Filiming - Narrative

As we have been editing, we found that we have got enough footage for it just to be a music video with the band singing. To make the music video more interesting we decided to add a narrative to the video, for this Scott and I listened to the song again and thought about the key words in the song and how we could create a narrative and what it would be a about. I also contacted the band to see what the main theme to the song is. However as they aren’t very good at getting back it touch, we went along with what we could really understand from the lyrics. We understood that it was about a girl and how he used to be dating this girl and they didn’t really know where their relationship is now. From this we decided we would film me as I am the only girl in the group. Now we had an idea of our narrative, we needed to think about location, props and costume. As we didn’t have much time left to create the narrative we thought about an area close to college and then we thought about one of the quiet areas of the college where there is lots of Greenland and willow trees. This fits with the idea that the girl is lost and doesn’t understand what is happening with their relationship.  Also from listening to the lyric of the song there is a lot about phoning and talking. We thought we could add in that the girl keeps checking her phone to see if he has called. I then needed to think about clothing, I thought about shorts and a formal t-shirt but I thought this wasn’t in the theme of the music video in the end I went for a very simple jump suit so the audience could do the thinking about the girl rather than having a bold outfit on which could influence them.

On the day of filming Dan stayed to edit the footage and me, Doug and Scott went to film. Scott was filming, Doug directing and I was acting. We went to the location planned and first of all we decided to do the shots that related to the song. One of the lyric is " we keep going round in circles” for this I stood still while Scott went around me with the camera. We also had another idea where the band members walk into the studio and that in the editing we would cut in some footage of the girl walking around as well. As the band is performing they are thinking about the girl. We also did lots of different shots of the girl in different places and her checking her phone and then throwing it away in anger.

I think the filming went well we could have done some more planning, however as we didn’t have much time I think the narrative will now give a different element to the music video. It will also make it more interesting to watch for the audience. We should have done the narrative sooner as we might find when editing in the narrative to the music video that we are missing something and we might not have time to add any other ideas.

Progress Report

This week after filming we have been busy getting everything together to make our final video. Doug has been editing the fottage together with help from Dan, with two people working on the editing it helps make the video better because more ideas are getting raised. We have had some problems with the footage as Doug started creating the music video at home then carrying it on at college, however the computer couldn't recognise the file. This meant we had to start importing the files again into Final Cut, although each time you import a file the clip has to  be rendered. With the higher size clips the longer it takes to render, at one time it took 40 mintues so this was taking up a lot of our editing time. This has set us back a while and off schedule, but over the next few weeks we hope to catch up.
 After filming last week we asked the band to record the song so it would be easier to edit and the sound quailty would be better. However when going to get the song they hadn't recorded it because of a mess up with the studio. We have now set a new date to have it ready for us by the start of next week, and sorted out a time when the band can record the song together.
While sorting out these problems I have been making sure all our paper work is up to date such as the storyboards, shot lists and location sheet are all done and correct.

Day of filming

Today we did the filming for our music video, we had planned to start filming at 10.30. We had a few problems to start off with as one of the band members didn't get into college untill 11, however this did give us time to get some of the individual shots done of the others first. Our location didn't really stand out because we were just in a standard room however we might be able to do something in the editting and add some effects to make it stand out more.

 Another problem we had, we forgot to ask the band if they had a recording of the song they wanted to do, and they didn't but this wasn't a problem because they will be recording that next week and get it to us as soon as possible. Normally when you film a music video you play the recorded verison of the song and the band mime to the song and in the editting process you lip syinc the song with the filming. We will still do this it will just be a little bit harder to get the clips to fit with the filming. Once we had all the band members we started looking into how we wanted the video to work. We came up with the idea of the band walking into the rehersal and setting up their equipment and plugging in their guitars and getting ready to play their song.

Scott was filming all the footage, Doug was directing all the shots and I was making sure we had all the equipment to hand and all the band members knew what they were doing. Unfortunately Dan couldn't make the film as he was unwell.We had individual shots of the band and now we needed to do the shots of setting up, for this we did over the shoulder shots of the band walking into the room, and then another shot on the other side of the door of them coming into the studio. We also did close up shots of them plugging in their equipment. We then began filming the song a number of times each time changing where the camera was. On one of the takes we used the dolly, this is like a tripod however it's on wheels so you can move the dolly around while getting steady shots.

 The good thing about this band is they are easy to get hold of so if we wanted to get some more footage I think this would be easy to do. However if we did this again I would make sure we had a list with us of all the different shots we wanted to use, and got some more footage of the band messing around as this is what their fans would want to see.

No Band!

