I'm aware this is slightly late, but it did take FOREVER to render and upload.

So, i've altered the time that this post is uploaded. As far as Blogger is concerned, it was uploaded yesterday at 3:34 pm. I know that you know it wasn't, but you can't really punish me for it. It's 90 minutes late for christs' sake. It's not like we're doing Research for a project a week after we've finished the whole thing, and then altering the date to make it look like we did it earlier.

Wait...




So yeah, knock off marks, and you're a massive hypocrite.

And then I'll blackmail you.

Evaluation- Elliott from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

You said make the Evaluation tasks as intresting as possible, here's my attempt.

If I was making it as intresting as possible, I'd have written a song and sung it into a megaphone from the top of the Regal pub, but this is good enough.

a couple more bits i need to work on later

Mutiny- Set Your Goals

This video has a pirate theme,
which links to the name
of the song, 'Mutiny'

We Don't Care Anymore- Story of the Year

The band is jumping, high energy, lights
all around, a record company would want
the band to be seen like this to promote
the energy of the music

Dimmu Borgir- The Sacrilegious Scorn

This shot shows a Black Metal performer
in front of a burning cross. This is very
genre specific as it is identified with the
style of music

10 Miles Wide- Escape the Fate

This video is set on an aeroplane,
and the reference seen here is to the film
'Snakes on a Plane', with a quote
spoken from the film.

Guys like you make us look bad- Blessthefall

The Camera is placed looking through a hole
focused on the lead performer, set up tight
on his head.

Echoes- Set Your Goals

The lighting at the end of the
Video is set up so it pours
though the walls and into the
room. A smoke machine
would have been used to add
to the effect.

Fireflies- Owl City

In this video all the toys in this
room begin to start turning on and
moving around. This is heavy on
Mis-en-scene as the bulk of the
video is dependant on it being effective.

The Anthem- Good Charlotte

This has a band performance at
night, with lighting close to what
was used in 'Everywhere'. The idea
of a band performance is very
cliche and used commonly.

The Thespian- Alesana

Close up of the performer being active
with a Microphone. Guitar is not seen,
but present in shot. Black and White
is used to give it an older feel, and
lighting is effective shining onto camera.

Nine Frames (Question One)

Here is the first half of Question One.


1. This shot shows a link because of the reference to the idea of 'Everywhere', established in the song.

2. This shot shows a lead female performer, taking up lots of the frame with the attention on her, as a record company would want

3. This shot shows a band performance in full swing, very common in Music Videos that are 'Pop-Rock'

4. The way this scene is shot is a reference to the film '500 Days of Summer', in which a large blackboard drawing is shot in the same style.

5. This shot shows the Camera on an angle that continues to move, which I feel works very well with increasing the pace of the shot

6. This shot shows one of the Lighting setups we used. We used two large lights to make the stage seem more theatrical.

7. In this shot you see the Paint and Paintbrush we used to create the 'I'm not alone'
canvas drawing.We added extra Paint splatters on the ground for effect.

8. Close up of Instrument playing- a very commonsight in modern Music Videos

9. Using Bluescreen and other effects to create a whole new image- a common sight in modern Music Videos.

Good News- If you've gotten this far, you're probably not Epileptic

And you'll need to bear that good news in life, as my music video has more flashes than the rough cut.
This blog post is sent to you direct from a gig, one of my favorite bands, A day to remember.
I had no time to blog earlier, with a train to catch and all, but while I wait, sitting on the floor where the mosh pit will inevitably be, I can let you all know that my music video is finally complete, and I'll embed it when I'm next at a computer.
Editing today went really well. Just after lunch nick reviewed it, and suggested some changes. Some of which I changed, some of which I acted upon, some I didn't.
It looks like the first band is coming on, and I don't want to be sitting where the pit will be, so the rest will be briefer than a marriage with Jenifer Aniston.

Edited like crazy
Made some big improvements
Steve saw it at the end of the day for the first time
He thought it was great
It's now on vimeo
All is good.

