video art

Various video installations by Tony Oursler

video art

Video art is primarily concerned with recording, editing, and sequencing of images and sound, often to create a narrative.

Video art is distinguished from traditional cinema in its focus upon treating the formal and technical aspects of the medium as the subject of the video, and by its willingness to challenge and depart from common cinematic conventions.

Bill Viola, Surrender

video art

Video art falls into two main categories: single channel video and video installation. Single channel video is synchronous, a serial presentation of images as a single projection or on a single monitor. Many video installations are asynchronous, involving the parallel presentation of multiple videos, often in a constructed and controlled context or site.

Shilpa Gupta, UNTITLED Interactive video installation

video art

Scope-1. Refers to the extent of our perception, the range of ideas presented or the amount of time that is included.

2. Also used to refer to the range of action within a given moment

composing the frame

Cropping-composing a shot paying special attention to the scale and arrangement of the subject and the edges of the frame.

POV- point of view. the distance, position, and field of view of a shot

Close up shots and tight cropping construct the viewer as active participants in the scene

Long shots construct the vieweras passive witnesses to the scene

establishing shot bird’s eye, aerial

low angle close up

over the shoulder detail, close up

medium shot long shot

composing the shot

A shot consists of a continuousrecording interval that may be long or short. During this interval the camera records movement both of objects infront of the camera and of thecamera itself. Camera work includes: tilt, pan, dolly, tracking, boom sweep, and handheld.

The use of zoom and focus (shift depth of field) also create a sense of movement.

David Fincher, Panic RoomClick image to watchUsually shots are fairly short as theyare in the title sequence. Compare thisto the complex 2 ½ minutes dolly shot that follows the more conventionally edited title sequence.

editing

A video or film is made up of a progression of images. A single image is called a frame. A shot is a continuous group of frames. A scene is in turn made up of shots that depict a continuous action in a continuous time & space. A collection of related scenes and shots is referred to as a sequence.

10 individual frames constructing a shot.Shots have a consistent or continuous POV

editing

Video editing is the process of arranging shots into scenes, scenes & shots into sequences, and sequences into the completed video. The order in which shots, scenes and sequences are arranged is called the chronology.The places where shots, scenes and sequences meet are referred to as transitions.

A sequence from Kubrick’s 2001 that uses a graphic relationship to transition between shots, seamlessly jumping a few hundred-thousand years ahead in human history.

editing

The term transition is used to refer both to the visual method of segueing between clips and to the type of relationship between clips.

Common examples of visual transitions include cut, jump cut, fade, wipe, dissolve, and cross dissolve (lap dissolve).

Still of a quick cross dissolve transition from Segei Eisenstein’s Strike! Of 1924.A police spy is visually linked to an owlto emphasize his stealthy, nocturnal and blood thirsty traits.

editing

Good editing carefully considers the how we transition from one shot, scene or sequence to the next. When editing shots into a scene, typical transitions include:action-to-actionsubject-to-subjectaspect-to-aspectThe three lower panels at right display both action-to-action (sequential shots) & aspect-to-aspect (different views or POV of the same scene)

If this were a video, then the transition from the top frame to the lower frames would be a jump cut while the other transitions are just cuts. Jump cuts have less continuity, connecting frames with large displacements in POV or subject .

editing

It is a bit more difficult to arrange scenes into a sequence because unlike the shots that make up a scene there is usually no shared action, and often no shared subject or location. To relate scenes into a sequence you want to establish: graphic relationship- creates visual continuity metaphoric relationship- creates

conceptual continuity movement relationship- similar motion of the subject or the camera creates continuitychronological relationship- scenes naturally seem to follow each other in time or as cause & effect

Dali and Buñuel, Le Chien AndalouThe opening sequence uses 3 transitions:graphic, movement & metaphor, to disturbingly powerful effect.

editing

One of the most important determiners of a video’s dynamics or energy is pacing (tempo, rhythmic relationship), the speed and rhythmic flow an between shots, scenes & sequences in the video. Typically the editor will want to create a variety of pacing in a video.

Click to play Breaking, a student experiment using rhythmic editing.

narrative structures

Narrative- the presentation of a sequence of events or relationships

Narrative structure- the order, conventions, and point of view used to organize the presentation of a narrative 

Story- a conventional narrative structure characterized by a linear plot: equilibrium-> conflict-> resolution

Nam June Paik, TV Buddha.Video installation. Video art is characterized by its willingness toturn back upon itself to reflect uponthe conventions and narrative structures of cinema and video.

narrative structures

Richard Linklater, Slacker.This film produced for $23,000 helped to spark the boom in indie film we havebeen experiencing for the last 20 years.It uses a contagion narrative structureto link a series of unresolved episodes into an engaging portrait of Austin’sunderclass. The film follows various characters and scenes, never stayingwith one character or conversation formore than a few minutes before pickingup someone else in the scene andfollowing them.

Linear narratives:

1. Accumulative: single plot line that resolves a conflict; provides a sense of historic time

2. Cyclic: events recur in cyclical patterns that loop back upon themselves; no clear sense of permanent resolution; provides a sense of mythic time

3. Contagion: shots are linked together by shared elements but without a clear sense of plot, conflict or resolution; provides a sense of achronological, parallel time  

narrative structures

Masters & Johnson, graphs of female and male patterns of sexual arousal

Peder Hill, a typical linear accumulative3 act plot structure. Compare to the graphof male arousal above.

Mainstream cinema uses a narrative structure that resembles the pattern of male arousal. “Art” films use various narrative structures that more closely mirror various patterns of female arousal.

narrative structures

Non-linear narratives: Elements do not appear in chronological order or there is no clear chronology1. Montage: a sequence of related images that presents an idea or interconnected ideas

Similarity in form; dissimilarity in contentDissimilarity in form; similarity in content

2. Repetitive narrative:Elements recur to create a pattern or give emphasis to an object or theme.

Click above to play Requiem MontageNote the use of repetition and ambient sound.