Lecture for SAQA University"So You Want to Be in Pictures: Documenting Quilts with Video"Studio Art Quilt AssociatesGood evening. My name is V Kingsley. Before we delve into over 20 minutes of the very technical subject of documenting quilts with video, I would like to spend a few minutes telling you a little bit about myself and how it is that I have come here to the Studio Art Quilt Associates.
Talking about myself is also kind of an excuse to give you time to get a paper and pen. If you would like, you can also boot up the computer and point your browser to an active search engine, open up a separate tab and go to my website www.alotoflife.com. I also encourage you to launch your favorite movie-making software program like
iMovie on the Mac (I have 4.0.1) or Windows Movie Maker for the PC
These programs should be bundled into your operating systems and would be found in the applications folder but if you would like to download them for free, you can go to my website and click the buttons on the bottom of my LINKS page. Iif you forget any of this or have any questions in the future, I can be found on the contact page.
In the meantime – while you are launching programs or finding a pen – I’ll tell you a bit of my family history - I come from a long line of necessity quilters. My mother’s grandmother always kept a large box of scrap squares in her parlor in rural Maine. From what I can tell – she used every piece of cloth available to her, hand quilting as she went along – sometimes without any batting.
On my father’s side of my family, I remember well the day when my grandmother bequeathed me the tattered remains of her mother’s heirloom quilts. They were used and loved nearly to death. What fascinated me about these quilts were the stories told in tandem with the giving – she showed me her play clothes and the blouse she wore on the day she lost her glasses on the forbidden Ferris Wheel in the 1930s.
The quilt itself evoked it’s own stories even without my grandmother– there were worn wool blankets and winter coats used as batting, men’s work shirts, parts of draperies.
I document the process of quilt making and the stories that accompany the fabric because THAT is what excites me! Partly because I am easily bored and partly because the quilts I make are usually on commission, I do not spend a lot of time with the quilts I create after I have created them so the process is all there is. I LOVE the journey and then I love to share the journey with others through the world wide web.
My journey into quilt making began with hand work as a child and moved to novice quilting and quilt restoration in the mid 1980s. I took my first quilt commissions in the 1990s and art quilt commissions in 2001. In 2003, however, my quilting came to a screeching halt when I went blind. I had severe dry eyes due to complications with cancer and an allergic reaction to cancer. I could no longer open my eyes so my sight was reduced to quick snapshots (like the camera-shutter) and all I could see were undefined shapes on a color scale from black to grey to peach to orange. I imagine that any quilter – any artist – maybe any person -would be initially devastated by the inability to see. I know I was but I was also determined to rail against the bleak prognosis given to me. Against the odds, I kept my sewing machine, I kept my scissors, I kept most of my fabric – selling only the larger pieces of yardage in order to pay for medical bills.
When my eyesight was restored with a new technique using prosthetic lenses from the Boston Foundation for Sight in 2005, the first thing I wanted to do after seeing my family, was to make a quilt to say thank you to the Foundation. I made a 2 1/2’ x 3’ wall hanging of a giant crazy quilted eyeball. At some point in the process of making that quilt, I realized that it might be a good idea to document what I was doing – to tell the stories behind this giant eye ball. I took snapshots along the way and made them into a slideshow with the story in accompanying text. It was my first documentary.
So this brings us to the point of documenting our creations. In this new digital age, it is imperative that we know how to document. Maybe you take your own photographs, maybe you hire a studio photographer to shoot them for you. Maybe you use film and maybe you have gone digital. But it is hard to imagine a modern professional quilter who does not photograph their artwork.
I want to be
completely transparent here. I consider my self to be a blue-collar
quilter. I have a small studio that doubles as a laundry room in my
home. I seldom create a quilt of all new fabric – choosing instead
to use scraps and the scraps of scraps. All but a couple of my
quilts have gone directly into
There really is no substitute for one decent photograph of a finished quilt that can be printed with accurate colors. There are professional photographers – I’ve recently been working with a very talented woman named Erica Crawford in Santa Cruz but there are many others - Gregory Case, Ben Peoples – just Google quilt photographers – They know so much more than I do about how to photograph quilts properly and what to do with the photographs. I recommend learning what you can about photography and photographers. But with that said…
Today, I will focus on Internet-ready video as a way of documenting quilts and quilt making. Before today’s lecture, Lisa Chipetine passed along a few questions for me to answer – and one of them was
I can imagine video taping my work and surroundings for insurance purposes or posterity or to integrate with workshops on the creative process.
What are some of the more unusual uses you know of for videotaping?
Video documentation- in my estimation - is just another tool to get your work out there to the world. Still photographs are for your hand held portfolio or the glossy post card you get at the fabric store check-out counter or for digital images necessary for juried shows or as a graphic to accompany a magazine article or new pattern book.
