Thursday 29 October 2009

individual filming and editing for rough cut

As a group we have filmed well and edited well, however, we are not close to finishing our project even the rough cut. There is still a lot of editing to do and some filming.

1. What went well- When filming we did manage to get a lot done in one night, we filmed some good footage that is going to be put into our final production, we worked well as a team and found good locations to film.
2. There were little points that went particularly well due to the fact of how many problems we encountered during the first day of filming. These made it very hard to film well or according to the plan, the biggest problem we encountered was:
-when we pulled out our tripod from the case one of the legs did not come out which meant that we could not use a tripod so all of our shots are shaky and we had to use many track shots, even though track shots are good because they can be done whilst looking shaky we could not do half the filming we intended to do, this meant we were a day behind in filming which put us behind significantly. We dealt with this problem well, we spoke to our teacher and she thankfully said it was the media departments fault and that they were willing to give us an extra day.
- another huge problem was that we intended to film by this huge lake which was a brilliant idea so we could make it serial, with sharks and dolphins jumping out of it. However we couldn't do this because the lake has been closed off and there was no entrance. We dealt with this well, we basically had to look through the script ad come up with a new idea for that part of the music video, we did this buy looking at other simple aspects like a bus stop and drawing serial and odd drawings and people at this bus stop to show a different contrast in people and objects.

Tuesday 20 October 2009

Dirty harry



This is video from Gorillaz, a band that's identity is under animation, and the band are jnown as these cartoon people. This video 'Dirty Harry' is a very similar video to ours, combining reality (real shots) and animated people and characters. It has quite a gritty quality making it seem more dark and not child like, this fits well with there style of music. This is something I think we should try to bring into our video.

Friday 16 October 2009

Animation







Throughout our film we have this animation and sketchy idea which is a work in progress an it is really going well. The music video by example watch the sun come up is a perfect video to show the sketchy look and the black and white sketches which we are trying to put forward in our video. The screen grabs above are similar shots and ideas we will be using in this weekends shooting we are doing. 17th and 18th October 2009 is when we will be doing our shooting and filming, then we'll be editing the whole music video and make it work for our music video.

Animation characters


This is a sketch, of a character that will feature in our video. Its quite abstract and strange, a weird monkey with braces. We have tried to produce something that is uite striking as a character, ith bold feature that stand out. Also we quite like the D.I.Y asthetic feel, with the animation looking a bit amateur. I feel this in a way reflects the band not being very main stream it suits their style and a bit underground and un heared of.

Thursday 15 October 2009

Test footage

Here is some test footage we shot and edited. We added some animation and it works! Obviously the animation here, is very simple. When it comes to the real thing we will get the faces to move and expressions to change We now nowthat are way of doing that will work because of this test footage :)

Gorillaz

This is an animated video from Gorillaz. The bands videos have always been animayed and you never see them when there not animated. I really like the unique style of the character and theme that runs through out. Further more I like creepy quality to the video with intense use of lightingg and mise en sene.

analyse of music video

Looking at our idea of making our video more serial and unrealistic i have looked at a video which is a little similar to what we are trying to do, some of the shots within this video work very well and are alike what we want to do. Here are a few captiones of the video itself to show you some of the shots.
















Looking at these images i have used of the Eminem video it is mostly all cartoonized but there are some similar shots of a real person standing in a different world which is what we are hoping for our video to be like.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

Teacher Feedback

This is a great post - well done. Don't forget to add your call sheet - this reflects professional practice so it should be done. As soon as you can get the sketches onto your blog to demonstrate that your production is developing - you need to show evidence. As soon as possible also get experimenting with editing the animation with the live action footage - it is worrying me slightly that you have not tested it out yet - try to do this next lesson.

filming, first draft

We shot our first piece of footage on the 12/10/2009, as a group our filming was very successful, we had a few problems with destinations and with the amount of shots we had.
one of our destinations was to go to the large lake in Cherry Hinton, unfortunately due to the weather it is very dangerous so it got locked down, this unfortunately was a big problem as we had to find new destinations and practically think of some new shots. This wasted time unfortunately.
Also our Tripod didn't work, one of the legs didn't pop out so it wouldn't work, this meant we had no time to do any good steady shots, and we also didn't have many variety of shots so they are all wobbly which makes it hard to get a good amount of shots, e.g. all our track shots were hand held. With our film some of this stuff can work due to the fact ours is very fast paced and in black and white so some shots can be more ridged. We have been given an extra day for filming due to the tripod.

