Rough Music Video

Sadly this took far longer for me to do due to unforeseen circumstances so it is not quite to the standard of which I want it to be but luckily I managed to squeeze out a cut before the deadline.

Intertextual References

Throughout the lyrics of the song we are trying to put froward the idea that our characters life is spinning out of control. This is highlighted through our video and the abstractness of what's going on. Yet through this there is still the idea and story that comes through of this boys life. At first he is just fine with friends but later on he starts to spill out of control. We researched into other videos and found that Foster the People's video especially represented what we are trying to create as a whole, for instance the random video clips that themselves seem to create a story of what the group does/goes through every single day.  

Editing Processes

When it comes to editing the music video there are several different types of media we are using e.g. the obvious music, along with pictures and video, compared to just the usual video format. One of the main differences is the sheer amount of cuts that have to edited to the correct size, this would usually be the same as video but since we have to use pictures to match to the beats of the song this means a huge amount of detail.

Here you can see the amount of shots, pictures and video we have to use. This equals a huge amount of layers, which often leads to trouble rendering as it takes longer but luckily I can use this time to work on my blog. An important thing to remember is that this screen capture shot represents about 1:30 of the song and it the result of about 9 weeks work. Yay...




Also having to get used to the way s in which you have to control the direction of the video and speed for instance we have a scene where flour is pushed out of the way to create the lyrics to the song.This is an effect used to try and push the point nd lyrics of the song across in as many ways as possible, Steady progess is being made...

Editing Progress

So far the editing is going well and all of the pictures are falling into place, but  have found that struggling with Final Cut Express isn't worth the effort of learning the ropes of now that I have finished the one piece of editing I needed it for (the shaking words on black background) so I have spent a great deal of time, which feels like a slight waste of time) exporting the video so it can be used with imovie which should speed up the editing process as a whole.

Google Maps Location

We have used several locations within our video which we have previously not blogged about so...Here we are!

My House.

 Here is my house and we thought it would be a prime location not only because of the large amount of space that we had to play with but also we could create a the dark room necessary to try and create the light exposure effect. We tried to make the most of the area we had so we started around the back of the house and worked our way round to the front (as illustrated on the picture) We just took as many pictures as possible, but after a few hours of trying the light exposure we realised the gravity of the task that it was to write just 'superstitious' back to front with a laser while keeping it in the frame, so we left feeling downtrodden until we realised that when we had gotten back to college and imported all of the photos that if we played them along to the track and just skipped through them as fast as possible long to a track it gave a really good effect as the combination of single shots and action sequences of lots of shots taken in quick succession didn't distract from the video by hurting your eyes or making it too much effort to watch. We also replaced a lot of the light shots with lyrics just represented in different ways for instance in a large amount of suspicious white powder...

Filming Day

We have had several failed attempts at filming so far but they have been helpful in letting us get to know the techniques we need to be able to use for filming, but tomorrow we have everything planned so that we should be able to do it all in one day, we have to film the verses using our light exposure technique which will look great along with the lyrics, that will be the hardest part of filming as all we have to do after that is just run through the song once with a space for where the projection will be present, in relation to that we have decided that it wouldn't be worth the hassle to use the 8mm camera for the effects it 'might' have brought around, as we would have to order film which again means delaying filming, and seeing as we have very little experience with these cameras we decided it would be better to just digitally use Final Cut Express to edit this part in.

Holt/Norwich Location.

We chose Holt as our location because wit was an good location for both of us to get to but as luck would have it the Christmas lights had been put up and they would have worked really well with the long exposure of the camera.

The only problem was that on the day we chose to film it rained heavily and therefore the shots would have been of a lesser quality and the camera wouldn't have stood up to the rain so we decided to try it out over at my house just to make make sure we had the right techniques etc. (Which luckily we did).





While Holt was an accidental location we did choose it originally even though we weren't aware the lights had been put up. We chose it because when it comes to the story of our song we focused it on how the boy 'Justin' only acted 'cool, calm, and collected'. So we would use the calm location of a quiet Norfolk town to highlight the hectic and crazy times that he usually pretends to have. As we can't film in Holt anymore we are going to use Norwich as we were planning to go there anyway and so now we will be doing the same thing but also just taking pictures.    

With our new location plan we think that we can re-create the calm part of town as it will be a friday when most teenagers will still be in school or college so it will be quiet enough in Norwich to create the mood in which we need to film.
We will then be re-creating the idea of all the times that 'Justin' pretends to be something he is not by filming during a party slash gathering that will be going on, on the last part of the friday off. This will contrast nicely to the calmness of Norwich, so the two will play off of each other.

Last Day Filming

This week we came together to try out our light photography and drawing techniques for use in our video and I'm glad to say that we nailed the basics of what we had to do, we found the hardest part was that we had a replacement photographer for the day as our original photographer forgot that we were doing it but sadly he wasn't as experienced as our originally chosen one but we made do and we now know exactly what we have to do. When we come together for the last time we know exactly what were doing. We will be going out into Norwich in the afternoon to which will provide us with the light that will help us represent the good side of 'Justin' and then later us and some friends are going to Becky's house for a gathering in which the darkness combined with the lights will help represent the darker side of 'Justin's' life.  These are different for our original plans but I think will actually work out better than we originally planned. For instance out video is inspired by Rizzle Kicks' video 'Prophet'  and we realised that we were in fact not using it as inspiration but copying the video. This way (even though it was a complete accident from something going wrong) we get to use the techniques in the video and come up with an original video style.

