Music Video: Production: Music Video Feedback

Audience Feedback

                                                                                                                                                   

"The effects on the edit were really good

The editing was amazing

The explosive nature of the song fitted well with the explosive nature of the edit

Nice drum kit- Maybe a whole band performance?

Loved the shots and effects

I liked the edit loads

Will be good when narrative is complete

The editing was amazing, it was really interesting and I like how complex the narrative was

I liked the colour correction, really brings out the camerawork. Great editing overall

Loved the editing, and how there was powder on the drums, was a nice touch

Efosa's costume really adds to the mise-en-scene

The camera work was great, really conveys the energy of the song"

Music Video: Production: Progress So Far...

Sir is off today with the bubonic plague, and has missed the completion of the Cd cover and Magazine advert.

We still need one more filming day, we are going to try and arrange it for this friday.
The edit is looking good so far, lots of feedback from classmates and friends that think its good, no constructive feedback yet but i'll ask for that when we've filmed more.

TO DO LIST

Get everyones costumes ready
Replace batteries in led lights
Purchase gaffer tape
MOST URGANT, PHONE CHLOE ASAP TO ARRANGE FILMING
find a way of getting film lights to the abandoned house, knock next door to find out + measure how much extension lead needed.
write a page of stage directions, maybe have a fight/struggling sequence between chloe and max
Get that fucking tent out the back of your car there is NO room for anything you should of either folded it up or abandoned it.

Music Video: Production: Filming Shoot 2

The day started well with taking some shots of Efosa playing guitar in an enclosed part of the forest. We gathered long twigs and logs, to create a creepy tent shape, showing that people may live there, this was a reference to the horror movie 'The Blair Witch Project'. The X-grip that i bought for my camera really helped to capture smoother and more interesting shots, and was a great investment. We all decided that supernatural powers would look great in the video so we dropped a box of leaves on Efosa, which we will reverse on the edit to make it look like he is using telekinetic powers to lift the leaves from the ground.
Other shots of Efosa included him dancing fast and punching and swinging his arms whilst covered in talcum powder. We shot this with the sun behind his back so that the talcum powder would have an orange glow and stand out more.

The next series of shots we did was of Max singing the lyrics into the camera. We got a long pole and attached it to my camera rig so that we could use it as a jib. This allowed us to get smooth panning shots towards Max from great heights, and makes the clip look very professional as the angles we were able to achieve with the Jib were impossible to get from a handheld rig or a tripod.

The last shot of the day was  a tricky one, me spitting white spirit into a torch of fire. The first time we did this it went very wrong, i failed to take into account wind and blew flames against it, which as a consequence backfired in my face and in a spasm of fear I threw the torch behind my back and set fire to a pile of leaves. However, our minimalist safety precautions of two bottles of water were thankfully enough to extinguish the flames before more serious damage could occur, and my face was fine apart from the beard I once had, as it is no longer.

The next two takes worked a treat as I managed to blow a modest 10 foot flame into the air without burning to death! We feel this ties in with lyrics of "Spitfire" perfectly. We examined the shots but abandoned any intuition to re-take and improve the shots from fear of death, or in the worst case burning my camcorder and starting a forest fire that could ultimately lead to the eradication of epping forest and possibly world war 3.

Music Video: Production: 2nd Day Filming: Photos

The new toy:

Hopsin:

Shots of Efosa being filmed:

D.I.Y Dan:

Music Video: Production: More Shots From First Day of Filming

Music Video: Production: New equipment

Spent my  wages on some equipment instead of just wasting it all on petrol. 

I bought a Rode VideoMic, I decided to get a compressor mic as I do a lot of music recording. Although it is worthless for shooting a music video as we cut the sound, it will still

Music Video: Production: Call Sheets

Music Video: Production: 1st Day Filming

So the time has come to start filming. It was wednesday 30th November and the teachers at school are on strike so we had the day of! a nice day of sounding lovely, But a day of filming is not for the faint hearted. We had an early start, we meet at Dan's at 9 30 with all our equipment. 

We had an hour meeting at Dan's to discuss the plan and what was doing today. After this we was set, Dan went to pick up Chloe, our actress for our video. We got to location at about 10 45 and began setting up , this took a while. 

The day was very long, but we got some really great shots and have a solid idea on how the video will look. We cant wait for day 2 of filming!

