upload

apparently my appendix doesnt have to be ready untill monday, which means i can upload everything and then not have any paperwork to hand in :)

Appendix

Uploaded a load of my research tonight, the movie is all finished now, although putting it into quicktime format is a pain so ive just left that for tomorrow morning. The only paperwork appendix stuff is my storyboards so that will be fine.

Generally happy with the video, two dodgy moments, but i was really worried it was going to be terrible so im happyyyyy as i saidddddddd.... LAYLAAAAAA you got me on my knees... LAYLAAAAAAAA... i beggin you darlin please : )

textual analysis 2

Wolfmother - Woman

Constant Special effects
Editing in time with the music
Performance
Jumpcuts add to the effect of the energy of the special effects
Very high energy performance
Closeups of the band members, more so the singer / drummer
Little or no narrative, ie there is a 'woman' in some shots
Energy makes up for lack of narrative


Royksop - Only this Moment

Opening shots are cgi, meaning at first unclear
cgi turned into realife through good editing (slight jump out with fade)
zooms, of varying pace, add some measured energy to the shots
narrative is gradually revealed
concurences between lyrics and visuals in the theme of being together in a moment
erraticness of the shots/edits is gradually built up, lots of freedom for the director
clearly defined visual areas, space, riot, dinner... blacks, reds, whites
areas come together as the narrative goes on

questionnaire example

textual analysis

7Foo Fighters - Everlong

Strong visual styles for different parts of the storyline, the beginning in black and white, the end in flashing reds for example.
Narrative which has a meaning not immediately obvious, we don't understand the significance of certain objects like the phone
The band members are prominent of screen despite the surrealism, Grohl plays the main character.
There is a performance element, the band play out the end, but the surrealist nature isn't compromised, the characters change into the band in unusual ways, like the drum kit appearing out of the bed.
Simple special effects, the giant hand, the water transition
Grohl made to seem iconic, dressed as iconic punk person
Colour changes, blue for the scary hut, orange for the nightclub
Surreal mise en scene, giant phone


The Cure – The End of the World

Visual style, reds and whites
Narrative might not be obvious, we don't get why things in the house are shaking
The singer in the only on screen person, he is in most shots
The singer is lip syncing throughout
constant use of special effects, animation
The Cure singer is easily recognisable with his trademark hairstyle and make-up
Surreal mise en scene, completely animated outside world.
Visuals linking us to the audio, Books moving in time to the music

A-ha – Take on Me

Separate visual styles, real world and animated
Visual styles merge, the woman is pulled into the animated world, and the man pulled into the real world
Narrative is fairly obscure, what are they running from?
Not particularly performance based, the performance part is mainly animated
Much use of special effects, animation
Iconic treatment of singer, especially the final hallway scene

Bloc Party – Prayer

Set in music / dancing environment
progression of narrative, more weird effects >surreal<
everyone in the video is good looking or a band member
jump cuts with use of the 'burnt' technique
close-ups on singer

Plain White T's – Hey there Delilah

multiple images
differing perspectives
acoustic set up
black and white / distinctive visual styles separate areas.
Huge focus on singer, some fretwork focus as well
Use of shadows / beautiful lighting
Intimate feel, set in apartment, contrasts with city scenes
Muted Colours... blues for city/cold ... iconic of distance/cooling of feelings

Paul McCartney – Dance Tonight

English country, muted colours, blues, muted greens
Focus on Paul once actor has fulfilled his role
Over layered images
Warmer colours in the house
Special effects
Narrative progression / completion
live performance in the basement

research on muse

Features of Indie

Concerned more with self-expression than financial success
because of its origins in punk a 'do it yourself approach' is often taken
deliberate utilisation of lo-fi sounds
use of the internet to avoid control of record labels, generate interest


Muse Research

British Prog Rock Band
Associated with Indie/Rock genre
2006 best alternative band MTV / 2007 best British band NME
Original Record Label Taste Media / Maverick records, Muse retained control of there destinies in each country they were realised in, Taste Media organising seperate deals for each European country.
'Black Holes and Revelations' accidentally leaked over the internet
Newest Album self produced for more freedom