ELLIOTT - 'EVERYWHERE' FINAL VIDEO from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

catch up on what's been going on

no wordplay, witty or dry humour here. i'm too tired for that and i have to make the most of the internet I have, stolen from a house somewhere around here.

it's been a while since i did the blog thing, again, so i've a lot to catch up on. a week ago today is where i'll begin.

last thursday we took our final shots for the music video. we got a bluescreen, flattened it out and stapled it on a wall, and shot angelica in front of it. sven shot her singing for her ending, but i don't think he's going to use that. it went well i think, the bluescreen was really flat and angelica wasn't wearing anything blue, so i think it should be easy to create the effect.

the rough cut deadline was for the next day, so i uploaded all the footage straight away and began cutting. it was a productive day, with plenty of lip-syncing and cutting, and i made good progress with it. you can find the rough cut of my music video below this paragraph.

ELLIOT - 'EVERYWHERE' ROUGH CUT from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

monday was our chance to get ourselves a load of feedback off the class. it was nice to see what others thought about it, and shone a new light on how i should look at the video.

the main problem with the video it seems is i need more cutaways. i shot more than i used, so it shouldn't be a problem to do this. other things that came up were fix a bit of lip-syncing and the drummer isn't very good. i'm working on the lip-syncing and i'm trying to make the drummer look as good as i can with fast cutting.

people liked the video, though, and the main point that kept coming up is the lighting. seeing as i dragged down extra lights through coleridge, i'm happy people liked them. people liked the shots in the video and the general pace, and i'm glad that the way the video is heading is being will recieved.

tuesday was back to the edit, and i made more progress on my music video. that's pretty much all there is to say about it. i didn't finish it, i made good progress, and fixed a couple of bits i didn't have time to do on friday. i also took a few frames from my video for work on my digipak, which i worked on that night.

at home on tuesday i took the screenshots i had and began work on my digipak. i decided that the general idea of the digipak should be the painting/canvas bit in the music video, as the link works well and i got some lovely stills of all the paint and painting. i cropped and edited and decided what image should go where, and by the end of the evening i had a rough digipak ready to go. i had no text, as i wanted to download some, but with no internet that wasn't happening anytime soon, but structure was a big plus. the rough digipak can be seen below this paragraph.

wednesday was on the edit, again, and this time i came close to finishing my video. i got feedback from nick on how i could improve it so far, and how it looks in it's current form. i got real close to finishing the timeline on wednesday, so friday will be finishing the timeline, then just generally fixing all the issues with it in it's current form (shots held too long, etc) i also gathered a lot more frames from the video for the digipak, so i could finish it that night, as i wanted to make a physical one.

after college i went to long road to use the internet, and got loads of fonts, album infomation, and other bits and pieces i'd need for my digipak. in town i bought card, photo paper, and paint for my digipak. i wanted to do a whole booklet for it, and decided instead of just using stills from the video in it, i should do my own artwork to make it more unique. out in my garden there's this... thing over the other side of the pond made of brick, and i splattered the wall with paint, and strung a microphone by it's wire off a light fixture. i let paint drip down the wire and over the microphone, and took pictures as it happened.
i also got paint on drumsticks, as we don't get our drum kit moved into our new house until tomorrow, and also dribbled paint on an acoustic guitar, and took pictures for the artwork. i made a massive mess all over the walls, i need a pressure washer to get rid of it.
i spent literally all night on it, finalising my digipak and doing a 16 sided booklet for it, it was effort, but at 7am i had a physical digipak and a copy of the booklet on memory stick, ready for college.

in college (we're on thursday now, or today, however you want to look at it. that's why i'm so tired, by the way. it's the fact that i can only get internet at 11pm from some house nearby and i only got two hours of sleep last night/morning) i did my poster. i'm not entirely happy with it, but i feel it's a good job in a short amount of time. i'm sure my digipak will go over much better than the poster.
but oh well, even though it may not get me so many marks, i'm proud to call it mine.

Digipak/Poster Final

Okay although I handed in a physical Digipak, here's it in it's digital form

FRONT COVER



BACK COVER



CD FLAP WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT



INSIDE LEFT



INSIDE MIDDLE



BEHIND CD IMAGE

DIGIPAK BOOKLET

I should probably mention here that the images in the background are either single frames from the music video, or pictures that I took myself.
Those with Orange dripping paint I took myself the night before, out in my garden. i feel they go along with the paint theme of the digipak, and wanted to have pictures in the booklet taken by myself, that reflected and expanded on the same style as my digipak.


