Project 2

PROJECT 2

Due March 6th, at the beginning of class.

For this project I want you to create a short, edited work that builds upon PROJECT #1 (the still project).

Your finished video should be at least 80 seconds long. It’s okay to import additional imagery (stills or footage), as long as it’s imagery you’ve generated yourself, or imagery generated by others that you’ve manipulated beyond reasonable recognition. You don’t have to stick to your original theme from the still project if you can think of something better to replace it.

Your final edit should be done in Premiere (or Final Cut, etc) using multiple video clips rendered from After Effects. Your edit should feel worked on and cared for; the viewer should appreciate the pacing, the tempo, the way new information is revealed over time.

Successful projects will contain some sense of journey. Your goal is to transcend the still image from Project #1 and cause the viewer to experience a larger world, either real or abstract or both.

EXPECTATIONS: Technically, you’ll be employing keyframes to animate the various transformation properties (such as Rotation, Scale, Opacity, Position, etc.)  One of your tasks is to really dive into keyframe animation and make it work in your composition. My expectation is that you’ll reach a point in this project where your use of these tools isn’t random, arbitrary, or mindlessly serendipitous (I love mindful serendipity,) but purposeful and skillful.

Try to make the edit and animation feel like you want it to feel. You can only do this by carefully managing your edit and keyframes well. Be as ambitious as your imagination allows. Please don’t hesitate to email me asking how to do ambitious things you can’t figure out on your own! Those are kinda like my favorite emails in the world.

Feel free to go longer than the minimum running time of 1 minute 20 seconds. In the end, the work itself should really determine its own length. Think about pacing: what’s really the right speed for this or that passage? And how does one passage relate to the next? Time is one of your mediums here.

Before beginning, try to make some structural decisions as far as time passage goes in your edit. How does time unfold? Is it repetitive? Is it circular? Is it chronological? Is it modular or compartmentalized? Is it a combination of these? How do you reveal imagery and their relationships over time? What passages move more quickly than others? Choices to those questions will have a huge impact on how a viewer experiences the work.

  • At least 1 minute 20 seconds (80 seconds).
  • 1280×720 resolution.
  • Edited in a program like Premiere based on multiple video clips rendered from After Effects
  • Compress final video using Handbrake (see instructions here) or Media Encoder or simply After Effects