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INTRODUCTION: Birds need two wings to fly, and so in today's world, we need both programming and multimedia authoring skills to function effectively as producers and publishers of useful digital content (now, working with increasingly powerful Artificial Intelligence [= AI] tools); especially in a world where . . . sadly . . . information- media- news- education have become a key "seven mountains of influence" battlespace. One, in which truth and so, souls are at stake. Where, technically, multimedia [= multiple + media], is the integration of various forms of information in an
attractive pattern for effective communication or entertainment.
So, let us start with a key, instructive comparison:
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| Fig. M.1: Key multimedia, ICT concepts. |
Similarly, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has suggested a general framework for computing knowledge that identifies multimedia creativity as a key component -- creating media:
Where, of course, we are using digital computers, machines for processing information based on two-state on/off-hi/lo-1/0elements and states. We can represent such a machine:
. . . and its data elements:
Of course, multimedia authoring requires appreciation of the technology underpinnings but focusses on multimedia applications packages for tasks such as document processing (and especially layout -- desktop publishing), presentation slide show creation, drawing and image processing (especially photographs), animation, audio and video editing, whiteboarding and teleconferencing all of which now have AI, artificial intelligence support. Indeed, now, AI is proving itself an increasingly potent author of documents, images, videos and computer code, as well as of analyses, though it is currently still prone to basic errors -- think, drawing a fox with three ears (oopsie!) -- and to plausibly presented falsehoods, now termed "hallucination." Onward, too, we will eventually see a transition to immersive, interactive three-dimensional virtual reality or augmented reality, including voice and subvocalisation interfaces.
For example of what is coming, here is a shared world for medicine and medical education:
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| A shared virtual world, for medicine (HT, Fair Use Edu [FUE]) |
In this Unit, we will therefore open a gateway to multimedia authoring, noting that Python, especially, is useful in Web scripting, as is JavaScript -- and yes that is "CamelCase." (For that matter, setting up a Graphical User Interface context for an application, already has in it elements of multimedia, as we can see by doing the companion Python and/or Java Gateway Workshop units.)
Our context, will be web (and podcast) oriented, also desktop publishing oriented.
Where, as the success of Radio, Movies and Television -- especially, Colour Television -- reminds us, vision and hearing are key human senses, so that educators often talk of the ear gate and of the eye gate. Indeed, a note on brain injuries points out, how experts notice that "[v]isual-perceptual dysfunction is one of the most common devastating residual impairments of head injury" and that "[t]here is an extremely high incidence (greater than 50 percent) of visual and visual-cognitive disorders in neurologically impaired patients, such as those with traumatic brain injury" -- marks of how much of our brains are involved with vision and of just how complex this key sense is. Sobering.
On a happier point, the same note highlights how:
" . . . vision is the process of deriving meaning from what is seen. It is a complex, learned and developed a set of functions that involve a multitude of skills. Research estimates that eighty to eighty-five percent of our perception, learning, cognition, and activities are mediated through vision."
Yes, eighty to eighty-five percent. No wonder the note has as headline, that "Vision Is Our Dominant Sense"!
In balance, of course, as concepts are often expressed and thought about in language, symbols and writing, sound, text and key symbols (such as for Mathematics) are also quite important.
Now, too, we need a fair amount of background context and knowledge of such media, to do the job right based on sound understanding. So, along the way, we are going to look at calligraphy to understand lettering, a bit at printing (and its revolutionary impact!), at what colours are and how they are made up, also at sound, at images and at animation. These will help us move beyond "faking it" based on just, blindly "doing what works for us" to working based on understanding.
For, as the educator Nancy Catty is said to have remarked, "knowledge without application is useless; [blindly memorised action steps] without understanding will fail in an emergency."
Further to this, let us consider how a multimedia content creation and outreach effort could be framed, for some movement reaching out to a public, as this will help us understand how the bits and pieces below fit together:
MOVEMENT X's MULTIMEDIA INITIATIVE
1] The core of the initiative, is a blog that uses newspaper/newsletter format, which -- to sustain interest -- is regularly updated with attention-getting, soundly informative articles,
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| A simple Magazine Show Set. Notice, tripod-mounted video camera with a shotgun mic |
2] those articles, having embedded images, audio and video elements, perhaps tied to a podcast based on a weekly streaming session with a "magazine format" show, with a live audience, online (use a chat feature or teleconferencing) and/or in studio. Where, of course, say, a well chosen verandah can be a "studio". . .
(All of this implies editorial oversight and curating of articles to see to soundness, responsible balance, winsome tone, technical media quality, attractiveness of design, effectiveness in communicating, informing, educating and appropriately persuading. [Note on longstanding related ethics, here. This link applies such principles to media.])
Ethics . . .
Here, FUE, is a simple lecture or presentation layout, using a whiteboard (or, alternatively, a similar display . . . perhaps, a wide screen LCD display unit), here, with an obvious Green Screen backdrop, with a slide of a library overlaid on the green backdrop:
We can see the actual backdrop of a green screen here, a background is inserted through video editing software:
Here, is a creative use of Green Screen to make a "high tech chalkboard," with a comments stream and live lecturer, rather like the old fashioned classroom . . . and with more impact than an inset small window:
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| A high tech chalkboard style presentation. This requires screen capture to capture the computer screen AND live editing to effect the green screen insertion, similar to much of broadcast news or weather presentations on TV. This has more impact than simple insertion of a small window. OBS Studio is a free-for-download application that can stream, including using a green screen approach. Here is a description, here is a video, here are further video details (language warning). Here, may help on miking, but be cautious in manipulating filters, effects etc you don't understand.. Cameras can vary from built in computer cams to web cams -- Go Pro style adventure cams and pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cams are noteworthy -- to phone cams (often, surprisingly good) to more elaborate SLRs run in video mode to video cameras. |
Where also, Times Radio provides a useful case of a more complex panel-at-a-table, group discussion layout that extends this technology -- notice the remote panelist in a small window, with a shadow effect -- a simpler way is to use a display:
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| Here, we see a host, who contributes to presentations, using a pointer. As necessary, items are placed on the map, and fresh maps are placed on the table . . . this invites the use of demonstration exercises such as experiments or table sized objects of interest. One panelist is in studio, the other is by teleconference panel inserted as if he were sitting at the table. The background is dark (this is called chiaroscuro, a famous effect from the world of painting), with presenters and the artifacts on the table being highlighted. There is a camera to the front, one overhead and possibly a third on an articulating arm, to give a grazing view of detail action on the artifacts table. Video roll-ins and tight focus on participants are used. And of course there are background posters of Guadalcanal, the focus of this episode of a podcast series. |
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| An Amazon-recommended, basic podcasting side-address (speak to the label side) USB condenser microphone kit with 192 k sample/s, 24-bit sound and built-in 48V phantom power, with boom arm, cable & shields. The "pop" shield should be 4 - 6 inches from the microphone, which also protects from moisture etc. Condenser mics are vulnerable to dust, saliva splatter etc and should be shielded; when out of use, a dust cover is a good idea. [~ US$ 60, For the next level, go to XLR mics and mixers or audio interfaces. HT: Amazon, FUE. Review.] |
3] The podcast sessions are hosted in a repository such as YouTube or the like (perhaps Rumble? [e.g., to avert censorship issues, as YT is owned by Google]), preferably in more than one host site. As a first level for audio, a reasonably good shock mounted, moderate cost kit USB podcasting microphone (such as this) a reasonable web cam both fed into a computer, with a green screen backdrop, could work.
4] The blog must have a short, catchy URL.
5] Perhaps as part of the blog or elsewhere there is a reference resources library page for links to categorised background and technical information. Similarly, there are repositories for images and for pdf or epub document files for download. (Try Scribd and/or Issu.)
6] Perhaps, there are free for download PDF slides, posters, pamphlets, readers, position papers, books, teaching resources, perhaps a newsletter or even an online magazine. (The Raspberry Pi Foundation magazine, MagPi, may be a useful example. Notice, it has free for download issues and a printed version. [Note, layout ideas, here.])
7] These are readily embedded in modern blog posts.
8] There is an associated social media outreach, that circulates the blog link and maybe links to particular podcasts or documents etc. that draw audience. Of course, archived and regular live podcast sessions hosted in a channel at a major video repository site, will potentially become a second main media presence. It is noteworthy that nowadays, we see automatic, AI generated transcripts that may be keyed to the timeline, helpful for record. X will also use short clips, promotional "cards," links etc. as in effect advertising and invitation to the main site. That main base is the [WordPress?] blog technology web site; social media promotion is part of a build- and- own- your- own- platform, censorship proof strategy. To that end, X also builds a repository of subscribers.
9] There are also billboards and there is an office for contact with the public, maybe a bookshop and coffee shop. A museum is an excellent centre, and even if there is just office space or a coffee shop, having a display with interpretation can be a point of focus and attraction. A nice piece of art or the like, might also be helpful.
10] If resources permit, there can be a low power FM Radio station that complements the streaming, that is we see here a community based radio station. (See here on setting up, here on equipment. Of course, if a magazine show set is used, simultaneous streaming can be done.)
11] As appropriate, there are events in general public media, possibly outside broadcast events in rented halls or the like.
12] If instead we are doing an education program, the main differences would be to focus on structured lessons and the streamed events would be class or tutorial sessions. Promotional outreach would be different, promoting the course, and prepared course content would be featured.
13] Similarly, there can be regular widely promoted public lectures or panels or engagement with Radio and TV Stations, or conferences (perhaps embedding professional Symposiums that issue peer reviewed Proceedings containing analysis, reports on research [so, fresh knowledge], proposals and calls to action) and associated Thinktanks that can serve as an umbrella programme of action that hosts projects, initiatives, fellows, raises funds, etc. Some ideas:
14] And, the like. What are your ideas on possibilities?
A few thoughts, framing possibilities and guiding the themes we highlight below. Remember, let us build knowledge with understanding and skills. It will be obvious that there is a lot beneath the surface of a media-rich, attractive, effective, helpful communication effort.
A thought or two on media as a means of influence will be helpful, in a region needing reformation. Start, with a Cengage summary of key societal patterns:
Refactor the Social Institutions framework, using a modified form of the seven mountains model far-seeing Church leaders have put on the table since the 1970's:
Further, ponder the Overton Window model of the possibilities for thought, policy and policy change, where, the window can be shifted through various campaigns so that the once unthinkable . . . for good or ill . . . may be made to seem plausible (and hence, the key ethical issues as noted: "on longstanding related ethics, here. This link applies such principles to media" as well as the analysis here and here):
In short, X's media strategy is a means to help frame or at least inform, as to the way forward; towards sound reformation and transformation.
Accordingly, we need to build multimedia authoring and content creation skills in a web based digital world, which may require considerable effort. Hence the fairly broad range of areas below.
Notwithstanding, this unit is also built on the accordion principle:
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| An accordion can be expanded or compressed across a wide range, and just so, by selecting degree of detail and focal aspects, this unit can be presented in differing degrees of detail, focus and time (but it is advisable to do as much as one can, as we need broad capability and familiarity) |
We will also, as far as possible, emphasise open source applications.
For background, kindly note here on the apparent trend of the Adobe family:
For example, we suggest Open Office or Libre Office for office productivity, basic drawing and presentation software. Scribus is our intended desktop publishing software [for books and magazines]. Blender's video sequence editor will be a useful nonlinear video editor, and YouTube is a likely place to host the videos. Audacity is good for audio work, though Blender can also do audio. For basic image manipulation, paint dot net is helpful, and at the next level up, we may want to use GIMP or Inkscape. WordPress has long since passed the level of simple blogging and is an online content management system used by a fair number of newspapers.
To begin with, however, a basic Hyper-Text Markup Language (HTML) Hello World is a good point of departure. Not least, because much of today's multimedia is web oriented.
PART I:
A Basic HTML Hello World:
As we may begin our gateway to web based multimedia, it is helpful to start with how a web page is coded. So, let us look at a basic, HTML code Hello World page:
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| A Hello World, using HTML. Exercise, see an introduction here |
It's output, in a tabbed browser, is:
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| Hello, world! |
We can see from that key elements of what multimedia and authoring are about. First, HTML is not a step- by- step procedure language (though we can embed procedurally based "scripts" in web pages); instead, it is a simple DISPLAY language, providing markups for how text looks on screen.
In the above, first, a document type was declared, HTML. This uses tags that tell a browser how to display the page, using angle brackets to tell it this is a markup feature. Here, we have the open HTML tag, then declare a head then a title. Write the page's title, here "A Small Hello." Close title using a close title tag, close head. In these tags, the forward slash means close. Then, open the body, set a heading at level H1. Write the title visible on the page, here, Hi. Close H1. The page to be created has just one paragraph, open it with a p tag. Write the paragraph, close the paragraph. In the real world, you would put in the next line a singleton tag, break, br / -- there is no open-close pair for this and the forward slash ["solidus"] comes after the abbreviation, br. Write the next paragraph, etc. To end the page, close body, then close HTML. Save as title dot html or htm, you can do so on your desktop.
Use a browser to open up and lo, there is the page.
More complex pages can be built but this is just to get started. Notice, how the HTML is about how a page will look once opened in a browser. Obviously, this is just a first exercise, though you may choose to make more elaborate pages by hand later on. More usually, you will use a "what you see is what you get" -- WYSIWYG-- tool and open up the HTML view to poke around at that level, which gives you much more direct control. Here is part of this page in an early stage of development, viewed under the HTML tab:
Make sure, that you know what you are doing when you go poking around at that level!
Clipping the W3Schools introduction to HTML for a few more thoughts:
HTML is the standard markup language for creating Web pages.
- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
- HTML describes the structure of a Web page
- HTML consists of a series of elements
- HTML elements tell the browser how to display the content
- HTML elements are represented by tags
- HTML tags label pieces of content such as "heading", "paragraph", "table", and so on
- Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to render the content of the page . . . .
- HTML tags normally come in pairs like
<p>and</p>- The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
- The end tag is written like the start tag, but with a forward slash inserted before the tag name
It also notes, "The purpose of a web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) is to read HTML documents and display them," and: "The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses them to determine how to display the document."
