Marktollefson’s Weblog
doing the documentary thingArchive for random narrative
Beginning to create a sequence for the flipbook
I’ve converted the jpg images for the project into both tiff and targa sequences so that I can view them as a temperolinear medium … that is, in motion over time. To do this I have loaded the sequence into my Avid editing system. Right now I am experimenting with the effects of persistence of vision to create a form of visual narrative. There are batches of images in the 100 jpgs that seem to go together as similar types, but it is also interesting to juxtapose or intersperse dissimilar types to create a rhythm. Too bad there’s no way to associate an audio sountrack! I have also been working on determining the exact frame rate per second. When you watch a flipbook the rate is far less than 29.9 fps associated with conventional video so I am trying to tweak the system so that it will play at around 18 fps, which seems to be the speed most people view flipbook pages.
editing for random narrative
For my “Butcher’s Penance” project I have created over fifty distinct audio/video files from the two television spots I used as source material. The observations made in the random narrative class were important considerations, especially the connectivity issue. For virtually every one of the files I had to fine tune the head and tail of either the picture or the sound so that it would more smoothly link up with other clips. When I present the project we will see if my work was successful.
thoughts on random narrative
Our experiment with randomly rearranging pieces of footage using the Max patch was very interesting.
It seems like the most important thing when you’re designing a random narrative is that the elements have to have cohesion and connectivity.
By cohesion I mean some sort of related theme … be it a place, subject matter, visual composition … it can be even be really arcane, such as people wearing hats. The combinations that seemed to work best in the class were the ones with this kind of cohesion.
Connectivity is a more practical issue. It’s how the elements begin and end, what people in television broadcasting refer to as the “top and tail”. A uniform and smooth beginning and end help create the illusion of narrative.
