Sound & Motion class 2

the basics of video recording and video camera operation

Basic manual camera controls

Why? For more control of the image

Optics

what lenses do: organize light rays

• pin hole cameras
• circles of confusion
• angle of view
• aperture
• shutter speed (in video)
• depth of field
• focus

Color in electronic/digital systems

Electromagnetic spectrum [[1]]

Visible spectrum [[2]]

Wavelengths that our eye can perceive [[3]]

Pigment (subtractive) primaries – RYB (actually CMY) [[4]]

Optical (additive) primaries - RGB (color.osx) [[5]]

color bars are the optical primaries and their complements [[6]]

assumes white light with consistent amounts of each source light color

BUT

Every light source has its own characteristic amounts of each color of light [[7]]

our eyes compensate, the camera doesn’t

Tungsten (production lights) 3200 K

Fluorescent 34 – 4800K

Daylight 5600 – 7000

The job of white balance is to make sure white is white so colors are accurately reproduced

• To white balance our cameras, set Auto Lock/Hold on the back side in the center
• Push the white balance button until the V symbol appears
• Push the thumb wheel (while pointing at a white surface)
• It will blink for a few seconds and then stop

This will give you the camera’s best compensation for the mix of variously colored ambient light in the environment.

How the camera sees and reproduces color: [[8]] whitebalance.osx

However, you can tweak the white balance to achieve a certain effect: [[9]]

Video Recording

helical scan [[10]]

Basic video editing with Premiere

Camerawork

Hand held vs. tripod

aspect ratio:

• 4:3 for SD
• 16:9 for HD

Scale, POV, angle, Composition

Shooting for the edit

(screen Conventional Space)

Reading for next week

Zettl, Sight Sound and Motion on composing for the screen

in class exercise

choose two of the shots required in Asn. 1 and compose/record them several different ways edit them together

Intro to Asn. 1

how to digitize footage and export movies in Premiere

• put the camcorder on AC power and attach the firewire cable to the computer
• open Premiere
• choose New Project and create a directory on the hard drive of the computer you are working on or on your own external hard drive that you have connected. Do not work across the network on your server space.
• File/Capture will bring up a window with controls that will allow you to stop and start your camcorder from the computer.
• press PLAY in the digitizing window, this should start the camcorder.
• Locate the spot you want to start digitizing, roll back a couple of seconds, play and press the red record button.
• hit the REC button again when you want to stop digitizing.
• in the dialog box, name the file; it should appear in the clip bin window.
• drag the clip into the timeline, highlight it, and choose File/Export/Movie to create a quicktime movie with the naming convention specified in the Assignment 1 description.
• default settings should be OK (DV/DVCpro - NTSC; millions of colors; 720x480; 29.97 frame rate, etc.)
• drag the movie into the /Classfolders/Drop folder