We need to do more filming like the basketball which will be done backwards which is a clever effect. We also need to film some trees so we cand raw owls and birds in to create a good effect.

Friday 9 October 2009

Production meeting 3

Today we have decided on a date to shoot most of if not all of our music video which is Monday 12th October. We are going to shoot in Cambridge but not really the city centre but rather some more urban parts of the city like Cherry Hinton.

We have finished the storyboard and made it into an animatic. We are currently working on the call sheet which is going to help shooting the video go smoothly.

The main actors/characters/singers are gong to be Will and Henry from our group. We don't need any props apart from ourselves and the surrounding environment.

We have come up with some more ideas like getting people to jump fences or of the roofs of buildings and when editing rewind the footage to get a surreal look of everything going backwards.

Animatic

Here is our animatic to give us a better idea what scenes and scenarios we are going to have in our video:







Kid Cudi, 'Day 'n' Nite' This is another video that we can use for inspiration. Its very similar to our video, combining actual footage with draw animation. Its is similar as it is combining the artist in a normal environment with bizarre magical things happening around him. I also like it because similar to ours again it doesnt really follow a narrative.

Thursday 8 October 2009

Radiohead analysis

Radiohead’s video, ‘No Surprises’, fits very well with the genre of music that they make. Their music is a combination of many other genres of music and can’t be clearly defined, regarded as alternative. Their video for this song is very unique like their music, it is unconventional and unlike most videos.

The video is shot in one consistent take. The video its self, uses lighting in a very stunning way in this video. The lead singers head is framed intensely, and it doesn’t move away from him. His head is also inside a glass bowl. As the song progresses, it becomes clear that he is some sort of warehouse or industrial space, as the lights from the room around him are reflected on the glass. These lights are slowly turned on creating a green and blue shade on the face. As more are turned on, his face begins to light up, and he becomes visible. I find the lighting in this stunning, as his face changes, and the reflection from the glass illuminates the image further.

The lyrics of the song are then projected onto the glass, but appear backwards. Then water rises up the glass and soon reaches the point where the singer is under the water. The lyrics and song continues but the singer is submerged under water. He stays under water for a long time, and what I love is you soon find you’re self-desperate for the water to lower so he can breathe, creating tension in a music video. The water then rushes out and he continues singing the song.

There are many reasons why I love this music video. I love the lighting, creating a very atmospheric, intense mood. Also I find the way the lights flicker and glow upon the glass, looks stunning.

Further more I love the way the shot stays consistently on the mans face, also framed intensely in a close up. In addition to this the way the water, distorts the face I really like, changing the lighting slightly, and there isn’t any trickery. The camera doesn’t break away from his submerged face. Holding onto the tension. I find it clever how; water is regarded often as calming and therapeutic, as is the song, very slow and relaxing, creating a connection with the water.

Most of all the way the video breaks so many conventions and sets its self aside so strongly. Having using one take, being submerged under the water and not singing, but the lyrics continues to role over the glass. It also is very in keeping with the genre of music, and unique style of music and a very unique video

Takaski Murakami

I was intrested in the work of Takashi Murakami a japanese artist that produced a series of work for Kanye Wests album Graduation. His work has a very animated style, and that is consistent in the video he has done and the album cover. His ablum cover strongly relates to the video on the album, which is an animation video, that follows a character the gear that on the front. I really like the theme that is consistent through out the the album and product as a whole, giving it an identity and making it recognisable. I think if our song was released as a product it would also have a animation theme.

These are shots from Kanye West's video 'Good Morning' also directed by Murakami. I really like the animated character placed in a really urban grimey environment, I think that is a really interesting mix and something we could combine into our video.




This video isn't for Graduation but and isn't a music video, It's a video for louis vuitton. But it his a really good animation, that combines animated fantasy creatures in an every day environment.










Our Idea

Our idea is an animated music video, that combines real footage of gritty, urban enviroment and also a more fantasy based animation.

The way we are goin to do this is by, drawing the animation like a flick book, drawing every turn of the head. Then taking photographs of every picture, putting them into photo shop and cutting out the background. Then we put all the drawingsd together in an animation so they run consistantly like a flick book. Finally we then place these animations over the heads of the artist in the footage. There are areas that I think will work and where it may not. Im hoping that the doodley and quite sketchy way of creating the character will come through in the footage, and hopfully adding to the gritty urban sort of look we are going for. What I feel may be the down side of this idea is that it is very time consuming and may becom slightly rushed.