Plug in Baby Research

First single from 'Origin of Symmetry'
The meaning of the song is unknown, although is likely to refer to a guitar “and how he (Matthew Bellamy) only has to plug it in and play, for all his critics to be proven wrong ('crucifies my enemies')
Matt Bellamy is amused at abstract readings of the songs meaning, some suggestions being it refers to genetically engineered puppies.
The songs opening riff is number 5 in Kerrang's top 50 riffs.
The original video: "The idea came from a conversation we had about genetics and being able to design beings for their own purposes", another explanation is that Muse just wanted to hang about with loads of attractive models all day.

theory

http://www.zx.nu/musicvideo/musicvideo.pdf

this is in addition to a sheet i have on theory which i will hand in on paper : )

its looking pretty good now, i've moved the timing forward, im now expecting it to be finished possibly before the next 'madcap' family in hollyoaks moves in, and long before the hostilities in iraq have ended :)

written work, got a couple of hundred words pretty perfect, and i think my appendix is basically fleshed out :) ... ...not in a gross way...

...some more quick editing on monday/tuesday leaving wednesday/thursday for any final revisions after people have given me feedback :) so far people have only been able to see the intro part finished, and its been positive-ish :)

Ideally were i to do the project again, more time would have been left to work off of feedback, but that just aint possible this time round the wagon trail darlin'

see you laters, urm, people who read this stuff : )

more filming

60% done, more like 90% considering all i have to do to some shots is apply a background. More confident about finishing on time. Have made start on the written wrok, should finish the first section tomrrow.

build

set up all the poles and stuff for the green screen frame and set it up with some help... got some shots... applying the chroma key settings takes ages but the results have been quiete impressive... final cut is annoying but ive got to know how to use it know and it seems to be better than the other software

forgot

forgot about this, will see if i can get the green screen tomorow

amy has been fairly ill, and the days have been dark, making things difficult... i have a morrisey song as backup, where i can apply some of the ideas i developed to it if i need to.

Becuase of this change of plans ive had to think through using plug in baby by muse, as there is an acoustic version of the song, it just means i or an actor has to mime to the words, as amy cannot mime to a male voice it would be wierd :P

Amy 2

Bad Points

>The intro could be cut down
>Unclean sound quality
>no lyrics
>boring editing
>not enough takes done in pre
>mise-en-scene
>no narrative
>none of the animation/cgi i want to include

Good Points

>lighting
>composition is okish
>synched pretty well
>one particular shot is very good and with better mise-en-scene i might use it in the cw, will have to re-shoot...
>feeling of intimacy achieved?? and of isolation as it goes on?? hope so

John

Just messing about with the software, as i didnt do any of the more complicated editing stuff last year really.

Animation1

This is really terrible, its done on my phone without a tripod, and you can ignore the last 20 seconds lol but anyway if you can imagine the underlying image as being greescreen you can see the transition would work pretty well, has a surreal quality.

amy

i have storyboards done i will post soon

prelims

ive finished my prelim stuff!! i storyboarded some angles i liked and tried those out on camera, which went pretty well... the only thing i cant do at the moment is stop gap animation, and the software still isnt ready, which is so annoying but at the same time i guess i can catch up on my crs stuff!! When the software becomes available i can finish off the practice shots i have filmed, and then start to work on the rest of my storyboards...

next up i have to storyboard the rest of the song, i think i need some sort of secondary narrative so i can mix up the locations a bit, and to work out the best way to record the audio stream is i am doing live performance. need to find locations as well grrr

you tube is wang

i cant get my animation up onto youtube i will have to try saving it in a different format or somthing : ( I have realised i cant just do previs of the cgi and i will have to do some conventional storyboarding, hopefully i can get this done over the weekend so i can do some practice cgi intime for when i start editing which might be as soon as next monday, depending on the thursday shoot. I expect the thursday shoot to be a disaster as i have not done any planning for it, but there is still time, and it think it is important to get raw footage as early as possible, i anticipate needing thee shoot days, and possibly i will need to turn my shed into a set but god knows how i will do this!!