More advanced web page elements and software will typically use HTML and may be "embedded" into a web page, so it is absolutely foundational. Further, the digital composition of documents and layout of pages is often based on similar markup languages such as XML.
However, let us now ponder:
PART II:
Thoughts on Roots of Multimedia
(for reflection, exercises and discussion)
Originally, back in the Web's beginning days, 1993, HTML was not particularly multiple-media [= "multimedia"] friendly but ways were found to integrate such elements and to better control web pages.
For instance, about 2000, a "hot" trick was to use invisible border table cells to control placement of elements in web pages; now, long since superseded by the use of Cascading Style Sheets etc. Today, we have HTML5, a genuinely multimedia oriented remake of html.
Another key factor for multimedia is layout and attractiveness.
Seas of boring "Times New Roman" text or "Arial" text or "Verdana" text etc. (whether on a screen or on paper) are ugly or even repulsive for many people today, especially if they are looking on the small space of a smart phone screen. Where also:
O1: Eat your veggies: Written text is an acquired taste (like vegetables),
. . . and a lot of people today simply do not have it; they want a sugar-rush chocolate sweetie instead -- an artificial, often damaging and addictive habit (BTW, at "proper" healthy level, our bloodstream should have about a teaspoonful of sugar in it). Unsurprisingly, then, if a body of text is longer than a tweet -- 143 - 288 characters -- they want to tune out; especially if it is not juicily gossip-y, polarising, suggestive, outlandish or sensationalistic.
And that's why it is a commonplace that far more people read the headline and maybe the first paragraph than read the news story. (Remember when there used to be talk of "reading for enjoyment"? For a lot of people, reading is like having to take out the garbage; a necessary chore but not something that one enjoys doing.)
This gives us a big challenge, as much of the key knowledge of the world is preserved in texts, texts that have to not just be read but studied and practiced with exercises. (Remember, School Maths textbooks? Notice the difference diagrams and colour make? What about video? [See here, at the Khan Academy. And yes, the mathematical fashion of thinking that only algebraic representations loaded with often esoteric symbols counts, can become educationally counter-productive; perhaps we should take a hint or two from engineering drawings, block diagrams [and associated block diagram algebra!], computing flow charts, the Unified Modelling Language and other systems charts, etc.)
Perhaps, a few further observations may help:
O2: Text as pain: for many of us, our experience of a book-dominated world in school was painful
and a few were so hurt that they made a -- yes, literal -- bonfire of their text books and exercise books when they finally were able to escape what too often seemed to be a prison. So,
O3: healing the pain of text: we have to have a more positive experience of text, if our attitude is to change.Now, too,
O4: The visual: we are visually oriented creatures, who are highly sensitive to colour and motion or change.
And,
So, if we are to be effective communicators in a digital age, we must have basic ability to create and use multimedia.O5: Music: we are also attracted to music,. . . though, tastes in music vary considerably. Just so,
O6: Voice: we want to hear a musical, pleasant, well-cultured, credible voice,. . . not a harsh, angry sounding, hard- to- follow, seemingly ignorant or arrogant one. Sometimes, we are so gullible that
O7: Itching ears: we will too often follow those who tickle our itching ears with what we want to hear,. . . instead of making the effort to seek truth, sound reasoning, prudence, fairness and justice. Last but not least, as Aristotle pointed out long ago,
O8: Emotive Judgement: when we are pleased and friendly, how we judge things is very different from how we act when we are frightened or angry or are polarised against someone.Communication, therefore, is not an easy, simple task. That brings us to the power of multimedia, again:
O9: The Multimedia Solution: Multimedia is the integration of various forms of information in an attractive pattern for effective communication or entertainment.
Of course, while multimedia was there long before the Internet, the digital age has made multimedia something that is in our hands every day: the smart phone, the tablet, the PC, the TV remote control. Where, indeed, many of today's TV's are also HDMI-port computer monitors.
Coming back to text, let's pause and ponder the alphabet.
PART III:
Pondering the Alphabet and text
That's actually,
ALEPH + BETH
(That is, the first two letters in the Hebrew and/or Phoenician alphabets: for, what we call "ox" and "house" so "Bethlehem" means house of bread. Some actually argue that the alphabet was possibly invented at a mine for semi precious stones, in the Sinai. What do you think of the just linked story, why? And, of the ability to insert HYPER-LINKS like that. Which, is where the "HYPER-TEXT" part got into HTML)
Surprise,
O10: Alphabet and multimedia: the alphabet was in fact the first kind of multimedia.
Yes,
O11: Eyes turned into ears: the alphabet was an invention that turned our eyes into ears so we can see shapes representing strings of sounds and read words then sentences.Illustrating, on the letter A -- which still has traces of its roots in an ox head, now upside down:
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| The story of "A" from Aleph to Upper and Lower printer's case |
Then, B:
Not to forget, an old Chinese saying:
O12: Ink vs Memory: The weakest ink is stronger than the strongest memory.In short, writing -- especially relatively easy to learn alphabetic writing -- is revolutionary. Not least, because of:
O12a: Cultural Record/Impact: writing creates record that can be stored, built up into a body of stored knowledge, studied, consulted in files or in a library, shared with the world.
That is why the act of turning our eyes into ears through writing and reading is an amazing step, one that has transformed the world.
Especially, once printing was invented by Gutenberg, c 1450, so that books did not have to be copied out by hand, letter by painstaking letter:
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| Monks in a Scriptorium, copying out a book letter by letter using a quill pen and ink. The red letters suggest, this is a Bible. Also, notice the Monk wearing glasses, vision-correcting glasses were invented in the middle ages, helping people to read. |
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| The Book of Kells, CHI-RHO |
Some of this has come down to us as the modern hobby (and sometimes, artistic profession) of Calligraphy:
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| A simple example of calligraphy, "beautiful writing." Notice, how two pencils are bound together and are used at a slope to form the letters with their smoothly varying widths, which helps to create the beauty. As an exercise, try to write like this, using the Italic font as is being used above.(Here is a tutorial online with illustrations, videos and work-sheets.) |
Tools and results, using a broad-nib pen:
Here is how the letters are composed, stroke by stroke:
Could you try to do that? Why not . . .
First, let us notice how a square or broad nib pen held at a constant angle (usually 35 to 45 degrees) will give a varying width of line:
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| How a Calligraphy, broad or square nib pen varies line width on a curved stroke (HT: Katharine Scarfe Beckett) |
Okay, now let's try an exercise.
EXERCISE: If you have a chisel-tip marker or even an actual square nib calligraphy pen, you might want to use that to give the square nib effect. If not, tie or tape two pencils together and try to write the phrase "Italic Calligraphy" or a similar short phrase. If you do so with pencils, shade in the strokes. Then, discuss what you learned from trying, and whether you find the effect of lettering beautiful. Why or why not? If you saw an invitation or a poster written like that, would it catch your eye? Why or why not?
A glance at such square nib pen calligraphic lettering will now immediately tell us that what we see in print or on screens comes from this sort of highly decorative hand-lettering. Clipping from the just linked, we may first see Foundation (a Roman Stone Monument-based) hand:
Here is an actual Roman stone monument -- and the roots of "Roman" fonts are obvious:
Notice, such monuments only used capitals (or "upper case" -- i.e. the Printer's upper case for lead type). Common, or lower case letters come from Carolingian script that was invented c. 800 AD. For example:
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| Carolingian script, showing resemblance to "common" letters (HT: Enc. Brit, 1897) |
Similarly, we may see how such letters were reduced to applied Geometry, from Albrecht Dürer in his book on the Just Proportion of Letters:
This is also an example of just how much visual design -- technical drawing or applied Geometry -- has gone into crafting the seemingly "simple" letters we commonly see; alphabetic text is indeed a multimedia element.
As we can note (or read), he used a square as his framework, with the thicker strokes a tenth of its width. The narrower ones are a third of this, a thirtieth of the height. Circular curves are blended in, with serifs at appropriate points.
(These, notoriously, give problems with computer displays, but help legibility. There is a debate over preferring lettering with and without serifs. It is likely, that we find more readable what we are used to. If you insist on sans serif, consider a compromise like VERDANA, which makes 1 -- "one," l --"ell" and | -- "pipe" visually highly distinct.
This text is in Verdana, and we see:
one = 1,
ell = l,
Capital eye = I and
pipe = |
for example.)
The same artist, Albrecht Dürer, also used projective geometry to develop perspective drawing:
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| Illustrating how perspective arises and shows itself through foreshortening. As an exercise stand in pairs, two arms-lengths apart. Stretch your right hands out to the right, at shoulder level. Swing the arms around until you point at one another, observing how the visible shape of the arms change. (If you are alone, stand in front of a mirror and swing your arm similarly, noting the same change.) Why does this happen? [Hint, think about how the sine of an angle varies between 0 and 90 degrees.] |
This approach shows how we may effectively and realistically display a three dimensional world on a two dimensional plane, such as a sheet of paper or a wall or a screen, using foreshortening -- the lute's appearance is relative to and changed by where and how we look at it. But, its substance and structure are still the same -- appearance is not reality.
This is a huge philosophical issue. (Ponder the story of the six blind men and the elephant.)
Notice, in that light, the pretty direct echo of the Lute in foreshortened perspective (and in proximity to mathematical instruments, globes and books), in Holbein's The Ambassadors, painted about 1533; where Dürer's work was dated August 9th 1532. Holbein also came from Germany:
We may want to ponder, here, a saying of Jesus from his world famous Sermon on the Mount:
Matt 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! [ESV]
Observe, too, how close observation, unifying Mathematical insights, art and practical affairs all come together in such perspective drawing; transforming how we see and understand the world. This has in it many of the seeds of modern science, and it was itself revolutionary. It is no accident that Sir Isaac Newton's major book (in which he presented his laws of motion and gravitation) is titled: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
Then, to get the visual magic of pictures with apparent motion, we can use animation; which provides a useful illusion. For, if we are shown a rapid succession of similar images, with apparent progression of movement, our visual system will blend it together into smooth motion. This is like the flip books we may have made as children:
Exercise: make some flip books as a class
Similarly, let us observe a "simple" but instructive 3-D, light and shade animation of a donut here, using the terminal's console window:
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| This example gives a larval form of the issues and techniques of computer graphics programming, a key facet of the multimedia programming that for example lies behind animation, rendering, 3-D modelling of objects, games, etc. Thus, it gives a glimpse of what lies behind multimedia authoring applications and systems. It also shows a bit of the physics involved: diffuse (Lambert's cosine law) vs specular (mirror-like) reflection, with resulting visual texture and shading (which here uses twelve levels based on text characters, as was often used in the days of fanfold printed paper output). Actual surfaces blend the two, sometimes with refraction and transmission or translucence. In addition, light may suffer diffusion, scattering and absorption. Colour comes in key part from wavelength dependent reflection or transmission, white vs black vs coloured smoke is a case in point, as is the wide variability of the colour of water bodies. Our visual processing system then interprets objects, motion, relative location (perspective) etc. A semi-famous case is based on Pygmies carried out for the first time on the plains of Africa. What are those insects? The "insects" were distant herds of animals but the men from the forests were not used to seeing things at a distance. At least, so we are told. |
It has been suggested that our vision effectively updates 8 times per second, and early films used 16 frames per second; this has a lot of flicker, like a fire. Movies then moved to 24 frames per second, and to get "flicker fusion" each frame was flashed on the screen twice, giving 48 times per second. Classic NTSC television used 30 frames per second with 525 lines in a 4:3 W:H "aspect ratio," interlacing two half frames on alternating lines; so we were shown 60 half images per second. This, is much better for flicker fusion, though some people still find it annoying. Modern computer screens tend to use 16:9 or 16:10 and many frame rates. That's part of why digital video editing can be a bit ticklish.
Nor, should we overlook how, as our eyes follow the lines and implicit story in an image like Duhrer's demonstration of perspective, an implicit inverse motion appears in our perception. A large enough, rich enough picture is, subtly, psychologically, a moving image by way of taking advantage of how our eyes are drawn to focal points and follow lines of interest that tell a story.
As a powerful case in point, contemplate the story being told as Turner shows us the now ghostly Fighting Temeraire (which came to the rescue of HMS Victory at Trafalgar in 1805) is now shown in fading light of the setting, cloud veiled sun, as she was being towed along the Thames to the breakers in 1838, pulled by a smoke-spewing steam tug:
In this image, animation is implicit, not only in the eye-tracking but in signs of motion such as the wake of the paddle-wheel tug, giving a powerful, moving effect. (See, a lecture here.)
If you doubt this, simply glance at this still from an online video on illusions, for a few seconds:
We can mechanise this sort of psychological animation, as Documentary Producer Ken Burns has famously done . . . though, over-doing it can become counter-productive. As he briefly explains:
Animotica explains:
A Ken Burns effect is a visual manipulation in videography which uses panning and zooming to give motion to static images.
As you’d probably guessed, this visual effect was named after Ken Burns, an American documentarian who applied the pan and zoom effect to 3000 still images! This effect is most useful in documentaries and documentary-style videos when still images are the only available resources. A typical Ken Burns effects involve a still image sweeping from left to right and zooming in on specific elements . . . .
[P]anning is simply the process of moving the focus of images from left to right, up to down, and vice versa. On the other hand, zooming is simply the process of adjusting the distance of an object on the screen. With zooming, you can either bring the object closer or view it further away. ["How to Add the Ken Burns Effect to Your Video," Animotica, April 11, 2020. Note, the free for download MS Windows 10 Movie Maker App, here. As enrichment, you may wish to watch the full video of the interview.]
As a bonus, let us duly note (from 1:28 on) Mr Burns' list of eight -- four plus four -- elements of audio-visual, documentary storytelling:
VISUALNor, should we overlook that as we read through a text, we create a similar psychological "animation," indeed many of us may hear the text while we read, like an audio-track in our heads; that's usually discussed as a limitation on reading speed but it is actually a relevant multimedia phenomenon. Linked, we may imagine the setting, creating an imaginary mental stage. This is part of why children (of all ages!) love books that are lavishly illustrated, never mind the additional costs and effort that requires to do it with good quality.
