Sound Slides and beyond e.g. Stop Action

The photojo from France didn't much like it, when a couple of years back we mixed a brill gospelly track, created overnight in the studio to the photos of Yannis Kontos who had just won World Press Photographer in the contemporary section.

"Leave the photos alone", was his advice.

He might have a point, and perhaps he wasn't referring to the cuts you can undertake on that brill programme SoundSlides.

In this case I was key-framing to produce the sort of filmic effect you'd find using a rostrum camera on opening credits to Law and Order or Homicide - Life on the Street.



Manipulating pics to provide movement is one of those added weapons in film making, whether as stand alone - see Eye of the Prize or as part of film - and one effect which regularly surfaces and there are some good ones on Youtube is Stop Action.

I can see how I'll end up stretching this to do something else, but for 5 minutes work, well you judge.

There's really nothing in it other than dragging a selection of photos from Iphoto onto FCPs timeline which I configured to 5 frames in FCPs "still frame" settings.

Creativity
A student emailed me about creativity and how you begin to create a slew of workable ideas.

My advice to her was that beyond the plethora of books on the stores shelves,go hang out with creative people, if you have the opportunity, particularly those that come from the adworld.

Their motivation, aside from being creative is to sell a product within the constrains of compressed time: a short movie in 40 seconds.

I spent three years with Jon Staton, ex head of TV at Saatchi and Saatchi - who's still my mentor. His office housed another creative team: the writers who thought up the car in front is a Toyota and other gems

And as a parting para to the wonderful world of manipulating pics, how about this for photorealistic from a friend and work colleague, Rob Ojok.

This isn't a picture taken by a stills camera but something built in Illustrator.

Nice!