When and where art is free

African American Firefighter Museum
Always free (but limited open hours)

Autry:
Every second Tuesday of the month

Bhagavad-Gita Museum
only 2.75 http://www.harekrishnala.com/krishna/Museum.asp

California African American Museum:
Always free.

California Science Center
Permanent exhibits are always free

Craft and Folk Art Museum:
First Wednesday of every month

Fahey / Klein Gallery
Free

Getty Center:
Always free; parking is $8

Getty Villa:
Always free: parking is $8

Hammer:
Every Thursday

Holocaust Memorial Museum

Japanese American National Museum
Free general admission every Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m. and every third Thursday of the month.

LACMA:
Every second Tuesday of the month

MOCA (all locations):
Every Thursday from 5p-8p

MOCA Pacific Design Center:
Always free

Museum of Jurassic Technology
Never free but donation based and modest

Natural History Museum
First Tuesday of every month

Page Museum (LaBrea Tar Pits)
First Tuesday of every month

Skirball:
Every Thursday; parking is free as well

Wells Fargo History Museum
Always free

Surge in activity

Last week, thehouseissmall.org logged 11,000 unique visitors in the three hours after msnbc.com picked up the AP story.

Green is the new green

The yoga sutra website, athayoganusasanam.com, now has a softer, more saatvic look. And a few new features, including a page that provides complete sutra listings by pada and translation.

Project Self Assessments

Honest self-assessment is an important ingredient in maintaining a sustainable artmaking practice. To that end, the final act of this course is to engage you in performing a frank self-assessment of the work that you produced in this course.

The bottom line:
Submit your self-assessments as a single reply to this post or as a single e-mail to me at eugeneahn@gmail.com. The deadline for submission of your self-assessment is Tuesday, May 6, 10 p.m. Please read the following instructions carefully so that your self-assessment can be integrated into your final grade.

How your self-assessments will be used in final grading:
Your self-assessments will be reviewed at the same time your Compilation Project DVD is reviewed. Please consider approaching your self-assessment with an open attitude of evaluating how the project revealed the strength, weaknesses, and characteristics of your artmaking process. For any given project, a score of 100 is possible. If the project is included on your Compilation Project DVD, the project automatically starts with a score of 10. If you turned your project in on time on the screening date, the project gets another 10 points for punctuality. The remaining 80 possible points per project are divided up into the areas of concept, technique, and execution, as originally noted in the syllabus. Your self-assessment influences this segment of the score. If your self-assessment is compelling enough, it may be used to represent the project's grade altogether.

Instructions for the project self assessments:

For each project, provide your own biased assessment that addresses the following:
1. The title of the work. Make sure this corresponds with the work on your Compilation Project DVD
2. Your score for the project's choice in subject matter or concept
3. Your score for the project's demonstration of your technique/craft.
4. Your score for the project's overall ability to execute/integrate your ideas and artmaking practice into a cohesive video art piece.
5. Your overall score for the project. This score does not necessarily have any direct mathematical relationship with the component scores of #2, #3, and #4.
Remember, each of these items requires more than simply a number notation. You should plan on writing a few sentences in support of each score that you give.

Scoring format:
All scores are to be based on a 0-100 scale, 100 being perfection and 0 being perfect inadequacy. For each score, you must describe, in complete sentences, what made you arrive at this score. Hint: Think narrative! Assess how you challenged yourself, what goals you made, what you learned, what you achieved, and what you did not achieve based on the choices you made as the author of the work.