Live Cinematography
Old [still] Photographs [or images/"slides"]
Interviews
"Footage" [from the period or reconstructions]
ORAL/AUDIO
Third Person Narrator ("the voice of God")
First Person voices [from the period or reconstructions]
Music
Sound Effects
Look no further for why comic books are so popular.
It is also why the old Masters of Painting and of Sculpture were so fond of capturing a pivotal scene in classic stories (including Biblical events). For example, we can see how Michelangelo's Pieta uses artistic licence to show an eternally youthful Virgin Mary holding her crucified Son across her lap, after the crucifixion:
So, too, as the rather humble but sometimes useful Wikipedia helpfully summarises:
Subvocalization, or silent speech, is the internal speech typically made when reading; it provides the sound of the word as it is read. This is a natural process when reading, and it helps the mind to access meanings to comprehend and remember what is read, potentially reducing cognitive load.This inner speech is characterized by minuscule movements in the larynx and other muscles involved in the articulation of speech. Most of these movements are undetectable (without the aid of machines) by the person who is reading.As a consequence, we can not only mechanically detect and recognise such subvocalisation but we can actually build a subvocal computer interface, as the famed MIT Media Lab demonstrates:
Of course, currently, such a device has to be adjusted to each particular user. (See here.)
So, what we often think of as boring, "eat your veggies" text and images can actually be used as subtle multimedia elements, which can be mechanised. As always, "less is more"; we need to use such to highlight or focus key points, rather than mindlessly animating for animation's sake. (Over-use of animation features for PowerPoint presentations is a notorious case in point.)
Returning focus to the impact of calligraphy, we may also look at the dynamism of slanted Italic text:
And of course, we can also compare the formal, medieval aura of what you may know as "Old English" or "Gothic," i.e. Textura Quadrata:
Here is a sampler of what is possible with "beautiful handwriting", bringing in many subtle psychological animation features:
Of course, copying books by hand to such a standard -- illegible, ill-formed scribbles need not apply! -- took a very long time and the process was very expensive. That meant that historically learning, information and news often tended to be something for the wealthy, well connected and powerful.
No wonder, then, that widespread ability to read and write was so liberating (in fact, revolutionary), once printing made books and information far more accessible. For, with the printing press, books, hand-bills, pamphlets, tracts and eventually newspapers advertising flyers etc could be printed off by the hundreds or thousands at one go (and at relatively low cost per copy), once the sheets to be printed were set up:
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| An early printing press |
Here is how Gutenberg's press as is sketched above worked:
The first major book printed by Gutenberg was the 42 line Latin Bible, here is a digitised copy.
By the way, I am actually using the HTML iframe tags to insert videos, including, changing what YouTube provides through its "share" button to give 640 x 360 pixels. A pixel is a picture element. And, we are of course seeing multimedia elements put together on this page: text, illustrations, video, audio. HTML is working with these elements. For example, we can again look at a snapshot from this page for the part just above (at an early stage of development). As in:
As a bonus, you may take time to notice, in detail, how web links use an address code a, here for a jpg image, href = "address.jpg" then close address, /a. The image is brought in using a table with style features added, and iframe is used to bring in a video. Notice, too, how width and height are declared in pixel units:
Likewise, the image explaining video embed was created using Libre Office Draw:
- The Application was opened and Draw sub application was selected, to create a drawing, and
- page was set to Japanese B6 in Landscape mode.
- The YouTube embed was captured with a screen shot App, and was pasted in from clipboard.
- This was clicked on and resized in the Draw page.
- A text Box was set up to do headlines and comments.
- Arrows were put in.
- The highlights are ovals and rectangles from the menu in different colours, then made 90% transparent.
- The shapes can also have text written into them by clicking.
- Text size was adjusted using menus.
- The drawing was saved as an Open Document Drawing, and was exported to GIF, 360 pixels per inch resolution.
- The GIF was inspected in Irfan View and was resized to be 750 pixels wide.
- It was inserted using the Blogger toolbar menu and expanded to original size
Infographics like that, can be quite effective for education or informing, or even making an argument.
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| William Tyndale, c. 1494 - 1536 (HT: Wiki) |
That is, mostly for daring to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek directly into English (which was then printed and smuggled into England), creating the first widely circulated Bible in English. Thus was fulfilled his vision to make the ordinary ploughman in a field at least as knowledgeable of the scriptures as some scholars of that time were.
It did not help that he was outspoken and a critic of the arrogance and lifestyles of the rich and powerful.
Ironically, and in an evident answer to Tyndale's dying prayer that God open the King's eyes, only three years later, Henry VIII was sponsoring a translation largely based on Tyndale's work, the Great Bible.
Here is the opening page of John, in Tyndale's translation (which has come down to us through the King James Version, originally 1611. The common version we have is the 1769 revision. Tyndale:
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| John Chapter 1, Tyndale. Notice, use of the "elongated S" which looks like "f" without the bar. Notice, too, how many words are abbreviated , how a solidus acts as a comma, lack of capitals and differences of spelling from the English of our day. The font used is similar to Gutenberg, Textura Quadrata (HT: Wiki) |
Obviously, people are not executed as rebels unless authorities fear what they are doing, and its potential. Here, using the power of the printing press to put the Bible in the hands of the ordinary person, in his or her native language, in an alphabetic script that would be relatively easy to learn. That created instant public accountability before scripture over what was being said and done by the powerful. Which, obviously, they found highly threatening.
Nor, would that be the last time!
Then, about a hundred years later, in the 1600's, a typical wage in England was nine pence per day. (The closest descendant I know is the Eastern Caribbean Dollar, which was originally set at fifty pence.)
At that time, a man could take a penny, go to a Coffee House, buy a cup, sip and listen to news, issues, opinions, etc. being read and discussed.
Soon, regular news papers were published and circulated, joining books, bills and pamphlets. This contributed to a bubbling up of popular discussion informed by serious sources, and the resulting ferment is the origin of modern public opinion.
That contributed heavily to the rise of modern democratic self government and it is why the press is said to be the fourth estate, after the nobles, the clergy and the commons.
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| A Flipchart (HT: Roomours.de. These go well with felt-tip markers, crayons and water colour or acrylic paints [advice, follow slide presentation guidelines]. Do not over- look chalk boards and white boards or overhead projectors; however chalk dust and modern electronics don't mix well.) |
A decade later, they would be taught to read and write by the same girl who had read the news of the war . . . who had by then become a trained teacher. The men wanted to learn to read so that they could work for a major bauxite company that was mining Jamaica's then recently discovered rich deposits of Aluminium ore.
In the 1960's, the same teacher went on to do a special USAID programme in audio-visuals, and pioneered educational television in Jamaica. In the late '60's it was feared that there would be great confusion over "decimalisation" of Jamaica's money. So, she created the educational materials for teaching the public how to convert Jamaica's currency from pounds, shillings and pence to dollars and cents, using colour printed flip charts as a main tool; her favourite visual aid. [The flip chart is, in effect, "a poor man's slide show"; one, that does not need electricity or elaborate technical equipment.]
As we can see from the Gutenberg Bible or Tyndale's Bible, pictures have always been important in books etc. Early printers used blocks of wood carved out so they could fit in with the type. That way, they could print the image at the same time as the text.
By cutting away an area, one would have white [the colour of the paper]. Similarly, by not cutting away selected lines, dots, stripes and areas, a surprisingly high quality image could be produced. One, such as Albrecht Durer's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
Here is a modern example of such a wood cut being made and printed as a form of art:
To go back 300 to 500 years, imagine this being scaled to fit in with the format of a page with its columns, and made just the right thickness to print with the text. Pictures and images, all together on the same page. Just like this one. Though, we now have the advantage of moving, talking images, thanks to digital multimedia. And by the way, there are flexible screen, scroll like technologies that could create a "magic sheet" newspaper with text, images, multimedia and scrolling, all together.
Compare, from the Harry Potter movies:
(I used Blogger's insert video icon here instead of a direct iframe insert, notice the different effect.)
Notice, too, that the wood block is face up and the paper face down. The artist has to carve a mirror image to what will be printed. Just so, the lines of text have to be a mirror image of what we will read. The logic of the manufacturing process, its technology, our tools, our machines and materials we use guide us in how we design, build and use a production unit.
And yes, printing is a kind of manufacturing, making books, newspapers, magazines, posters, brochures and other products that store and convey information. We are here seeing mechanical information technologies from 500 years ago, technologies that led to an information revolution, helping to build our modern world.
(Sometimes, too, we need to go back to the past to appreciate the present and to rightly understand how it came about. Also, let us think about how powerful such images could be in the days before photography was invented. That should give us an idea of how powerful more modern photographic then our current digital electronic, computer-based production techniques are! And, something else drops out: the printed page or poster is a static screen technology, one that does not require an electronic display device or batteries. So, too is what was once a real innovation for education: the now humble blackboard or chalkboard -- a manually powered wide-screen large format display!)
Over the five and a half centuries since the 1450's, many, many improvements were made. For example, this is how books were made in the late 1940's:
Today's digital revolution now enables every person to be a publisher, though of course we have to deal with quality, promotion, legal issues and much more.
So, as a first step to becoming digital, multimedia publishers, let us now look a little more at the hyper text markup language, HTML.
For HTML basics, this text based tutorial is useful. Notice, the importance of tags in angle brackets.
Now, this is useful, not only as "okay, here are the ABC's and 123's," but because much more advanced systems will deliver HTML to the browser and/or will incorporate HTML elements.
For instance a little HTML helps in Word Press Comment boxes, or can help with writing your way around problems. Even with Blogger, just to put up the following two videos, I called up the HTML tab so that I could adjust the size to a preferred scale. So, take time to pick up on HTML and practice it. (then, onward, I suggest as one basic WYSIWYG editor, Kompozer; which is comparable to about where Dreamweaver (version 3) was in 2000 -- at least, for common tasks.)
And of course, going even further back, the keyboard I used to type in this content was using . . . ABC's and 123's. "Basic" does not mean insignificant, simplistic and "boring" . . . so skip over.
It actually means: FOUNDATIONAL. So, now:
PART IV:
More on HTML
(context for web-based multimedia)
Here is a one-hour "for beginners" introduction:
Similarly, here is a follow up on Cascading Style Sheets, CSS:
Notice, the W3Schools tutorials in the left hand column here, which will help to fill in details if you ever have to do significant HTML coding. Of course, we recommend something that is "easier":
PART V:
WordPress as a Blogging and Web Content Management System
WordPress is no longer just a blogging [= web logging] software but a web content management system. One, that comes with thousands of templates and helps to support web sites that are regularly updated -- and, "fresh meat" is one of the key features that will keep people coming back for more.
In fact, there are newspapers that are based on Word Press sites.
So, gaining some familiarity with WordPress (WP) will help to open doors. As WP hosting company, Kinsta dot com summarises "for beginners":
At its core, WordPress is the simplest, most popular way to create your own website or blog. In fact, WordPress powers over 35.2% of all the websites on the Internet. Yes – more than one in four websites that you visit are likely powered by WordPress.In short, WP is an authoring system for creating, updating and maintaining web content. It can host video and audio files, images and user inputs through comment boxes. The simplest way to access it is through Word Press dot com itself, which offers free blog hosting services.
On a slightly more technical level, WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free. A content management system is basically a tool that makes it easy to manage important aspects of your website – like content – without needing to know anything about programming.
The end result is that WordPress makes building a website accessible to anyone – even people who aren’t developers.
EXERCISE: Click on a link to Word Press dot com, here. Look around the welcome page. What do you think? Discuss what you see and what you could do with it. Note, too, here, on how to work with "blocks," WP's recently redesigned authoring interface. (A good part of this, is because of the rise of smart phones as a main information access platform.)
Your local Internet Service Provider (ISP) may also offer WP. There are premium hosting firms, starting at perhaps US$ 3 - 5 per month for basic service, though registering your own domain name ["web site"] will cost maybe US$ 12 per year extra, assuming you can access credit cards to pay for a US based service. As usual the sky is the limit and you may also host your own web services. But if you are going to do that, you will obviously be well above the "newbie" level for this unit.
To do this unit, likely, you will not want to post a web site that is on the open Internet. It is possible instead to turn your computer into a mini server, and locally host WP. However, that is a bit fiddly to set up. Instead, it will be assumed that WP hosting will be set up on the local area network for the centre where you are doing this unit.
NOTE FOR TECHIES: Setting up a Local Web Server, here. This involves setting up an Apache server, through XAMPP, where "XAMPP is a free and open-source
cross-platform web server solution stack package developed by Apache
Friends, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB database,
and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming
languages." More details, here and here. Note, another similar solution oriented to setting up a site locally then uploading, Local by Flywheel, here. THIS IS NOT FOR NEWBIES.
However, web sites require some thought on how they are to be organised, if they are to be effective. It's not simply, oh pick a template, or once you have a message you know how best to say it. We are in fact, back at the AIDA principle:
A -- ATTENTION: we have to draw attention of an audience, then stirA useful approach is to have a welcoming or main or home page, which leads to other pages, and generally should have something fresh on a regular basis. One approach is to lead from there to a sequence of pages telling the core story, and/or to have regular news "above the fold." WordPress is good for this as it is a web log application. The main page can be about news, which is what brings back audiences on a regular basis. Then, have story pages and a references and links repository. Tabs or buttons take readers and viewers to the various sections of the site. A good idea is to have columns, with one main column to carry the main message and narrow ones that link to resources or onward information etc. A useful technique is to categorise news stories, creating topical archives. Featured stories of enduring character or popular stories can also be highlighted.
I -- INTEREST: if we are to hold focus to hear a message, which must provoke
D -- DECISION: what is to be done, how, where, when? Which must translate into
A -- ACTION: what is to be done, now and later.
Nowadays, it is common to have a cycling highlights feature that circulates across several major developments. Sometimes, a scrolling ticker-tape of headlines is also displayed.
It is also common to incorporate video and images. (Captions tell a story in brief for these stories within the story.)
If we have an e-commerce type site, obviously, each item has a response that takes the user to a shopping basket and payment mechanism. Other types of web should have a subtler feature that invites responses from each page, maybe to sign up for a regular newsletter or subscribe to a service, or the like. Of course, it helps to avoid annoying popups.
