Art student wanting to do stop motion video or a moving image film

Question

Hi
I'm very new at this but am interested in Stop Motion or at least moving illustrative work. I'm a masters art student and have been put down as a 'video art' discipline. I have always been interested in the work by William Kentridge who illustrates and films it using a video camera, illustrating frame by frame, stop motion style. Has anyone ever done anything like that or have heard or can direct me to illustrative work that would be classified as 'video art'. I'm not sure where to start and what programs would be best to use. I am proficient with Photoshop. Any help and advice would be awesome.

Answer 1

Les
Your one sentence is art in itself! My sentence is puny compared to that!
Jim Cookman wrote:
One could argue that all video is art. Myself, I lean more to defining it as craft, but there you go. Please define art in a short sentence.
Hi Jim,
There is a lot of confusion regarding the difference between art and craft.
Craft tends to focus on technique, like good pacing in a video edit,
color-correcting with an understanding of color theory, composing a shot well, etc.
Sometimes the more creative examples of craft are called art.
People talk about the artwork of a advertisement, or a Smoke artist.
A trained artist can offer a lot of originality and skill to a video/film
production, but generally the work must support a story,
so it stays in the domain of craft. For example, in David Lynch's
Mulholland Drive, one could argue that the lighting and camerawork are craft,
and the storyline and editing are art.
In ancient times, art and craft were the same.
For example, the Greek word for art is τεχνι, i.e. technique.
Another approach to art is think of it as a way to create beauty.
Classical art of every culture includes examples of this. Even today
many people have a difficult time with contemporary art because
it often does not strive for beauty.
A more up-to-date definition of art involves language. There are
many kinds of language--natural languages like English,
the language of film conventions, the language of choreography, etc.
English, for example, can be used to express all kinds of things,
from software manuals to impassioned love letters; but poetry
is a very special form of English usage. The essence of poetry
is playing with the language. Sure, sometimes it rhymes, sometimes
it is beautiful, sometimes it is very expressive, but deep down
the artistic aspect of poetry is using language in a different way.
An important aspect of contemporary art is the idea that
it doesn't express a clear message. A TV commercial might be
very clever and "artsy", but the message must be clear: You
Want Our Product. A work of art tries to be much more elusive,
so that the viewer in engaged in a kind of cat-and-mouse game
with meaning.
A one-sentence definition of art? Uh, let me give it a try:
"Art is the manipulation of linguistic conventions so that
the multiplicity of possible meanings form a structure that is
interesting."
Les