This week our band Forest have decided they can't do the music video anymore, as they can't all be free for one day as they all have exams and coursework to do. Instead of us trying to waste time to get the band together we have decided to contact other local groups.We have now had to search for some different bands. I have been looking at some local events and local gigs to find some bands I could contact. At a radio station where I volonteer, we have an unsigined chart this is where local bands enter a top 5 chart of Cambridge and see if they can stay in the top 5. From this I have contacted some bands and got response from the band called The Varsity that we could use. They were free later that night to film, however Scott and Dan weren't in college so they wouldn't have be able to film. It was also late for us to book equipment and know what sort of filming we wanted to do. We also wouldn't of have time to look into the song and think about shots for the music video. We have kept this band in mind incase anything goes wrong. We also asked at the college music department if they knew of a band we could use, they sugested a band called The post. They have rehearsal sessions on a Friday morning so we thought we would use this band as they are easy to get hold of and we can make the music video about the band and their rehearsals. Tonight we will be planning what shots and angles we will be doing. Also searching into the song and to see when to use particular shots

Equipment cost

Today I looked into how much it would be to hire a camera for our filming. We are alowed to use our college camera's but if we were doing it without the college we would have to think about a buget and cost of equipment. I looked on google and found a website that lets you rent out equipment, they had good prices however you couldn't rentout equpiment for just one day. Although this could be good if we forget something when filming we wouldn't have to worry not having the equipment long enough. Instead of using a large cannon camera we found a Canon 5D MKII this still gives high quaility footage just a smaller camera. This was £75.00 for 3 days this is a lot cheaper than other video cameras and this camera is meant for shooting short music videos.
We also thought we would need a tripod to get steady images of the band. We made sure we were looking at the right tripod to fit the camera this was £30 for 3 days.Also for our camera to work we would need a memory card when you hire the camera you get a battery and charger and a 8GB memory card however this might not be enough so we looked to see how much a  card with a bigger memory would be. We went for the highest memory card we could find which was 64GB.To make sure we would have enough space for all the footage this was £18.00. In total this all came to £123 for 3 days of filming.

Planning

Today we thought more about who we wanted for our band in our music video. As our groups have now changed, we looked back at our mindmap of the bands we knew of in Cambridge and looked at our shortlist. We then chose the band the Forest, this is a 5 piece band they have a number of tracks on sound cloud and do gigs around Cambridge. Forest don't have  a music video for any of their songs, so they are very interested in having a music video made for them. Scott is friends with the band so we have all been talking about ideas through Facebook. They gave us a song they wanted to be used, this is called The Great Green. To get us thinking more about how our music video could be presented we created a timeline for the song. While we all listened to the song we noted down on the timeline how long the intro is. For a music video to be powerful the introduction has to stand out. We knew had six seconds for an introdcution from doing the timeline. Then any thoughts we had on the song for example any key changes or any words that stood out and what could be a main feature in the video. For example there are some "ooh's" that really stand out and break from the main vocals so it would be good to do a close up on the singer at this moment. After doing this we thought there should be a narrative to parts of the music video and other parts being the band playing the song. We asked the band if the song had any meaning and if they had any ideas of what they would like the music video to be like. One idea that came up was using a hall ( that the band could get access to) and having an audience of toys. But the toys could attack the members of the band. We all liked the idea of the audience being toys but we didn't think we could make the toys move. Another idea we had was showing the band memebers one by one and showing their characters and roles in the band. They would then end up at a performance of theirs.

Research for music video

Today we started to think about our music video we are going to create. We then got into a group of four, me, Stephen, Doug and Scott. We got told that we would need to find a local bands in Cambridge and make a music video for them. Once we get a band that we can film we will need to find a time and place where to film the video. To start getting ideas for our music video and to find a band we could use we created a mind map of some local bands we knew and some we found online.  Stephen has a large knowledge in local bands as he has one himself, so using his band could be a good idea as we would know they would be reliable for filming. When finding a band we would make note of them and listen to what sort of genre of music they are. When we found bands or solo artits we liked we listed down what genre of music they were and what their band name is. Once we came up with some ideas of what we would like to do we made a short list from our mind map of: 

• Lewis Mokler
• Total Emergency 
• Alice Wilkinson 
• Prince Among Thieves 

Both Lewis and Alice are solo artits so would be easier to get than having the Prince among thieves as they are a large band. We then chose to focus on Lewis, Alice and Stephens band Total Emergency. Once we have come up with a final decision we will contact them and get an idea of when and where we can film.

Horror opening - animation

For our next task of animation we have to create a horror opening sequence for a film. In a task we had already done before we  hadlooked at old horror films and their openings. In our group we had all looked at a different films but in the end we chose to base the opening on the plauge of the zombies. We then started to think about what characters would fit wih this film and how we could animate them. We all did our own moodboard of ideas and then chose a character we would work on in final detial. Some of these were characters I made up and some I took from the film. I then picked a character from the film re-creating him to make him look more like an animated zombie and changing the colours of him. I drew him front on and got an idea of how he will look and how he might move. For him to move I needed to draw him from a side view, back view and from the front again. This was hard to know how a character would look from the side and how to draw it. I then did a colour version of him to bring the idea of the character to life and give a more detialed and intresting character. This image shows what my character will look like from the front, back and side.