Much more can be said, but this is enough to give an idea of what is needed. A good approach would be to look at several sites you like and see what options you have to make a good approach.
Obviously, there is more than one way to skin a catfish!
Oddly, the idea of a web that weaves together a pattern of points centred on a focal point and with a ring of anchor points and radial anchor lines is not new.
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| A spiral form spider web (HT: Reader's Digest) |
So, in setting up a web site, we can ask ourselves and discuss questions about some key ideas and how they are best tied together into a whole. Pardon, but some big questions need to be asked and answered:
- Why should your target audience (who are they? why?) come to this site a first, second, third and more times?
- What is going to draw attention, excite continuing interest, lead to a favourable decision and follow-up action? (Yes, AIDA. Notice, the implication of "draw attention," that the web site needs promotion and must be able to stir a buzz so word of mouth further promotes it. As one step, choose an easy to remember home page URL (= uniform resource locator, aka Internet/Web address) and use it in all communications as a part of your address, along with street address, P.O. Box, phone/fax numbers and email addresses.)
- What do you want readers of the site to do?
- Specifically, what is the desired decision, commitment and action they should take? Why? How? (AIDA, again.)
- How does such a commitment contribute benefits to the organisation or person(s) sponsoring the web site? (That organisation, group or individual is YOUR customer as developer or maintainer of the web Yes, think about your own web site, too.)
- So, what is the focal -- main -- thought, "selling"/persuasive point, idea, argument, goal or vision of the web site?
- Can it be captured in a catchy phrase and logo? (Think, why is the Christian Faith -- the world's largest religion and oldest surviving big organisation -- represented by the cross, formerly the mark of uttermost shame, public execution by torture and degradation? Why do countries have flags -- many with crosses? Why do Universities and Schools have crests? Think, too, about world-class brand names.)
- How can you best express that core message in a home page?
- What are the key details? Onward references and resources?
- What is a natural progression of rings of such details, and what spiral, step by step path through these details is best (especially if there needs to be education, tutoring or information)?
- What are the anchoring big ideas that provide a solid foundation?
- What are the anchor-line connexions that tie the focus, details and big or key ideas together?
- So, too, what are the points for links within the site, and onward through references? (Does an onward links and references page that in effect provides a miniature library make good sense?)
After that, how comes up. WordPress is a recommended answer. Perhaps the easiest way to learn its technical details enough to get started is to follow a video tutorial while making reference to support materials (e.g. here, here) . . . and yes, this is itself a multimedia approach.
A good video tutorial on WordPress Web site creation (never mind the promotional part), is here:
Why not, watch and discuss?
Then, try building a first "toy" web site.
However, the Web is not our only platform, we also need to look at how to lay out things that are often printed on paper. Such as:
- business [or, social/ calling] cards,
- [Hand] bills,
- posters and infographics,
- brochures (especially, trifold),
- newspapers,
- magazines,
- comics/ anime/ graphic novels,
- catalogues,
- pamphlets and
- books.
EXERCISE: Take a look at several examples of such materials. Which impress you, why? Which are beautiful, which draw the eye, which are memorable, which would be effective. In that light, use pencil and paper to create a design for a business card and one for a small bill or mini-poster [say, letter-size]. As a second phase, you may want to use a drawing or presentation package to create an example. Beyond, you might want to try doing a trifold or bifold brochure or informational handout. Recall, a small billboard is little more than a poster blown up to a large size, hint, the rule of thumb for legibility is one inch of text size -- 72 points -- for every 25 feet of audience distance. Four inches for 100 feet, where a vehicle moving at 20 miles per hour is covering 30 feet per second, that's why you want to use several catchy words, a splashy image -- usually an attractive face in an inviting scene -- and a very memorable contact number or web address. For ideas, just look around you and discuss what you see. There are printing offices that can print a poster to vinyl, but by that time you are looking at serious money, e.g. for a mini billboard or sign for a business. Libre Office Draw or Impress might be useful for that. (NB: This, alone, can be enough to do a small on a shoestring PR campaign, e.g, for a student election.)
An example from 1908, HT Wikipedia:
That brings us to desktop publishing, so to:
PART VI:
Scribus and Desktop Publishing/Layout
Paper-oriented layout is a key to understanding desktop publishing:
Desktop publishing [DTP] is the use of the computer and software to create visual displays of ideas and information. Desktop publishing documents may be for desktop or commercial printing or electronic distribution, including PDF, slideshows, email newsletters, electronic books, and the Web.
Our multimedia perspective, instantly, helps us see that desktop publishing software is authoring software, oriented to paper based documents, though, today, many books, pamphlets etc are in fact electronically circulated, perhaps as e-books.Desktop publishing is a term coined after the development of a specific type of software. It's about using that software to combine and rearrange text and images and creating digital files for print, online viewing, or websites. Before the invention of desktop publishing software, the tasks involved in desktop publishing were done manually by people who specialized in graphic design, typesetting, and prepress tasks. [Source, Lifewire dot com]
Further to this, it is adapted to the needs of Commercial Printing, which is far stricter on layout, colour management, permissions for use of text, images, type faces, etc. For, those who publish -- especially for profit or on politically tinged matters, take on significant responsibilities regarding respect for intellectual property, copyright, permissions, defamation etc. That said, if one is non-commercial/academic, fair use may be a relevant defence.
Notwithstanding, legal liabilities can be very costly and highly stressful, even if one wins in the end. Fair warning.
Now, too, especially when one publishes electronically using DTP software, the e-documents may contain an interactive or animated element. For example, Scribus is adapted to create pdfs -- portable document format files -- with embedded videos or interactive forms etc.
Why Scribus?
Because, it is free, cross-platform and open source, with professional grade performance features, and allows easy importation of content from Open Office [or, Libre Office, a "fork"].
If you have a Word Document instead -- a family of private formats owed and guarded closely by Microsoft -- a good solution is to first open it in Open/ Libre Office, then re-save as an open document text [odt], clean it up and then import it into Scribus. Google Docs, the online office productivity suite, can also do this.
(A NOTE FOR REFERENCE ON FORMATS: The Extensible Markup Language -- XML -- based odt format is registered with the ISO as a world standard document format. Indeed it was so registered before the Word format was. It is not a fly-by-night dubious format that is about to disappear. XML, of course, is closely related to HTML -- yet another good reason to learn some HTML. Likewise, the more modern Word format, docx -- as opposed to the older doc and its relative rtf [= rich text format]) -- is also XML based. [For differences between odt and docx, kindly see Microsoft's discussion here.] Indeed, over in the Linux World, there is a discussion of how docx is basically a zip of XML files, so that one may use unzip to go into the format and pull out its components. However, as "extensible" highlights, there will be specialised formats set up by Microsoft to suit their particular purposes. In all of this, the pdf display format -- a "hello world" look at details is here -- is highly stable and cross-platform; though, of course nowadays there are always security matters so that PDF reader software has to be kept up to date. PDF is used for web documents, for finished forms of documents prepared on world processors and it is used for professional printing. No, it is not a word processing format, though PDF editor software such as Adobe Acrobat or Nitro Pro can do some editing of PDF files. It is wise to always keep and archive source files [locally and on the cloud] and to create document templates so formats can be recovered. That is one of the advantages of DTP software.)
Scribus is fairly similar in approach to InDesign, by Adobe (a leading commercial application), but of course the look and feel will be somewhat different. The same will hold for Quark Express and PageMaker or MS Publisher. However, as with computer languages, once one is reasonably familiar with a first language (and with the task in hand), it is fairly easy to learn one's way around a second package.
It is worth noting, that nowadays most Office Productivity word processing software -- actually, the commonest authoring software out there! -- will have elements of desktop publishing features. In fact, Open/Libre Office grew out of "mid-level desktop publishing" applications, so that Writer and Draw are in fact suitable to make professional-looking layouts, allowing fine control of positions, styles and templates.
In some respects, they are therefore comparable to MS Publisher, but with file formats that are open. Writer is suited to producing long, text-heavy documents, and Draw to graphics-heavy applications. You may have noticed that when these sub-applications export to PDF, hot links are preserved; now you know part of why.
As a result of that inclusion of DTP elements, one of the effects of doing this workshop, will be to make you more aware of layout possibilities, principles and linked aesthetics for word processing and drawing/presentation applications. For, simply being aware of the DTP approach will naturally change how you use Office Productivity software, especially Word Processing and Presentation software.
That said, word processing software is designed to create documents, while desktop publishing/ layout software is designed to control layout for publication to print, to e-book and even to the web. That makes for significant differences in approach/ philosophy and capabilities.
For just one instance, consider the "bleed" and inside margin issues. These require solutions to the problems that printed images etc. often must run right to the edge of the paper and the related effect of print that gets caught up in the bent paper due to binding. As a result:
Magazine pages (and flyers, and book pages) are printed on sheets larger than the final page itself. These sheets are then cut down to size. As with all things mechanical, the cutters are not 100% accurate. There is a margin of error, and that is what the bleed compensates for. A usual margin of error for modern day machinery is in the +/- 3 millimeter range, so the cutter’s blade can fall anywhere between 3 millimeters inside the page and 3 millimeters outside of it. This means you should not place anything you don’t want cut off less than 3 millimeters from the edge of the page. It also means that, anything you want to go over the edge of the page, say for example a background image, must go over by at least 3 millimeters.
You must also remember this is a magazine and the pages will be bound together, so both margins and bleeds will vary from inside (the side of the page nearer the center of the spread) and outside (the side of the page further from the center of the spread) and, sometimes, from top to bottom too. The inside margin will usually be wider than the outside, since the nearer the center a block of text is, the harder it is to read because of how the page bends. [Paul Brown , "The Art of Layout according to Scribus (I): Master Pages," Open Content & Software Magazine, November 12, 2015.]
Obviously, creating a good layout is the primary task, one that was being solved even before the invention of printing with movable type.
The software that now allows us to do so much easier than in the days of a Gutenberg type printing press with movable lead type and woodcut illustrations etc, is secondary.
However, such software makes for vastly improved productivity and flexibility.
The third task, is export to a publishing-ready format or to a user-oriented display format; as most DTP applications will have their own internal working format.
PDF format, with suitably high resolution and technical features, is a good publishing-ready format.
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| How CMYK printing colours work |
C -- Cyan [a slightly green, beach-bright blue],
M -- Magenta [a reddish-pinkish looking purple],
Y -- Yellow [which looks orangey-brown in ink bottles], and
B -- Black [= Key or Kohl, i.e. "coal"].
White provides the fifth colour, and it comes from the paper.
This reflects the demonstrated -- see, here, the glossy magazine industry, with National Geographic using Kodachrome film based, high resolution colour printing as the old flagship -- capability of CMYK to give a broader gamut with colour subtraction based pigments, than the seemingly more plausible red, yellow and blue pigments. Printing, is of course, colour by subtraction -- red pigmented paper absorbs greens and blues, reflecting reds, and blue pigmented paper reflects blue while absorbing red and green. By contrast, red, green and blue light sources mix colours by addition, as in the RGB pixels in a computer or television screen.
Indeed, it can be argued that CMYK allows for a more accurate rendering of pigment based colour complements. Here is a special colour test page for Web Colours.
(If you need to do colour management in Scribus for PDF's, start here. Here gives further counsels on colour.)
EXERCISE: As colour vision deficiency affects a significant fraction of the population, this test may be a helpful exercise. If you detect a problem, consult a doctor. Nowadays, there are compensating glasses that may help many people with such challenges.
Colour vision, of course, is quite complex. So, we pause to explore:
PART VII:
Seeing/Displaying in Colour
Let's begin with how a modern, LCD Display or TV works to show colour images:
This already hints that our eyes sense R, G and B and our brains use these colours to compose full colour images. That is roughly correct.
For example, we have metamerism, by which colours that are spectrally different can be visually matched, such as [HT, Wikipedia] a yellow matched through red and green light:
This is the effect that colour displays, photography and printing take advantage of. However, especially for objects that reflect light, consistent matching under daylight vs fluorescent light vs incandescent lights can be challenging.
For more detail, let us now see how we could get R, G & B colours (we are adding light in the eye) from how our cone cells [the actual sensors] work. Notice, the peaked colour responses and how close the L and M peaks are. That is a puzzle at first, and a hint that the eye is not simply adding R G and B. Also, let us note that rod cells are more dominant for low light levels, which is why our low light level vision is monochrome, with a greyish green tinge. Here then are the responses of our Cones and Rods, with a note on how we can get to RGB by subtraction. In short, the colour vision process is credibly based on an array of L, M and S peaked response sensors and onward signal processing:
In the sensor and neural networks in the retina, optic nerves and brain, it is thought that an additive/subtractive process is carried out, which can be seen as in effect giving four colour channels, roughly, RGBY:
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| Physiology studies how our body parts, from cells on up, work. Here, we see how cone cells, with neural network processing, support colour vision. There is a lot more, complex processing in the brain, 3-D, colour vision is not simple like a photograph |
In short, we have red-oriented, green oriented and blue oriented sensors that overlap in their response, but by addition and subtraction we get to RGB response and even to Y response. There is even an argument nowadays, that a shift to RGBY displays might improve yellow response and colour gamut. This fits well with the opponent processes theory just above:
Related, in the 1940's Richard Hunter developed a Lightness [vs darkness], a-axis [Red vs Green], b-axis [yellow vs Blue] colour space that is similar to the Munsell model. By 1976, this was refined and standardised as CIELab or the L*a*b colour space, which is available on some image processing software. Apparently, it is the closest to a "uniform" space we have. HT Wikipedia:
For printing, we could consider a typical, "basic" CMYK inkjet printer:
Inkjet printers thus produce a pattern of dots:
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| Inkjet printer output, here with CMYK. Observe, how solid colours have dense dotting, with colours layered, and how ragged edges are, which is used to detect some kinds of fraud that use printers to replicate things printed on presses, e.g. money. Also, Carbon based black inks are brownish, so printers may add cyan to get a more neutral black. Yes, "black" may have coloured ink added to it. |
Clearly, colour vision is complex and those who design display screens and projectors or printers face significant challenges.