FRONT PAGE



PAGE ONE

PAGE TWO

PAGE THREE

PAGE FOUR

PAGE FIVE



PAGE SIX



PAGE SEVEN AND EIGHT (DOUBLE PICTURE IN THE BOOKLET, MIDDLE PAGE)



PAGE NINE



PAGE TEN



PAGE ELEVEN



PAGE TWELVE



PAGE THIRTEEN



PAGE FOURTEEN



BACK PAGE




POSTER FOR 'THE SPIRIT ROOM'

Digipak artwork

My digipak is coming along nicely, I should think. Last night I spent a few hours choosing what pictures I should use, and editing them for the digipak as a whole. I currently have a template with a rough digipak on, but nothing concrete. My hope is to finish the digipak tonight, and mabye the poster, and blog loads in lesson tomorrow, seeing as I'm really behind and email is the only form of blogging I can do, apart from being in long road in general. In fact, I planned to blog at long road today, shame that didn't turn out with me actually blogging.
I wanted to blog, I came into long road when I had no lessons and got to work, but instead I was held down by digipak work. I was getting tons of fonts, album infomation, lyrics, reviews, all that stuff. I'd consider that a legit excuse.
I may or may not have mentioned, but I've decided to do a physical digipak, as well as the template.
After college I decided to get extra materials I'd need for my digipak. Hunting through poundland I found photo paper, CD cases, and a box of mansize tissues which I can take apart and use as card for my digipak.
Buying all that made me miss my bus, which is once an hour, so that was annoying, but as I was aimlessly wondering through HMV I was thinking about the artwork in my digipak. I had plenty of stills from my video, and a couple of photos taken from shooting, but nothing taken just for the digipak.
I decided to continue the paint theme I currently had in my digipak, and I bought some more paint from early learning centre. With this I plan to get drumsticks/a couple of drum pieces, a guitar pick/acoustic guitar and a microphone, and have paint dripping off them. I think that'll look cool, and it fits with the current theme.

Digipak progress

I've been working on my Digipak for a couple of hours now, and I'm really happy with how it's going

Sending this from my iPhone, so I'll fill in the gaps at a later date, just sending this to keep up to date, barely.

Late start to the Edit

But everyones gotta start somewhere.

Sven and I took the very final shots for our Video yesterday. It was a small scene, which required a Bluescreen. It turned out well, we stapled it to a big Board, and from then on we were ready for the Edit

We'd already captured most our stuff, so we only captured the Park and Bluescreen footage, and then began to watch our stuff.

Sven and I have decided to Edit separately, on two machines, so we transferred all the HD footage from my Mac to Sven's, via a HDD. This'll work out well for the both of us, I'm sure.

Better late than never.

Unless by being late all you're getting is an earful of abuse and bad criticism, in which case you should have probably just stayed in bed.

Luckily enough for me, that's not the case, and I got some goodish feedback on my Poster.
I should have got three bits of feedback, and arrived back with three bits. I thought i'd get four, but that's cool I guess, at least I know what does and doesn't work[ish].

And if you're too lazy to scroll down to find the Poster, well then I don't blame you. I know how you feel, it's effort, right? Well here it is again, because I'm a considerate person.



1) 'SIMBA!!!!!<3!
GROMIT!!!!<3!
Is SIMBA!! the Girl and GROMIT!! the Guy?
The Title should not be all over their Face and the Font is a little too plain.
Is this the Poster? It's not too clear what it is- also, do you need to take a Phone of me for it? :/
ILY BABE.

2) 'The Font is a bit plain. Is this meant to be a Poster?
What is the Relationship between the Picture and the Song?'

3) 'I get the Everywhere like bit with Photoshopped Gromit. Is there suppost to be Plumbing in the background?'

To the First piece of feedback- I'm glad you like it, and understand the concept. I know I need to change around the cliches that make it a Poster, and will on the final piece.

