Videography and Conservation
Recorded On: 04/14/2022
- Registration Closed
Online, March 31, April 7, and 14, 2022 with live sessions at 12:00-3:00 p.m. ET
Instructors: Austin Purnell, Justin Denis
Coordinator: Emily Frank
Conservators are increasingly using videography as a tool to document their work and the objects they engage with. Videos can capture elements of art-making, conservation treatment, and object biographies that can be difficult to record with other methods of documentation. This online workshop will provide an overview of videography fundamentals and time-based storytelling concepts. Instructors will provide an introduction to film-making basics, including theoretical aspects of videography and storytelling as they relate to emerging questions in the conservation field. Sessions will also focus on establishing a videography workflow from concept to finished product, with a primer on cinematography, basic editing , sound editing, and post-production using Adobe Premiere Pro.
Participants will use the lighting and camera equipment they already have on hand, which can include smartphones. Participants may use any video editing software package, however, use of Adobe Premiere Pro is encouraged. Comfort with standard visible light photography, camera optics, and data management principles as outlined in the AIC Guide to Digital Photography are prerequisites. This workshop is especially relevant for conservators engaged in public outreach, but will also be useful for any conservator seeking to add videography to their documentation tool kit.
The live sessions for the workshop will take place in Zoom and automated captions will be available. All live sessions will be recorded and accessible to participants shortly after the session is complete.
Funding for this program comes from the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation (FAIC) Endowment for Professional Development and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The FAIC Endowment for Professional Development, which was created by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is supported by donations from members of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and its friends. Workshops are made possible with the assistance of many AIC members, but no AIC membership dues were used to create or present this course.
FAIC relies on your contributions to support these and its many other programs. Learn more about donating to the foundation.
Austin Purnell
Austin Purnell is a conservatory-trained professional actor and filmmaker with 15 years’ experience both acting in and producing theater, TV, documentary, and feature films. He was the acting coach for the Academy Award nominated film Beasts of the Southern Wild, and has appeared in Best Picture winner 12 Years A Slave, and HBO’s Treme among other productions.
Having worked as an administrator at the Objects Conservation Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, he is interested in the role of video in the conservation of cultural heritage, and in the conservation of video as a form of cultural artifact, and is developing a body of work which explores these connections. He earned his BA in theater and history from Wesleyan University and his MFA from the NYU-Tisch Graduate Acting Program.
Justin Denis
Justin Denis is an award-winning filmmaker, freelance content creator, videographer, and editor based in New York City with over 10 years working in the TV/Film/Commercial industry. He is an alum of the Sundance Institute Creative Labs and SPACE on RYDER FARM Film Lab fellow. He holds a BA in English from Wesleyan University.
Emily Frank (Moderator)
Emily B. Frank is a sculpture and objects conservator working and studying in New York City. She received an MS in Conservation of Artistic and Historic Works and an MA in History of Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (NYU) in 2018, an MA in Principles of Conservation from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London in 2014, and a BA in Art History, Chemistry and Archaeology at McGill University in 2011. She is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at NYU, where her current project has a strong anthropological theory component and is focused on intentional interventions in Roman objects in the Roman Empire.
Emily has worked in conservation throughout her education in a wide range of contexts: the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Kınık Höyük Archaeological Project (Turkey), the Yale University Art Gallery, the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis (Turkey), the Brooklyn Museum, Agora Excavations (Greece), the Natural History Museum (London), the American Museum of Natural History, the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project (Italy), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal), as well as privately, with a number of artists, studios, galleries, and collectors.
Session 1: Fundamentals of Videography with Justin Denis
- Learn the traditional filmmaking process and how to approach a work of visual conservation from the perspective of a videographer.
- Explore a wide range of core video concepts and terms such as codecs, resolutions, frame rates, the exposure triangle and much more.
- Focus on how to incorporate principles like composition, framing, field of view, and camera movement into your work to create more effective visual storytelling.
Session 2: Fundamentals of Post-Production with Justin Denis
- View a successfully edited conservation video and work in groups to discuss what worked and didn’t work about the video editing.
- Go over editing as a creative practice, elements of picture and sound, film editing grammar, and a successful editing blueprint to follow.
- Demo on Premiere Pro for general editing, plus specific tools helpful to creating a conservation-focused video.
Session 3: The Art of Storytelling with Austin Purnell
- Discuss the role of storytelling in relation to the field of art conservation, using case studies and diagnostic prompts.
- Discover the utility of storyboarding, screenwriting, and script analysis in the creation of documentary and instructional filmmaking, and how the logic of story informs creative and technical decision-making.
- Explore how perceptions about the passage of time inform both the filmmaker’s and the conservator’s process, and the advantages and disadvantages of video as a tool for historically-minded conservator.
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