This boils down to, if you need precisely accurate, closely controlled colour rendering [e.g. medicine, fashions, high end glossy magazines, science], that is going to be expensive and highly technical. (See a discussion here and advice here. Here is a page with Pantone standard colours.) However, for most things, impressionistic colours that catch the eye and are good enough will be acceptable. Today's low cost colour displays and inkjet printers are an astonishing achievement.
Of course, the ranges of colour that can be reproduced, relative to what our eyes can detect, also very significantly. Here (HT: Wikipedia) is a comparison of colour gamuts using the CIE 1931 reference standard tongue of colour to mark the range of colours we can see:
(By the way, a printer's "point" is pretty nearly 1/72 inches, a pica is 12 points and 72 dots per inch was a classic resolution for half-tone screens used in newspapers and some magazines. That's why 12-point type [a standard size for documents] is effectively six lines of type per inch and 10-point, 7. Consider if going up to 14 may help or going down to 11 or 10.5. In two-column text, 9 point in something like Times Roman or Garamond or Palatino or Cambria or Georgia may work well. For Sans Serif type, which generally prints larger than serif, Arial, or Helvetica or Verdana or Calibri might be good first tries. A serif is the "hook" on strokes for letters, which can help in recognising letter shapes. Verdana allows for clear distinction between I, l and 1. Comic can be useful for more informal work, or a handwriting like typeface; consider Calligraph421 BT if you want long, handwriting like but highly legible text. Chancery Italic or an "Old English" Textura Quadrata text may work for some things. Monospace, even-width "typewriter" letter fonts such as Courier have their use, even though they tend to look ugly; do not overlook that their numerals can be used to make sure columns of numbers align exactly; which can solve otherwise thorny problems with tables and spreadsheets. Consider Lucida for large signs that are to be seen at a distance. However, a riot of fonts can become chaotic and distractive, and highly decorative fonts are usually hard to read in extensive text. Use such for highlights and accents, not the main body text. Look at what quality newspapers and magazines do.)
Scribus and other Desktop packages . . . including that Open/Libre Office is actually a low end DTP App . . . can deliver on such.
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| Ranges of colours for the eye converted to a circle of colour model. Notice, gamuts for RGB [screens/addition], Pantone [a proprietary colour system], CMYK. Observe how CMY appears as based on three key colours, likewise RGB and Pantone, on five: red, bluish magenta, green-cyan, green, greenish yellow, possibly magenta too |
However, if you want to go into the advanced topic of proprietary Pantone colours, and spot colours more generally, that will become tricky. (Suggestions, here.) Not an issue at 101, gateway workshop level.
In fact, a lot of effective print work for fairly small runs can be done on a modern CMYK Colour Laser Department level printer.
For casual small runs, a CMYK colour inkjet printer is hard to beat (including to print photographs), the problem being that such paper based output will usually be vulnerable to water and to strong sunlight.
To develop this a little, let us notice, we are now using a circular model of colour that wraps the rainbow into a loop; which Newton introduced.
Also, colours by adding light have as PRIMARY colours, red, green and blue. Where, colours by subtracting/absorbing some incident light and reflecting or transmitting the rest have as PRIMARY colours red, yellow and blue, or alternatively, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, assuming a white background. Black is in theory reproducible by superposing CMY on the paper but that would in practical cases tend to a muddy brownish colour, and for precise things would require very difficult registration. Black as a separate colour makes good sense.
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| An Abalone shell, showing "mother of pearl" iridescence (HT, Wiki) |
We can also consider iridescence such as an oil film on water or the pearly effect of certain shells such as Abalone, but the rainbow effect tells us that these are spectral colours (produced by "thin layer" interference of light waves). The Peacock's tail, bright bird feathers and similar things are also "rainbow" colours.
Munsell and others have created a hue-saturation-value model based on the wheel of colour:
Here, we see that we consider degree of lightness or darkness from black to white (which is what black and white photographs capture), and surround this line with the rainbow of hues; forming a sort of double cone. Then, we can see that we can have different intensities of colour that differ from the grey point at that level of lightness or darkness; as we see for a given blue colour. Or, reducing to a three-dimensional, alphanumeric hue-saturation-value scale with the column of graded neutral greys as spine:
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| HT: Munsell et al, educational fair use |
Selecting one branch of the resulting Munsell colour tree or colour spindle, tied to the traditional artist's yellow, Yellow Ochre, we can readily see how a broad range of tints and shades may be unfolded:
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| HT: David Briggs, educational fair use |
We may compare the tones, shades and tints of red, similarly:
Here, the B/W greys spine runs 0 to 10, with the extremes being ideal white and black. Real world W/B might get as near as 9.5 or 0.5. Saturation of a given hue is unlimited, but depends on getting better pigments. As for the hues, the circuit is closed, with rainbow colours plus the purples, and the issue is to interpolate. Going beyond, we can see a more or less biconical spindle-shaped colour solid emerge as approach to very bright converges on White and approach to very dark converges on black:
Or, we can take an "apple-slice" view of the Munsell colour tree:
Other schemes are possible and many are actually used, but this suffices to give us a framework to deal with colour.
Some further points on Hue-saturation-value are well worth noting:
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| (CR: See slide 5 here.) |
From this we can easily see that on a screen, red, green and blue dots are lit up in patterns and to degrees that allow us to see colour images. White is full red, green and blue [RGB], black is full-off RGB. If a computer is showing 24-bit colour, that corresponds to 0 - 255 for each, 0 being fully off and 255 fully on. These are the 256 possibilities for a string of 8 bits, each, for RGB; thus 24-bit colour.)
The classic, traditional colour mixing wheel then allows us to ponder colours around the wheel, primary, secondary, tertiary:
A look at the wheel will show that mixing pairs of primaries yields secondaries. Mixing the three does not yield a perfect black, one tends to get a muddy grey-brown familiar from childhood experience of washing out brushes of water-colour paints. The brownish tint comes from reds or oranges mixing with dark greys or blacks.
We now have six near-rainbow colours: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
Mixing the new neighbours, primary + secondary, gives another six colours, the tertiaries, here labelled: vermillion, amber, chartreuse, teal, violet, magenta. Altogether a dozen. We may note too, a particular blue-green familiar from tropical beaches, cyan.
And, that brings us to a surprise, as printers from 1906 on realised that the widest span [technically, gamut] of colours mixed from pigments comes from the true printer's primaries, cyan + magenta + yellow + black (+ the white supplied by paper). Where, from 2015 Pantone has added three more to span an even wider gamut that reduces the need for special spot colour printing, + orange + green + violet. So, we can see the utility of the traditional artist's palette with a fairly broad range of "standard" traditional colours.
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| From 1906, but now we see an extended gamut since 2015 (HT, FUE: kwalitylabels) |
Further mixing can be done.
This can give a traditional gamut of named colours:
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| HT: 216 Creative et al, educational fair use |
We then see that close neighbours are harmonious. By contrast, complements have maximum contrast, being on opposite sides of the wheel, and triads of colours are roughly evenly balanced across the wheel, red, yellow and blue being the most obvious, followed by orange, green and purple. As Betty Edwards notes for a typical real-world colour:
Take, for example, the light brown color of a paper bag: This color is actually a pale, dull orange [dulling orange yields brown] made of red mixed with yellow to make orange, lightened with white, then dulled with orange’s complement, blue . . . .
[ . . . ]
Confronted with colors such as an overcast sky or a peach-colored rose, the artist has no corre-sponding pigments to match those hues. To achieve these colors, the artist must mix them, using the attributes of a color as a three-part description in order to unlock the
“recipe” for mixing that specific color. [ Edwards, Betty. Color, A course in the Art of Mixing Colors. (NY: Penguin, 2004) pp. 26 - 28]
A good colour mixing strategy, then, is to 1: identify and match hue [e.g. Orange], then 2: use white to
tint (lighten) or else 3: use black or grey -- or, a complementary colour from the opposite
side of the wheel -- to "sadden" or shade or dull the colour. Of course, a real world, three dimensional object has varying tints, shades and even hues depending on how it is illuminated, where highlights are and what is shaded. That is part of what creates the natural richness of what we see.
Regrettably, though, we do not have perfect spectral colours for painting and so, beginning artists need to study how mixing actual pigments and dyes works. That is how skill is built up in creating natural-seeming effects. Typically, painters will use black, white, a couple of reds and a range of other colours; ten to twenty or so main colours is somewhat typical. (If one wishes to experiment with say wax crayons or coloured pencils, learn to mix or blend the colours. Acrylic paints may be a worthwhile investment.)
Of course, CMYK + W [white from paint] is an alternative, and artistic paint manufacturers sometimes recommend using such a colour set, but again, so far there are no perfect CMYK paints.
Modern photographic finish inkjet printers tend to use further colours that allow for easier, more precise colour mixing.
With practice, one can become quite good at colour mixing.
However, let us note another effect. By looking at how colours are built up, we are changing how we understand how we see the world. We now have tools to analyse how light, colour and shade work, how colours can harmonise and so too, how we can work with colour.
For example, armed with the colour wheel, one can look at creating harmonious colour schemes (and avoiding clashing riots of colour). For enrichment try here.
Similarly, we can also see why black and white [or cream] are a classic contrasting pair for main text, allowing colour to serve as an accent.
PART VIII:
More on DTP, Layout
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| A page of the Gutenberg Bible at U Texas, showing 500+ years of wear and use. (HT: U. Texas, nb. this is a 1024 x 1024 image, use view image to examine in detail) |
A good way to begin to understand this is to look at some case studies:
EXERCISE: First, to prime your eye, look at the animated presentation on layout principles here. Then, look at several pages of the online Gutenberg Bible (go to the British Museum as it has two copies, and use the display that compares a paper and a vellum copy). Compare also, hand-written calligraphy manuscripts as we again see below -- notice, how closely Gutenberg matched what people were then used to seeing? Why was that?Again, handwritten layout:
Next, look at some business cards, some hand bills, some Tabloid format [11 inch x 17 inch] or bigger posters, a newspaper or two, a magazine or two also (include a National Geographic), adverts in these, a few trifold brochures, some pamphlets, an infographic, a textbook or two (try, one hardback, one paperback), a hardback book for the general reader (a novel or a topical book), a colour image rich coffee table book, some paperbacks, a few children's story books, an ordinary Bible and a Study Bible or two. If you can set up Amazon's Kindle Software, also display a Kindle e-book (get a free book or two).
Examine black and white photographs [if you can find any!], colour photographs, line drawings, information graphics [= infographics] and diagrams. What images are most striking, which are most attractive, which ones make their point best, why?
For the brochures, cover pages of magazines, front pages of newspapers, book covers and posters, and posters, measure the size of the headline text in inches.use the rule of thumb that furthest reading distance in feet = headline size in inches x 25 ft.
Which cases catch your eye best, which ones can be seen the farthest away, which are the most easy to understand, which are the most effective, which are the most "professional"-looking (and which ones look "amateurish"), which layouts look easiest to do? Which ones, do you think, would take the most time, effort and care to create? Why?
Discuss and make notes.
University of Colorado has a useful discussion that begins with a summary:
[T]he fundamental themes of page layout and design [are]:(You may also find the presentations here and here [notice the alignment lines and grids] helpful, also the more principles-oriented discussion of layout here, also this pamphlet- as- a- blog- page.)
- Purpose and Audience
- Organizing Information
- Getting Their Attention [--> so, AIDA]
- Balance
- Alignment
- Repetition
- Emphasis
- Proximity
Now, Scribus is from the Linux, open source world (which is strongly linked to major, high performance Open Source software).
Since then, it has been brought over to the Windows and Apple MacIntosh worlds. It also uses the older FILE-EDIT-VIEW etc menu bar, and floating tool pallets tend to be buried. These factors may make it somewhat unfamiliar to those who have worked with certain dominant commercial products. However, it is highly effective, reasonably easy to learn and free-for-download, which is decisive.
To set up Scribus, the first step is to download and install the non-commercial package for Ghostscript. Try the AGPL non-commercial download, here. If you have a 64 bit processor, download the dot-exe for 64 bits. Then click on it - likely, in the downloads folder -- and follow instructions.
Once Ghostscript is installed, download Scribus, try here. Download the latest stable release [currently, 1.4.8, the 1.5.X is for experimentation]. Install, similar to Ghostscript, which it uses.
Once it is installed, click on the desktop icon to launch it. You should see something like:
Scribus can be a bit fussy about being set up just right, so it is wiser to start from templates, and the easiest is a business card. So, pick a business card template. Notice, how it has a background canvas and then text frames or "boxes" and image frames. The card should be outlined in red, that's the paper margin, and sometimes there is a "safe printing area" blue margin inside.
As a first simple exercise -- equivalent to a hello world, click on the image frame with the sample name and type in your own name. Save the result under a name like b_card_try1 to a scribus_projects folder that you set up. It will save as a Scribus Document-dot-sla. That's important, once you set up a document, save it in your projects folder and make sure it is okay by trying an export to pdf, the icon is on the tool bar:
You may get error messages, click ignore and proceed with export.
The PDF will come up in the same project folder. (If you try to export before you save a document, Scribus will refuse to export to PDF.)
PDF, of course, is your main format for producing electronic documents and dealing with printers. Not just the printing machines, the business people who may print your document in quantity.
Now, click on your text frame again, and once it is outlined in a red box, click on the edit text box button in the tool window, or call it under the EDIT menu.
You can do some basic things on the layout window, but Scribus is not a word processor. Get into the habit of making changes in the edit window and then clicking the green check to activate. For example, highlight your name, change colour, size and font, using the tools. save as say b_card_try1a, see that the layout changes; then try the PDF export. You should be able to experiment.
Next, go to FILE, and click on New, so the New Document window comes up again. This time, click on Single Page under the New Document Tab. Watch this first tutorial video:
(This is part of a series, which is well worth watching for specifics on particular areas; video works with text and illustrations to enable understanding -- itself an example of the power of multimedia. Similarly, under the HELP Menu, there is access to a Wiki, a Help, a FAQ, a general How-to Manual, a guide to pre-press/ commercial printer grade PDF production, and a quick-start guide tutorial. [This last, will be an exercise for this workshop.] In addition the four articles on DTP for a magazine with Scribus here [typical multiple column page with illustrations], here [cover], here [master pages] and here [styles and workflow] are very useful. There are commercial books out there, too, try searching for Scribus under Amazon. [My search was quite fruitful.])
