"A Dimension of Mind: Film" - Part 5: Finals

Round 5 – Finals

No explicit instructions here. Take what remains of your individual film budgets and use it up on this. Combine all that you’ve learned about storytelling, character, lighting, and sound to create a film with a story or an idea in it that YOU really want to tell —for your own sake, not for the assignment’s. The final film should approach four minutes in length, and needs to have some character, some sound and some lighting (you can’t just revert to the easier assignments and count it as your final)

Narrative Photography Workshop: 1 - Camera Mechanics.

Narrative Photography Workshop from KCAI (The Kansas City Arts Institute) - Level 1

This workshop deals with staged photography. From it you will learn to tell stories through the use of props, sets, costumes, and acting. You will also learn to operate a digital camera. Though this is a photography course these lessons apply to the moving image as well as the still image.


EQUIPMENT:

All that is necessary for this class is a digital camera with a manual focus setting and an adjustable shutter speed.

Assignment 1 - Camera Mechanics

Terms:

ISO - The speed with which the film exposes. A smaller number represents a slower exposure and a crisper image. A large number means represents a faster exposure and a grainier image.

Shutter Speed-The amount of time that the shutter opens and the film exposes. A smaller fraction means less time and less light.

Aperture - The size of the opening for light. A larger number means a smaller hole and less light.

Part 1 - Depth of Field

Find a subject to photograph with a distinct foreground middle ground and background. Fist set your aperture to it's lowest setting so that you have a narrow depth of field and adjust ISO (film speed) or shutter speed appropriately to compensate. Photograph your subject first with the fore ground in focus then with the middle ground in focus and finally with the background in focus. Next set your aperture to it's highest setting and adjust the ISO or shutter speed. With your aperture at it's highest setting photograph your subject so that all parts are in focus.

Part 2 - Shutter Speed

Take three photos to experiment with the effect of shutter speed. First photograph an action with a highs shutter speed in order to freeze the motion. Next photograph that same action or a different action with a slow shutter speed in order to blur the motion. Last Take a photo a night or in dark space with a very long exposure, if your camera has the a bulb setting (marked with a B) use that.

Narrative Photography Workshop: 4-9

Narrative Photography Workshop from KCAI (The Kansas City Arts Institute) - Level 1

This workshop deals with staged photography. From it you will learn to tell stories through the use of props, sets, costumes, and acting. You will also learn to operate a digital camera. Though this is a photography course these lessons apply to the moving image as well as the still image.

EQUIPMENT:

All that is necessary for this class is a digital camera with a manual focus setting and an adjustable shutter speed.

Assignments 4-9 have only one step apiece

Assignment 4 - Narrative Tableau

For this project produce one photograph of a scene from a story. Use costumes sets and props to communicate the story clearly. A viewer should be able to “read” the information in the photograph to figure out the story.

Assignment - 5 Miniature

Create a scene using miniature objects. You can play with scale by including life scale objects. Photo manipulation is allowed.

Assignment 6 - Sequence

Tell a simple narrative in a sequence of photographs. Can be anywhere from 3 photos to 12 photos.

Assignment 7 - Character

Do a series of five portraits of the same person as five different characters. Try to choose characters along a theme. Communicate the characters using costumes or makeup as well as through their actions and body language.

Assignment 8 - Childhood Photo

Find some photographs from your childhood. Do something with these photographs to recontextualize them. You could manipulate the originals or stage a photograph in someway based on the originals.

Assignment 9 - Final

For your final project take what you've learned about set, characters, costume, props, lighting, and narrative and produce a final photograph or series. You may use photoshop, you may do a series of any size, stretch the boundaries of “photography” and “narrative.”

Narrative Photography Workshop: 2 - Faces

Narrative Photography Workshop from KCAI (The Kansas City Arts Institute) - Level 1

This workshop deals with staged photography.  From it you will learn to tell stories through the use of props, sets, costumes, and acting.  You will also learn to operate a digital camera.  Though this is a photography course these lessons apply to the moving image as well as the still image.

