Com Arts 155 1st Edition Lecture 7 Outline of Last Lecture I Art Cinema Storytelling and Classical Storytelling II Transmedia Storytelling Outline of Current Lecture I Computer Languages II Digital Technology Fundamentals III Film versus Digital Capture IV Computer Graphics V Clarification of Course Content Current Lecture Computer Languages Hierarchy of Computer Languages User s Software Experience Most abstracted Very far removed from machine language but we re still speaking through series of systems Higher Higher Languages PHB BASIC Scripting languages very much removed form machine languages They re really handy for automating any number of tasks but they don t give you as much control Higher Level Object Oriented Languages Java Intermediate Language C It s easy to reuse the same things over and over again these things are like small programs that we refer to as objects This is called object oriented language This makes things faster to code but we give up some control Assembly Language Takes a lot of lines of code to do things Machine Language 1010001 1 100010 It s really just in 1s and 0s It s really hard to read and therefore way easier to make areas Digital Technology Fundamentals These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute 19th Century Digital Inventions It s not all electronic They have a Difference Engine and Analytical Engine Idea was to create a machine that would let you convert information into numeric symbols and then convert it back again This allowed you to solve really complex problems Since Babbage s machine was not electrical and since all digital computers are in a sense equivalent the feature of using electricity is thus seen to be only a very superficial similarity Alan Turing 1950 Basically there is a lot more to digital technology than electricity It has fundamentals Digital Technology s Real Fundamentals Store information Execute operations Manage the order of operations Convert information into a symbolic numeric expression After operations are complete covert it back again with no information loss Ex Bringing a picture from a camera to Photoshop There is no quality loss as you duplicate it A codec is a program for encoding and decoding data streams Make something into a symbolic sequence and then redo it Example is AVCHD We will use this in video assignments 20th Century Breakthroughs Transistor late 1940s Started to use transistors and semiconductors that could hold either a positive or negative electron Silicon worked really well with that Microprocessor 1970s Has 10 of thousands transistors in it By putting transistors closer together with the electrons closer together it moves faster There are many different ways to manipulate data and each way is going to give you a different level of control Differences between Film and digital Film A Photochemical Process Light comes through lenses and then hits a film and leaves an image on it Digital Capture From Lens to Imaging Senor to Codec Still have lenses Instead of hitting strip of film light hits an image sensor Codec changes that information to an image Computer Graphics Two forms of Compression Lossless Algorithm packs data in a way that original can be reconstructed More efficiently maps sequences of data It goes through different ways to reconstruct data and tries to find a more efficient way Run length encoding EEEHHH becomes E4H3 You re cutting down the size of characters At the end you can fully unpack it again and it s the same Efficient way to pack up but can take back out Examples Zip PNG Lossy Algorithm packs data but also throws away data that are considered less important e g sounds beyond the range humans usually hear or minor color variations in a photo It throws away data that it considers unimportant Examples in sound files Human hearing typically spans about 20 thousand hertz So if something is really high in that range this algorithm will throw it out Another example is a file type like JPEG It makes images really small by eliminating data Example JPEG MP3 MPEG4 Nearly all video codecs including AVCHD are lossy We would need tons of server stacks and hard drives if we were trying to capture all the information Computer Graphics Vector Mathematical Can get scaled up or down without losing clarity Bitmap Thinking in Pixels A pixel is the smallest unit that makes up an image on a computer screen display or television monitor Shorthand for picture element Pixel Density Resolution The more pixels you can fit in an area the higher the resolution Example IPhone 3 versus 4 Pixel Density Longtime Mac monitor resolution 72 PPI Retina display resolution 220 PPI Minimum PPl for hi res image printing 300 PPI Poster needs to be at this level HD Video Resolution The more pixels the higher the resolution Why does this all matter It matters because you re making decisions all the time that involve this information Understanding AVCHD 1080 p 30 AVCHD is codec 1080 is resolution number of pictures P is progressive They used to not give you the full image at one time but rather interlaced pieces of images However now it s progressive All information all the time 30 is frames per second Clarification of Class Content Photoshop We ll learn more about Photoshop the more we use it Purpose of lights 3 lights Key light primary source of light Fill gets rid of shadow Backlight to define objects from background High Key when the 3 point set up is used in a way to define figures in space without having too much shadow Low Key We ve taken away the fill Amps Watts Voltage Always try to look at circuit box Have access to it Make sure you re not plugging in too much into one circuit Amps 15 Volts 100 Midterm Thursday March 5 Two Parts Multiple Choice and Problem Solving Essay Essay is problem solving orientated Not going to be asked to analyze a sequence from film Example you show up on set Here s what the set is like What are you going to do Study guide is coming next week If you are registered with McBurney please let us know ASAP Fair Use Revisited Two Key Questions Did the unlicensed use transform the copyrighted material by using it for a different purpose Was the amount and nature of material taken appropriate Different Clips Fair Use or not 10 Things I hate about Commandments It is pretty transformative but it s mashing up a number of different forms of different copyrighted content Game Over Video