Re: InfoD-Cafe: The cinematographic language of instructions
Jose de Souza <marconi2006 <at> googlemail.com>
2008-02-01 15:31:57 GMT
Conrad,
Many thanks for your excellent insights and information. Very stimulating.
Indeed, the so called "academy" is very receptive to the "craft
knowledge" contribution
(at least the "academy" that I know).
> The cinematographic language brings to the art of explanation
> and instruction two useful distortions of reality:
>
> (a) the ability to rapidly shift from one Point Of View
> (hereinafter POV) to another;
>
> (b) the ability to distort and in particular to elide
> passages of time.
In order to achieve clarity, the traditional graphic language can also
"distort" reality in similar ways. For example, McClouds's five
choices to "distort" reality are: moment (including alteration of time
duration perception), frame (including POV), drawing technique, word
and flow
(see http://images.amazon.com/media/i3d/01/makingcomics_2p.pdf).
I would add a sixth choice: provision of user (i.e., observer and/or
reader) interaction flexibility.
Thanks again.
Jose'.
On 31/01/2008, Conrad Taylor <conrad <at> ideograf.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Apologies for coming late to this discussion; and, of course,
> I shall contribute little of any academic value, as is my way...
> 
>
> I have made a number of videos which could not be described
> as "instructional" -- if by that you mean that you desire people
> to repeat what has been shown -- but "explanatory", which means
> that they are supposed to explain and illustrate complex processes.
> The former is not a perfect subset of the latter, but there must
> be quite an overlap; and there is some overlap of technique, too.
>
> The cinematographic language brings to the art of explanation
> and instruction two useful distortions of reality:
>
> (a) the ability to rapidly shift from one Point Of View
> (hereinafter POV) to another;
>
> (b) the ability to distort and in particular to elide
> passages of time.
>
> That is not the entire toolkit, but they are the two methods that
> are used most routinely.
>
> To illustrate this: quite a few years ago I made a video about
> "How a magazine gets printed", which I have subsequently used
> in training events. The reason for making this was that many
> people responsible for specifying and ordering print for their
> companies had never seen the processes in action. Several
> times, I arranged for the course participants to have a
> guided tour of a medium-sized print-plant, but this was
> time-consuming, too dependent on the goodwill of printers,
> and didn't display a wide enough range of processes (e.g.
> could not show both web-fed and sheet-fed presses in action).
>
> Imagine explaining (cinematographically, with narration)
> the operation of a Heidelberg CPC Speedmaster sheet-fed
> press. We want to show the whole press in wide view.
> We narrate that it is fed with sheets of paper (POV-cut
> to paper feed mechanism, side-view... we see the sheets
> going down the registration slide one by one). Suction
> feet and compressed air are used to make sure only one
> sheet at a time is fed (POV-cut to rear view, where the
> operation of the suction foot array is most obvious).
> The press has four printing-heads, one for each colour
> (POV-cut to wide view, showing first two heads, angled
> view) and the sheet of paper passes through each in
> turn (not a POV-cut, but a pan with slowly opening zoom
> to follow the course the sheet takes). Having received
> impressions from all four printing units, the sheet is
> delivered with a full colour image (POV-cut to the
> delivery end of the press, medium shot, and slowly
> zoom in to printed sheets falling one on top of each
> other).
>
> Five different points of view, with instant transitions
> between them, ranging from wide shots to shots that show
> so much detail in close-up (thanks to telephoto lenses)
> that one might be in mortal danger trying to replicate
> them with the naked eye. All steady-shot on tripod,
> all perfectly focused, and the trickery is perfectly
> accepted by the audience which has become used to the
> convention.
>
> Note that in the scenario described above, we can exploit
> the mass-production, repeated nature of the print process.
> Each part of the press is doing exactly the same repeated
> action at intervals slightly less than a second. During
> a run of the press, we have plenty of time to move the
> single camera to each required POV and film a segment.