Filming

We will be filming our chorus section tomorrow at Holt. We will decide on a location when we are in Holt and can get a good view of the area tomorrow we are choosing it because it is within easy reach for both of us and a bonus is that the long exposure combined with the recently added Christmas lights will give a great effect to the video. We will be asking our friend Catrin to take the pictures so obviously we can both be in our video, the upside is that she also is good with cameras so will be able to cope with taking so many photos.  

Animation Survey Upload

I have now uploaded the full verse animation for our song and an accompanying survey in the description which it would be really helpful if everyone reading this can fill out.

Toby Lockerbie's influential video style.

Most of our inspiration comes from Toby Lockerbie's video for Rizzle Kicks 'Prophet'. We felt that the use of using single long exposure shots was really unique and something that had never been done before. We also felt it gave a really professional look. Toby Lockerbie himself has never worked with any other artists and only works with Rizzle Kicks because he attended university with them, he is actually a full time wedding photographer. But from the videos he has made with this group we can see that he has a specific style with all of his videos which is that all of the colours seem slightly lowered and dulled. He also uses steady cams in his videos which gives it a more relaxed looked.

There is a small section of video that we can relate to as the lyrics come up as they are sung over the top of the video in a 'projection' style.

We can really draw inspiration from the way that this shot is constructed as we could see what the best amount of shots to use for each word can be which really will help speed up the speed of our editing. I think a large part of the challenge of this video is to make sure that it doesn't just completely copy his video, so this led us to come up with the idea of using an actual projector, and also for the style of video to vary between the verse and chorus.

Music Video Progress.

So far we have made the animation for the verses, but the problem is that it took far longer than expected. So this means that we ARE behind schedule, but we have experimented with editing the pictures together and the time it took wasn't too long so we should still finish before the 16th of December. The main reason that the animation of the lyrics took so long was because I had never used Final Cut before which didn't help the time it took.

Music Video Progress.

We have officially written, performed and recorded the song. Which is great and we have now started the animation of our lyrics which shall be projected onto the wall behind us performing the track during the verses. This also has the added benefit of people being able to clearly understand what the lyrics are.

Schedule for finishing the video.

Just a rough schedule of our aims of what to have finished and by when.

We will have finished and recorded the song by the end of the week (6th November)

Then after that another week to film our sequences for the Super 8 Camera. (7th-14th Nov)

Hopefully it will take less than a week to edit the parts of the video we will have filmed but we are allowing time for anything unexpected  

After that all we have to do is create the lyrics on Final Cut Pro to be played in the background and to just put all of the separate parts of the video together. (15th-22nd Nov)

So all going well and to plan we should have the video all finished by the 22nd of November.

Toby Lockerbie

When we found the video for Rizzle Kick's song 'Prophet we realised that we could recreate the effect of the pictures blurring into one another to create a form of video. We would do this by making the exposure of the camera last longer and take multiple shots in quick succession.

But at first we were stuck on how to create the effect so we found out that the video was directed by Toby Lockerbie so we went on his website (tobylockerbie.com) and left him a message and e-mailed him but sadly with no reply.

Luckily after experimentation we have figured out how to create the effect ourselves.

Some other examples of Toby Lockerbie's work:

Video with lyrics concept.

Our concept was to have the lyrics playing along behind the artist at the same speed as them. This is a technique that has been used before in other videos such as:

Kanye West's 'All Of The Lights' (N.B. The effect we are using only starts at 1:05 into the song).

Cee Lo Green's 'It's Okay'

Progress with video ideas.

We have found that Becky's Dad has a 'Super 8' style of camera which produces a really good 'flickery' grainy effect which we can use to be projected onto the background of our artist. The only way in which we need to prepare for this is to buy some of the special film which goes with the camera. We also plan to create our lyrics which will be projected onto the screen and do this all in Final Cut Pro. Once we have created this our idea was to film with the 8mm camera from the Mac which will give it the grainy effect. Once this is completed we then film our artists performing the song with the lyrics playing off of the 8mm projector that Becky's dad also has and onto the wall behind them.

We have actually made progress!

We have officially written our song and come up with our ideas for our music video. The only thing we have to do left is actually record the song and the footage, I feel we have planned ahead to enough to leave enough time to do all of these things but the only thing that may be a difficulty is that Becky is going away for a week next week but we have planned for me to carry on editing which is something that I can easily do on my own.

Major changes to Music Video

We have had to change our artist as we realised that we might not get enough time to film the song which they had written, so we are writing a song ourselves simply as a backup in case we aren't able to film Maddy and Julia. We ourselves have recently started to make music so whichever way we decide to go it will be a good way to start off.

Advanced Projection Music Videos

Just an interesting video I found that shows how far music videos have come and how we could use this in music videos for singed acts and for their live shows.