There are myriad ways of producing a good and professional documentation of the projects that you develop during your studies. High quality documentations of your work can strongly elevate your works reception. In many cases, good photos/videos can make or break how successful future applications will be. Developing good skills in photography/videography for documentation can save yourself a lot of money in the future.
So, you have finished and exhibited/performed/presented your work and now you want to document the (intermediary) result of your artistic or design process. Strategically, there are arguable (at least) two main approaches:
- You're aiming for a documentation that gives a neutral insight into how your work naturally appears in space.
- You're aiming for a documentation that aims to expand what one can experience with their own body in the exhibition space.
While there is a tendency for attempted objectivity in the documentation from the more artistic direction, and a tendency to - to some degree - market/promote/advertise for your project in a more design direction, both are valid and intensely used strategies in different fields across art, design, architecture.
This is of course just a first plateau of reflecting on what you aim for with your works -- ultimately tying together a positioning towards the established aesthetics of the field that you steer your career towards, the "natural" appearance of how your work behaves in different kinds of spaces (white cube, dark room, offspace, etc.), as well as your own idiosyncratic visual/sonic/textual vocabulary.
It's strongly encouraged to make use as much as possible of the university's facilities: For smaller objects (devices, publications, PCBs, etc.) make use of the small photo station and the professional photo lights. For larger spatial installations consider either the photo studio, or temporarily setting up your work (for example for a dark room in the cellar of Marienstr. 5, or for a clean white background in Marienstr. 7b, room 002 - both may be more easily availble during the lecture-free period). Cameras and audio recorders can be borrowed from the university. Please check out the Media-Point of the university for borrowing equipment, as well as computers for editing: https://www.uni-weimar.de/de/kunst-und-gestaltung/struktur/werkstaetten-ausstattung/zentrale-werkstaetten/mediapoint-im-medienhaus/
Either way, a documentation becomes high quality through an excellent setup and in turn: good and professional photos and videos, and lastly, a well-written description. To each of these components we would like to offer some tipps:
High quality photos
Use lighting with consistent color temperature. Indoors, this is achieved most reliably by shutting down curtains and working with a controllable light source (aka professional photo lights). If you are using your own LED-based light source, make sure to use LEDs with a high CRI value.
Photos should be geometrically corrected. That means in spatial depictions vertical walls should be 100% parallel to the left/right edge of the image. Same goes for square motifs like a printed publications, PCB, etc.
The white balance should be appropriately set: Monochrome (i.e. grey) areas in the image should be *truly* monochrome RGB values, like rgb(125,125,125).
The brightest point should not be 100% white, but rather max. 95% white rgb(240, 240, 240). Apart from a more softer appearance, this will make sure that your images will not blend in too much with the background on white backgrounds (in websites for example).
High quality video
Most of the tipps from the photos section are also applicable. Additionally, we do recommend:
Use a tripod! Unless you're filming a running or a horror scene, don't include shaky footage.
Your video should cover all relevant angles and perspectives that one would be able to inspect while viewing your work, while keeping a steady pace. Not too fast to be rushy, but also maybe not too awkwardly slow (unless that's intentionally what you're going for).
Give the changes from different perspectives in your video an understandable rhythm. If you're not sure what may be a good "choreography" through the close ups, detail views, wide angles and full installation views, then: Watch a large amount of other documentation videos to find out what red thread through a documentation video you like.
If you're documenting a media artistic work, most likely you don't want to add background music to your documentation that you wouldn't also hear when your work is exhibited. Adding an ambient or background "soundtrack" to your video with the intention to make your work more exciting, is most likely going to have the opposite effect. Instead, try to work with the sounds that your work is producing by itself: The noises of the motor, the sound of the air when your work is moving, the clicking of a relay, the slight humming of your PWM-controlled MOSFET, etc -- whatever sounds your work emits. And if your work is completely silence - then most likely your video should also show that.
^^^ That being said, there are occasions where complementary sound can be a good decision: A voice over, sound recordings that are conceptually relevant for your work, etc.
Unless you're recording your video in a populated exhibition, try to somewhat remove background noise for your recordings to a reasonable degree.
If your work involves a complex assemblage of technical processes that does not explain itself from the footage alone, one strategy to make your work more understandable could be to add text overlays and diagrams to your video.
Well-written project description
Depending on how you are approaching your documentation, a well-written description can:
- explain what you did
- be a genuine expression of your interests in a specific material, phenomenon, event, idea, etc.
- enhance the readers perception of your work
- mention the technicalities of your project
- give additional references
- contextualize your work (and therefor your evolving practice!) in a wider discourse/field
- be a smooth/fun/exciting reading experience :)
Credits
Include the name that you want to be accredited as (might be your real name, your artist name, ...), as well as: the title of your work, the year/semester of development, your lecturers, the university department (Interface Design chair & Media Art + Design study program), as well as the Bauhaus-University Weimar in the credits of the documentation. The university logo can be downloaded here, and the Interface Design logo can be downloaded here.
This document is part of the list of Conceptual Support Resources for Students.