Videos are a dynamic way to reach the public – to promote your art, your process, your passion, your merchandise. Videos can reach a world audience in a way that glossy post cards and books and quilt shows never can. I get hits on my website from all over the world. Maybe it’s my Yankee upbringing but I really appreciate the low cost and the consumer freedom involved in this type of marketing. All it takes is a camera and time. Sure sure– I was supposed to read the camera’s manual but I didn’t. Sure, I could have saved some time and spent some money on computer classes – but I didn’t. I just learned from each video I made - Trial and error – that’s all it takes.
Another way that I use videos are for my ipod – they become a portable portfolio and entertainment wrapped up in one. I carry my entire portfolio of still images and videos on a contraption the size of a makeup compact in my purse to use as a quick and easy business card to show if the subject of quilting comes up in conversation. A picture is worth a thousand words they say!
And to finish up answering this question, I would have to say that the possibilities are endless – videos can be used on Internet channels, as Vodcasts – they can be used on RSS Feeds in tandem with online journaling and blogs, in classes, with children, with our guilds…they are simply another way for people to experience our passion.
(sreeeeeech) OK - pause - I just heard myself say some technical sounding words. What the heck is an RSS feed? I am taking for granted that this audience will have some basic knowledge of the Internet and will use a combination or digital video and digital still images (either from a digital camera or from a CD from the film processing store.) I am going to assume that you know basic technical and Internet vocabulary but if you do not – it’s OK! don’t despair! I am SO NOT a computer person – I have never taken a computer class and do not identify as someone who is mechanically inclined in any way. And yet, because I am driven to share my passion, I’ve managed to learn all of this on my own. I suggest that if you have no idea what I am talking about, simply re-listen to this class on the recorded SAQA University audio file when it gets posted on the SAQA website, pause it when necessary and go to your favorite Internet search engine (I love Google) and type in the word or concept that you do not understand plus the word “define.” It might take a little time, but I have learned many things this way. I will also post this lecture in written form on my website along with a glossary.
OK – let’s carry on - I use videos on the Internet mostly – You Tube and Google Videos are two of the most popular sites that allow everyday people to set up their own channel where we can post videos. We can be as ambitious as we want – or only post one special video ever. Either way – it’s a great tool to have our work seen. And after the video is uploaded onto the Internet, we are given the link to it that we can give to people and the magical html code to use that will even embed the actual video into an email or onto a web. I use several online communities in addition to my own web site to promote my quilting – Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, Tribe, LiveJournal. These are all free places where we can set up our own pages – we do not need to have a professional web master to make these pages. They totally walk you through the process. And what I LOVE about You Tube is they are marketing for me! When anyone types “Art Quilt” into the You Tube search engine, they can come up with SAQA Journal editor Carolyn Lee Veslage and a number of other art quilters. And no matter which one, the user picks – You Tube will give my video as a suggested related video in the sidebar. It’s so cool!
Reaching people in this consumer-driven world economy is so exciting. I don’t think there has ever been a more exciting time for artists who want to share their work!
Of course, having one’s own website is advantageous and I recommend it. If you do not feel comfortable using web page-making software, it is handy to have a webmaster so you hold more control and your own domain name or and an advertisement-free space. In the meantime, though, there are plenty of ways for Do-it Yourself Internet marketing. Having a video on you tube is a good place to start.
The second question Lisa sent me was:
What do you recommend for folks who don't want to pay for a video camera or spend a lot of time learning how to use one. Is there a quick and easy version that can be rented?
First, let me say to the people who do not want to get into video cameras and learning something completely new - A video for the Internet can be made by using photographs alone. You can just string photographs together like a flip book. This is called stop-motion video.
With that said - Video cameras can be also be rented. Just Google the words “video camera rental” and the name of your town. I suggest getting a digital video camera so that your information is stored on a memory card instead of a VHS tape. This information can them be uploaded onto your computer using a cable that runs from the camera to the computer. Do not despair if all you have is the video camera that you bought to tape the kids back in 1985. VHS tapes can easily be transferred onto a DVD or a memory card. But I would be remiss if I did not tell you that for under $300, you can buy a decent video camera or dual-purpose camera like the one I have and they really are easy to learn. If this whole notion of videos is new – there will be a learning curve no matter if you rent or buy.
I’ll take the third and final question put to me and then we’ll get started on how to actually MAKE a video!
Okay, suppose I get hooked enough to go to buy [a video camera]. What unit would you recommend for that same person. Something lightweight, basic, and cheap.
