Lesson 6: Tell and Show: Manipulating Mass Media in Video Art
Over the next two weeks and lessons, we will integrate what we have learned with video and sound into a studio project that uses the format of an
interview as a point of departure. Video art is rich with examples of artists who transform journalistic tropes into art that uncovers or elucidates what is
often unseen in our culture.
Learning Objectives
Rift off of the concept of a formal interview
as a means to create art.
Learning Materials & Resources
MATERIALS
Storyboard Worksheet
http://xinsight.ca/tools/storyboard.html
Create a storyboard.
Formulate interview questions.
Over the next two weeks, create a threefive minute video piece that uses the
interview format as a point of departure.
TUTORIALS
There are no software-based tutorials for
this week. If you want to go ahead and
finish the last set on effects and transitions
early, feel free.
Combine video and sound in a deliberate
and effective way.
If you are using another software, feel free
to peruse other tutorials and do the ones
you feel relevant to your project.
Identify the connection between content
and the delivery method of video content
as content that has as much or maybe
more content than the actual content.
Here are some production-oriented videos
that offer suggestions on how to improve
your shots or develop other potentially
relevant techniques.
How To Storyboard
http://accad.osu.edu/womenandtech/Story
board%20Resource/
Shooting on the Diagonal
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/641592/co
How Learning will be Assessed (Methods for
Evaluation)
STUDIO PROJECT 4: INTERVIEW
(worth up to 15 points)
Use the personal interview format as a way to talk about an
issue. (One secret point of this exercise is to apply
awesome sound skills to video and use the medium to
present an issue of importance ). Consider how you, as a
technologically privileged member of society, can amplify
your concerns to the world. What is the power of this
medium? The rules: You must take a position on something,
or let persons to present positions, via interview format. You
don't have to use a tripod.
To prepare for shooting your video, you will need to
complete two pieces of process work. Completing these
exercises contributes to the process part of your grade for
this project. Decide how you will interpret the concept of an
interview and then formulate the questions or prompts for
your subject. Once you have decided on the concept, you
will also need to create a storyboard detailing the scenes of
your interview. The storyboard must have at least 10 cells.
Both interview questions and the storyboard must be posted
as a discussion AND placed into the drop box by the end of
Week 6.
Do not forget to thoughtfully comment at least two of your
mposition/
Reviewing the Law of Thirds
http://www.howcast.com/videos/1369-HowTo-Achieve-Good-Video-Composition
A Little More on Sound (Focus on second
half)
http://www.howcast.com/videos/3188-AFIScreenNation-Sound-Tips
Formulating Interview Questions
http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/in
terviews/questions.html
http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/in
terviews/open-ended-questions.html
http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/in
terviews/leading-questions.html
http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/in
terviews/tips.html
Interview Basics (This is traditionally how
people shoot interviews. For this project,
the idea is to play with that.)
http://www.howcast.com/videos/3191-AFIScreenNation-Interview-Basics
classmates’ storyboards and interview questions on the
discussion board.
Please answer the discussion questions below using
information from the readings as well as the assigned videos
to support your ideas.
DISCUSSION QUESTION 1
Please elaborate and explain McLuhans’s statement, “The
movie by sheer speeding up of the mechanical, carried us
from a world of sequence and connections to a world of
creative configuration and construction.” Use examples from
this week’s assigned video to illustrate of what might be
meant by creative configurations and construction with
respect to the artists’ manipulation of mass media.
DISCUSSION QUESTION 2
The medium is the message is a catch phrase in our culture
especially when we discuss new technologies. Please
describe instances in both your own experience and in the
videos that you have seen thus far in the course where the
content and the medium of a particular video or technology
were inseparable.
DISCUSSION QUESTION 3
How can media be “a prison without walls for its human
users?” Pleases give examples again from your own
experience and relevant examples of this from artists’
critique of mass media (if any) in piece that we watched for
this week.
READINGS
The Medium is the Message Marshall
McLuhan
Link to pdf
Read the following short articles to better
help you discuss the assigned videos.
How to Analyze Video Texts
http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/howconduct-close-analysis-media-text
On Reading a Video Text
http://www.medialit.org/readingroom/reading-video-text
VIEWING
Please screen the following videos.
Bjorn Melhus The Magic Glass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ugR_D
Qizp8&feature=related
Bjorn Melhus Deadly Storms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF0Ox9t
OqFU&feature=related
Candace Breitz Factum
http://vimeo.com/album/259786
Gillian Wearing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7y5uvy
hHgc
Julia Metzger and David Thorne It’s Not
My Memory of It
http://vimeo.com/1863049
http://www.meltzerthorne.com/itsnot
Nancy Holt and Richard Serra Boomerang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulv17G
HWaPM
Haroun Farocki Inextinguishable Fires
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7980892732782257479#docid
Haroun Farocki Between Two Wars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhxstXz
avtU&NR=1
I am aware that some of this is in German.
Brian Winston Reads the News Paper
Tiger TV
http://www.ubu.com/film/paper_tiger_winst
on.html
Dara Birnbaum Wonder Woman
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4y5e5_
dara-birnbaum-technologytransforma_shortfilms
Kristin Lucas Whatever the Mind Can
Conceive
http://www169.pair.com/klucas/whatever/
The Eternal Frame Ant Farm
http://www.ubu.com/film/ant_farm_eternal.
html
Explore the Atlas Group Website Walid
Raad (Click on Archives link.)
http://www.theatlasgroup.org/index.html
Harry Dodge Stanya Khan Can’t Swallow
It, Can’t Spit It Out
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/02/25/
arts/1194817108589/harry-dodge-andstanya-kahn.html
Documentary. Made primarily with iMovie:
Tarnation (2003/ Jonathan Couette)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLDQL
23nutw
Nam June Paik Global Groove
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/glob
al-grove/video/1/
Nam June Paik The Medium is the
Medium
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIBEasz
ndLA
SUGGESTED MATERIALS
Although not required you might want to
watch or listen to the following.
Professional Storyboarding
http://www.claytowne.com/beats-diggingditches/storyboard-tutorial-how-to-createstoryboards-for-film-video-and-television/
Using Photoshop to Storyboard
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/harrin
gton_richard/photoshop_making_storyboar
ds/video-tutorial