CS 4803D / 8113I  Digital Video Special Effects

Instructor: Irfan Essa

TA: Gabriel Brostow

Spring Quarter 1999 
Tuesday & Thursday 4:35-5:55pm, 102 CCB.

Course Description:

Techniques to manipulate digital imagery to generate beautiful effects for movies and television have revolutionized the film industry.  Developers and artists using a computer as a digital manipulation tool can now generate special effects to tell stories on projects of various scales, ranging from very high budget films to low-budget independent films to television movies to movie shorts from home video collections.

The Digital Video Special Effects class (CS4803D/CS8113I) offered this spring quarter is aimed at teaching the techniques that are used to generate video special effects. This course is designed to allow students to explore their creativity while extending their graphics and programming skills. In this class we will  undertake a detailed exploration of the world of digital media as it applies to the generation of digital special effects.  Topics covered in this class include, digital representations of audio and video, spatial and temporal aspects of video, digital compositing and blending, merging graphics  and raw video, and merging & morphing of digital streams.  Participants in class will be required to generate special effects, critique and analyze effects from movies, develop skills and abilities to manipulate digital video and audio, and implement their own algorithms to express their technical and artistic skills.

Using off-the-shelf software for video manipulation, combined with your own algorithms implemented for the class, general ingenuity, and artistic skills, students will generate "video shorts"  that will show off their zany ideas in all their 32-bit glory.

Topics to be covered:

  • Introduction to New Paradigms
  • Representations of Digital Media 
  • Computing Methodologies 
  • Image Effects
  • Video Effects
  • Audio Effects 
  • Spatial Techniques
  • Temporal Techniques 
    		•
  • Into the Picture 
  • Merging Graphics with Video
  • Blending Multiple Streams 
  • Video and Image Compositing
  • Morphing
  • Putting it together 
  • 3D
  • Case Studies 
    		•

    Books

    Prerequisites

    CS 4390 or LCC  6104 or Programming/Video Expertise

    Projects

    This is a project-based class in which students in teams OR alone will develop "video shorts" of digital special effects.  We will use Adobe Premiere and Adobe AfterEffects.  Students will develop "Plug-Ins" for these commercial packages to generate their own special effects.

    updated: Tue Feb 16 08:52:23 EST 1999, irfan