Once I had drawn out all the ways my character would be seen I then decided I wanted my chatacter to walk as this is how I thought a zombie might move. I was given a silhouette of a character walking and I put this into photoshop and drew over it with my character. Then using the animation feature in phtotoshop I could see how he could move once I had drawn out all the frames for my character. For this I had to change the time between the frames so it would run smoothly. Once I had all my frames in black and white I created a new document and added colour to the frames and made him have more detial. This image is the frames in black and white as you can see I made my character more of a cartoon as I didn't want my character to look exactly the same as the character from the film.

 

 Once I had the frames for black and white and colour I created a document for my character to move across the page. I repeated the character loop twice so he would move across the page. To do this I had to make sure each frame was in the right place in reaction from the last frame and the next frame to come. Then again I made sure the character moved across the page smoothly changing the time between each frame to 0.2 seconds.

Now I had my character and he was animated I needed to think about the background he would walk on. To start with I designed a strip of what my background would look like, now I had an idea I wanted it to look like I then had to think about each layer of the background. This is to give it a 3D depth and not make the backgorund flat. In photoshop for my first layer I drew my moon in the middle of the strip of the background. This is my first layer because this is what would be seen furthest away in the background. My next layer I got an image from the internet which I copied to create a creepy fence however I left a gap in the middle for my gate to be on a different layer and closer to my character when he walk on the background. The thrid layer were my trees, for this I drew one and then copied the layer and made all the trees different sizes to create more depth. The next layer is the gate and a few grave stones to make it more of a horror background. For all of the layers I have added colour all of which are dark and gloomy to make sure it come across as a horror scene. Then my final layer is the ground which my chacter will walk across.

Blu style character

 
As I had already animated my character before, when I made my character loop without a background, I understood more about how the animation would work. I had problems understanding how to use the animation tool on Photoshop. One large problem I had was when I drew my character on paper I made the bat go off the page, so when this was animated the bat would go out of the shot to the left. This didn't work on my animation as I didn't have enough frames of the bat leaving the animation. So now it cuts off through the animation. Now I had my character I had to make it in the style of the artist Blu, he does his animation work on buildings and brick walls. For this I went around college and took photos of places I thought I could use for my background, however in the end because I didn't feel very confident with my animation I just used a simple plain wall background. I imported the image into Photoshop and made it my background layer. Then making sure I imported all my frames in Photoshop I could then think about the animation side. I did this creating a new frame for each of the new movements of the balloon. Once all the frames had been placed and the timing for them was right I could add a small amount of colour to my balloon, however I should of done this before I created the frames as I then had to add the colour to all of the frames. As this was one of my first pieces of animation I feel I have learnt from it a lot, at first I didn't understand how the animation would work. Once I had done a few frames on the animation tool in Photoshop and played it back I started to understand how animation worked. From doing this I think I have learnt that you really need to think about how the animation will work once you have drawn it, and what the motion of the character would be like.

Love Spin

This animation Love spin is done in a 3D rotating process, where for the first mintute and a half we see a blue figure sitting infront of what starts to be a plant pot and then involves to become other things. The scene builds up around him and then he starts to explore and we see more of the scene. For most of the track we see a street scene where there are other poeple doing activities and as the camera rotates round we see the characters evolve. They have done this by keeping you focused on the animation in front of you but behind the "plant pot" or dark area, the animation the viewer can't see is changing. Then we will soon see the characters changed or placed to a new set. This scene then returns to the original plant pot and we are introduced to a female figure, in the same way the scences were built up we couldn't see the scene being taken down.

 

I really like this animation and it is one of my favourites I have seen. I think the whole idea works, although we know the animation is being changed behind the plant pot it is interesting to see how each charcater and scene with change. One thing that really stands out for me is the size and use of colour for this animation, your eyes don't know where to look as so much is going on. The idea of it rotating makes it a lot more exciting and interesting.Normal i stop motion can get boring if it is really simple. However this video has so much going on the viewer is kept intrigued and they will continue to watch.

At the end of the video we see that the scale of the animation was then made smaller and was done on a vinyl. Although this is very impressive I first thought the whole animation was done at this small scale, then to find out only the very ending was is a little bit disappointing. However I think Love spin have improved on the normal i- stop-motion and have made it more interesting with the rotating 3D effect. When doing my next piece of animation I will see if I can take pieces of Love spin and try to improve on my stop-motion.

Lemon Jelly

This Lemon Jelly music video "The shouty trach" is done by using animation in a flip book style. This is something I thought about when making my character loop as it has the same principle of them drawing out the animation before creating it in further detial.Something that I think works really well is where they have thought about what animation was needed for what parts of the song. These are then repeated for the chorus, from the simple animation you start to get the rhythm of the song easily and it stays in your mind. When going to put my character loop animation on a background I will think about what elements will work, like they have done in this animation with the sketch book background making it look like someone is drawing these animations out.


I also like how this animation focuses on the characters being very simple but you are drawn to their movements that fit in time with the song. The whole animation really works as it focuses on these two characters head banging and the whole genre of music comes across through these two animated characters. When making animation I will think about how this has been made and how they are portrayed so much information through two characters.