Update on the video

Just an update on the video - a narrative version will be uploaded shortly.I just thought it would be interesting to get a screen grab from ours and compare it to the likes of other professional music videos within the same genre, this includes Sum 41, All American Rejects and Good Charlotte.As you can see, we focus upon the lead singer as much as other bands and in the same manner of shots as well which represents a clear indication with the audience viewer and our band.

Grading Test

Since we ran out of narrative footage because our shoot was delayed by about 1 week or 2, we decided that we would begin to look into grading the music video. We already liked the live performance (and with agreement with Mr Earl also) we at the moment aren't going to touch it. What we are going to change however is the narrative. It's been suggested that we change it to black and white by both Sean and Reece but that's slightly problematic 1) it isn't really conventional with what we've been looking at 2) we already have quit a conventional music video so why would we break away now? What are the complications? It is possible that we could tint it, still remaining colour but keeping a fine distance though I'm still even hesitant on this; maybe more colour is needed particularly around the effects of the drugs.
Nonetheless, here are some of our tests:

At the moment I really like the tints, 2 and 5.

Example of Font

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This is just a reminder to me, Sean and Reece of the type of font that's conventionally used in a digi pack. The blog entry below has the completely wrong type of font for our genre, as I said it's often very bold and plain.

Double Page With Lyrics

I'm really happy that Sean edited the double page to work in some lyrics. Though I do have a lot to press on about. He got my suggestion though he's a bit off of convention in some sense. I really like the second image as it keeps on that image quality of his drawings, but the font... well it really has nothing to do with the genre at all. Alternative Rock genres often have very bold, large font types and are often centre alinged too - further more it should have more black space as its starting to over lap the photo/edited photo and the song needs to be broken up into verses.

I dont think Sean is very interested in these, yet the whole point of a digi pack is presenntation of lyrics. So, we'll meet at a middle ground. The font, verse ligns must be seperated and this double page must have a lot more room. The title of the digi pack should be
''ALL the small things''
Then a double page for each verse of the lyrics. There are in total at least 6 different verses, meaning we can have a range of drawing double pages and edited photo images, then possibly finishing the book in art and images. Really don't want to insult Sean but I hate the font set out here - we could do so much more. I'll take this up with him on Tuesday.

Digi Pack Development

Whilst I've been away editing this week, Reece and Sean have been working hard with the digi packs and I'm really happy with the progress, but would also like to suggest a few things. The guys are making some really awesome, creative works which reflect the genere effectively. The only complaints I have with this double page particularly is that it breaks conventions slightly. Most double pages are used either to full (so the drawing would have to take up more space because it leaves too much space) or that there is either a piece of art/image accompained by text - the lyrics often enough. I think this would be a cool thing to see so I've suggested it to the guys. Otherwise its cracking on well.

Digi Pack Drawings

These are Sean's concepts for the digi packs,  they are abstract punk like drawings that reflect the main themes of the songs. It's a lot like Underclass Hero from Sum 41 which is what I look at last month. I really like all of the drawings and think they fit well - the sex one is the only one I'd want fixing up abit so that it had the same style of frame as all the other drawings, you know for keeping sake of cotinuity; one of the themes is also repeated again, two are of alchol and isolation or parties would be another good one. Keeping those black and white in the drawings keeps the digi pack conventions that we've researched into, meaning that it fits and suits into the alternative rock genre.

Edited Images

These were images from the shoot that have been edited by Sean in Photoshop. I like a lot of them, particularly the black and white ones and the bold coloured ones as it keeps the conventions of a digipack, star colouring against black or just black or white. There's an abstract element in some of them which reflects  also other bands digi packs, Linkin Park's a pretty good example of this as they have this art-like look to them. Furthermore, by keeping the close ups of the lead singer, it maintains that sense of iconography and yet again, the conventions of altnerative rock music videos.

Music Video Rough Cut

This is our current rough cut, the live peformance is synced and alinged correctly, the narrative now just needs adding and the editing process trimmed a bit to have higher paced editing. I decided to have this as the rough cut as it is probably best that we fine tune the live peformance first then the narrative, working in layers that can change in transparency (basic viewing point) so we can decide what we want or where we want to cut and can go back later. It's a youtube video only because its a HD video and would take hours to upload to either blogger or vimeo.

I found this interesting when I saw the update from Linkin Park. About a month or two ago I identified that there seemed a new up and coming of vinyl for the alternative rock genre. Whilst I knew that Lostprophets and older bands were releaseing or re-releasing albums to vinyl, it's sort of struck me to see this. Linkin Park is a huge alternative rock band and to see them release a vinyl means many things; firstly, the genre is housing this 'styled' or 'culture' effect to it, keeping the vinyl; secondly, it is possible that vinyl is progressively becoming popular due to piracy issues; lastly, Linkin Park are a huge mercheant relient band, it's effectively remakerting their album 6 months down the line with the 'styled, old time cool look', maintaing this culture of keeping things somewhat retro and capsolised in this time. More so, what other genre does this? Apart from classic rock, I can think of no other expect for the rare expection. So it seems it is becoming a popular convention for the alterntaive rock genre and why shouldn't it be. I grabbed this screenshot of Facebook because it seems popular already despite the rumour of vinyle being dead. Otherwise, convention is still the same. The colour and imagery on the pack is a smiliar style as Living Things, it has that disorted, choatic image thing going on which really relates to the theme of rebelliation in their music and the pack is black and white - exactly what we've been looking at.

