One must die as a sighted person to be born again as a blind person and the opposite is equally true: one must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing person.

Your task is to imagine that you come from a planet that has no visual culture- a society of the blind or a society that has never developed visual representation or has never found visual information of any special interest. This society has sent you to Earth as an anthropologist to study the ways in which visual culture operates. Upon returning to your planet you discover that, due to an unfortunate accident, you have lost all the material samples (images, objects, apparatuses) of this culture that you had gathered along the way, EXCEPT ONE. From that one sample you must try to reconstruct for your audience both a general idea of what your object is and how it comes to be understood by people who approach the world visually. For example, your object is a desktop picture frame. You will need to explain to your audience what a frame is [a polygon or circle made of wood, metal, or plaster], what it does [holds, usually, a two dimensional object for display], and how it functions in the lives of the people who use them. Where did you see this object [on people’s walls, by their bedsides, in museums] and how did location affect its contents [personal snapshots, paintings]? You will find that you will need to tell your audience what a snapshot is, what a museum is or what the word “display” means.

Your task is to give a five-minute “show and tell” presentation using your sample to illustrate what a visual culture is like. This sample can be just about anything: it need not be a picture or a piece of art. In fact, your object might be more interesting if it isn’t. It could, for instance, be a machine, instrument, found object, a piece of clothing, etc.,...

The objective here is to de-familiarize visual experience and representation, to re-stage it as a problem to be explained rather than a capacity to be taken for granted. The idea is to set up an empty frame in which any object or experience may be staged for inspection and analysis insofar as it helps to explain what a visually oriented culture is.

Our Show + Tell will be staged during discussion section during week 3. You will be presenting in groups of four. Each person in the group will talk. Please come prepared with a 5-minute presentation and an open mind. 10 minutes, in addition to the presentation time, will be dedicated to Q + A from the audience.

1. Working individually, shoot 36 pictures of a PLACE you know well. YOU WILL BE TURNING IN just [6] PHOTOGRAPHS, so try alternate compositions of the same subject.

2. find a subject/environment that is dynamic, visually compelling and offering a lot of possibilities for texture, contrast, color, form….etc. [ NOT your dorm room ] and then pick the pictures that convey the qualities of place.

3. Use only available light – no flash.

4. Shoot for composition and content. Shoot ONLY horizontal format shots.

5. Include at least 4 of the following composition types:

COMPOSITIONAL TYPES [SHOOT ONLY HORIZONTAL FORMAT ASPECT RATIO]
• a primarily vertical composition
• a primarily horizontal composition
• an image which uses focus [depth of field] to attract our attention to the object/person
• an image which abstracts its subject through de-contextualization [for example, an image of a billboard or sign which is fragmented to spell a new word, or an extreme close up on a texture, object, or pattern].
• an image which contains foreground, midground, and background
• an image in which the aspect ratio of the frame is changed through the use of an architectural or
natural feature [creating a frame within a frame]
• an image that creates an interesting relationship between positive and negative space

6. Present these photos by attaching them to a 8.5 X 11 inch page(s) that has your name on each page and identify the compositional type under each photo. OR mount a page on your website, and turn in the URL

.
• if you are printing from a digital camera, use only photo paper and turn in “photo quality” prints. Do not crop or cut the prints. Do not “fix” your images in a photo editor. THIS IS A CAMERA EXERCISE

Write a 2-3 page essay about some PLACE.

This is an observational assignment and should be based on what you see, hear and experience. Look for the events and characters that animate the space – it’s your job to make it an interesting story to tell, to provide structure and coherence. Write in a prose style using complete sentences. You may use small amounts of dialogue [over heard] if its appropriate but don’t allow dialogue to dominate the writing. Do not interview anybody.

This is a writing exercise designed as ‘pre-production’ research. Think of this as a short story, a piece of non-fiction that will be adapted for the screen. It is not a screenplay and should NOT be formatted as one. This is a WRITING assignment—drafts should be proofread for spelling and grammar!!

Write a 2-3 page TREATMENT for a short fictional film that takes place, at least partly, in the location you described in exercise 3.

Use your imagination to invent characters or to invent fictional lives for people who you observed there. Shape your story so that it conforms to the needs of narrative---- conflict, exposition, etc. Re-read the 2 short stories: Raymond Chandler’s story [excerpt] RED WIND; A.M Holmes CHUNKY IN HEAT and pay attention to how cinematic they are. This is the proper prose style for the treatment. Do not write in a specialized language [screenplay, etc.] Give your story a significant ending.