The production of books brings in additional complexities, e.g.:
Accordingly, that can be set to one side for now. However, for those who may take up that adventure, here is a video guide by an author, Michael Henderson:
(Much more can/needs to be said for such a task. This would be a good start. This, too will be helpful. Some templates etc. are here. Advice: buy a book or two and talk with your friendly local printer/publisher.)
For now, let us do a fairly simple task or two, building on the business card hello world above.
[WIP]
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Drawings and Images
As even manuscripts show, illustrations have always been very important for Documents. Digital technology allows us to create, manipulate edit and present drawings, charts, photographs and the like with an ease not seen before. So, again, we need to look at some useful technologies, especially painting, diagramming and drawing software. We will briefly look at Paint dot net, Open/Libre Office Draw, Inkscape and Gimp.
Before we get to such, let's not overlook probably the commonest photo and video making device today, the smart phone. Which, can make surprisingly good images and videos, or even edit and upload to an online repository. As a first step, here is a video from India on making good pictures. Beyond that, this on editing may be useful, and a search onward may be helpful.
Why not pause and share thoughts for a few moments?
Next, Paint dot net is a useful (and fairly simple to use) first example for editing, marking up and creating images, showing typical tools and techniques that will appear again and again. The download is here. Here is a first tutorial:
(The series of video tutorials is here. A series of textual tutorials is here. )
Draw is a component of the Open/Libre Office Suite -- download here -- and is optimised for An introductory tutorial is here:
Gimp is a photo editing suite with capabilities similar to Illustrator. As an introduction:
A similar tutorial on photo editing is here. A list of official tutorials is here. If you wish to try to use Photoshop filters, try this. (I add that Irfanview can also do image manipulation and works with Photoshop filters, especially the 32-bit version, cf. here.)
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PART X:
Audio, simple Animation and Video -- Blender+
Text and images are powerful, but audio and video are even more powerful. Multimedia therefore seeks to integrate these elements also. Indeed there are such things as PDF files with embedded video (thus audio), and more. (And in years to come, virtual reality is likely to come on strong also; especially through immersive simulations and educational games. Those, however, are quite advanced topics.)
Perhaps a simple way is to consider what it would take to do a simple magazine type show with hosts, guests, panel discussions, roll-ins and possibly teleconferences; based on pod casting approaches and fairly simple but effective equipment. This would also work for a course or online workshop, or the like.
A good place to start is with sound and light, the two key elements of audio and video recording. Both are based on travelling vibrations, called waves. Sound is due to vibrations of the air, water or a similar medium. Light is an electrical and magnetic vibration, as are radio waves, microwaves etc. We typically hear vibrations from 20 to 20,000 Hertz [cycles per second] for sound, and we see in a range from red to violet. [That is, ~ 380 nm to 740 nm wavelength/ ~ 790 down to 405 THz, Tera Hertz; one Tera Hertz is a million million cycles per second.Using the photon energy expression E = h.f, 3.10 to 1.65 electron volts per photon.]
Now, as an octave is a doubling of frequency, the sound range is about ten octaves and the visual range, about one. (2^10 = 1024, and 740/380 = 1.947.)
Now, we might wonder, why is frequency so important. At simple level, it is tied to how high or low the pitch of a sound is, and to the colours of the rainbow. For sound, let us notice our built-in high end boost and compression for high intensity sound:
But it is the next level that is stunning. For, there is a mathematical context, where Mathematics can be understood as the study and substance of the logic of structure and quantity. Through an analysis by Fourier, we can transform between frequency and time variation so sine waves of different frequencies, phases and amplitudes can be added up to form any periodic wave form, using a technique called called the Fourier Transform. Indeed -- via the Fourier integral -- any pulse also breaks down into a continuous spectrum of sine waves. For example:
And, that transformation to frequency is in fact how hearing works, using many frequency sensitive hairs in the cochlea of our inner ears, as sound detectors. Clipping the video:
Illustrating, next, the building up of sound waves from sine wave components:
This leads to the different, recognisable quality or voices of different musical instruments (and also, singers):
For music, the most widely accepted standard is that A above Middle C is 440 Hz. Other sounds and notes are set at ratios to this standard. Musical harmony is strongly tied to simple ratios of frequencies, though all of the ratios cannot be exactly matched in a practical scale, so the standard 12 note octave uses a practical compromise that is good enough.
AM broadcast radio, classically uses 4 kHz audio bandwidth and 2,500 Hz can in fact work for voice, but music requires much more for good reproduction of sound. Accordingly, FM radio uses about 15,000 Hz. And of course, it is no accident that to pick up a Radio Station we tune to its carrier frequency. These forms of radio wave broadcast use smoothly varying signals, termed analogue.
The standard CD sampling rate for digital music is 44,100 samples/second, so it can in theory capture signals of up to 22,050 Hz.
(NB: As a rule of thumb, for communication we want to sample at least twice per cycle for the highest information carrying frequency -- the Nyquist Rate -- and we need to filter out higher, unwanted frequencies. This limits bandwidth, thus avoiding aliasing -- creation of false frequency signals -- which makes a particularly annoying noise. For completeness, feedback control systems require a different approach, as they have to manage sharp, transient changes: ramps, steps and spikes; that's one reason not to tap or blow on a microphone to test an audio system . . . please say, "mike check," instead. So, for digital control it is wise to sample at least 4 - 6 times in the fastest reasonable "rise time" in the system.)We may also summarise the audio spectrum and some milestone effects, across the ten or so octaves [doublings] of frequency that are involved:
Let's augment, by showing the bands for voice and typical instruments:
This is useful for understanding how miking, mixers and graphic equalisers work. Short lesson: we have to think in terms of frequency spectrum and bandwidths as much as how loud/soft, boomy/tinny, clear/muddy, sweet/harsh/flat our sound is.
Where, not only is the human voice an instrument with fundamentals at 100 - 300 Hz but microphones are also instruments that can be used to shape a voice to give a more pleasing tone. This can be seen from the peaked frequency response of the famed Shure SM 58 dynamic [moving coil] microphone, a longstanding favourite of many singers and a yardstick standard for many PA systems:
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| Here, we can see that a microphone is a musical/vocal instrument. By boosting 2 - 10 KHz, the SM58 enhances harmonics ["overtones"] that carry much of the articulation of speech and the quality of a singing voice. There is not much signal in our voices below 100 - 300 Hz (the upper end being high female voices) and cutting this reduces rumble, muddiness etc. Choking up on a cardioid mic boosts the lower end, but too much becomes boomy and unpleasant. A good rule of thumb is to stick out your thumb to the lip, to keep the mic from being too close. For a note, 6 kHz will carry clear and pretty much undistorted speech and 3 kHz can be surprisingly clear. FM radio uses 15 kHz for music and AM radio 5 kHz, with older telephony 4 kHz. Many professional singers carefully select -- usually, expensive -- mics that enhance their particular voices/style. (There are also specialist mics for drums, instrumentation, conferencing, etc. Video on voice/speech; video on hearing; more details on the cochlea, here.) |
At the top-end, we can ponder the famous Neumann U47 family (cf. here; and its imitations, descendants and replicas etc -- including, model mics and kit mics [listen to the samples!]). This was the Mic used by the Beatles for some of their iconic recordings. Reportedly, Frank Sinatra owned his own U47 -- yes, mic selection to match one's voice is that personal and significant at the top end. The U47 is a condenser [= capacitor] microphone, with originally a vacuum tube [UK: "valve"] pre-amplifier and an audio frequency transformer; where, the mic now becomes an actual musical instrument, part of the artistic process that shapes the musical or vocal sound. (Neumann/Telefunken had to stop making them when the stock of Telefunken VF 14 valves ran low, and switched to FETs in the late 1960's. There is now a replacement VF14M, made, precisely, to support original U47's and U48's.)
Here is a U47 FET in action, which has a field effect transistor pre-amp, with the harder, squarish [so, harsher] saturation that semiconductor amplifiers have; though, by keeping signal levels in hand from being over-driven into "clipping," that should pretty well eliminate harshness and make the sounds very close to the world-famed classic original (but "they" say it did not sound the same . . . likely, subtle saturation effects) -- which retails second hand for up to US$ 10 - 20,000 . . . when you can get someone to part with one:
(To cap off, here is a review of a dozen classic microphones.)
Clearly, understanding the audio spectrum is important for mixing ("simple" pro job tutorial here, audio mixer basics 1, 2, with basics for live streaming here also more sophisticated set ups here), including for graphic equalisation. This sort of stuff has become far more significant for churches, schools, businesses, organisations and governments in a COVID and post-COVID world. Basic rule: audio can make -- or break! -- a video or streaming experience or teleconference, so get it right.
Let's pause and just look at a good field grade baseline analogue mixer that will cover many situations short of a full bore music concert or recording studio, a 14 input channel, Behringer Xenyx X1832USB analogue technology mixer with nine-band graphic equaliser riding on the usual bass, mid, treble equalisation for inputs and with a built in "audio interface" for a PC [the USB output] which allows for onward processing with software free for download on registering with the manufacturer; one, that runs at about US$300+:
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| The Mixer, HT Sweetwater. Manual. Note introductory video here (see tutorial too, buying guide also technical specifications here, a more complete manual here, contrast audio interface here; notice how an audio interface can split tracks live [= all at once as you live stream], mixers tend to give stereo output, that means that to get tracks you do separate recording sessions for each track, but some mixers can do both -- of course that costs extra . . . see tutorial; there is a good "top ten" review/buyer's guide with "tons" of advice c 2022 here.) |
Here is a video overview:
Here, we see a typical audio mixer with a per channel work flow from the input plugs at the top of the front panel, through channel management dials and with a slide fader at the bottom [with a mute button too]. Outputs, including USB (so, built in PC audio interface), are at the back. Inputs 1 to 6 are mono, 7/8 through 13/14 are stereo. Of course, consult the manual before use and if there is anything you don't understand, check with an experienced technical person. The nine-band graphic equaliser at right-centre would be rudimentary for professional equalisation but is quite good enough for many live events. It also allows us to pick the band causing feedback oscillations [squealing] and pull back the amplification for that frequency band until it stops. In any case, recording and PC interface would allow for much more sophisticated onward processing, as will the programmed effects, FX. Take due note here of possibilities for an audio mixer with full capability, track separating audio interface and USB output for recording multiple tracks live and setting up post recording track by track processing. The baseline mixer philosophy is to do it all live, of course but now we have options. Let's give a name, model and price point, the Soundcraft Signature 12 MTK Mixer and Audio Interface with Effects, a bit under US$ 600 at Sweetwater.
NB: If you wish or need to use a mixer with USB Mics such as the Blue Yeti or Tonor Orca 001 or Samson Go mic, etc -- which are meant to directly interface with a computer through its USB interface, rather than with sound equipment through a balanced XLR connector or unbalanced 1/4 inch phono jack -- that can be a challenge. This video provides three solutions, based on the 1/8/3.5mm headphone monitoring jacks commonly found on such USB microphones. Headphones, once a mixer is present, should go to the mixer's monitor output.The video also has some good, basic mixing and cabling advice. As to the DI, direct insertion, box the presenter mentions, see here. [Of course, if you do not already have a DI but have say a mixer with phantom power, it might be a better bet to buy an XLR, condenser mic, cf here.] After this, he gives advice as to why it is not preferable to do all of this extra processing on a mic signal: each step does a little degrading. (Sometimes, it is unavoidable, however.) Of course, one might consider the Samson Q2U dynamic microphone (itself, a good riff on the Shure SM58), which has both an XLR and a USB output. Microphone floor stands, table/desk top stands, articulating boom arms and even suspending cords from the ceiling, are potential mounting possibilities. If one opts for wireless mics, why not use clip-on lavalier/lapel units? Similarly, notice the difference between side address mics [typical of condenser mics such as the Blue Yeti etc, or ribbon mics but note also the classic Shure Unidyne dynamic mic (cf. the 55SH "Elvis" style mic here)] and end address "ice cream cone" mics such as the SM58.
A note of caution/balance is in order, however.
Popular music is a huge industry that can make its top stars very wealthy indeed, and with current digital signal processing, a multi track recording can be transformed into a sound experience that may be pleasing but bears little resemblance to realities of a live voice, live instruments and real world classrooms, halls, conference rooms, offices etc. Think of such multi track recordings as the aural equivalent of a high end dessert confectionary -- an occasional treat but not the basis for one's diet. Instead, we should aim to enhance the audio quality of live events, for which (while we want pleasing sound) the clarity and reasonably natural realism of a voice and what is said are paramount. In that regard, live filtering of various frequency bands, as is demonstrated here, may make a difference. But as always, test, listen, adjust.
Here, HT Behringer, are some of the many mixer-centric audio setup possibilities:
We also need to ponder for a moment, how people will experience the audio and associated visuals etc in a facility, including a few subtleties on how sound problems for an auditorium are countered.
