How to:

Make a Movie with Digital Stills

Words: Jason Wishnow

Micro-Movies | THE WEB CAM

Elka Krajewska creates her experimental Web and gallery installation video clips with a Web cam because of the unique radiance and sense of intimacy inherent in the format.

Her aesthetically alluring films, aptly titled 67 Seconds, 53 Seconds, et cetera, explore spatial relationships within confined spaces. Elka explains, "I like my movies to be viewed by one person at a time, in a discrete encounter with the viewer. Because the movies are short, it works out well with gallery installations: people do not have to wait long for their turn."

At first Elka broke apart a black-and-white Web cam (purchased for under $25) and rearranged the CCD and lens within a new, custom-built case of foam core using regular SLR camera lenses for superior sharpness. "I did this so I could get within an inch of an object," Elka explains, "but with the new Web cam/microscopes I can get even closer and play with depth of field in a more controlled way without these modifications."

Elka's films are comprised of Web cam footage mixed with scanned drawings, photographs and found materials. The movies are created during a very fluid editing process in which the filmmaker instinctively arrives at each shot. "The process usually starts with a single image that has a strong appeal to me, something I saw or photographed or dreamed about. But that single image may lack context. At times when I am stuck on a particular series of images or get bored with them, I switch to working on sound. It is created simultaneously, using a Macintosh microphone and Sound Edit 16."

With Web cam technology improving, Elka has moved on to color, but her image size remains consistently small: "When I worked in photography I always had problems with enlargement. Most of the time enlargement is unjustified and arbitrary, but I prefer photographs in books and small prints. I like to be able to hold things in my hand or be in close proximity to them -- there is a physical space that is ideal for intimacy." You can see Elka's movies at www.elka.net.

"The world around us is in constant motion," Rodney explains. "The photo freezes it in place [de-animation] and then the process brings it back to life [re-animation]. Though, when things are re-animated they're never quite the same."

Stop-Motion | THE DIGITAL STILL CAMERA

I've been writing this article on an extended coffee break from the stop-motion film I am directing -- it's a version of the entire Oedipus Trilogy told in 12 minutes and starring vegetables. I suppose there is nothing too unusual to report about the process: move the models a few millimeters, snap a photo, repeat. Still, the production quality is incredibly refined because we are working with high-res digital SLR cameras.

There's a lot of talk about the resolution bump when shooting HD or 24P video, so it's easy to overlook digital still cameras as input devices of equal, if not superior, image quality. But virtually all still cameras match DV's meager 720 x 480 pixels and quite a few exceed the 35mm film standard of 2k (2048 x 1536 pixels).