Reading:
Jeremy G. Butler, "The Persuasive Power of Style" PDF
They Say/I Say, 42-51
Homework Activity:
As we learned last time from Butler's essay, style is important. The
basic unit of film is the frame (a single image recorded on a film
frame) and beyond that the shot (the continuous footage or sequence
between two edits or cuts). Director's use storyboards like the one
above in order to plan the shots that make up each scene of a film or
television episode.
For this assignment you will produce your own storyboard for the advertisement you have selected. Using the above example as a model and the following link as a template, you can go about doing this assignment one of two ways.
- You can draw your storyboard as Alex Tavoularis has done above for Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsisder,
- or you can use a digital editor such as VLC in order to pull the individual shot from the video stream.
Both will be equally acceptable for this assignment, however, because
the essay assignment requires you to include an image from the
advertisement, you may want to take the digital editor route so that you
can get a head start on this portion of the essay. Regardless,
underneath each image you will record the dialogue, any important visual
features
(lighting, camera movement, etc.), musical accompaniment, or anything
else you find important just like Tavoularis does above. This assignment will be worth 10 HW points.
Steps for using VLC:
- Download VLC from the Internet. You can find it here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html.
- Install VLC onto your computer. Don't worry it is safe.
- Go to the YouTube page where the advertisement was originally posted by clicking on the YouTube logo on the bottom right hand corner of the video on our course website. Cut and paste the original URL for the advertisement.
- After opening VLC, click on "file" and "open network."
- A window should appear with a text field for the URL. Copy the URL for the YouTube clip in this space.
- In a few moments, VLC should have opened the advertisement.
- Each time, a new shot occurs or any significant action within a single shot, use the snapshot feature located under the video tab in the toolbar.
- These snapshots will be recording as png files, and your standard image viewing software should be able to open them up as static images.
- Now that you have the images, place them on a Microsoft Word document by going to insert on the toolbar and selecting photo or picture (depending on your version of the program). Place the images in sequential order on your word document, resizing as you see appropriate. Underneath each image record the dialogue, any important visual features (lighting, camera movement, etc.), musical accompaniment, or anything else you find important.
- Save your work and print it out to bring to class.