Sure, vinyl is a little out dated, but who's to say it isn't worth looking at when we come to do it with a CD pack and a digi pack. Why can't we do a vinyl pack too?

Depth of Field

When we did the shoot on saturday we got some nice depth of field stuff like this, obviously using the focus ring creatively it will make a nice trancisition from the live peformance into narrative and gives that style that I wanted to create as well.

Photos from shoot

Friday's shoot:

Saturday's shoot:

As you can see for the narrative, we got a lot of macro stuff done because we thought it would be way more interesting and reflect a styled and drug like effect that we were after. We got a lot done and we think we have enough to work with, so we will begin a rough cut edit on tuesday as a group. However we still need to film the party scene but this can be done at a later date.

Oh yeah, and a dog ran off with our tripod bag. We got it back undamaged though. So all in all 2 good days of shooting and over coming problems :)

Kit part 2

Side note to previous blog below:

I will also be taking photos whilst we are filming and setting up kit and playing (or we can grab stills) and of instruments so that we will also have stuff to play with when we come to do the digi packs. It's worth while doing whilst we're there.

This is our kit for tomorrow, I've already done a kit check. We have the camera bag, canon, lense, two 16GB ultra memory cards (giving us a grand total of 32GB to film onto), an extra battery, both batteries are charged and the USB capble in case we have to back anything up. Reece will have the tripod - which should fit onto the camera? Hopefully as most tripods are 'universal'. All we need are props and we won't need lighting this time (hopefully!) unliek Depicher (previous project) as this camera has exposure, white balance and focus - all of which I know how to use manually because of the NSA training. The camera also has a grid on it for 'the rule of thirds' so that we can compose the shots correctly if we need to (which may be good for the live peformance squence). Other than that, we're more or less ready to go.

This is my costume tomorrow: a Shinedown band shirt. I will wear this with jeans to meet the common look of the band as they conventionally wear band t-shirts and normal average clothing, which in some ways add to the sense that they are connecting with the audience more and their tastes for music and expectation.

Effect Testing

http://mass-pug-effect.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/testing-editing-um-thing.html



After talking over for the drug scene, Sean was really eagar to do something like the Judge Dredd drug scene, so he did a test effect. I think the image above would be cool to do, though hard. I think it is worth playing with effects however we're too early in the stages as we haven't even gotton any footage yet. Once we start editing however, I would like to then expirement with the drug scene effects but until then I would like to focus on getting the shoot done as we're over a week behind on schedule due to being unable to film last week.

Sunset Times

We're going to be filming over the next week, hopefully tomorrow, so Reece got this time table of when sunset is and so forth - this will be useful as we're filming on the 16th tomorrow, meaning that the sun will set at 16:09 and we can begin filming after that; we may also be filming on saturday the 17th of November, though Sean is at work until 12 so we will have 3-4 hours of filming though this is unlikely we will probably only get about 1-2 1/2 of footage done.

Narrative

shot of a boy and a girl sitting in opposite sides of a classroom, both hard at work, when the boy hits the table in anger (due to the work), which makes the girl turn aroundquite timidly, who catches the eye of the boy and vice versa, who smile at each other and then urn back to their work.

Then a shot of the girl noticing the bell going, picks up her work and leaves to go away from the table, yet the boy is still working.

Then a shot of a corridor (Time lapse) of people moving around, to mark the end of the day.

Girl walking down the street with books in her hand and knocks into the boy, then which she drops her books and he offers to pick them up, they start to converse.

We then cut to a bench scene, and the boy gets drugs (Tic Tacs) from his pocket and gives them to the girl. They both take them.

Stumbling into house, as they get into the house they continue to take alcohol.

Drug and alcohol begins to take effect as they start to kiss (Not actually kissing, the camera suggest this)

Clothes are thrown against the wall and onto the floor to indicate ‘sex’ (again suggested) then cuts off to the end

This is an outline of the narrative - I feel that we don't have enough though so we will need to get numerous takes of these scenes and add anything in additionally if we can. Some of the themes have been forgotten, such as alcholol and isolation, these will need to be picked up.

Scout Locations

These are the photos that Reece took the other night and are on his blog; this is the live peformance location that we should be filmin at on friday night in the dark, the park bit particularly will be the lit area and it is relevant to the story and themes of the music video. Mr Earl noted on Reece's blog that if we weren't using the right type of camera, we could have difficultly filming here. However, since we're using the canon 600D and we can use exposure manually, I don't think this would be a problem. Extra lighting may be required, this is only possible though.

When we shoot this on friday, we'll make sure to have lots of over lapping action to make the editing process easier and the guantee that we have enough footage.