Compositing, Effects & AI Cinema (September 27) – DTC 208 Introduction to Digital Cinema

To Do This Week

Explore these experimental video/cinema works which use various effects, including Generative AI. Choose one or two you would like to write about.

Light is Waiting , by Michael Robinson
Lake Como Remix by Mark Amerika
starwarswars.com
Yorgo Alexopoulos No Feeling is Final; In Five Chapters, 2010
How Not to be Seen by Hito Steyerl
Whispering Pines (series) by Shana Moulton
Again and Again and Again by Rachel Maclean<
Carnival of the Ages by Justin Hackney (AI cinema in 2023)
POOF | AI Short Film (AI cinema in 2024)
Posthuman Cinema by Will Luers, Mark Amerika and Chad Mossholder (AI cinema in 2024)
The Wizard of AI (AI cinema in 2023)
Identity Upgrade Series, AI Cinema 2023 by Jhave
Kelly Bosch Tik Tok AI Art

How is the realism of traditional cinema (its truthfulness in capturing images of bodies in a three-dimensional world) altered, enhanced or challenged by these techniques?

Window assignments…

View Continuity Projects – clarity on continuity cut
Review Montage Projects

Please name your projects properly in posts.
Video urls on its own line no links…

Digital Effects

MATTE / COMPOSITING EFFECTS

combining two or more images into a single, final image by masking certain areas of the film emulsion to selectively control which areas are exposed. sometimes paintings are added to backgrounds through matte techniques

CINEMA “PAINTING”

Digital Compositing Effects

combining images by replacing colored pixel areas usually in order to create the illusion of a single image

– multiple layers of video
– effects (pixels as information)
– green screen – swap pixel colors
– enhance image with AI

New Media (HTML) – each piece of media is discrete, not a composite

GREEN SCREEN

Cloverfield, green screen effect

GLITCH / DATAMOSHING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y03SsJqjluk

Layering Tracks, Dissolves and Color Key

http://starwarswars.com/

ROTOSCOPING (painting on video)

Waking Life, by Richard Linklater

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J0MlkmtXyY

CMDC student Haley Zach

CINEMA TEXT

SCREEN CAPTURE /DESKTOP SPACE (text and multiple frames)

There are many option for screen capture. On a Mac use the free Quicktime: File>New Screen Recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU

Noah, by by Walter Woodman and Patrick Cederberg as a class project

Student Effects Projects:

GENERATIVE AI CINEMA

AI Video Workshop
AI Multimedia Workshop

Discuss Effects and AI…

“From today, painting is dead!”
-painter Paul Delaroche on first seeing a photograph around 1840

“The fear has sometimes been expressed that photography would in time entirely supersede the art of painting. Some people seem to think that when the process of taking photographs in colors has been perfected and made common enough, the painter will have nothing more to do.”
– artist Henrietta Clopath in 1901

AI Green Screen

World-Building

Tableau (Vivant): a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically illuminated.

Live Performers with AI Skin

Puppets

AI Video Essay Fiction

AI Cinema Tools:

Compositing and Effects (5%):

DUE Oct 11th (two weeks)

Create a 30-second sequence that uses at least three Premiere effects or that delves into the possibilities of AI Cinema using RunwayML and any other AI tools. Apply these effects to video either for story or for abstract experimentation. The point of this assignment is to play with techniques and see if certain effects can be used to generate ideas for a final project.

Montage Sequence (5%)

DUE Oct 4th (next week)

As an element of film language, montage (the juxtaposition of discontinuous fragments) can be a powerful tool for storytelling: getting across ideas or emotions, summarizing events, conveying the cyclical or simultaneous, making poetic associations and creating rhythm and tension. Because juxtaposed images act on our subconscious, montage is effective in propaganda and marketing as well as storytelling. In other words, be free to juxtapose images for narrative/expressive effect, but be aware and sensitive to how those juxtapositions will be perceived. In this assignment, pay attention to Eisenstein’s methods of montage: metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, intellectual.

Create a 30-60 second video (on any subject) that uses at least one of Eisenstein’s montage editing methods (any of these can be combined with the Rhythmic method which is similar to continuity editing). You may also use the Picture in Picture technique for Spatial Montage:

Metric – editing follows a specific number of frames, duration of shot
Tonal – editing follows visual correspondences/associations for emotional effect, graphic match
Overtonal – combines metric, rhythmic and tonal (a chase scene, any intense action/motion)
Intellectual – editing to create abstract, non-representational ideas