EQUIPMENT:

All that is necessary for this class is a digital camera with a manual focus setting and an adjustable shutter speed.

Assignment 2 - Faces

Part 1

Capture a series of portraits of a person expressing 10 emotions.  Include only their shoulders and up in the photographs.  The focus of this study is facial expression so do not include hand or body language in these photos.

Part 2

Similar to part 1, however this time do a series of 10 self portraits showing how you express emotions.

Narrative Photography Workshop: 3 - Body Language

Narrative Photography Workshop from KCAI (The Kansas City Arts Institute) - Level 1

This workshop deals with staged photography.  From it you will learn to tell stories through the use of props, sets, costumes, and acting.  You will also learn to operate a digital camera.  Though this is a photography course these lessons apply to the moving image as well as the still image.

EQUIPMENT:

All that is necessary for this class is a digital camera with a manual focus setting and an adjustable shutter speed. 

Assignment 3 - Body Language 

Part 1

Find a location from which you can covertly photograph people interacting.  Take at least 10 photos to study how people behave when the are not aware that they are being observed.  You must photograph the from the same location looking at the same space between all 10 photographs.  Find a place where you know people will be passing through and wait for subjects to come into frame.

Part 2

Go to place with many people interacting.  Try to capture people behaving naturally.  Unlike part 1 you may move about.  In this set of 10 photographs you should practice capturing events spontaneously as well as how to compose photographs quickly based on you environment and what is happening.

Part 3

Hang a sheet and an set up a single light source such that a person behind the sheet will cast a crisp silhouette onto the sheet.  Capture as series of 10 photographs of a model's silhouette expressing 10 different emotions only through their body language.

Part 4

With the same set up as part 3 study the body language of a pair of people.  Capture a series of 10 photographs experimenting with the body language of couples using the silhouettes of two people.

Part 5

Cover two people in fabric sheets to conceal their bodies.  You could either have them under one sheet or two separate sheets.  Produce a set of 10 photographs of this pair interacting out is a space (Non studio). 

Submitting a Lesson Plan: Fun and Easy

I am committed to seeing Open Art School get off the ground.  If you have taken an art class, then you have a lesson plan to share and I want to help you do so every step of the way.

Even if you think you're no writer, and even if you don't know what kind of format to describe your class in, you can still submit a lesson plan.  There are several ways:

1. If you have a lesson plan that you would like to share, or even just a vague notion of one that you'd like to suggest to me or another editor, I am inviting you to email me with whatever you'd care to give us.  Eventually a special email address is going to be made, but until then you can send an email to my "professional" email address — ThomasBoguszewski@gmail.com
2. The Open Art School forum is now online thanks to my good friend Michael McConnell.  The forum is intended to be a place for the authors of this blog (myself and a few other editors) to re-post lesson plans that are posted here so that they can be discussed in an in-depth way.  We are going to make sure that a board on the forums especially for "lesson suggestions" is made, and if you suggest a lesson plan and we use it, you will be given full credit if you want it.

I want to hear from anybody who has enjoyed a college art class.  If you enjoyed it, so will somebody else —let's bring it to them :)

—Thomas Boguszewski

Why Open Art School exists - Thomas' Story

Let me tell you a bit about myself:

All my life I've been an aspiring and practicing artist.  I was encouraged to be creative and draw and paint and act and make movies ever since I was a kid.

However, Minnesota is full of some awful "normal" public schools and some amazing experimental public schools.  The first school I ever went to was not equipped to handle the arts and it didn't want to be (unless hockey could be considered an art), so when I was ten years old my parents pulled me out of the local school and found a very special public art and science school.  I'll admit that I was totally lucky, but there's something in this story that we all can learn:

• You have to take your education into your own hands and fight for what you need, because not all educators are thinking hard about your best interest.   Look elsewhere than you are, don't accept "normal."

