Results
See the amazing work that our class created.
Rationale
If Stephen Ramsay argues for the importance of building things in the digital humanities, Mark Sample proposes something else entirely, “a theory and practice of a Deformed Humanities.” This version of DH privileges breaking things and exploring their insides. He claims that the process of deforming is a “legitimate mode of doing and knowing.” I suppose there’s only one way to know…
The Nitty Gritty
This assignment has nine (seriously, who is hiring these people?!) parts. You will work in groups to complete the first eight parts. While it is possible to split these tasks up among group members, I strongly recommend tackling them together since you will appreciate having the help of a partner!
tl;dr: You have an in-class presentation on Tuesday, 16 November. You have a reflection paper due on Saturday, 20 November.
1. Select Two (or Three) Films
As a group, pick two (or three, if a three-person group) films that you want to analyze. They should be films that all of you have previously seen and films that have some sort of relation to one another, whether they are part of a series, have a shared director, studio, or universe, etc. (I know, I know: this will in no way be as easy as it sounds.) You will need access to DVD copies of them (not BluRay), either copies you own or that you can get from a library.
This project works better if we don’t have multiple groups picking the same films, so please post your choices on Learning Suite’s Digital Dialog. If two or more groups want the same film(s), whoever posts first wins.
2. Imagine Two (or Three) Films
Spend some time together thinking about what you think you will see in the two (or three) films you are working with. Jot down some predictions. No, really; write these down—you’ll need them for step 6.
3. Extract Two (or Three) Films
Extract frames from your films at the rate of one frame for every two seconds. You can do this most easily with VLC Media Player. You can either download it or use it on the computers in 1131 JFSB after borrowing a DVD drive in 1141 JFSB. You will need to make a few changes to VLC’s settings to capture the images. (For a watch-as-you-go example of these steps, try this video by Prerit Patidar.)
- Go to preferences.
- Click “show all”
- Click on “video”
- Click on “filters”
- Find “scene filter” and tick that box
- Scroll down under “filters” to find “scene filter.” Select it to edit its preferences.
- Paste in a directory path for where you want the screenshots to be collected.
- Set the “recording ratio” to be how often you want a still to be grabbed. For our purposes, you should set this to “60,” which will provide one frame for every two seconds.
- Click save.
- Quit the VLC application.
- Open the VLC application again.
- Open a movie file in VLC and let it play.
- Watch the screenshots roll in. (Check to make sure that they’re appearing.)
VLC must play the entire film from beginning to end in order to capture the frames. You can mute VLC and let it run in the background, however.
Pro-tip: If you have a digital file of your film (e.g., an mp4), it is much, much faster to use the ffmpeg library to extract frames. Chat with me if you want to explore this option.
4. Sum Two (or Three) Films
Following the process that Kevin L. Ferguson explains at the end of his article in Hyperallergic, create a summed z-projection of your frames. Since you will have already extracted all the frames of your films, you can skip step 2. Once you have the summed images, be sure to save a copy of them (File > Save As > PNG).
5. Barcode Two (or Three) Films
In addition to making a summed image, you will also use ImageJ to create a “barcode” of your films, similar to what you see at the Tumblr MOVIEBARCODE.
- Open ImageJ.
- File > Import > Image Sequence…
- Point the file browser to the folder that has your frames.
- Make sure you do not choose a virtual stack. It needs to have a “real” stack.
- Let your frames load. This will take a while, and you can watch the progress bar.
- Image > Stacks > Orthogonal Views
Once you have the two barcodes for each film, save copies of them.
6. Slide Two (or Three) Films
Make slides that you will use in the presentation (see below). The slides should feature your two (or three) summed images and your four (or six) barcodes. You should also include some individual scenes from the film that you have used to help you understand your composite images.
What order should everything be in? That depends on how you decide to talk about what you’ve found. You’ll certainly want to include something about what you expected to see before doing all this work. (See, there was a reason for step 2!) See the slides that Hannah and her partner made last year as an example.
7. Blog Two (or Three) Films
Prior to the presentation (see below), post a link to your slides and your two (or three) summed images and your four (or six) barcodes to a group member’s blog. Please post these no later than 1pm on Tuesday, 16 November.
8. Present Two (or Three) Films
As a group, you will present your summed images and barcodes to the class on Tuesday, 16 November. Presentations should be at least 2 minutes long, but no longer than 5 minutes. Each of you must participate in the presentation. In the presentation, you will report on patterns that your group has found and offer an interpretation of those patterns.
9. Reflect on Two (or Three) Films
Finally, each of you will individually write a two- to three-page reflection paper (12pt, Times New Roman, double-spaced) about this assignment. Reflection papers should be submitted as PDFs via Learning Suite by 11:59pm on Saturday, November 20. Some questions to consider in your reflections are
- What did I learn by completing this assignment that I couldn’t have learned by watching the film alone?
- As I completed the assignment, did I feel like I was deforming something? Or building something?
- What did I learn about digital humanities in this experience?
- What did I learn about digitizing the humanities or the friction of formats?
- What was my experience of working in a group on this assignment?
- What would I change about this assignment to make it more relevant, informative, enjoyable, challenging, or interesting?
Groups
Chloe
Ashlin
Ashley
Amanda
Eliza
Maria
Jenni
Estelle
Elizabeth Bennett
Elizabeth Bodily
Dane
Brooke
Allie
Chase
Winthrop
Grading
As an experimental class project, you are not being graded on what you and your group learn about your film. Instead, you are being graded on (1) whether you successfully complete all of the different steps, (2) how engaged you are with the work and your group, and (3) how well you apply the method of pattern recognition/interpretation we’ve been embracing throughout the semester. Finally, your reflection paper will be evaluated on its discussion of what you learned, as well as clarity and grammar.
Extra Credit: GIF Two (or Three) Films
For an extra 3 points, your group can create two GIFs from each of your films, for a total of four (or six). GIFs are easy to create, thanks to these step-by-step instructions from LifeHacker. Submit the GIFs on Learning Suite by 11:59pm on Saturday, November 20.
Credits
This assignment is inspired first and foremost by the work of Kevin L. Ferguson, who has shared his methods for creating summed z-projections of films and also graciously answered a number of questions from me as I started exploring his methods. Others who contributed to this assignment—perhaps indirectly—include Mark Sample, who invites us to break things, Zach Whalen, who builds remarkable things at a rate that astonishes me, and whoever is behind the Tumblr MOVIEBARCODE. And of course, the assignment’s aggressively hopeful pun/name points back to the work of Martin Wattenberg, Fernanda Viégas, and others on IBM’s ManyEyes. I designed the assignment in 2018, cut out some steps (seriously!) in 2019, and update it annually.