My plan is for it to look completed and statisfying, holding that doodley urban look, and not something to copmpleted or undercompleted.

shooting location

On Monday 12th October we are going to book the video camera and tripod to do the first half of the filming for our music video. We are going to shoot in Cambridge:

We are mainly going to shoot some more of the urban parts cambridge as we think this will aesthetically go well with our video style. We are going shoot stationary objects like cars, trees and then add animation to them when editing. We are also going to shoot the main characters (henry and will) singing the lyrics.
URBAN PLACES:
Cherry Hinton

Props and locations

As our film idea is black and white we are not needing any major props apart from:
- Tripod
- Camera
- Clothing = This will consist of black and white casual look, fashionable, so cardigans and jeans and a t-shirt. Because it is black and white filming it will not matter because what we wear will show on the camera and final cut express that everything is black and white.
- basketball and basketball court like "Coldplay the scientist" where the basketball is played all backwards and this effect makes it all serial, by doing this it will add great tension and make our film even more serial.

The locations we will be going to are in Cambridge Town and use some of the shops, to film in, (we will get information from the store managers to do this.) We want the stereotypical look very rap so this will bring the effect of the film out and with it black and white this will work really well. Cherry Hinton Chalk pits (picture shown below) will be a very good place to film including city centre Cambridge, reasons for this are because we can make images come out of the water like sharks and creatures, this will be making our music video far more serial.


8/10/09- feedback from our class

In today's lessons we have got feedback from our class to see what we can improve on and this what others said about our blog:

Group 1 analysis

-Good introduction
-influences shown well
-good use of more ideas
-nice mood board
-Theme and ideas easy to understand
-Teacher feedback- good idea
-micro + macro elements good idea and very clear
- Emailing band (Did they reply?)

---------------------------------------
Groups 2 analysis

-Good idea
-could be hard to deliver
-inspiration shows throughout
-good idea on power point
-possibly more diversity in the mood board

---------------------------------------
Group 3 analysis

-great idea
-easy to follow blog
-very comprehensive

Looking at this feedback i can see that our blog is going well but can do with some little extyra improvements.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

LYRICS

"Black History Month"

Can you remember a time when this city was
A great place for architects and dilettantes
A nice place for midwives and crossing guards
And on, and on...

Hold on, Hold on children
Your mother and father are leaving

Do you remember a time when this pool was
A great place for waterwings and cannonballs
A nice place for astrologists and blow up dolls
And on, and on...

Hold on, Hold on children
Your mother and father are leaving

Hold on, Hold on children
Your best friend's parents are leaving X2

E-mailing the band!

We e-mailed death from above 1979 to see if it was alright to make the video and hear any feedback that they may have!

Things to include in our Blog

BLOG SUGGESTIONS

Remember to LABEL EACH POST so the examiner knows who has been putting the work in.

Stuff to include: Notes from every meeting you have with your group. Remember: you’re a production team now, not a bunch of students. If you have any differences of opinion, mention them, chart how you reach certain ideas and choices – use it as a diary of the project’s development.

Mood board – a collage of images, writing fonts and ideas that capture the tone and look of the project. Either collect pictures from the internet (flickr, google) and put together in Photoshop. Or cut up magazines and paste onto paper – then take a digital photo.

Influences – embed music videos, clips from TV, film trailers, experimental film – anything that has helped shape your vision of your project. Then write up just how the clips have influenced you, mention intertextuality, and even if you don’t end up using these influences then say just why.

Similar music types or video – embed examples from youtube etc and explain which codes and conventions you’ll be looking to use. Use Goodwin’s theory (it is on the blog) to the criteria to structure your analysis.

An email to the band to demonstrate that you understand issues surrounding copyright

Song lyrics and your interpretation of them.

Test shots – any footage you’ve taken to experiment with an effect.

Digital photos of locations, costumes, props, lighting,

Storyboards, timeline, shot list – take digital photos.

For DVD covers, magazine ads - CD covers, tour adverts, adverts and logo that catch your eye – take pictures of, embed from the net or post a link to.

Look on Photoshop tutorial sites for ideas of effects and fonts you could potentially use and learn just how to create the look you want. Remember this is marketing so make it appropriate to the type of consumer the music/video is intended for.