Here, is a simple guide to setting up a modest scale auditorium:
This large auditorium shown below shows some possibilities for large, celebration scale events:
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| Notice, first, the wedge shape with the rising audience area, which allows people to see the stage rather than backs of heads. This rise can be quite sharp in cases where you want every attendee to in effect have a "front row experience." The stage is elevated, for similar reasons. If this had been a lecture theatre, each row of seats would have a writing/working surface and, there would be space for bags etc so students can stow their books etc. Doors have to be provided [including fire/emergency exits, with lighting], and the stage will have wing curtains. Notice, the stage is made of wood, a good acoustic material. On the stage at its front are wedge shaped, stage monitor boxes, so onstage participants can hear the sound well; there may also be small screens set so the speaker at the lectern can see himself, and to show projected song text etc. The speakers for the audience are elevated to project sound down to the audience, also this reduces possibilities for feedback oscillation squealing. Notice, the arc shaped wedge with a rising audience area and multiple ridged roof means there are no large flat parallel sound reflecting areas, which could cause reflections and echoing thus long reverberation times and boom-y, muddy, unclear sound where speech and song will be hard to follow. (Think about how unclear sound can be in an airport.) The ceiling, in particular, is in contoured ridges and is covered with acoustic tiles, to minimise resonances and reverberation. Seating is also of sound absorbing materials. (Audience members, with a full crowd, are also sound absorbing.) Lighting is distributed, and uses narrow beam units, to give good house lighting without glare. Notice, the stage is naturally dark, so stage lighting will have best effects. Likely, special lighting units are hidden behind the nearest ceiling ridge. Lighting, is a science all to itself and can require a lighting specialist for plays or broadcast video/concert quality. [Cf. here.] On the stage, the drum set is in its own special cage, to help manage balance of sound. The lectern and keyboard station will have their own audio lines to a stage box and snake, which goes to a sound station. Miking issues are as Behringer suggests. Mixing follows. Observe, too, the large projection screens, one in the centre, one at right, another [not seen] at left, for high power multimedia projectors. There may also be camera stations to pick up audience faces/reactions and contributions etc. (Microphones are sometimes put in the aisles for that.) And more. |
This layout shows working group or cell tables for a conference, on a flat area:
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| Working tables layout. One can also have a rising audience area behind, and seats and tables can be swapped out for a close area audience, However, that closer audience will not have a good first row experience. A U-Table can also be used for a working conference area. Notice, how chairs are used on stage to set up a panel discussion. For a conference or speech, a tablet or 2 in 1 computer, allows for a flat, accessible screen and emergency communication or reference device, but without the social barrier effect of an erect screen. If you are doing a debate or potentially hostile interview or panel, do not underestimate the power of a 1/2 - 1" three ring binder "folder," with a set of colour coded index markers across the top and side, which can be Post It style stick on sheets or glued in with white glue. The same can also hold lecture notes or a printed out paper copy of a presentation and key quotes or images. If you are using a Bible or key reference, consider making a multiple tail 1/8 inch ribbon book mark unit, with colour coding, which can be tucked into the spine or clipped inside the back cover with a paper clip. Flip charts and decks of large cards (which can be foam board) with posters can be useful too, as can be wall sized sheets of paper or white boards. Notice the ZOPP style self documenting consultation techniques that use buzz groups and strips of bristol board [= cartridge paper] that are marked up with felt tip markers by the groups and are then posted up on the wall. A simple photograph then documents. Also see IADB suggestions here. Integrating teleconferencing and moving microphones as well as wireless keyboards, similar to the multimedia seminar room, then multiplies possibilities. |
At the high end, we have LED Wall technology, for a worship space, a lecture hall, a concert hall, a command centre, a Media Conference Centre or a Multimedia teleconference room:
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| A high-end lecture or presentation hall, with LED Wall and chyron (HT, FEU: BIBI-LED (more details)) |
At the even higher end, some video/movie production sound stages now use primarily digital effects, based on a wraparound LED wall (= LED volume) sound stage, e.g. ILM/LucasFilm/Disney's StageCraft:
(More details & issues, here.)
Here, too, is an outline layout, for a multimedia and Internet teleconferencing based seminar room suitable for education:
On the digital mixer side, the Behringer X Air XR18 rack mountable 18 channel unit for tablet or PC is an interesting example:
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| The Behringer X Air XR18 mixer is a first level digital mixer (cf. overview) |
For audio processing, editing and recording on a computer, we may wish to look at the free for download Audacity (for which the recent "spyware" scare, given response of its new owners, is not a deal breaker). A PC Magazine review summarises:
If you're looking to start a podcast or record music, or if you just need a tool to assemble and convert some audio samples, it's tough to go wrong with Audacity. A powerful, free, open-source audio editor that's been available for years, Audacity works smoothly with up to 32-bit/384kHz audio with built-in dithering. The program lets you import, mix, and combine audio tracks (stereo, mono, or multitrack) and render the output as one. [--> thus creating a single audio track] Historically, Audacity's edits have been destructive, but its latest upgrades include some powerful features for music and audio production, such as real-time effects, a bar-and-beat grid, time-stretching loops to tempo, and more. Although it still won't replace a proper digital audio workstation like Editors' Choice winner Avid Pro Tools, Audacity remains the ideal go-to for quick-and-dirty audio work, and in testing, it's easy to see why.
Here, is a basic introductory video:
At the next level is the digital audio workstation, and a review here may be helpful. (For the Windows PC based Cakewalk, try tutorials here and here.) For example, these applications allow simultaneous taping of multiple tracks, live, from different mikes, instruments etc, which can then be edited as individual tracks; just like nonlinear video editors. They may build in instruments, sound loops and the like, being targetted towards music production.
Of course, the visual is also pivotal. Here is a low-end video set up for live streaming, etc:
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| Hanson shows us how to create a simple live streaming solution, vid here |
Then, HT Virtuoso Central (details here), using Joystick-controlled Pan-Tilt-Zoom Cameras, we can have:
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| Here, we see two domed, pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras, controlled by joystick controllers, with a PC, the audio setup is not elaborated, apart from headphones. Such PTZ cams are now popular as security devices (reducing cost), and some such are set up to be controlled from the PC through controller software. |
(As the again linked will show, this is considerably more involved. Keep things as simple as possible without being unduly amateurish, seems advisable. To record a choir performance, consider techniques such as the X-Y mikes etc here and another case here. Note various options demonstrated here. Extreme mike tests. How we hear with direction (and how recording can take advantage), here. Sweetwater recreates Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, here. Notice, Telefunken ELA M 251 E microphones, re-creating a great classic, go for more than $ 10,000 -- well worth it in cases where a golden sound can make a runaway bestseller hit. Rumour has it, originals, if you can pry them out of their owners, are maybe twice that sum. However, there is good news for ordinary pockets, we can get surprisingly good sound with much more modestly priced mikes, the Shure SM 58 and relatives being a yardstick. Some of the recent Made in China off brand or resurrected brand mics are also surprisingly good. [That's part of the background to what we are doing.])
Then, there is this sophisticated miking and stage setup (complete with what seem to be on stage personal digital mixers . . . yes, a product category) for the Mongolian music sensation, the Hu:
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| Notice the miking. Here, we see shock-mounted, side-address microphones, almost certainly Neumann U47 FET capacitor [= condenser] microphones, which have a very flat frequency response but tend to be delicate. Pop filters are in use, as are "rubber cradle" shock mounts. An analysis of the special instruments and vocals is here. |
Of course, the sky is the limit but we can now do amazing things with audio on a modest budget, for education, streaming, conferencing, podcasting etc.
Where, too, the rise of broadband Internet services, and of web based multimedia has obviously transformed the media environment so with modest skills and expenditure one can put one's message, news, marketing or education services out there; the issue is to draw and build a significant steady audience in an age where people typically have to be coaxed to read more than a short tweet length message. In that regard, voice and music are key points of access to the ear gate (and the heart), and allow us to lead to text, which is where bulk information still resides. Recall, the invention of alphabetic writing and of printing allowed us to turn our eyes into secondary ears, transforming civilisational possibilities -- for good or ill. Further to this, training our eyes to follow structural patterns so we readily "read" graphs, charts, flow charts, maps, technical diagrams etc further empowers our ability to recognise powerful rational principles that shape our world. A world in which the Gaussian, Normal, bell shaped curve reminds us that even chance tends to follow structural, dynamic patterns. Indeed -- and this helped shape our civilisation -- in the Christian Scriptures, it is taught that the Son of God and Creator is LOGOS, communicative reason himself, who holds all things together by his word of power, making this world a cosmos -- an ordered system of reality -- rather than a chaos with no particular order.
That is, learning to read, habitual reading, learning, seeking understanding are key civilising forces.
Kindly, note, too, that oral presentation of bulk information (even with flashy graphics, multimedia presentations and video feeds etc) will take many hours at 120 - 140 words/min. as a rough "average," one has to win commitment to get the effort to listen and focus for so long; the bridge point is probably, anything beyond a 10 - 30 minute speech or sermon is effectively an education effort.
A challenge.
As a yardstick, a standard 55 minute college lecture, at 120 - 140 wpm, is 6,600 - 7,700 words; at about 500 - 600 words/page for letter size, Times Roman, with 6,600 words, that is 13 to 11 pages, and handwriting is probably 300 words per page, so double that. A Newspaper feature may be 1,200 words and a magazine feature might be up to 5,000 to 6,000 words. In many formal meetings, there is a two minute short speech limit [240 to 280 words], tweets are now up to 280 characters, with observed average 33 -- make that 7 characters per word on average including spaces and we see 200 words [= a typical limit for ordinary letters to the editor], where a standard newspaper column once was 800 words but now 700 or less is about what you will get -- attention spans are shrinking. Notice, too that at a slow reading rate of 300 words/minute, one may read twice as fast as one listens. With tutoring that can move to 5-600, i.e. up to four times the rate for speech. And, as the information is all parallel, one may access it in a "random" fashion, especially where there are a table of contents, properly titled sections and an index. Web searches and search for text tools help with electronic text.
So, unless a voice is a celebrity with mass appeal [think, Fidel Castro's two hour speeches *], it may be best to use a keynote introduction, then a panel discussion or debate or a magazine show or workshop type format, and to do a series or mini course, cf. here on what a magazine is in the digital age.
* EXERCISE: Contrast Eutychus, a young man of Troas, c AD 57; who -- likely after a long day of work -- sank down into sleep and fell out of the window as Paul was
teaching for hours through conversational dialogue (probably, free
flowing question, answer, discussion format). Read the linked. Notice, after a miracle of resuscitation, re-energised, they went on to an all-nighter session. What lessons can we draw from this case about messaging, promotion, outreach to the general public, informing, equipping, persuading and transformation through education?
Accredited certification for tested education achievement may help.
Audience building is, frankly, a strategic marketing effort. So, it must now be part of the mainstream of strategy thinking for an organisation, network or movement. Churches, this includes you.
For video [the other big ticket to go with print, graphics and images, animation and audio, and a key access to the eye gate], we need to integrate sound and light.
By contrast to sound, the visible spectrum is about one octave wide (and is of course electro-magnetic), approximately 380 to 740 nm wavelength, or 680 to 480 THz frequency:
Ironically, while the frequency range of vision is in the hundreds of millions of millions of vibration cycles per second, 405 - 790 THz -- nearly 500 THz, by cleverly representing the moving image on a screen as an array of red, green and blue lights, classic analogue Colour Television could be represented in 6 - 8 Mega Hertz, i.e. 6 - 8 millions of cycles per second. This included, room for an embedded FM radio channel to carry Audio. Digital "through the air" broadcast television is currently being rolled out globally and tends to have about 8 MHz bandwidth per channel.
It is worth noting, too, that it seems likely that Newton's spectral "Blue" corresponded to our "Cyan," and his "Indigo" to our darker blue. And indeed, the ever popular blue jeans are mute testimony to the colour of indigo dye. Violet, of course, is a pure spectral colour. It is not the same as purple, which is typically a blend of reds and blues. Since then, as the chart shows, Indigo has been dropped and rarely, cyan is introduced.
In 1931, the International Commission on Illumination (CIE, from the French) introduced an "additive" colour model, based on research in the 1920's. The "tongue of colour" model with a spectrum locus and line of purples, with a white point in the middle. One way to interpret it is to imagine ideal ultra-red, ultra-green and ultra-blue sources of light blending to form various colours we can see by rolling a frosty glass marble about on a flat sheet:
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| 1931 CIE Colour space/gamut (HT: Wiki, note discussion here & on eye action here) |
Notice, how the spectrum locus runs from 380 to 700 nm wavelength and how each particular colour maps to a particular coordinate in the space. Of course, as we saw above, practical colour displays or printed or painted materials etc cannot capture the full gamut of what people with excellent eyesight can see. Darker colours come from reduced intensity in context, e.g. a dark yellow becomes a khaki-like brown, or in another case the bronzy green we call olive drab, and brown, roughly is a dark orange. Black is absence of light, greys are darker than white on the way to black. Metallic surfaces, water and shiny surfaces get their appearance from reflection. Gold and copper, of course, absorb some light so they give coloured reflections. A careful comparison will show that silvery or grey metals may also have subtle colours.
We can correlate to pigment-based, mixed colours:
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| HT: CIE et al, educational fair use |
EXERCISE: Examine a typical yellow-appearing LED white light source. Notice, how in ambient light it seems to be a yellowish surface. Note, yellow combines red and green. Turn it on, avoiding glare [which can damage your retina] and note the typical bluish-white colour. Why do some people dislike the effect of such a bluish illumination on their complexion? Compare a fluorescent lamp. Compare an incandescent lamp's reddish colour. Note, the sun's peak emission is a yellow-green colour, which is why it seems yellowish. What problems do you think these differences may pose for lighting a studio or making videos?
That noted, this model is a useful framework for projection screens, televisions, computer monitors and smart phones, etc.
Which puts the focus on screens and on available colour gamut and area . . . lush, but realistic colour, smooth good resolution video, clear text and more that fit the screen format all count. This is so transformative that suddenly we can recognise -- see! -- that a chalk board, or the open pages of a book or magazine, or a flip chart sheet, or a poster, or a billboard etc are all older "screen technologies." technologies that have advantages, e.g. inherently high resolution and independence of batteries or power cords.
We have a bit of a challenge, can we bridge the spectrum, colour wheel and tongue of colour models?
Yes, as there is a way to tie the CIE tongue of colour (with its spectrum locus, line of purples and white point) and colour wheel or spindle approaches together in technical detail, by using the coloroid model:
The base of the model is a colour circle that uses 48 standard hues that are spaced in what we see as even steps. As our vision varies with hue, these are most tightly clustered for yellows and are more spaced out for purples. A cylinder rises, with its axis ranging from black to white. The tongue of colour is plotted to the circle of hues, and we see a complicated, twisted loop. In part, that is because our vision is much more sensitive to yellows than to blues. Inside this loop we can plot an odd oblong shape, the gamut of colours we can create using pigments etc.
So, while more sophisticated models have since been developed, the colour wheel, RGB, CMYK and tongue of colour are good enough for us to understand painting, printing and visual displays.