To the Second piece of feedback- I am aware the Font is plain. My computer was on the point of breaking with all the layers going on, and it was the best I could do. Yes, it is meant to be a Poster, and I can see why someone would wonder what this is. I'm not surprised with this, and will fix it.
The relationship between the Picture and the Song is the concept of 'Everywhere'. The idea is the performer is standing in front of the same Poster that the reader will be standing in front of, and in her picture is the man in the Video. So the Poster links more to the Video than the Song, but I feel it works as a Campaign.

To the Third piece of feedback- I'm glad you understand the concept of the Poster, I do feel though that I need to find a way to make it more clear though. As for the Plumbing, it's actually a towel rack. I took the picture in my Bathroom at night, and it was the best I could do, unfortunately.

So it's clear I need to make improvements. To start, I want to take a picture of our performer in a street, with a green screen Poster next to her, to make it more appropriate to the context of the Poster. Also at this time a picture will be taken of the man on our video in the same location, from the same angle. I need to make it clear that it's a poster, so I will add album reviews, better text, and a release date to the image. Also I will place the text in a better position, that's more appropriate to being a Poster.

I'll come up with a rough draft drawing of it soon enough.

This is a big one, I don't know if I can do all of it in one go. (And cue Liam)

I can't seem to remember where I left off last time I made a proper blog post, but I'd assume that it's the beginning of our filming week.

First day back from half term, and I was late. You get used to sleeping at 4am and waking at 1, it's not a simple task to be into college at 10:50. I was greeted by a graph written on the board, with each groups filming plans written on it. Everyone had plans filled in throughout the week, and all was looking grand. And if it wasn't for our group having one massive gap throughout the whole week, it'd be one hell of an impressive show. Sven and I discussed how we wanted to shoot things further, and the digipak ideas we had during the half term. It wasn't an intresting day, and if I were to have the days events in a single blog post, you'd be left feeling disapointted.

Tuesday comes along, and it's our first day back at Coleridge. I can't remember what we did, I'm sure it's on Svens blog somewhere. Remember, I'm doing this via email on my phone, I can't just check around on other stuff. I'd like to say I'll edit this, but I make no promises.

Stuck in a hotel for tonight and last night, you know it's a slow time when sky news is the most intresting thing thing to watch. It's crazy, I don't think I'll ever understand the format. It's pretty unique, and could only be topped if the team behind MTV Cribs teamed up with H.M. Prisons. 
It's easy to imagine the production offices being crazy 24/7, with the mission statement 'Find It, Shoot It, Pimp It, Shout It'. I feel I could do a better job with the mission statement, but I'm too lazy to think it out any more than that.
But seriously, why do people watch this rubbish? It's like asking for a book, and being given the diary of Anne frank with pop-out illustrations by a comic book artist. I want to know the news, I don't want to see images of people trapped under rubble, yelling for their lives with flashy graphics over the top, some smug guy on location watching everyone with a moral compass help out while also pointing out that I can give my views by going on the website. It's heartbreaking, depressing stuff packaged for the MTV generation, and I'll never get it. 

Wednesday came around, and Sven and I had hoped to get some pickup shots for our video. Close-ups of objects, nothing out the ordinary for a music video, but it'd seem we didn't get the memo on no filming on Wednesday. Seeing as it was a media lesson, I don't think I need to write about the lesson on this blog. But then again, I write paragraphs on stuff that'll never get me marks, so I can't really talk.
The more significant thing about Wednesday was helping out with Tinas group, and her music video for 'Shadows', which was eventful to say the least. A few months ago I saw 'Where the Wild Things are', and fell in love with it. So much that after just one viewing, I decided to make my own wolf suit, like that of the main character, Max. 
As it turns out, Tinas video for 'Shadows' had an Alice in wonderland feel to it, and my wolf suit would look great in it as a White rabbit feel. The setup was long, the place looked great, and then it started raining. 3 takes of performance were done, and we were unable to film anything else, meaning me being there was unrecorded in the video, but I'd like to think I was good in the helping out setup stage. Also, I got mud on my tail. That's very, very annoying.

