DV for Teachers

Here’s something not on DV but squarely aimed at teachers: how effective is your presentation style? if you haven’t thought about it recently, it’s probably worse than you think.

How to Stand and Deliver (signal vs. Noise) recaps this November 2003 article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about effective methods for presenting to classes or groups: public speaking, in other words. The site with the first link, 37Signals, also posts notes on a lecture by Edward Tufte, the star of information design.

All too often students watch their instructors read their PowerPoint slides, an unconscious, implicit, and unacknowledged insult to their intelligence. I highly recommend these links and the thoughtful information within them to any one who speaks to more than two people at a time.——-

Here are 22 lighting principles drawn from the demonstrations on the DV Enlightenment DVD:

1. Great lighting is simple. Sometimes a single light and a piece of white foamcore is better than a whole professional light kit.

2. Hard light comes from a point source and creates sharp, distinct transitions and shadows.

3. Soft light comes from a large light source, creates soft, wraparound light and is the easiest to make flattering.

4. Shadows add a third dimension to your composition- the whole purpose of lighting is to describe the three dimensional shape of your subject in light and shadow.

5. The direction of your light sources- especially your primary light source- is profoundly important in determining the look, mood and emotion of your shot and the effect it has on your viewers.

6. A classic position for your key (primary) light source is at a 45 degree horizontal angle from the line between camera and subject, and a 45 degree angle of elevation from the ground.

7. Move the key light more to the side or back of the subject for a dramatic, low key lighting setup.

8. Light from a lower angle to create a mood that is fashionable, futuristic, wondrous, scary or evil.

9. Light from overhead for an interrogation or spiritual look.

10. Avoid shooting with the key light close to the camera.

11. Use a flag to cut spill from your key light onto the background.

12. Use a reflector for fill- to reduce- but not eliminate- attached shadows on your subject.

13. Fill controls contrast ratio, thereby mood.

14. Backlighting defines the edges of your subject and separates your subject from the background.

15. Cast a pattern of light and shadow on the background.

16. Light to support your message.

17. Use motivated lighting.

18. Avoid your subjects casting shadows on each other unless desired. Avoid multiple shadows. Avoid mic boom and crew shadows and reflections.

19. When shooting outside, try to shoot at golden hour, magic hour, in the shade, or on an overcast day.

20. Use zebra to gauge consistency of background lighting.

21. Put safety first when lighting.

22. Learn the rules, then break them. Don’t repeatedly and robotically follow any formula for lighting- look at each scene with fresh eyes and visualize what lighting setup would best communicate the message and emotion of that scene.——-

DVCreators.net sells DV production training tools and classes. I took their 3-day DV Revolution class a few years ago, and it was great. Their latest product is an instructional DVD about lighting for DV. It’s gotten good reviews, and the sales page has some useful tips and photos. At a minimum, you’ll learn something from visiting their page. I don’t know enough to recommmend it myself, but lots of folks I respect like it very much.

[Update: from the email they send to interested customers, I posted these Twenty-two Illuminating Lighting Principles they say are illustrated in the DVD.——-

Stumbled across this Apple Learning Interchange page. Good links, if a bit Apple-heavy.

Technology Showcase: Videography for Educators——-

From the LAFCPUG Tutorials page: “Tutorials are a necessary ingredient in any educational group, and the lafcpug is no exception. With the help of our expert members, we have and will continue to bring you “How2s” on working with FCP, Digital Movie Making, Multimedia, and what ever else we can think of that we believe everyone could benefit from.”


You’ll find a wealth of information here. Many of these folks also post at Ken Stone’s great and oft-linked site.——-

“Most people use television commercials as an opportunity to grab a snack, channel surf, or take a bathroom break. The American Museum of the Moving Image (AMMI), however, has found a way to take those ads and turn them in to the main event.

“The AMMI has compiled a representative sample of television advertisements for presidential campaigns from Eisenhower vs. Stevenson (1952) to Bush vs. Kerry. Called The Living Room Candidate, the exhibit originally began as a short-term, gallery-based exhibit, consisting of 11 television viewing stations with looped commercials. Now, the museum streams the ads directly to virtual visitors as well.”

What a great site for studying mass media, political rhetoric, media literacy… all kinds of aspects of the use of television and its impact on audiences. Via Streaming Media.——-

“ImageWell is the easy way to edit, rotate, crop and resize your image and upload it to your iDisk (.mac account), FTP server or WebDAV server. No need to launch multiple applications to add text, labels, drop shadows and shapes. At the click of a button the image is sent and a handy URL is copied to the clipboard.”
This little app will change how I process pictures – I plan to use it to put many more on my web posts, and I’m adding it to my Freeware for Teachers workshop and web page. Way to go, Xtralean.——-

Audacity gets an upgrade. This is an exceptional value (being free, of course) and the developers just keep improving it on all platforms. I just used it to make CDs of some aging cassettes for my family, and I regularly use it for the voice-overs I record for making videos here in the ITC. I highly recommend this application.

I’m at the Apple Market Center in Atlanta watching Jim Kanter run Motion through its paces. He’s emphasizing that this is a 1.0 release; it doesn’t have nearly all the capabilities of After Effects. Yet it’s got a great education price ($149, 50% off MSRP), and offers a unique way of applying motion or effects to objects: Behaviors (clicking link will load a QuickTime movie clip).——-

Test out any open source blog or content management system. This kind of public service makes me love the web. Writes site editor Scott Goodwin:

“This site was created with one goal in mind. To give you the opportunity to “try out” some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world. You are welcome to be the administrator of any site here, allowing you to decide which system best suits your needs.”

Again, link found via Stephen Downes (scroll down): “This site allows readers to evaluate open source content
management systems (CMS). What’s nice about this site is
that an administration userid and password are provided so
people can see how the system functions behind the scenes
(the systems are reinitialized every two hours). The site
only offers evaluations of systems written in PHP and using
mySQL, and only systems that do not require administrator
access to install. Via the EDTECH mailing list. By Various
Authors, August, 2004.——-