This is a WRITING assignment—drafts should be proofread for spelling and grammar!!

You will be working in groups of [3]. Each of you will perform twice and direct once [this may be subject to change—dependent upon available time]

The process is as follows:
1. invent a relationship between two characters [co-workers, siblings, lovers, roommates, etc.]

2. devise a given circumstances that bring these people together. [funeral, waiting for a bus, dump date..]

3. re-work the script, if necessary [students are allowed to rearrange the words so long as they do not add words or remove them.]

4. give the words a fresh new context. Find a doing for each generic word that puts it into a dramatic context. For this exercise, it is important to transform these words from generic dialogue into the context of actions.

EXT. NIGHT – A SUBURBAN STREET
In a beat-up 1974 Chevy, Ruth and Rob are listening to the radio and sharing a cigarette. Ruth is panicking, she tries again to start the car, but just hears the clicking of the solenoid and says, "nothing"

5. identify the style or genre you are working with, and develop the scene accordingly.

6. bring all necessary props. Do not pretend a bottle is candle. If you need a candle, bring one.

Count on spending at least 2 two hour sessions working out the moments with your partners. Do not try to put this together twenty minutes before class]

ORIGINAL SCRIPT:

A: Well
B: Well I'm here
A: So I see
B: Yes
A: Well
B: Is that all you can say
A: What do you want me to say
B: Nothing
A: Nothing
B: You don't trust me
A: It's not that
B: Then what
A: Nevermind
B: Stop it
A: What
B: That
A: I can't
B: Try
A: Is that better
B: This is hopeless
A: What's the matter
B: I don't know
A: You don't know

For this assignment you will be producing a shot list--- a pre-production sketch of how you will be transforming your written ideas [your treatment] into a series of visual images

EXAMPLE:

INT.- Santa Cruz Metro Bus
1 – wide shot of Jimmy Jones sitting in the back row.
2 - Jimmy’s POV: of the front of the bus, an old woman boarding, and shot holds as she walks back to a seat, her arms full of packages.
3 - CU - Woman is juggling her packages, she smiles at Jimmy
4 - Medium shot of Jimmy, he looks away, fumbles with his ipod
5 - Jimmy’s POV – out the window of the moving bus
6 - MS - of the woman, she looks out the window, trying to identify where the bus is, then reaches up to pull the stop cord.
7 - WS from front as the woman gets up, struggling with her packages as the bus lurches to a stop
8 - Jimmy’s POV (same as 2) - she gets off
9 - Jimmy’s POV/CU - the woman’s purse is sitting on the seat where she left it
10- Jimmy’s POV – 3 shots of other passengers – one is reading, one is asleep, one is looking out the opposite side window
11- Same as 9 - the purse
12 - Same as 1 – Jimmy slides over to the window and looks back
13 - Jimmy’s POV – in the distance he sees the woman turn into a decrepit apartment building as the bus moves away

2. Even though the focus of this assignment is ‘storytelling’ [i.e—the relationship between images; ‘blood in the gutter’] try to implement the strategies of composition that were explored in the first assignment

3. This ‘shot list’ can be:
a. a list with descriptions [like the example above]
b. a series of storyboards [examples are in reader and see McCloud]

4. This assignment is designed to help you visualize the construction of your narrative--- a plan for constructing a 3-5 min. visual/aural stroy

With your images constructed and timed in imovie, export the timeline as a quicktime movie (titled, for example as, irene’s 20P project.mov). Remember to export out of imovie as 320x240. You may have built a rough soundtrack in imovie but you will be building another one in Garageband. When you import the quicktime movie (irene’s 20P project.mov) in to garageband, it will appear as a picture or video track.

1. Working in Garageband you can now create a soundtrack to give your images ‘added value.’
• Add sound effects—on screen’ off screen/ diegetic/ extra diegetic.
• Record a voice-over narration or produce voice effects for your movie. [Avoid trying to do “lip-synch” dialogue].

Do NOT:
• Use a commercial music track or any copyrighted music
• Place a single piece of music throughout the duration of the film. NO WALL TO WALL MUSIC

2. When you have completed the soundtrack, save it into iTunes [it will save as an MP3 file]

3. Import you garageband soundtrack back in to your imovie project, synching it with your image track

4. Export your movie to idvd and burn it to disc [the exported movie should be full frame-- 720x480]

5. Your Movie should be 3 to 5:00 min. long [image + sound]. Label the DVD clearly [your name/TA/title of project]