> Edit the segments together guided by the audio, so
> the rhythm of the press doesn't make a jump, and you
> have what you want. Filming the take-off of an Ariane
> rocket from Kourou from several different POVs could not
> be done with a single camera.
>
> As for the manipulation of time, let's go to an earlier
> part of the print-process: the platemaking. Remember that
> this movie was made prior to direct-image platemaking.
> So we show the imagesetter, and we describe how this
> machine is using a laser beam to image our pages as
> film positives. Switch to the film-processor unit,
> and the film is emerging with the page image visible
> on it. Switch to the film-imposition light table,
> where the films are being attached to carrier foils.
> Switch to several POV-shots of the printing-down
> frame, where the foils are laid onto plates and
> exposed to UV light. Switch to the rear end of
> the plate processor, where the plates emerge with
> imposed page images on them. Those, as it happens,
> are all POV-cuts; but they are also understood to be
> a contraction of elapsed time, so that in 90 seconds
> we can explain a process that in truth takes 45 minutes.
>
> :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
>
> My implementation of these two techniques depended in the
> example above on videotape and editing to achieve both
> POV-shifts and time-shifts. Where do the roots of these
> techniques lie, culturally? Probably in story-telling,
> and they are well established in the form of the novel.
> The stage-play, of course, is another animal...
>
> Let's take a jump back to instructional television for
> children, and to the early 1960s, a few years after the
> BBC Children's Television programme "Blue Peter" started
> transmission (it is the longest-running children's TV
> show in the world, and will be 50 years old in October).
>
> From quite early on, the shows featured craft demonstrations
> in which we children (there were no "kids" in Britain at
> that time, other than in herds of goats) were encouraged
> and shown how to make toys and gifts and decorative or
> practical objects out of disused cereals packets and toilet-
> rolls, glue, sticky tape and stick-backed plastic (terms
> invented by the programme makers so as not to use such
> trade names as "Sellotape" and "Fablon") ... and of course
> serious glues that are no longer sold to children due to
> the novel mind-altering uses to which such substances are
> now put.
>
> These programmes went out live (they still usually do),
> though they usually included one segment that had been
> filmed and edited and were transmitted through a telecine
> machine. There was very little use in the BBC at that
> time of the new-fangled Quadruplex 2" video recording
> system in preparing programmes; though Blue Peter was
> one of the few programmes to have been consistently
> archived from 1964 (and on video from 1970).
>
> Craft demonstrations also required, as in my examples above,
> shifts of POV, particularly from shots showing the presenter
> in wider shot to extreme close-ups showing beads of glue
> being applied to fuzzy-felt, etc. Given the real-time
> nature of the show, this was achieved by multiple cameras
> well choreographed, and a switcher desk.
>
> Time shifts, however, were impossible with this technology,
> hence the invention by one of Blue Peter's two first presenters,
> Chistopher Trace, of the phrase "Here's one I made earlier" --
> as a version was produced in which the glue had set, paint
> had dried, etc.
>
> I've used Blue Peter as an exemplar, but anyone who wanted
> to make a historical study of the evolution if instructional
> methods on TV might find the archives of the BBC a treasury.
> Sad, then, that in the name of recycling and cost-cutting,
> all the 1970s and early 1980s master videotopes of "Tomorrow's
> World" were erased...
>
> There must also be military training films as another kind
> of resource. And cookery programmes. Maybe even military
> cooking programmes.
>
> :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
>
> A supplementary technique which I have also had to use in
> cinematographic explanation is, of course, diagrams and the
> animation thereof. Generally this is when a diagram can
> reveal processes that would be hidden to a camera or even
> a human observer, or show the action of what could never be
> visible (such as the passage of data through in information
> circuit, or the action of gravity or radiation) -- or, of
> course, where the diagram simplifies what is complicated
> to see in reality. But that would take the discussion
> into realms which I do not have time to address just now.
>
> Hope some of these ramblings help!
>
> Conrad
>
> --
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--
José de Souza
PhD Student
Department of Typography & Graphic Communication
The University of Reading
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