amy found a really beautifull song called falling away with you by muse, gonna use it instead of foo fighters as the concept i want to use is still applicable, as is the narrative of broken down love / isolation : )

random chat

imagine i animate a peice of paper scrumpling up into a ball
								uhuh
		18:13:10						okay, this would be cool if the film suddenly froze and scrumpled up
		18:13:25						but! it would be shit if all you could see was the table
		18:13:30						underneath the paper
		18:13:35						u still follow?
		18:13:41						uhuh
		18:13:44						WOW
		18:13:48						i am doing good!!
		18:13:51						well
		18:14:48						if i scrumple the paper up on top of greenscreen, i can play the next shot, of, say, john drumming, so you wont see a table anymore you will see john scrumpled up and john playing underneath again!!
		18:14:55						but i need to practice
		18:15:06						as i want the paper to scrunch up into a swan
		18:15:15						and then have it turn into a reallife swan
		18:15:19						and things like that
		18:15:29						well, i might find it hard to get a swan
		18:15:29						"john" scrumpled up and john playing underneath again!! lol
		18:15:33						u make perfect sense
		18:15:42						are you being sarcastic?
		18:15:47						if you actually understand
		18:15:52						u are the first person
		18:15:53						lol
		18:15:58						i understand
		18:16:01						WOW!!
		18:16:23						i am putting the transcript of this on my production blog !!

i suck

ive realised my drawing skills are so bad its not worth trying to explain my technique!! i have made an animation and will post a link to it after uploading it to youtube. it demonstrates a transition i can use, only imagine moving images freeze, then that peels away to reveal the greenscreen, only of course the greenscreen will have played on it moving images.

Tomorow i am going to possibly use the green screen for the first time, as i want to try and use 'the technique' on my short film entitled 'ultimate timelord of dance John of Rose vs Led Zepplin', which is intended as a way of experimenting with ideas before i enter the final production.

i filmed the short this morning, and did a small amount of editing, finding that matching the visuals to the beat of the lyric was intricate, but not as hard as i expected. I messed around with some of the visual effects as well, it was great and stuff : P

OMFG

I have a fookin narrative!! it progresses and EVERYTHING haha owned : ) Okay i am trying to storyboard it without it looing gimpish.... but basically, the song is about a relationship breakup and eventually grohl is like fuckit you can have it all back if thats what you actually want. AND SO everytime the green screen effect happens, the paper will fold up into somthing in the next shot, if that makes sense, and then that next shot will fold up into somthing in the next shot... eventaully the screen will be a bit cluttered. But when the lyrics cut in about grohl giving it all back we can start to smash up the stuff occupying the screen.

This sounds quite bland and stuff but there is room to manoevre with cutaways and things i will experiment with the details of angles on the days i film.

Basically i just need to stroyboard the general items the paper will morph into, before worrying about how these will fit into loactions and eventually angle lists

mrs B

had a good old chinwag with mrs B today and decided the green screen is going to save me an amazing amount of time on my concept!! I am still going to try and do my original idea but perhaps only with a very short sequence, the intro or exit, to give it impact.

My original idea, as i realise i havnt explained it, is to take lots of still images, and then stop-gap animate them, doing wierd things to the images as i go! This is why i have cited wolfmother as an influence!!

However if i use greenscreen, i can take one single image, an iconic image like the ones we saw in the Beck video, print it out onto paper and stuff, put the paper on the greenscreen, then animate the paper. In post i can put moving images on the greenscreen, so that the paper being ripped reveals the next part of the movie... bascially a long winded transition shot!!

However i have some ideas about how the old shot will become an object in the new shot, and so on, untill the final shot is just composed of a room full of items made of old shots!! if you can visulaise that??? i will draw up a storyboard dont worry!!

byebye

woohoo

finally found some creative inspiration and thought i would get it down as quickly as possible before my brain loses it all. I saw the weird technique on the wolfmother 'woman' music video and after thinking this would be an interesting technique to develop found further ideas came really easily.

The track i have chosen is foofoofighters 'but,honestly' after being stuck for many weeks considering songs by yeah yeah yeah's, the clash, helloween and enter shikari. Im hoping to cover the track with a female vocalist, but if i cant get a decent sound setup, ie microphone and stuff, i will have to either change my concept slightly or move to the album version of the song and switch to a male to mime davey grohls raspings.

My ideas for narrative arnt very well developed, but as i am switching to performance rather than purely concept, it will be easy to greatly scale down any narrative elements as long as i can get the filming of the performance correct.