Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Spring Digital Photography Courses

Digital Photographic Arts

Art 328-001

***NOTE TIME CHANGE*** 3:00 pm – 5:45 pm MW

Faculty: Chris Jordan

Learn essentials of digital workflow from image capture through print. Discover new modes of picture making in the digital realm. Gain mastery over image-editing tools (Photoshop). Be inspired by contemporary photographic artists and develop your own body of work.

Pre-requisites: Art 218, Art 224, or permission of the instructor.


Photography: Creative Studio Lighting

Art 408-001

12:00 pm - 2:45 pm MW

Faculty: Chris Jordan

Learn how creative studio lighting can transform your photography. Learn fundamentals for still life, portraiture, location work and other applications. Explore natural, hot light and strobe light sources, reflectors, light modifiers and more. Develop a body of work exploring the use of light as an expressive photographic medium. The course will primarily be taught digitally, but skills also apply to film.

Pre-requisites: Art 318, Art 224, or permission of the instructor.


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Movie Poster Project


For this project, create a movie poster for your video project. The finished poster should have a strong design that is in keeping with a professionally designed movie poster. Study existing movie posters and look to them as design templates to help you with image ideas, layout and typography decisions. The finished piece should look convincing as a movie poster.

A great catalog of movie posters (the good, bad and ugly) can be found here:


Other useful resources:

Fonts for billing blocks (the credits appearing in movie posters)
  1. Create your background graphics in Adobe Photoshop and/or Illustrator
  2. Layout and Typography should be set in InDesign
  3. You will turn in contributing photoshop file, and final PDF output file
  4. Design the poster for a size of 11"x14" at 300dpi.
  5. Be mindful of bleeds and build these into your design
  6. Make sure all graphics are of adequate resolution to support final print size
Final Posters will be evaluated on:
  1. Correct file setup (file types, size, resolution, color space, etc.)
  2. Correct use of applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, inDesign)
  3. Fresh, creative, exciting graphic ideas
  4. Strength of design (layout, typography) that is convincing as a movie poster
Production/Due Dates:
  • Production Critique 11/15
  • Final Poster Due 11/22
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Monday, October 18, 2010

Class recommendations: Videos

Prince and Cinderalla

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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Project 4: Video Art

Due Dates:

Monday 10/18:
  • email (cjordan@as.ua.edu) two links for experimental videos that have inspired you
  • story board
Monday 10/25:
  • Video footage due, captured / converted to .mov format
Monday 11/1:
  • Initial cut due for screening critique
Monday 11/8:
  • Final Videos Due
Additional dates TBD

For this project, create an experimental art video ranging in length from 1-3 minutes.

The video should have a distinct theme, concept or even a plot. This is entirely up to you—think way outside the box and push beyond the expected.

Its advisable to watch and study many examples of video art projects for inspiration. While Hollywood films are often tied to obvious linear plots, with experimental video there is no need to do something so rigid. Be abstract, poetic, suggestive, wild, weird...but always keep quality in mind.

Basic steps:
  1. Arrange for video equipment (should be done by now)
  2. Watch a lot of video art
  3. Brainstorm your ideas... develop the "story"
  4. Storyboard ideas... pre-plan your general shots and sequences
  5. Arrange actors, shooting sessions
  6. Shoot footage
  7. Capture footage... your footage must be captured into .mov file
  8. Edit footage with iMovie
  9. Score video in Garage Band (add music, sound effects, etc.)
  10. Output final movie file

Check out these links to get you going with some possible approaches. Others can be found at the site (link located on the bar to the right)... some ranging from profound to clever, to downright odd.




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