I personally like the ease, size and quality of my Casio Exilim 6.0 camera. It is the size of a modern cell phone and takes both digital stills AND videos up to several minutes long. The 6 things to look for in a camera:
OK! Let’s make a video! I want you to know that I’m going to zip through this process due to the time constraints of the lecture – we could spend hours doing this together! But there are excellent tutorials that can visually show you how to do what I will be explaining and I hope that you supplement this mentor lecture with these tutorials. Just Google “Windows Movie Maker Tutorial” or “iMovie Tutorial” and you will get pages of step-by-step tutorials to choose from. Be careful – some of them are terrible but just take the time to find a tutorial style that works for you.
The videos I make are made from a combination of .avi / movie file clips and/or .jpg digital photographs. Because the videos are condensed (or made smaller) before they can be uploaded to the Internet, the quality and size of the photographs for my web video are nowhere near the quality and size of a ready-to-print file that I would need for a glossy post card.
We begin our documentary by taking photographs with the standard Internet image size of 640 pixels x 480 pixels. You get this by choosing it from the camera menu under “size”
A word on pixels. Pixels are those little squares that make up an image. They carry weight – so if an image is dense in pixels, it can be blown up to a larger size or zoomed into closer while maintaining clarity.
A standard photograph that would get you pictures for your family photo album is usually 2048 pixels across by 1536 high and has just over 3.1 mega pixels. This is too large for the Internet – especially for folks who still have dial-up. This is why I recommend 640 x 480.
You can set your camera’s menu to have economy sized photo and video at the outset or you can take high quality images at the outset and open the photograph in a software program like Adobe Photoshop and resize it to a smaller size if you want to have more options. You can make a photograph with a larger number of pixels smaller but you cannot make a photograph with a small number of pixels larger.
I will take you through the steps of how to get these pictures into the movie making program in a moment. But let’s stick with the raw data for a moment. If you have video capabilities, with minimal effort and learning, you can take a video of the finished quilt, panning into a special design feature (but don’t expect any amount of detail to show in these Internet videos – they are NOT good for details). You could also make a movie of you making the quilt or talking in front of the finished quilt. Don’t worry about missed lines if you have a script or if there are things you decide you don’t want later. They can be easily edited out in the movie making programs.
If you do decide to talk in front of your quilt, I recommend combining any talking head shots with other visuals and music in the finished project. I think it’s tough to hold the viewers’ interest with a talking head or with voice audio alone. On the whole, the Internet viewer is driven by the desire for the visual. Just imagine what this lecture would be like if I were showing you my great grandmother’s quilts and giving you actual screenshots about pixels and changing the image size in the settings menu on my camera.
So – the first thing I do is to take a series of photographs and very short videos of the process of making a quilt. Sometimes I take many, many pictures along the way so that I can line them all up – almost like an old-fashioned flip book or stop-motion film. Think time-lapsed photography of an opening flower! Because this is a class, I will say that the best way to photograph – even for the web – is to have a tripod for the camera and diffused light from both sides in front of the subject matter using pretty close to a 45-degree angle. I can also tell you that Brussels sprouts and liver are very good for you. Just because I know something is the best thing, it doesn’t mean that I do it.
I do not have time or space or – frankly- the patience to set up a professional photo shoot every 10 minutes in my studio. Lucky for me- the Internet does not demand that I do. I usually work on a design wall and just click away, capturing the drama of the changes – placing the center of the piece I am working on in the center of the photograph. Sometimes I have to work on a flat table surface and in this case, I get above the quilt to photograph it. Yes- I definitely lose the true colors when I use a flash – yes – I lose the texture and the tiny stitches of the quilting. But that is not what a video is about. A video is about the process of the quilt – the stories in the fabric – the emotion - the step-by-step action. If someone wants texture and color and beautiful lighting, show them your portfolio or bring them to a quilt show.
So, once I have the photographs (which are made in a .jpg file on my camera) and the videos (which are made in a .avi file on my camera), I take the files and upload them into a folder on my hard drive by connecting a cable from my camera to my computer. On a Mac, I see an icon of my camera drive and in Windows, I think you search for that auxiliary drive. Once in the drive, I drag and drop the jpgs and .avi files into a folder on my desktop.
Then I’m ready to make a movie. If you are taking notes, I will tell you that there are 8 steps from raw data on your hard drive to a video that can be seen on any computer in the world. These steps are:
1. Import data into the movie making program 2. Add music 3. Create Timeline or Story Board 4. Create Transitions 5. Create video effects 6. Create titles and credits 7. Save the finished product 8. upload the movie to the Internet
I work exclusively on a Mac but Windows Movie Maker is easy to use too. Sometimes I alter them in a photo editing software program like Adobe Photoshop but you don’t have to. I import my photos into iPhoto and then I launch iMovie. And for the .avi video files, I just drag and drop the video files onto the clipboard pane of the movie program and keep them there until I am ready to use them. With Windows – you import the files from the file menu in the movie making program.
