Study of Dziga Vertov

Dziga Vertov was an experimental Soviet film maker in the 20s and 30s of the last century.
Born in 1896 in Poland as Denis Arkadievietch Kaufman,his father was a librarian and his two brothers Mikhail Kaufman and Boris Kaufman both became noted cinematographers.He began writing poetry at the age of ten and at sixteen he was studying violin and and piano at the Bialystok Music Conservatory.A resident of Russia since 1915,he went on to study neurology in St. Petersburg in 1917.It was around this time that he took his pseudonym (loosely translated as "spinning top" or literally "top turning".)
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917,Vertov was invited to become the editor of Kino-Nedelia/Cinema Weekly,a filmed periodical that contained snippets of the lives of Soviet citizens.He left the film series to edit the full length compilation film Anniversary of the Revolution.Next Vertov started his own newsreel series,Kino-Pravada(Cinema Truth)which he named in honour of the official Soviet newspaper Pravada.During this period,Vertov developed his montage techniques and honed his growing theories about cinema being the art form best suited for the masses.
In 1919 he joined with other intellectuals in debating the issue of art versus the people.That year he also joined with other filmmakers,including his future wife,Elisaveta Svilova,and his brother,Mikhail Kaufman,to form Kino Glaz(Cinema Eye) to promote his idea that the impartial eye of the camera is far better suited to recording and organizing the truth than the subjective and often fawlty human eye.
He was profoundly influenced by Marxism and presented a rather poetic view of it in his many subsequent films,most notably Chelovek s Kinoapparatom/The Man With the Movie Camera in 1929,an avant-garde portrait of Soviet city life that employed numerous innovative camera techniques,including superimposition,fast and slow motion,split screens and rapid montage.
Vertov won a prize at the 1934 Venice Film Festival for his Tri Pesni o Lenine/Three Songs about Lenin although it was not immediatley released in Russia because it was felt that Stalin's role in the film was not developed enough.His film kolybel'naya/The Lullaby (1937) was edited without Vertov's permission to make Stalin's role bigger.
By this point the conservative government began showing more interest in fictional features and Vertov spent the last twenty years editing artless newsreels.A far cry from what this visionary,talented and creative filmmaker was capable to produce.

FIRST TIME USING AFTER EFFECTS!!

This is when things started to get a little scary...we had to use a programme called 'After Effects'.
This is the quintessential software used in motion graphics and I had more than a little trepidation using it.After first uploading it,I had a week of telephone conversations with Adobe technical support because the programme kept crashing...only adding to my loathing of the whole concept of using this package.However,when it was up and running...I rather enjoyed it!
We were given the brief of producing a 10 second minimum piece of work,visualising a piece of dialogue between two people.A sort of motion typography.
At first I thought about doing Churchill's declaration of war with Germany but soon realised that this only involved one person talking.After scratching my head I decided to use a piece of dialogue taken from Fawlty Towers-classic British humor.I chose a piece from an episode called 'Communication Problems',with Basil talking rather heatedly about a bedroom view.
After Effects didn't seem so scary when it was explained to me that it was just like Photoshop in the way that it used layers.The bit I had to get my head round was key frames and the timeline.With these elements understood and the programme up and running I actually enjoyed working with it and am pleased with the result...

Project Number 3 involved a process known as Scratch Film.
We were each given a number,mine being the number 9,and asked to produce a 2-3 second piece of animation using this scratch film process.
It is called 'Scratch Film' because it literally means scratching images onto individual pieces of 16mm celluloid film.There are other methods of applying markings onto the film such as inks and lettraset.
It is a very laborious process when you remember that it takes 24 frames to make 1 second of animation.I produced a 7 second piece of animation which means I had to render 168 different pieces of imagery.
I decided on doing a short piece on the 'Nine Lives of a Cat',utilising Lettraset,scratching on the film and black marker pen.Unfortunately not all the image can be seen as the right hand side has been cut off.I'm not sure if this is because I made my markings too close to the right hand side of the film or it was somehow lost in projection.However,I'm still pretty happy with it!

Okay,I've got over my little freak out the other day and was finally able to upload my video.All's well in the house of Ben!

OKAY I'VE NOW HAD ENOUGH OF THIS BLOGGING BULLSHIT.I'VE SPENT ONE AND A HALF HOURS TRYING TO UPLOAD A SIMPLE JPEG AND QUICKTIME VIDEO WITH NO SUCCESS.I QUIT.

Next we were put into groups of three and asked to produce an animation sequence using 'stop frame animation'.This is a process which involves taking single still images using a camera and then compositing them together to produce a piece of moving animation.My first EVER piece of animation!

The first project we were set was okay.I say okay because it involved using programmes that I was already comfortable and familiar with.

We simply had to take a word that had been given to us and simply represent the meaning of the word through manipulating the text.A simple typography exercise...well within my comfort zone.

Then getting a little more along the lines of motion,we had to create 24 frames changing an element of the typography in each frame,finishing up with the completed original image.Why 24 times?Because as it was explained to me,it takes 24 frames to create 1 second of animation...jeez!Now I can fully appreciate just how hard those guys at Pixar and Disney work.

The beginnings...

Well,here goes my blog.....if you're really interested!

Not really knowing where to go with my career as a print graphic designer,I've decided to study the SCARY medium of motion graphics.

I say scary in bold print because it's going to involve a whole new range of applications and methods,practices which I so far know nothing about whatsoever.I haven't even owned a camera since I got given one on my tenth birthday and motion graphics involves at the very least still camera shots.

In short I know nothing about this whole world but here I am enroled on a graduate diploma in Motion Graphic Design.....yikes!!