Week 1: Composition

Welcome

514 is going to be a fantastic course. Please review the syllabus.

This is the website we’ll use for class. There are plenty of links for you, you can follow along with the the class with week-by-week pages, and there are assignment reminders.

Please complete the Google Docs Form.

Assignments and tips will appear on the main 514 page. You can be notified of website updates/news via RSS or Twitter.

Join our 514 Google+ Community. This community has three categories: videos, assignments, and resources. As you complete assignments, please share the links to your YouTube videos to this community.

Each week, share one educational video or video resource. Reply to at least two classmates each week. Initial posts are due Wednesday, responses due on the following Sunday. Initial post addresses the prompt (1 point). Responses are respectful, and continue the conversation in a meaningful way (1 point). The initial post should be approximately 20-40 words.

 

Global Innovation Through Video

Watch Chris Anderson’s TED talk about how web video powers global innovation. TED makes their talks available to the world for free. More than 1400 TED Talks are now available, with more added each week. Be sure to spent some time listening other TED talks.

 

How Our Brain Processes

Please read this article: The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens. E-readers and tablets are becoming more popular as such technologies improve, but research suggests that reading on paper still boasts unique advantages. This research has implications for how we teach our students, both with text and with video.

Rules of Composition

There are a few simple, fundamental ways you can make your work look and feel more professional. In this project you will take 9 pictures with a digital still camera that demonstrates these shot types:

1. Close-up……………………………CU

2. Medium Shot………………………MS

3. Wide Shot………………………….WS

4. Establishing Shot…………………EST

5. Closure Shot………………………CLO

6. Reverse Shot………………………REV

7. Over-the-shoulder Shot………..OS

8. Point-of-View Shot………………POV

9. Cutaway/Insert Shot…………….INS

Look at these photos to review.

Types of Shots

Rule of Thirds

When composing a shot (photo or video), divide the frame into thirds. Imagine a tic-tac-toe board, and align important subjects with the lines. Watch the slideshow to learn:

Flickr

We talked briefly about Flickr in class. Here are details about it:

Flickr (pronounced “flicker”) is an image hosting and video hosting website, and web services suite that was created byLudicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, and effectively an online community, the service is widely used by photo researchers and by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media.[3]

The Verge reported in March 2013 that Flickr had a total of 87 million registered members and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded daily.[4] In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according to reporting sources.[5]