Max's car packed out:

Here are some pictures of location:

Here is setting up the set and our location:

To make the day even more enjoyable, Max's car battery died 

                                              

The life saver:

Music Video: Production: Tom Jones Editing Sync Test

The first step was to drag the audio into the A1 track, turn on the soundwave display and lock the track so it couldn't be moved. I then trimmed and inserted the clip into the timeline, using markers to sync it with the audio track. I discovered that if you increase the speed of the track by 2% it syncs much better with the audio. I don't know why it works but i can only imagine that the clip has been sightly distorted when it was converted from HD to the mac. I put all the clips in place using markers to decide upon cuts and for the lipsync, then added various effects to the video to make it look more professional. The first thing I did was use a colour corrector, in which i increased the midfield and the white balance, then upped the contrast slightly and lowered the saturation until it was black and white.
At 17 seconds I decided to add a time effect called "trails" which distort the clip so movement delays and appears multiple amount of times. I used it on a clip of me pointing, and when i decided i didn't want the effect to continue past when was about to put my arm down, i manually added a fade to the effect by using pointers and lowering the "Mix" edit. This way the clip reverts back to normal without effects.
At 25 seconds i changed the black and white to a hue of pink, and changed the speed of me dancing to 50%, then duplicated this clip and reversed the duplicate so I would dance one way in slow motion, then dance the other way in slow motion. I added crossfades to make the transition between black and white and pink gentle, but as the fade is long it also creates a psychedelic effect.

As this was a short exercise I was stuck with how to end it smoothy and didn't want to cut to black suddenly, so I cut out the middle section between the first verse and the solo on the audio track and spliced them together so there is a smooth transition between verse 1 and the solo, this divided the length of the whole track and I added a fade where it seemed appropriate to end.
I then found another clip of me dancing, and put a slug in-between the last clip and the beat of the music when the solo starts, I then applied the house style to this clip and added a glow effect so there would be a solid wash of black and white fading into a slightly dazzled image of me smiling, to which i faded to black and wrapped the edit

Music Video: Production: Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual (Practise Editing)

Music Video: Production: Effects we could use

This is not a video on how to eat fire, we won't be doing that.
This is a video teaching you to make a plume of fire from one torch to light another one without the sticks touching, it fits the lyrics to our song and could be used as a transition effect

Music Video: Production: Key Framing Exercise

Music Video: Production: Pink Panther Rhythm Editing Exersize

The first step was to open final cut and save the project as "Pink Panther Exercise" and upload the folder with pictures and music into the media bin.
Next we inserted the audio into A1 and inserted the pictures into V1 with a different overlapping picture on V2. The next step was using markers to determine the cuts. We used the saxophone in the music to mark out the cuts between each picture. When we had all our markers, we used the blade tool to cut the track on the markers, then deleted every other clip so we had a constant switch between one picture and the other, in time with the saxophone.
When we were more confident and felt we had developed our editing skills enough, we started to incorporate our own pictures and expand the number of pictures in the timeline.

Music Video: Production: Spider Shots

I got home from school one day and a spider crawled across my living room as i was taking my shoes off. I took the opportunity to capture it and take some shots for our music video.

Here are some screenshots direct from my camcorder

We used this pencil to persuade the spider to run towards the camera. It worked well, and also gives you an idea of the size i had to film everything at. 

I created a white studio using paper placed on my living room studio, and used film lights to create big shadows which added a eerie feel when the spider was running.

I used overexposure while filming so the spider would appear more faint and transparent, whilst remaining focused. (Picture is much darker than appears on film)

On final cut I will blur the background so you can't see the grain of the paper, which will make everything look smoother and more professional. The spider itself will be focused, and i'll change the colouring so it has a bolder and more imposing appearance.

The screenshot I haven't got is a clip of the spider with a red crucifix shining over it. I created this by cutting a cross in some thick card and shining a red light through it. Its a very powerful shot I wish to incorporate into our music video

Music Video: Production: Film Test (slow motion reverse)

This effect was created using a hd camera with a high shutter speed and four 2000w film lights. The shutter speed was so high that the camera was filming pitch black without the lights, i actually filmed this on a sunny day at 3 o'clock. These effects were created in final cut pro by changing the contrast and slowing down the clip to a third of the motion, and reversing the clip. The posterized effect was created in final cut and is my favorite as it seems most suitable for our music video.

Here are the steps i took to achieve this.

• Raised the shutter speed on camcorder to its maximum 
• Raised the Iris to allow more natural light to be captured
• Plugged in film lights and adjusted the white balance to suit the focal point of the shot
• Filmed myself dispersing talcum powder in different ways
• Rendered the video in final cut
• Slowed the motion of each clip down to 35%
• Reversed each clip
• Added various effects and upped the contrast on every clip so the talcum powder really stood out
• Kept on playing with effects until i was happy with the look of each clip
• Rendered the project and uploaded to youtube