of Cinderella on Youtube (you never know where you'll fetch up on an OCA course) . . . This would be good for analyzing frames, will keep the link here as a reminder to go back.

Meanwhile, the next thing to do is to draw the Cinderella story in five frames.

iMovie '09 book

The iMovie '09 version of Jeff Carlson's book (May 31 2009) is available at http://www.amazon.com/iMovie-09-iDVD-Mac-QuickStart/dp/0321601327/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256317311&sr=8-1

and his companion blog is at http://jeffcarlson.com/imovie/.

The '08 version of the software and the book is enough for me to digest for now. I went out and took ten minutes of video yesterday and can see there's a long way to go.

An iMovie book

I had a chance to borrow this book for a couple of weeks while in the US. It's well written and clear and has the information I want. The first chapter consists of advice on things to look for and things to avoid when buying video cameras (notice avoidance of the word c--c--d-r). There's also a section on the practical basics of making movies. And then the greater part is about iMovie.

I'd tried iMovie before and got tied up in knots, this book makes it easy so I had no hesitation in buying it. A bonus with purchase is access to the free online edition which seems to me a much better deal than Kindle.

P.S. 26.12.2009 -- it's not such a good deal after all. You are required to sign up and give a pile of information, and then the online version is available to you for a limited time only, I think it's a month but can't remember exactly. I declined the deal and was annoyed by it.

Why video?

I arrived home on Friday after being away for a month, and along with the pile of mail I found the OCA Digital Film Production course pack.

Generally I've avoided photography, because as a painter it's too easy to slip into bad habits and take a snap instead of the much harder work of drawing. I've tried to explain to people how drawing from life is different to photography but it's no use, I can't put it into words. It's just a different medium expressing different things.

Rembrandt, Jan Six's Bridge

I do have a very basic camera but I'm not serious about photography. The occasional "serious" pictures I attempt are utterly different to anything I would draw or paint. Other than that I use it mainly for taking pictures of my drawings and paintings, and more recently, logbook and sketchbook pages for uploading to Flickr.

So that's photography, in the main it's not for me, though I love looking at other people's photos and I follow certain photographers with great interest.

Video is different again. Now you have the added and different elements of time and sound. To me there's something very exciting about it. It's also become a lot more accessible in the last year or so, as video cameras have improved and got cheaper and especially with the editing capabilities of the Mac. It reminds me of those exciting days when desktop publishing was suddenly within reach of everyone. I'm sure the PC is fine too, but if I find it cumbersome for word processing I dread to think what editing a video would be like.

So here goes on the OCA Digital Film Production course. I'm not actually intending to make films, a few well-constructed ten-minute videos will be fine to go on with. I've had a project in mind since before signing up and I'm devouring the course book with that in mind.