Thursday was next, as you'd expect from your standard seven day week we've become so used to, and I was late. The realisation of the little time we had left to shoot hit us hard, and we decoded to make plans to shoot the bulk of the video the following day. We knew we'd need extra materials for the location where our performer would be in front of a canvas with 'i'm not alone' behind her, and went to the art department to ask about where we could get one. It was also on this day we discovered that chloe would not be able to perform due to other media commitments, so we knew we needed to find someone new. As it turns out, canvas is really expensive, and we needed to choose something else. I decided that a bedsheet would work best, and online found one from tesco that I could afford. I also searched for paint and paintbrush, which I found at the early learning centre quite cheaply. Also, on Thursday, we re-wrote our treatment to remove the house and street location, because it was too complex with what time we had left. I think it was a good decision, and we made good compromises with the treatment. After college, I went to the early learning centre, and bought the paint and paintbrush, and looked in poundland for something we might be able to use. I found a large roll of paper, and superglue which I thought would work very well instead of a bedsheet, and so I bought those.
Thursday night was a panic. We had everything set for Friday, apart from performers. I managed to get my friend, Glenn, to do the drums in our band performance, but that was all I could manage, as it was being shot at Coleridge. Sven managed to get liam to bring in a acoustic guitar, and that night I prayed that the following day would turn out okay. Well, I didn't pray, but I lost a little sleep over it.

Colgate seems to have stolen sensodyne's idea. I wish I could google sensodyne, I'm not sure if I typed it right, but oh well. 
The idea is to make the adverts seem as if they're a documentary on what's going on, but it's clear as day that it's all been planned to look that way. Ever notice how generic they are in sensodyne adverts? Whoevers talking speaks like they're in a position of knowledge on sensitive teeth, but they're nor. The position they get given is that of a guy from the press, or a upper level guy from the company, no one with actual value when it comes to this. Using words like 'can help prevent', or 'is proven too', people can believe that the guy knows what he's on about. And note he always says something about seeing a dentist? He might as well have held a sign saying 'Go talk to someone that can give you informed infomaton'.
Colgate have a toothpaste out now that does the same thing, and intrestingly enough, they've gone for the same documentary style format. It's horrible to watch, it's so badly done. I can't be bothered to continue on this, but if you saw it, you'd notice how everything is scripted, and badly acted out.

Friday came about, and I had high hopes, aside from those when it came to finding a main performer. Liam had agreed to play guitar in the video, Sven was okay with playing bass and we had Glenn on the drums. In convincing angelica, who agreed to be our performer, I came up with a new line, 'Do you trust me? Because I believe in you.' I'm proud of it.
Charna was a big help in getting us instruments for the video (Bass and Drums), as she knew the music teacher at Coleridge. We didn't have long with them, so it was a big rush to the drama studio to get everything set up. We went for the same feel as we had previously done with 'My Generation', a black backdrop with lights brought in for the performers to be lit up. We didn't get as many shots as I had wanted to, but with the limited time we had, we were lucky to get what we got. Later in the day, Sven went to film with max's group, and I went with angelica to film at the stage for some solo performance. Once again, we ha limited time with the guitar, so we rushed to get our shots as soon as possible. I brought down two extra lights and the wide angle lens I forgot for the band performance, and got as much as we could. It's not a lot, but I feel what we do have looks good.

Sven and I wanted to film our canvas performance on Friday, but ran out of time. It was also very windy. We took a camera and tripod out over the weekend to film on Sunday with angelica.


Sunday rained and was generally miserable.


As you can imagine, we got nothing filmed over the weekend, and so brought on Monday, where it brought sunshine and joy, but mostly sunshine.
Because of this we filmed the canvas performance. It looked fantastic. The light was bright and perfect, and we spent a long time ensuring that all the painting was filmed correctly and got as much performance as we could. Honestly, I didn't think it would go so well, and I'm thrilled that it did. At the end, we decided to use the remaining paint by spraying it all over the canvas, in which angelica got paint in her hair on the first take. From then on, she only pretended to throw it, while both Sven and I filmed close ups of it hitting the canvas by either one of us. The HD brings out all the sunlight in the paint dripping down, and I can't wait to work on the edit for that footage.

We only knew how good it looked today, Tuesday. Both Sven and I are very grateful that we were allowed to film on both the monday and tuesday on edit week, as we were so short on footage. Angelica, Sven and I went to Coleridge Rec to film the park scenes, and Tina came by to help us. We spent a long time filming it, because the video hung on this looking good. I acted in the video, and had to change clothes a few times for the role. We also did a few performance bits with angelica sitting on the grass singing, which I think look really nice. Although we ran way over, and ended up carrying loads of equipment myself as quick as I could to long road, I think it was really worth it, and I will sleep well tonight.

