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Tell a Story in Ten Frames

Assignment

This is a pretty straightforward, lightweight individual assignment. Tell a story using either 10 still images, 10 short video segments, or a combination of both. You choose the topic, the characters, etc. You can use any tool you'd like to achieve it--slideshows, collage, video, PowerPoint, or something else. Once you're done, post it to the # Mini-things channel.

YouTube: Tell a Story in Ten Frames

Backstory

The idea for a story in ten frames came together organically. As I was thinking through initial ideas, I became aware that this project lends itself to make some very complex stories. I was thinking, children's books are illustrated in ten frames; people purchase homes in ten frames; most magazines, news, or online articles might not even make ten frames... So, I dialed it back. Well, at least I thought I did until I started producing.

The idea for "Meditations" came to me in the park. I thought I was going in one direction, but after some time outdoors, I ended up here. The story itself is loose, and I think it plays to the soundtrack and the essence of mediation... let yourself go and leave the world behind.

Process

To start things out, I first located media resources. After I knew media was available, I started producing. I first needed to sync up the original video with the new soundtrack. I imported both of these into Adobe Premiere. I cut the soundtrack to a start and end, then started trimming down the video. I started at the beginning, slowly modifying along the way. I spent some quality time in the first minute of the video.

The soundtrack lends itself to have visual emphasis, so that was a piece of the challenge - syncing the sounds and sights up. I thought of this during the creative process. I went through the audio track and placed markers at points of emphasis throughout the soundtrack. I then adjusted the video timings using the "rate adjustment" tool. The markers were used as markers or guides to sync everything. The video was extended and shorted as need, even tossed some parts.

While adjusting the video, I noticed that there were some slow zooms in and out. This would cause issues with a mask unless I matched them. So, I went through and placed markers on the video denoting zooms. While doing this, I located a frame to export to Photoshop to create the image mask. In Photoshop, I outlined the person, and filled it in black, and then exported the image mask back into Premiere. I then layered, masked, and synced zooms.

I then imported the ten frames and synced those to the soundtrack using the markers created earlier. I circled back to adjust the opacity to the video changes.

Oh, and early in the process, I created the title sequence - as short as it is; and then crated the credits to close out the project.

Time & Stretch

This project took 8 hours. I anticipated 4 hours. As the creative process goes, once I started remixing the original video and mixing in the original music, new ideas came into play. Throughout the many projects up to this point, each has allowed me to develop and learn new techniques. This project allowed me to combine multiple techniques, from photoshop to premiere. It is empowering when the tools facilitate the creative process and are not a barrier. I would have liked to experiment and try to implementing a "glitch" technique into one of my next projects. This one has a lot already going on... I even reversed a couple of videos - forward then backwards - that was fun. Still working to get a hang of the image masks.

Tools

  • Pexels
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Premiere Pro

Attributions

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