Video

Create a short demo video in the form of a newsreel. The point is to experiment with video composition and non-linear (i.e. digital) editing. The input video data you use can be live, synthetic, or from other sources. It must also include "running commentary" from a synthetically-generated POVRAY figure (or equivalent).

Specifics

You must accomplish a video assignment that requires the creation of video or multimedia content. For this assignment, you can work in groups up to 2 students.

The suggested approach is to create a demo video combining:

synthetic images rendered with POVRAY,
live video footage.

Various short clips can be edited together using the Adobe Premiere application (installed on the Macs) or with iMovie.
As you know, POVRAY is available on the computer graphics CD as well as most SOCS machines, and runs on Windows, LINUX, UNIX and MacOS.
Live video can be acquired from videotape using Premiere or iMovie on the Macs. Camcorders can be borrowed from McGill ICC (instructional communications office). Equipment for moving data from a Camcorder to a Mac using firewire cable can be borrowed from SOCS system staff.

Requirements

Final submission

Your submission for the video project should be an NTSC-format video on VHS tape, and should be of roughly 2 to 4 minutes duration. The final submission must include a text document that specifies the precise contribution of each team member, broken down into 100 "contribution points". A simple example follows:

  Greg   video editing with premiere
                                       assignment of trasitions 10
                                       testing draft versions   15
  Bob    digitizing and cutting footage                         15
         planning sequence                                      25
  Carol  generating synthetic footage with POVRAY               35

Teams that do their assignment earlier in the term will benefit from a slightly more generous marking policy.

Evaluation Criteria

The following criteria will be used in evaluating your submission, roughly in order of importance:

Technical sophistication: the effective and appropriate use of advanced effects, features, or methods.
Production values: the level of professionalism in the final appearance of the video.
Originality: the use of innovative content, effects, ideas or plot.
Theme, plot, coherence: the overall extent to which the video makes a point, tells a story, or conveys a feeling.

For example, a video which is a collection of random clips haphazardy stuck together will be graded poorly. Using every possible transition effect that Premiere offers is generally not a good idea; it's equivalent to the kind of document people produce on their first computer, filled with different fonts as if it were a ransom letter.

Technical hint

You may want to use Secure-Copy (scp) to transfer files between the Macs used for video production and your UNIX account, or other machines.