Course Number: ARTD 267
Course Name: Intro to Video Art
Professor: Mr. Bart Woodstrup

Assignment 3 - Cultural Montage

Initial Image Acquisition Due: March 1st
Due: March 22th

Objective:

To create, through the use of sound, image, and editing, a video that as a whole represents a deeper conceptual representation of a particular socio-cultural structure. You should approach the project with a malleable conception of your culture, and allow the documentary and editing process objectively inform your work.

Montage:

Attributed to Sergei Eisenstein, a Soviet filmmaker from the 1920's, Montage is an editing style that can not simply be described as the "juxtaposition of relatively rapid succession of different shots in a movie.” Influenced by Marxism, Eisenstein had much deeper philosophy than that. He perceived the montage to be a kind of "dialogue” of different, sometimes opposing ideas that influenced each other on the cinematic timeline - whereas the collection of these images and ideas lead to a greater truth through their objectivity on the timeline. Truth lies in contradictions? Consider how your ability to "effect” digital video adds a layer of meaning to the images that Eisenstein did not have access to.

Eisenstein developed five methods of montage:

1. Metric - editing based on a predetermined number of frames (not considering the content of the imagery).
   
2. Rhythmic - editing based on time, music, and/or visual composition (Potemkin's "Odessa" sequence).
   
3. Tonal - editing based on the emotional character or significance of the content of the shot.
   
4. Overtonal - a somewhat abstract synthesis of Metric, Rhythmic, and Tonal.
   
5. Intellectual - uses shots that when combined have an original or higher meaning than the shots would individually.
   

Assignment:

1. How do you identify your culture? Spend a week trying to answer this question and document your answers with images, text, and video. (Due March 1st)
   
2. Acquire new images/video that relate to your concept.
   
3. Create a montage of images that relate to your concept. Edit this into a 4-5 minute piece with rhythm and pacing.
   
4. Utilize effective cuts, fades, video layers, transitions, video movement.
   
5. Consider how digital effects have meaning.
   
6. Use original audio and imagery. All appropriated work must first be cleared with your instructor.
   
7. Utilize titles. As indicated and demonstrated in your previous assignment.
   
8. Output to Vimeo.

Definitions of Culture:

- The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population.

- Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it.

- A high degree of taste and refinement formed by aesthetic and intellectual training.

- The integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.

- The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group

- A particular society at a particular time and place.

- All the knowledge and values shared by a society. The attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group or organization.

Documentation:

Written documentation is required for each and every assignment given in this class. You must clearly state your intentions for your work - doing so may very well ensure a higher grade. This documentation is required when handing the assignment in. It should be in sentence form, using terminology explained during lectures. What led you to choose the images and sounds that you used? What strategies did you employ for the editing process? What are you hoping that your piece communicates about your culture? What did you learn from this process?