In My View — A Judge’s Perspective

Episode 2

Andrew N Gagg FRPS

So now, how about the way you put the pictures together? One thing to bear in mind is to keep your pictures to the same ratio – 16:9 or 3:2are perhaps the commonest. Unless you have a very good reason for including a picture which doesn’t t your chosen screen format, don’t do it! It is very distracting to be bombarded with pictures of different shapes and sizes – we want to appreciate the content of the pictures, not a higgledy piggledy assortment of frames. If your pictures don’t t, crop them, or nd alternatives. Please don’t use a frameline or surround unless there is a valid reason for doing so.

While on the topic of picture sizes, it’s pointless to include picture les that are much bigger than the current projector formats – for 16:9 that will be 1920 x 1080 px. Anything bigger simply gives the graphics system extra unnecessary work, and can affect the smooth running of the sequence. The only exception to this is an image that you intend to zoom or pan, when it will need to be big enough to remain un-pixelated at its largest magnication.

Transitions are valuable tools, but don’t be tempted by all the elaborate ones that are available unless you have a justiable reason for using something more that a cross fade (called a ‘dissolve’ in Pictures To Exe). Like all the other ‘don’ts’ I am offering, the result will be that you distract the viewers attention from the story and your lovely images. A series of bird pictures for instance (I have actually seen this in a recent competition) will not benet from spinning around and jigging all over the screen! We want to see the pictures, especially if they are good ones!

Next, vary the duration of your transitions. Don’t just set the transition length at three seconds in PTE Project Options and leave it like that – make them t the music, or the narrative. If you don’t your viewers will settle into that soporically regular rhythm, and you’ll lose their attention.

It seems it is relatively rare for AV makers to use a cut – a real cinematic cut –i.e. a transition of zero length. (A ‘Quick Transition’ in PTE.) It could be used more often. Given a fast-paced sequence – music with a snappy beat for instance – hook the rhythm of the pictures up to it – ‘cut to the beat’. The same thing can apply to a quick-re narrative. That’s not difcult now. In the current version of PicturesToExe for instance, you can actually see the trace of the soundtrack immediately beneath the pictures in the timeline, so that you can t your chosen transitions to it pretty precisely.

The accompanying illustrations are taken from Alan and Bev Tyrer’s Nameless, the story of a sad little Victorian headstone to an unnamed new-born child. It represents a ne example of what judges will seek, and as such it won First Prize at this year’s MidPhot competition, as well as the Audience Vote, and also the Award for Excellence, a new MidPhot award aimed especially at fostering the skills of writing and delivering narration.

In My View – A Judge’ s Perspective continued ...

Like everything in AV making (as indeed in any creative pursuit) every aspect of the work should be the result of a decision. Sometimes, with experience, this might not be a conscious one – it can become instinctive, but if questioned one should be able to provide a reason for every element of the work.

This certainly applies to the use of pans and zooms. We are all accustomed to such moves – they equate to camera movement in cinema or television and they are part of the visual language of the medium. As in the cinema, there must always be a valid reason for them – never arbitrary. A zoom is intended to draw our attention to some aspect of what we see at the start of the scene. “Look at this – this is important” we are saying. Sadly, less commonly used is the opposite effect – the ‘zoom out’. This also draws our attention to something – but in this case the wider context of a subject we’ve been shown in close-up. Sometimes this can contain an element of surprise – perhaps we don’t expect to see this in these particular surroundings – “Look, this lily is growing on a garbage heap”!

Similarly a pan must have a real reason for its use. It should start on a wellcomposed and interesting framing, and progress to a nal shot which is equally considered. Sometimes, though not always we may want to hold the initial framing still, as well as nishing on a still frame. Following a pan in one direction by another pan in the opposite direction is not a good idea – it equates to the amateurish practice of ‘hose-piping’ a video camera, and can be positively vertigo-inducing!

Two pans of similar speed and in the same direction gently cross fade, one into the other can be very effective. Done more rapidly this can, as in the movies, be used to convey a change of location – known as a ‘whip-pan’.

A transition that I have seen used recently in competition entries, though not as frequently as one might wish is the ‘fade through black’ wherein we have a point in the transition when the screen is completely black, or possibly even white. This is again part of the language of cinema (which we all understand, albeit unconsciously), and usually denotes the passage of time.

Having touched on the idea of images which appear to move, we can consider the possibility of images that actually do move – the introduction of video into an AV. Because it has only relatively recently become a possibility, it seems that many AV workers are still coming to terms with it, and it does indeed require some thought and judgement. It is somewhat unnerving, and therefore another unwanted distraction from the narrative ow, to see an image suddenly spring into life. As an example I recall an excellent still shot of a bird, which in the next image was galvanised into life – startling and very distracting!

One approach worth considering is that a piece of video should be prefaced (and succeeded) by pictures that in themselves appear to have movement –those pans and zooms are a possibility. Another is the ow of matching still images transitioned imperceptibly into each other, giving a sense of movement. (It’s possible given controlled conditions to shoot a series of identical images where only the lighting is altered. When run smoothly together the lighting appears to move.)