From that point on, I had a great art education and eventually I went to the Perpich Arts High School in Minnesota, which is arguably a miniature art college.  There I studied Visual Arts, but I also had a passion for filmmaking, which was part of a different department in the school (called media arts).  Eventually I was able to run around, pull strings, make friends, and do other gregarious, proactive things so that I could make movies if I wanted to, and by the end of senior year I was given a $100 grant to make a movie *within* the visual arts department. 

• Never tell yourself, "I can't." Never take "no" for an answer.
• Just because you aren't enrolled in something, that doesn't mean you can't do it.
• You will find people who want to help you, and you may even make friends out of foes.

After I graduated High School I went off to New York City to study at certain a famous film school that will remain unnamed.  For the first year, I studied liberal arts and had no art classes at all.

• There are people who would practically kill to take art classes, but don't get them.

Then summer rolled around, and I finally began to take film classes.  I learned BOATLOADS during a crammed summer session that almost killed me.  Then when the next semester of school rolled around, normal-paced film school seemed almost boring by comparison, and after spending two years in high school fighting to squeeze film into a visual art setting, I found that the film setting was pretty much devoid of satisfactory visual arts classes.  The irony is palpable, hipsters rejoice, c'est la vie.  I decided to suck it up and do what I did last time - be proactive, pull strings, snoop around and fight for what I want.

• If you have a LOT of artistic interests, you're NEVER going to be satisfied with a single course of action (especially if most people find your interests to be eclectic or conflicted in some way).
• The only way you can get what you want is by looking for it on your own.

I made it halfway through Sophomore year when the rug was pulled out from under me and my family's entire financial situation fell through.  Now I'm stuck taking a leave of absence and if I can't get a mysterious briefcase full of glowing currency by next fall I won't be going back to that school at all —for Visual art, Liberal Art, Media Art or otherwise.

• You can blame capitalism, socialism, the government, the American post-secondary education system, the Bavarian Illuminati, your racial/ethnic out-group of choice, New York City itself, other countries, God, the Devil, or even the goddess Fortuna or Grand Ol' Discordia for your problems; but the fact is s*it happens and you gotta carry on.  
• If you don't carry on, then you're letting "them" win, and the blame rests on your own shoulders.

So then I went back to Minnesota to celebrate Christmas and plan my exit strategy.  At this point I had taken up a pair of generally uncreative projects because I needed cash.  I was web-chatting with a friend and moping about my situation.  I figured that I'd probably never take another film class again, and I knew that even if I did, I'd just be sending myself down a path that leads away from the lifestyle I want (which is filled, for some reason, with history, puppetry, animation, graphic novels, philosophy, painting, and a bunch of other creative, educational, poetic things) in favor of a lifestyle that leaves me editing trident gum commercials and drawing pigeons with capes forever —doing it all "for the money."

I thought, "wouldn't it be great if there were a way to take real, well thought-out illustration courses in my free time, while studying a different discipline elsewhere and/or working for a living?"

Then it hit me.
It WOULD be great, and it can happen

Q:  Why don't people educate themselves?
A:  Because one can't know what one doesn't know.  You always need a teacher!
Q:  Why can't we be each other's teachers?
A:  We can!

I can say from experience that art college is expensive, often too expensive.  I can also say from experience that a lot of the courses you take in college are comprised of activities that you could have done at home with a few friends for critique and a small investment for materials.

Q:  So why DON'T people just do all this "art school" stuff at home?  Why do we pay lots of money for it?
A:  Because until today it's never been easy to take the experience and wisdom of teachers —the organization and insight of their lesson plans— and distribute it to students for free.

But shucks, it's 2011 now.  The age of the internet has already arrived.  It's time to get busy.
And those who are looking to open the world of education can do better than the vague instructions of WikiHow.  There are platforms available for posting art, holding meetings, giving demonstrations, combining text, images, video and sound into one place... and networking it all together.

That's what this project is about:  taking the capabilities that have existed for years online and combining them into a network that allows us as self-driven students to take the capabilities that have existed for years IN US and nurturing them so that we can become better educated, more practiced artists.

For those of you who read all this, thank you for listening to my story.  I hope you stick around and make the Open Art School a part of yours.

—Thomas Boguszewski