Podcasts! You can do Podcasts – just as long as they sensibly put together and are to the point. An intelligent discussion about parts of the planning, different techniques or even a Director’s commentary would make a great post.

ANYTHING AS LONG AS IT IS CONSTRUCTIVE, WELL PRESENTED AND RELEVANT!

Friday 2 October 2009

Micro elements

Mise-en-scene
The video is going to be shot in black and white to go with the animations. Costume for the actors with be plain dark clothing but some wearing things like checkered shirts or stripy shirts.
Locations include Cambridge town centre as the city has unique and cool streets to film in.

Camerawork
The camerawork will be a mixture of steady and hand-held shots and we are going to try and get all camera shot types but we want mostly close-ups so we can fit the animation well onto the heads

Editing
The editing will be quite fast paced as the song has a fast beat. The thing that will take up most of the editing time is adding the animations onto the video in the software, finalcut. This special effect we are doing is called Rotoscoping.

Macro elements of our music video

Genre - we going to challenge convention by making it quite abstract. The song we chose is indie pop/alternative so by making the video surreal and abstract, the genre of our music video is going to be indie/alternative. We are going to make it abstract by using weird and surreal animation in random places and locations. The characters are going to be teenagers like us.

Goodwins homework

The video i analyzed is 'The Scientist by Coldplay' it is directed by Jamie Thraves, It is a very serial and abstract music video the way the video is done all backwards. The lead singer Christopher Martin had to learn the whole song lyrics backwards to get the effect that the film had to show, I will be analyzing the video through Goodwin's points.

There is a lot of genre characteristics, with this music video being an indie band, it shows off the indie conventions of showing what the artist can do, this is what a lot of indie bands do, the way the band shows off what the main artist can do, it is similar to any typical rock/metal band where they like to show the audience in a lot of there music videos because the audience really get in to the music. The indie band genre characteristics in coldplay are shown a lot through the artist and lead singer. The stage performance is brilliant, the story is all backwards and the artist had to learn all the words backwards to get the backward effect to work. Actors are playing basketball in the set and this shows the ball moving backward and it makes it clear that story is being done backwards.
The relationship is very significant between the lyrics and the video, lyrics reflect on the end of the story where it shows an accident happen. It is a narrative story being shown through the whole video. It is very illustrative, how the story behind the lyrics works with the video, there is no contradicting through the whole story. The lyrics it says "no body said it was easy, no one ever said it would be so hard, I'm going back to the start" these lyrics work very well with the backward effect, because he wants the car accident not to happen. The visuals shown work very well with the lyrics because he is describing his emotions that the through this car accident he'll never be able to recover.
Looking at the video it consists of a lot of work on the background, the background creates a lot of meaning through mood. However the mood contradicts the background because the background seems happy however the lyrics seem to be sad, this effect works though because it could be argued to different people that the background is sad. However, there are several close ups and different camera styles, through the production. Even in Coldplays other videos like 'Viva la Vida' he is shown a lot, the artist has developed motifs which re-occur across there work. Especially the camera work a lot of similar camera shots occur.
Not all of Goodwins points can be established in this video. However the ones that do are very productive and work with the music video. It works very well with the video, the video is full of suspense with a neat story twist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmjPrdTNxQ0



The video couldn't be embeded so i had to get screen grabs and the URL.

Goodwins homework

For Goodwins homework i decided to analyze the music video, Black or White by Michael Jackson;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI9OYMRwN1Q

The genre characteristics of this music are of a pop video. Most of the attention is focused on the singer and only the singer, Micheal Jackson because he is also a solo artist. Jackson is shown doing a lot of dance routines, which is typical of a pop star.

The lyrics of this song are saying that it does not matter what colour your skin is, what your ethnic background is, what language you speak, where you come from, we are all equals and human beings at the end of the day. And in the video there is a vast example of every ethnic background and coloured skin possible.

There is also a relationship between the music and visuals as well as lyrics and visuals. In the video everyone is dancing together and getting along. The dance routines go well with the beat.

The demands of the record label are also met. There are lots of close ups of Micheal Jackson. He also constantly shown doing his trademark dance routines for which he is most famous. And Micheal Jackson is also wearing a single white glove on his right hand, which he also famous for wearing.

