Technology
Here are some quick notes on the technology we used for this studio. The intent was not to jump into the most cutting edge equipment, rather to gather enough hardware and software that would be useful in the short time we had. This studio was not meant to be about the technology for its own sake, but to give students a feel for using contemporary tools for creation. In the end, students grasped several of the professional level tools very swiftly and we were able to spend less time on the nuts and bolts and more time on the art and expression.
Hardware:
Computers:
Video composition and editing was done on Macintosh Computers, including a new Macbook, a new Mac Mini, an older G5 Tower, a Macbook Pro and a pair of G4 powerbooks. The emphasis on Macs was partly due to their relative ease of use, their low barrier to quickly get working, and partly due to the availability of software and hardware.
Still Cameras:
Most shooting was done either on the instructor’s Nikon D50 or on a hand full of point-and-shoot digital cameras donated by Eyes Wide Open Worldwide. A few students brought their own digital SLR’s and point-and-shoot digital cameras as well.
Video Cameras:
We had a variety of video cameras, donated from The Now Device, The Turner Foundation and from Avetec. Most shooting was done on a Sony VX2100, a Sony TRV900 or a Canon GL2. All of these are miniDV cameras, a few years old and in the consumer to pro-sumer range of Standard Definition video.
Storage:
Images and video were captured directly onto external hard drives connected to the computers, via firewire or USB connections. Some content was moved around on pocket flash drives. Students ended up with a pretty large library of digital still images and captured video footage.
Presentation:
We had a 30″ LCD flat screen TV for in-studio review as well as a pair of 4,000 lumen digital video projectors. For projection surfaces we used an old style pulldown da-lite screen, and transparent pieces of fluted polypro board. The fluted polypro was used for the temporary and final installation. Also for the final presentation we had a much larger Sanyo flat screenTV, owned by the Westcott House, and several other projectors donated by the Turner foundation and Benjamin Steel. For in studio live mixing and mixing at the final presentation we used two Edirol V4 video mixers, provided by the Turner Foundation and The Now Device.
Software:
Most of the composition was done in Apple’s “Final Cut Pro”, a professional, non-linear editing suite. In final cut still images and video clips were combined, audio tracks were added and various filters were applied. The resulting files were DV compressed Quicktime movies for the most part.
Playback of the video was achieved primarily using Apple’s “Quicktime Pro”, though on some occasions we used “the Doer”, a custom video sequencing application developed and used exclusively by The Now Device.
We did have a few copies of Adobe photoshop to work with, and a few photo touch ups were done with it, but in most cases, still images were dropped into the Final Cut timeline without much preparation or correction.
One student brought in his own laptop and got himself up to speed video editing on a version of Adobe’s Premier. We were able to combine these videos with the Final Cut produced pieces without much fuss.