Then, it’s time to add the audio. To make it super duper easy, I try to make the videos and photographs fit into the same length of one song – about 2-4 minutes. A You Tube video can only be under 10 minutes. I suggest choosing a song or combination of songs that have some relationship to the work you are showing. This really does add to the overall effect of the video. It’s a multi-media world now and our videos need movement and audio. Please familiarize yourself with copyright law and ethical uses of music in videos.
I import the music as an Mp3 file from iTunes. It’s why I love Macs- everything is integrated. But on Windows – you just import the music file from the file menu. The .avi files have the audio portion of your video in the file. It can be separated from the video from the file menu. Another thing I do is to record my voice on my digital/video camera and take the audio files from my camera and turn them into mp3 files by saving them into iTunes - which is by the way - available for Windows or Mac.
So say you take a video of yourself free-motion quilting – either by having a friend take the video or setting up your camera on a tripod. It’s fun to watch but maybe the sound of the machine in the background might not be the best audio to keep the viewer engaged. Or maybe there is a dog barking in the background. Separate the audio from the visual and replace the audio with either music or maybe audio of yourself explaining what free-motion quilting is and how you do it.
The audio can be edited at any point in the process. I usually fade the music in and combine a couple of songs for longer movies. Sometimes I have time to do an audio explanation of what I did in my process and sometimes I just want to get the video out there so I keep it simple.
When I have imported the music and the images, it is time to set up the story board or time line.
Video is dragged onto the time line in the same way but usually needs to be edited down. To edit a video clip, use the split command (on the preview pane in Windows or from the edit menu on the Mac) and take the part of the clip that you do not want and delete it or drag it up onto the clip pane to use for later.
Both programs use the notion of a time line. The photos are imported from your photo file folder or, in my case, from iPhoto and dragged onto the timeline in the order in which I want them to appear in the finished video. Photos can be shown for long periods of time (like 6-10 seconds) if you want to get a good look at something or if you are explaining something in depth. But they can be resized to a much shorter time (1 or 2 seconds) if you want the images to blend together to make stop-motion.
Once all the images are where you want them on the time line or story board and the audio tracks are laid, it’s time to get fancy. Of course – you may not want to get fancy and that is OK too. Sometimes I have time to add transitions between the photos (it’s important NOT to use transitions if you want a stop motion effect) and sometimes I don’t. I like to add titles and I think it’s ethically imperative to add credits if I have shown photographs that can be credited to photographers or music that belongs to someone else. I also like to thank my family for putting up with my long hours. Most importantly, I want to point the viewer in the direction of my web site so that they can discover more of my work.
When it is all finished, I save the project. Actually, I constantly save the project as I go along just so that if the program crashes, I won’t lose all of my hard work! This will be a file readable by my movie making program and I save it just in case the movie needs to be updated – like maybe I spelled someone’s name wrong in the credits or I get a picture that I really want to add later.
After I save the project. I need to make a .mov file that can be read by Quicktime or windows media player. I do this under the file menu under a heading called “Share” – I am given several options in whether to share it in an email, for a video camera, on a DVD or for Quicktime. I always make a Quicktime .mov file with the best resolution (or frames per second) that I can. Then I go back and make a Quicktime compressed for web streaming or for CD Rom. I choose whatever will get me closest to 100 Megabytes but not over that because you tubes cannot be over 100 MB in size.
Now that you have a finished video compressed to the right size, it’s time to upload it onto the Internet! Go to Google videos or YouTube.com and set up an account with them. Once you have done that, you click on the button that says upload video. They walk you through the process and it’s super easy! One thing that is important is to make sure that you put tags – these are key words that search engines search for - that best describe your work. For example I almost always put art and quilt along with quilter and documentary plus any special feature of the quilt like mermaid or New Orleans. A snappy description in the description box doesn’t hurt either. And just to let you know - once you have uploaded your video – it takes at least 30 minutes for it to post to the Internet so that people can see it. I finished my latest video just for you all today and you can find it on my You Tube channel which is www.youtube.com/vkingsley.
I genuinely hope that you can have a fun time with the learning process. It gets frustrating at times and I make new mistakes every time I make a video. But each one gets better and easier. I don’t like to spend a lot of time – as a home schooling mother and a quilter – my time can be spent elsewhere than the computer! But with videos – I think it’s OK – they don’t; have to be professional and polished – they are just home movies of my process and believe me – my process isn’t perfect!
So – I will open up the floor for questions and if you want to take the questions to me in an email, I look forward to hearing from you through www.alofoflife.com.
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