Let us "simplify" to a Hue-Saturation- Light/Dark Value [HSV] Colour Spindle Map:
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| Modelling colours using a HSV spindle, for a first technical discussion cf. here |
One more step and we are back at the Munsell Colour Model:
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| HT: Munsell et al, educational fair use |
Such models are good enough to help us work with CMYK colour printers and with how computer displays and televisions tend to use picture elements -- pixels -- that blend dots of red, green and blue light that in combination create the images we see. Those images move through animation, by which our visual processing systems fuse a rapid succession of images into the useful illusion of continuous motion; as we saw above.
Not perfect, but "good enough."
A few words on "miking" and lighting will also be helpful. Advice on microphones:
I also suggest another omnidirectional "miking" technique that may work for teleconferences or panels: boundary layer or pressure zone microphones. (See video, here.)
For lighting, the use of key [main], fill and backlights is a useful technique:
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| A lighting set-up, HT Tech Smith here and here. For concert=style high end, cf. here.) |
Here, the key light is the main source and should come from the side, 4:30 on the clock face system is useful, with the camera at 6. It may be necessary to raise it so highlights don't come off glasses or the like, try for 45 degrees down to the speaker's face, which by trigonometry means as high up above the face as it is far from him or her; which adds up to serious room height quite quickly but keeps potentially glare-causing bright lights out of eyes. The softer fill light fills in shadows to avoid extreme contrast. This tends to flatten images, though. The back light or so-called hair light (keep it low!) helps to restore three dimensionality. Other approaches are also possible. Do not overlook, that if a live audience is present [such as for church, education and conference meetings, house lighting counts and people need to be able to read and take notes, but some dimming may help to highlight a stage or platform when a presentation or performance is the focus of attention; which may call for a spotlight operated by a knowledgeable lighting person.
Recall, in the end, cameras capture light so good lighting counts.
A second relevant technique is the green screen approach, which is superior to picture in picture. Here, by creating a bright green "chroma key" backdrop (a colour far from those of flesh tones), we can then turn that into a transparent colour (or equivalently crop it out), superposing a background image or scene. For instance: (NB: vids on this topic tend to be problematic, so kindly click the link . . . here instead is an image showing how a background -- it can be a still shot "wallpaper" or another video layer -- replaces the green screen)
(For more detailed instructions, try, here. Don't overlook the onward how-to's in the upper right hand of the e-How page. This video for Blender is full of useful tips, and this one has how to seemingly walk on water. With green screen techniques, the sky is the limit -- oops, NOT the limit. {Then, there is what lies beyond Green Screens for sophisticated productions.})
Then, there is the challenge of understanding and using the camera -- a key means to produce high quality imagery, whether for still shots or for video:
Lenses, a key element for most cameras, are a fascinating but fairly complex topic:
It will be useful to make a pinhole camera viewer as an exercise:
EXERCISE: Make or demonstrate a pinhole camera. This is a version using a can of potato crisps, with a viewing hood, and here is an explanation; basic math is here. It will be helpful to line the inside with black paper or to paint it matte black; otherwise, reflected light inside the box will tend to "wash out" the image. For example,
. . . take two smaller size crisps cans [the metal coating helps to make them light proof], punch the pinhole in one, line it with black, use a cut out bit of tracing paper as screen, placing it inside the transparent cap. cut off the metal bottom for a second can and duct tape or glue it to the first. line it also, with black. Use it as a viewing hood and use its plastic cap as a protector.
Here is the next step up, a cardboard box camera obscura -- Latin for dark room [source of our "camera"] -- one, with a lens; this also demonstrates the principal focus of a lens and formation of a real image one can see on a screen. Here is a literal open box demonstration and explanation of both. Notice, too, just how little light is used in image formation in a pinhole camera. What does this tell us about how sensitive a digital camera's CCD sensor must be? Old fashioned film? Our eyes? Also, what does this suggest about the black level for displays? For example, why is it that some multimedia projectors and screens wash out in daylight or in a highly lighted room?
Compare, next, the camera lucida, here. Further compare, a software camera lucida here. (NB: There are Android camera lucida apps, too.)
You may find this lecture on Vermeer, illuminating . . . he seems to have, likely, used a camera obscura to help him compose his paintings. Note this experiment. How do you think this would help artists to understand light and shadow, colour hue, saturation etc? Does this help us see the significance of the Munsell and similar colour spaces for images of the real world?
NB: Lens image formation is compared to the pinhole, here. Depth of field is explained here. Ray optics is explained here, and some thin lens ray optics is explained here. (In the old days, with some graph paper, one could graph out a lens or microscope or telescope to scale and measure its performance.) Some follow up will be done on this.
Aperture opens up the ability to focus on a particular zone, trading off light flux:
The F-Stops are set that for each step up, the light flux doubles. Wikipedia (often useful for a 101 on non political subjects) gives a useful summary:
In optics, the f-number of an optical system such as a camera lens is the ratio of the system's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil ("clear aperture") . . . .
In photography, stops are also a unit used to quantify ratios
of light or exposure, with each added stop meaning a factor of two, and
each subtracted stop meaning a factor of one-half. The one-stop unit is
also known as the EV (exposure value) unit. On a camera, the aperture setting is traditionally adjusted in discrete steps, known as f-stops. Each "stop"
is marked with its corresponding f-number, and represents a halving of
the light intensity from the previous stop. This corresponds to a
decrease of the pupil and aperture diameters by a factor of . . . about 0.7071, and hence a halving of the area of the pupil.
Most modern lenses use a standard f-stop scale, which is an approximately geometric sequence of numbers that corresponds to the sequence of the powers of the square root of 2: f/1, f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, f/32, f/45, f/64, f/90, f/128, etc. Each element in the sequence is one stop lower than the element to its left, and one stop higher than the element to its right. The values of the ratios are rounded off to these particular conventional numbers, to make them easier to remember and write down. The sequence above is obtained by approximating the following exact geometric sequence:
That is,
Continuing:
In the same way as one f-stop corresponds to a factor of two in light intensity, shutter speeds are arranged so that each setting differs in duration by a factor of approximately two from its neighbour. Opening up a lens by one stop allows twice as much light to fall on the film in a given period of time. Therefore, to have the same exposure at this larger aperture as at the previous aperture, the shutter would be opened for half as long (i.e., twice the speed). The film will respond equally to these equal amounts of light, since it has the property of reciprocity. This is less true for extremely long or short exposures, where we have reciprocity failure. Aperture, shutter speed, and film sensitivity are linked: for constant scene brightness, doubling the aperture area (one stop), halving the shutter speed (doubling the time open), or using a film twice as sensitive, has the same effect on the exposed image.
This framework, then allows us to adjust for focus and depth of field desired for a given shot. Where, as ever, lighting -- natural or artificial -- counts, as does how one sets up the focal point of attention for a shot. A further factor is types of lenses, which is a further field of study to itself. The best initial advice is, if fairly common fixed lens cameras -- often with zoom lenses -- are not good enough, get an experienced technician. Where, for first level teleconferencing and educational streaming, good web cams, good smart phone cams and good consumer video camcorders can give a surprisingly good result.
Just, make sure of 30 frames per second to get full motion.
NB: Testing is underway to see how security PTZ web cams can be adapted to teleconferencing. This will be updated as results come in. So far, once tied to a router through ethernet, the camera will come up and appropriate software will manage PTZ features. Onward, integration with OBS Studio or the like.
For camera setups, consider:
Let's also note:
FURTHER CONTENT: A short, free course in photography is here. This video here on NASA photography is fascinating, giving real world context. There are video guides to lenses (more here), to depth of field, to video camera movement, to framing and composition, to shot size, to the close-up, to camera angles, to lighting, to frame rates, to editing, and to scene transitions. Also, still photography basics and a short course; also, another. Starter gear suggestions. At the "[nearly?] good enough for broadcast" end, consider this video, but ask
yourself, at what point are we at a good enough balance of cost and effectiveness to adequately support the communication of a message, without robbing resources needed for other service priorities? (Across time and as technical capability to make the most of equipment advances, that sweet spot point will shift. And one must reckon with not making a church into an overly attractive target for thieves.)
Now, for rich multimedia, we clearly need both sound and light with motion to get moving images with synchronised sound. That is, audio and video, with properly aligned sound.
For example, we all will remember how irritating or even annoying it is to see lips move out of sync with speech. We therefore need good audio, we need good colour video, we need them in synchronisation, and they need to come together to tell a coherent story. This means that audio and video authoring and editing must pose technical difficulties.
That's why audio and video editing are -- necessarily -- somewhat challenging.
Audacity, an open source sound authoring application that is often used for podcasting, is a good place to begin.
(It may also be helpful to see an actual edit of a podcast in action, here.)
Now, sound goes with sight, so we need to work a bit with video and with edits.
First, let us remember Ken Burns' 4 + 4 elements of audio-visual storytelling:
VISUAL
Live Cinematography
Old [still] Photographs [or images/"slides"]
Interviews
"Footage" [from the period or reconstructions]
ORAL/AUDIO
Third Person Narrator ("the voice of God")
First Person voices [from the period or reconstructions]
Music
Sound Effects
We turn to the video side.
PART XI:
More on Video
Similar to Audacity, Blender is an open source app with a non-linear video editor.
(BASIC LEVEL VIDEO EDITING ALTERNATIVES: Notice, a comparison tabulation here -- one of the more useful things we can find on Wikipedia. Blender is professional grade. Obviously, go get a second opinion before purchasing or trying to spend serious effort to learn and use software. [I also notice that over the past few years, Microsoft has stopped supporting its well-known Windows Movie Maker. It now supports its Video Editor, which is "hidden" inside its Photos App for Windows 10, instead -- a tutorial is here. There is now the free Animotica Movie Maker, here, see overview here and tutorials here. You may also want to look at NCH's VideoPad as a similar, free for download functional basic "prosumer" editor that has now earned some respectable mentions. See its tutorial page. Another alternative is to use an older version of prosumer software that is available at a discounted price, such as Corel's Video Studio or Cyberlink's Power Director or Vegas Pro. The free software, Lightworks is another possibility; which also has a full bore pro version. DaVinci Resolve or ClipChamp and CapCut are other alternatives. However, basic or prosumer editors will all be less powerful than Blender or the like.])
At this point -- bearing in mind how post Covid-19 Pandemic Electronic presentations will be vital for education and for work place meetings -- I suggest two alternatives (which may be done in sequence).
Alternative A: Animotica. This is designed for beginners and is in effect an all in one, free for download editor optimised for ease of use at beginner level proficiency. Accordingly, I link the overview here and tutorials here. Note, the free version will watermark the output; price/performance options are here. Following, is an introductory video on using it to take a PowerPoint presentation to the next level:
(It seems I have to leave a greyed out vid to block a problem from propagating. )
Part 2: here . . .
Part 3: putting together various elements such as video clips (and using supportive software, e.g. for screencasting):
Of course, to use video clips, one may need to trim, split and merge. As this works with AVI and MP4 files, the built-in converter or something like FreeMake Video Converter will also be useful. Likewise, as screencasts may be a good part of what we wish to say, how, something like Screencast-O-Matic might be a good tool.
If you use this "simple" tool, note how the free version does up to fifteen minutes, watermarks and will likely have a different -- often, too quiet -- level on videos played in screen. Lightworks does not, and will do a much longer video.
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| A sample panel from Prince Valiant, showing realistic rendering, indoors lighting from 7 o'clock low (a fireplace? The setting Sun?) and outdoors lighting from 8 o'clock high; also, story sequence. (Fair use, Edu, HT Wikipedia and Golden Age Comic Book Stories, etc.) |
Of course, hot tip: do not try to "wing" a screencast, plan and script what you intend to do and say!
Consider doing a storyboard, in effect a comic strip that shows scenes, key action points, action, backdrop, camera angles and implied lighting, shot by shot for the timeline. Which, is a key editing tool to align and sequence audio, image and video elements. You can use stick figures and speech bubbles as well as panel notes in the narrator's voice, similar to the justly famed Prince Valiant.
Indeed, a useful first exercise is to do an audio tape [use say Audacity], then fill in start and end screens, images and video clips to give a visual element, along the time line. And yes, apart from action scenes or animations or demonstrations, THE AUDIO CARRIES THE STORY.
These days, the level one tool for video will be a good smartphone or tablet form factor computer. Nowadays, just about every smart phone, tablet or notebook PC will be good enough to work for basic video and multimedia authoring.
Such tools, together, should be good enough for educational multimedia production in a pandemic age.
Alternative A1: Lightworks, see video tutorial here.
Alternative B: Blender, actually, is much more than a video editor; it allows creating 3-D computer animations and more. However, our interest is in its Video Sequence Editor. Which is a sophisticated enough, non-linear video editor. Our focus for this unit, however, is to gain an initial experience; expertise comes with practice and being willing to resolve complications and frustrations of dealing with professional grade software.)
An overview tutorial is here:
More (including vids) here. Also, here. For fairly sophisticated green screen in Blender using a mask, see here, note how microphones and lighting also come in. (NB: This tutorial also shows why a pro-grade editor has to be more complicated to use than a basic one. More precise control, in short.)
Here, we are just exploring at first level. Accordingly, let's see a short tutorial on creating a YouTube channel introduction, a useful practical exercise:
REMARKS: With this unit, we have "only just begun." The gateway is open, let us now boldly go through it. Accordingly,
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
This unit gives a first exposure to multimedia authoring, taking the unusual view that TEXT is the first multimedia element in a world of literacy where we have trained our eyes to be secondary ears, so that we can see text and hear it automatically through sub vocalisation, much as we also subvocalise when we think. That is important, in a world where text is increasingly badly under appreciated. However, graphical and photographic elements, audio, animation and video are also important.
So, in a web based, multimedia world, we need to be able to use authoring tools to produce effective materials for education, teleconferencing, discussions and presentations, reaching out to the public, marketing, presenting news and views, participating in the marketplace for ideas and issues.
If we do not develop and regularly use this capability, we will be marginalised, stereotyped, twisted into strawman caricatures, scapegoated, blamed, sidelined and -- if we are lucky -- dismissed.
If we are NOT lucky, we can be targetted for abuse or worse, in an increasingly polarised age.
This is an area of capacity we simply cannot afford to neglect.
We have been forewarned and given a starter on tools and techniques.
Now, we must move forward.
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