There is defiantly a notion of looking with Micheal Jackson looking into the camera as he sings and dances. And near the end where there are the faces of many nationalities and different ethnic backgrounds singing Jackson's lyrics into the camera.

There are inter textual references in this video but none comes to mind. There is defiantly one at the beginning with the narrative before the music.

TEACHER FEEDBACK
This starts positively but some paragraphs are clearly the results of minimal effort. Some aspects of it however are mature, clear and are written well so I know you are very capable of much more.

MY RESPONSE
I have taken into account what Emma has said and will keep it in mind when writing music video analysis's in the future. I will also put in a lot more work and effort next time.

Production Meeting 2

1/10/09 - Today we talked about when we are going to film and what we are going to film. We need a day that we are all free. The storyboard is nearly complete so we can do our animatic tomorrow. This is going to give us a better idea of what our final product is going to look like. We are also going to start the time line task so we can hear for important parts in the song. We also got feedback from the teacher today which helped point us in the right direction. Also over the last week we have carried out more research and in particular research into other ancilliary texts as we need to make a magazine advert and CD cover promoting our video. And all this research is giving us more and more ideas which is shown in various blogs.

Thursday 1 October 2009

Teacher Feedback

This is a really good blog with lots of research into similar products. It is clear that you have a solid idea of style. Continue to carry out research and planning into the other products ( digi pack and magazine advert) as they also need a lot of thought. Make sure that the three products have continuity of style. Try to do a test sequence and put it onto the blog as a quicktime. Also try to take some still images of locations/actors/costume/props/.

Video ideas

This video is very similar to the language advert, which both show how we want our music video to happen. They both show clever and they attract the modern audiences of music video technology.

The music video shows good genre characteristics, very abstract but there is no rock band or band action for this particular song, it very bass and metal which especially in metal it shows the band and this doesn't no dance routine for a drum and bass either. So it is very abstract.
the lyrics and visuals do work well together, it does tell a narrative story, the reason why it does work well is because it is not like any normal drum and bass or rock metal video but yet it's very serial and abstract. The lyrics contradict the lyrics numerous amounts especially at the end with the boy and girl on a see saw.
The camera work is very clever it seems as if the camera stays still and all the action is through a lot of still images and the action happens behind it, it switches from scene to scene through a huge swirl and it seems as if it's switching planets or something. very clever way but hard to switch scenes. you can see it switches scenes cleverly here how the bird cage is shown then it follows the bird cage and ends up starting a new scene and camera shot. There are a lot of screens within screens and layer over writing another this is how a lot of the scenes change.






This music video by 'Raveonettes sound of color' is similar to how we want our music video with some of the technology shows. The video:



some of the technology which our group will be showing and doing similar stuff to is:



Similar stuff to this screen grab because it is a funky and attractive effect and it shows a clever look which grabs the audiences attention well.

analyzing a cd cover

i am going to look at a CD cover which we would like our CD cover to look like, I have chosen a black and white CD cover as our music video is going to be mainly black and white with maybe a single standing out object with a bit of color on it to create some atmosphere and make the music video seem real. The CD cover i have looked at is from 'Pink Floyd The Wall'. This album cover works well with what we want to achieve as it is mainly a dull black and white back ground and a some color of a scary face. We would like to achieve something a bit different and this would be more if the black and white and just a single object standing out.
This shows the viewer that you are trying to achieve more of a dull and plain video not a bright funky serial video.


You can see by this picture that it is not exactly what i am looking for as it has a bit to much color on it and our preferd CD cover would be more black and white with one item bright with color standing out.

magazine advert

Our magazine, we are hoping to be very serial and weird. We want this serial effect due to the fact that we are doing a very serial video, we are trying to make our magazine advert as catchy and as eye-opening we possibly can. We are going for the funky and weird looking effect. The magazine adverts we have looked at, in the sight of funkiness and attractiveness are:



This magazine advert is very clever in the way it is very serial and there is a lot happening with different colours and it catches the audiences eye, we want our magazine advert to be like this so when people catch the eye to it they see a lot of weird and modern technology is used in the advert so it'll be a good sale.

Another magazine advert based on the colour we are hoping to achieve, which is a lot of black and white images, maybe with a slight bit of colour but making this very faint.



This is the streets and how the weird effects and the different colours are very serial and this is an eye opener, because a lot is happening in this picture it catches an eye and the colours are not too light, they are very original and they fit the scene perfect and this is how we want ours.
 
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