• Before class: please disassemble and stow any remaining materials from the first tutorial.
• Please sign up  on your own for fire extinguisher training as needed: BioRaft Fire Extinguisher Use
• If you need IDeATe laser cutter training, please speak to Garth and we’ll schedule a session.
• Suzie has linked her presentation from the first class here.
• Please tag A10A reservations as non-exclusive by tagging your name with ‘open’, e.g. ‘garthz-open’.  This will help ease contention.
• If you are unfamiliar with Max, please spend some time on the basic tutorials; Max is available on cluster machines.  You may find our Max Review Guide helpful.
• Headshots: Garth will take your photo just to help with learning names.
• Events Not to Miss: Annina Rust, Skawannati, Hacking/Modding/Remixing

Agenda

• Video review from the Tabletop Optical Puppetry tutorial.
• Tutorial: Cameras and Light
  • Docs for our Sony cameras can be downloaded from Manuals and Datasheet
• Workshop exercise: Light and Camera

This site will be the primary source for course content, assignments, and student project reports. This site uses Andrew authentication, so students may log in using an Andrew ID and password.

The syllabus is still in development, but the course description appears below. We look forward to working with you and each other, we think this promises to be a fun class.

Course Description

Inspired by the early “trick” films of George Melies, this project-oriented course brings together robotics and film production technique to infuse cinema with the wonder of live magic. Students will learn the basics of film production using animatronics, camera motion control, and compositing. The projects apply these techniques to create innovative physical effects for short films, all the way from concept to post-production. The course emphasizes real-time practical effects to explore the immediacy and interactivity of improvisation and rehearsal. The robotics topics include animatronic rapid prototyping and programming human-robot collaborative performance. The course includes a brief overview of the history of special effects and robotics to set the work in context.