The projects (in case you have forgotten):
Project 1: In-Camera Self-Portrait
Project 2: Cinematography
Project 3: Editing
Project 4: Portrayal (Narrative and Intention)
Project 5: Anti-Portrayal (Appropriation/Critique)
Project 6: Final Project
Project 7: Bonus Assignment (If applicable)

How to make a DVD with a menu screen that plays several movies

Basic software procedure for building a DVD that compiles several movies and presents them in a menu. This DVD will be playable in a consumer DVD player:



In Final Cut Pro:
- Set In and Out points for each movie. You don't need lengthy amounts of black lead-in or lead-out, because the DVD menu environment provides your viewer with enough "setting" and "environment" for your movies.
- Export each in the appropriate Quicktime format -- generally NTSC 4:3 (standard) or NTSC 16:9 (widescreen)



On the desktop:
- Move all of your movies into the same folder



In iDVD:

Project setup
- Startup Menu: Create a New Project
- Save As: Name in the same folder holding your movies in the appropriate aspect ratio (4:3 or 16:9). Choose the aspect ratio that matches your movies.

Selecting theme
- Single-click a theme from the theme library to load it into the project canvas. Use the dropdown to browse categories. Choose a theme that matches your selected aspect ratio.

Setting the menu title
- Double-click on the Title Text to modify the text. An options strip will appear under the text so that you can set font face, style, and size.
- Single-click on the Title Text to drag the text to a new position.
- Single-click on the Title Text and then select View: Show Inspector to call up additional formatting options. The most commonly used option in the inspector is Shadow. This places a dropshadow on your selected text and helps the text stand out from the background graphics.

Placing movies as menu decoration
- If your theme features any Drop Zones, you can drag your movies or photos onto these drop zones, and they will be used as content on the DVD menu screen. Remember that placing a movie onto a dropzone DOES NOT make that movie a playable asset on the DVD. It merely makes the movie part of the "window dressing" of the menu.

Placing movies as linked objects
- Select the "+" icon on the bottom left corner of the authoring window and select the option Add Movie. This will place a text link object onto the canvas.
- Drag a movie onto the movie link object, where it states "Add Movie Here"
- Double-click on the movie link object to modify the text of the link.
- Single-click on the movie link object to drag it to a new position
- Single-click on the movie link object and then select View: Show Inspector to call up additional formatting options.

Previewing project
- Click on the Play icon located along the bottom of the project authoring window to enter a simulated DVD player mode. Use this mode to preview the DVD menu behavior, before you commit to burning the project to DVD.
- To exit the preview mode, click the Exit button on the DVD remote control panel.

Review DVD map
- Click on the Map Tree icon located along the bottom of the project authoring window to enter a DVD Map screen of your project. Use this map to locate and address any problems with your project. Problems will be marked with a yellow alert icon. Hover the mouse on an alert icon for information about the problem.

Burning DVD
- Click on the Burn icon located along the bottom of the project authoring window to print the project to DVD. The icon looks like a spaceship porthole door. Click on it once to open the door and the icon will turn into a yellow and black hazard icon. Click that hazard icon to begin the burn procedure.
- If iDVD detects any project errors while processing media assets, it will quit the burn session and leave your DVD blank and unused. If this happens, review the DVD Map to locate and address any problems.
- The first copy you make of a project will take the longest time, because iDVD has to encode all of your media assets for the burn. But if you need to make additional duplicates, those will not take as long because the media assets will already be encoded.

How to make a looping DVD the easy way

Software procedure for building an autoplay DVD that loops video content:

In Final Cut Pro:
- Set In and Out points for your project
- Think about what you want to achieve with your loop -- repetition of something with a start and an end, or seamless continuity of something that seemingly has no start and no end?
- Export as appropriate Quicktime format -- generally NTSC 4:3 or NTSC 16:9

In Toast:
- Mode: Video: DVD-Video
- Options: Menu Style: No Menus
- Options: Auto-play disc on insert
- Options: Play all items continuously

Storyboarding basics

A storyboard describes the series of "shots" that is your film. Each "shot" contains information about for shot composition, camera positioning, location, and performance/story.

Here is a breakdown of the information to note in each shot:

Frame/Subject
- Sketch depicting basic composition of elements in the shot
- Indication of any subject movement

Camera Notations
- Shot type (Wide, Medium, Close-up)
- Indication of any camera movement

Environmental Notations
- Day or Night
- Interior or Exterior

Narrative Notations
- Any key dialog
- Any key sound/audio
- Any key mis-en-scene (colors, props, etc.)