keyword: photography

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briefs historical

Collaborative short film on Photography – HfG Ulm

This assignment is taken from the student publication «Output», which was created by students of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm.

In the year 1961-1962, starting in October 1961, the school launched a curriculum centered on film, inside the sector «Visual communication».

The brief

On the first day, the students received the task of creating a short film on the topic of “photography”. The film is divided in 5 parts, which have each a duration of 2 minutes. Each sequence is made by one or two students. The duration of the whole film (with start/end titles) should be 12 minutes.

  • Sequence 1: It started with Daguerre. Development of photography, from the beginnings until today. Not a history but a depiction of the progress made.
  • Sequence 2: Light and shadow. The attempt to observe the original meaning of photography: “to paint with light”.
  • Sequence 3: The fixed moment. The opposition between a subject in motion and a fixed image.
  • Sequence 4: Extremes. Photography allows to visualise areas that aren’t accessible to the human eye (x-rays, ultraviolet or infrared photography). The use of composition, lighting and camera angles to create subjectivity.
  • Sequence 5: Manipulations. Photography as an instrument of power and influence, for political or commercial motives.

Schedule

  • October-December: writing of the script. Preparations of the shooting: a) Search for subjects. b) Reproduction of material from books and magazines. c) Gathering of props and models. d) Organisation of the schedule.
  • January–February: setting up the shooting plan. 3 weeks of shooting, at Kodak/Stuttgart, in the observatory/Heidelberg, at Zeiss/Oberkochem, and at the German Museum/Munich.
  • March–June: 1) shooting of the titles. 2) Raw and final cut. 3) Sound recordings: a) Sound effects. b) Music. c) Commentary and slogans.
  • 26. October 1962: Premiere of the short film in the aula of the HfG Ulm.

Sources

  • Alfred Jungraithmayr, « Beiträge zum Thema Film an der Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm », Output, no 14,‎ October 1962, p. 4-24
  • Erika Fortner, «Bericht über die Filmabteilung und den ersten Film an der HfG», Output, no 14,‎ October 1962, p. 31-39 (PDF document)
Categories
briefs ideas

Portraits for Wikipedia

Students have to create portraits for personalities in theirs city. The portraits are to be released under an open license on the Wikipedia Commons platform, so they can be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

In order to find suitable persons, a search can be done on Wikidata. For instance, this query searches for living persons born in the city of Lausanne, aged less than 85 years, that have a Wikipedia page but do not have a picture.

SELECT ?personne ?personneLabel ?dateNaissance ?age
WHERE {
  ?personne wdt:P31 wd:Q5;         # être humain
            wdt:P19 wd:Q807;       # né à Lausanne
            wdt:P569 ?dateNaissance.  # date de naissance

  # Ne pas avoir d'image
  FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?personne wdt:P18 ?image }

  # Avoir au moins un article Wikipédia
  FILTER EXISTS {
    ?article schema:about ?personne;
             schema:isPartOf ?wiki.
    FILTER(CONTAINS(STR(?wiki), "wikipedia.org"))
  }

  # Exclure les personnes décédées
  FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?personne wdt:P570 ?dateDeces }

  # Exclure les personnes de plus de 85 ans
  BIND(YEAR(NOW()) - YEAR(?dateNaissance) AS ?age)
  FILTER(?age <= 85)

  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "fr,en". }
}
ORDER BY ?personneLabel

PS: this idea is quite similar to the existing Wikiportraits Project.

PPS: there’s an article by the BBC about the project, that also made me discover @badwikiphotos on Instagram.

Categories
briefs

music and photographs

This brief is inspired by this line, by photographer Joséphine Michel, on her collaboration with Mika Vainio:

Écouter tous les matins un de ses albums, puis aller photographier des lieux en correspondance avec sa musique. Dans la nature, ou dans les musées de sciences

Source: Fisheye Magazine

  • Photography by Joséphine Michel, from The Heat Equation
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ideas

Participate in Wiki Loves Monuments

Students produce photos in order to participate in “Wiki Loves Monuments“, an annual international photographic competition held during the month of September.

Students will have to identify historical monuments and heritage sites in their surroundings, take photographs, and upload them to Wikimedia Commons.

Winners of the 2019 Switzerland edition. See Wikipedia for credits.

The list of sites is specific to each participating country. A list of participating countries can be found on this page.

For Switzerland, the participants have to take photos among this list of cultural properties.

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ideas

Movie poster group photo

Students have the task to create an archetypical “Movie poster group photo”. They form groups, and select a movie genre they will be working in (comedy, sci-fi, thriller, super heroes…). They will chose a setting, costumes, accessoires…

They may need to use effects such as green-screen backgrounds, projected background, artificial smoke.

They will need to apply postproduction to match the tone and atmosphere of the chosen genre.

Finally, the photograph needs to be combined with typography and movie poster credits.

Some examples of different group photo styles:

Categories
ideas

Stock Photography

The students are requested to create “stock photography” of some topic – for instance, their city. They will create lots of photographs (maybe also video) of different key locations, and publish them online, on stock photography platforms.

The produced content can serve as base material for further briefs, becoming part of the schools photography database. This will raise questions of how to manage, to share and to classify such a database.