Stuck at home? Want to make a video about the environment?
We've put together resources to help you create films on your own or with friends. Each assignment contains student examples, technical instructions and ideas to work as a group or on your own.
We would love to see what you make! Email us for directions on how to send.
The majority of the media environment is fast paced and attention grabbing, it’s part of our consumer driven culture. This assignment is to help you slow down and see what is right in front of you. Explore your environment with your camera like an artist with a sketchbook. Things that seemed boring become fascinating as you look longer and in more detail.
Look for shadows, reflections, emptiness, density, color, and light.
Always keep an eye on where the light is coming from and adapt to it.
Experiment with camera angles. Get close, hold your camera low to the ground or climb up to gaze down, don’t be afraid to move around to get the right angle. If using a phone, shoot horizontally whenever you can. Zoom with your body, not with the zoom function on your camera (when possible)
Learn more by watching this Lens on Climate Change video.
We would love to see what you make! Upload your videos to youtube or vimeo and send us a link. We have many events and we may include your work!
Gather footage from a group of your friends into a shared online folder. Each of you makes a 1 minute film from the shared footage, or one person volunteers to be the editor of your collaborative film. Watch your movies together!
Tips and Hints: You can use Google Drive if you have access to that.
Watch your films together either online, or set up a screening.
Reflect afterwards: What is surprising? How would you do it differently next time? Hatch a new plan!
A great example of an ongoing collaborative film: https://yourviewsfilm.com/
We would love to see what you make! Upload your videos to youtube or vimeo and send us a link. We have many events and we may include your work!
Stop Motion Animation involves taking a photograph of objects or characters, moving them slightly, and taking another photograph. When you play back the images, the objects or characters appear to move on their own. You can literally animate anything! The most common examples are paper cut outs, objects, people or clay.
If you work as a group find a way to create visual or thematic connections between your group members. This can be a video version of an “exquisite corpse”. The connections you find could be a common object, technique, or location, it is up to you! Stop motion is time intensive, so aim for 30 seconds each.
Assemble your videos into a timeline in an editing app and watch your movie!
“Exquisite corpse”....a game where each player takes turns writing or drawing on a sheet of paper, folding it to hide their contribution, and then passing it to the next player for the next contribution.
Come up with a plan. How will the object or character move through the space?
Here is one way: a cut out circle bounces through the frame or a goldfish cracker swims in S shapes as if swimming in a pond being observed from above.
Gather or make your objects and props.
Tips and Hints: You can use found objects that in shape or texture allude to something else than what they are. For example, sandpaper as the background for a beach; a plastic bottle cap for bubbles.
Set up a backdrop. This could be a wall or piece of cardboard. Decide if you will shoot above or straight on. Feel free to decorate your background as well, give your objects an environment.
Shoot! You can use your phone, a camera or an ipad.
Tips and Hints
— Generally you need to take 10 to 12 photos for each second of finished video.
— It’s very important that your camera does not move. If you have a tripod, use it!
— If you don’t have a tripod, check out this video to learn how to make anything into a phone tripod.
— Use a Stop Motion Animation App-we used the FREE version of Stop Motion Studio.
Watch your footage and edit out any mistakes.
If you are working with a group, assemble your animations together! Watch your films together either online, or set up a screening.
Reflect afterwards:
— What is surprising?
— How would you do it differently next time?
— Hatch a new plan!
Stop Motion can take a long time, if possible set up your animation stand in a spot that you can leave for a while, in case you need to take a break.
The volume buttons on corded iPhone earbuds might operate the shutter in some apps
Here is a great tip on animating water.
We would love to see what you make! Upload your videos to youtube or vimeo and send us a link. We have many events and we may include your work!
Experiment with making a “cinema stanza” or a poem-film. Many avant garde filmmakers explore the connection between film and poetry; finding systems to juxtapose words and images that generate entirely new associations, metaphors and ideas.
To start you will first create a found poem. Expanding on the centuries old technique of erasure poetry, Emerge is a playful tool for creating found poetry out of articles, speeches, quotes, books, and more. Emerge was created by the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University.
Go to Emerge and make a poem by clicking the button above.
Record yourself or someone else reading your poem.
Visualize your poem.
Tips and Hints: How did you choose the words for your poem? Did you choose based on the meaning, the sound, the way the word looked on the screen, or did it just pop out at you?
Gather footage, think about the reasons you chose the words for your poem. Can you find a system for choosing images? Think about relationships like sound, color, meaning, contrasts, similarities.
Tips and Hints: shoot new footage or use some video from other assignments.
Add the audio of the recorded poem to your footage in an editing app. Experiment with where the words and images line up. Do the images change the meaning of the words? Do the words change the images?
Share your video either online, or set up a screening.
Reflect afterwards:
What is surprising?
How would you do it differently next time?
Hatch a new plan.
We would love to see what you make! Upload your videos to youtube or vimeo and send us a link. We have many events and we may include your work!
Take a trip to explore what scientists have discovered about the waters near you.
Watch works by artists engaged with environmental issues.