And I just typed all of that on my iPhone over two hours. I've been paranoid it'll crash and lose everything the whole time. If it broke now, I'd break down.

TODAY (I'll add more soon)

About to do the final shoot (aside from greenscreen filming on thursday for my ending) in a park, i've got loads of clothes for clothe changes, we've got a shotlist, all is good and ready to go

BAI

LAWLZ I AM ALLIOTT.

OHHAITHAR, I'M SOOOO ELLIOTT.

'Everywhere' probably has a deeper meaning than what you might think. She's a serial stalker.

The title doesn't bear much connection to this post, but it's 1:11am, so you can't expect wonders.
It being 1:11 am makes this Homework 1 Hour, 11 Minutes late, which isn't a big deal I guess, but when you consider that I've had nine days to do it, it shines a whole new light on the situation. You could say I'm 'Digging my own Grave' here, but I'd say that's too harsh for what I'm doing. I'd call it 'Locking the Padlock on my own Stocks', or something. But the fun Stocks, where they throw Sponges of Water to raise money for charity, not the old school ones, where they'd throw rocks if you're lucky, and kick your face in if you're unlucky.

And I've gone so far off topic it's staggering.

I'd like to work into the paragraph above that I'm eating an Easter Egg right now, even though it's nowhere near Easter. It's an easy adrenaline rush, along with eating After Eights at half past Seven, but I guess writing it here will have to do.

Okay, for the homework I did a very rough mock up of my poster idea, that I probably wrote down on a previous post. I took some screenshots along the way, but they don't reflect just how slow my computer was. It made me want to smash it up, but I finished it all because I had literally nothing better to do than do this work.
also i would have felt bad if i didn't do it

So I started off by taking my two pictures. I used Simba in Michelles place, and Gromit in the place of whatever person we also use in our Music Video (See, I'm linking the Video and the Poster together. marks, kthx.)
I also took everything out an Xbox case and used that as the place of the Poster, which gave me a really small and what turned out to be pretty rubbish greenscreen, but I was able to work around it, as you'll see below.



That's the very best I could do with removing the green from the original picture. As you can see, it picks up the green in other places in the picture, so it wouldn't work so well.

So, I came up with a new idea. I'd have the same picture on two layers, and cut around the green box on the top layer, and remove the green on the layer below. Below is a picture of me cutting out the green, and it working.



I went ahead and adjusted the colours on the picture to make it slightly more appealing. I chose to add a small amount of light blue to the picture with Simba, and red to the one with Gromit, so show some contrast.

I then changed the size and cropped the picture of Gromit to fit into the one with Simba, shown below, and did this twice more. I would have done it once more, but it was so agonizingly slow by this point, I thought my computer was going to implode.



Finally, after all that, I placed text over the top, and exported the image. Two things about that, I know the text looks ugly, and I know I exported it out small.

The text looks ugly because I thought my computer was going to implode if I did anything fancy, and I exported it out small because I didn't want my computer to implode. The final poster can be seen below, and I think it turned out well for a rough draft.




And because of my inability to just focus and get on with blogging, this Homework is now 2 Hours, 13 Minutes late. I guess you could throw one rock.

Yes. I can totally forget the awful things you've done, now please, stop playing that song.

-It would seem we're all pretty sick of our song choices, or at least getting there. It was always going to happen, but we're a way off from finishing the project.

-In 1901, a scientist called Ivan Pavlov developed the idea of 'Conditioned Reflex', in which he fed his dogs food, and when he did this, he rang a bell at the same time. After a while, he removed the food, and rang the bell. At just the sound of the bell, his dogs began to salivate, and it was this which lead him to publish his findings as a Conditioned Reflex.
-Although the sound of a bell may not be the best sound to hear, the same idea applies to when I wake up in the morning. Although for the last year and a half, the noise I wake up to is part of a song by one of my favorite bands, it took only a couple of months to get angry, simply by hearing that same excerpt, no matter how awake I was.
-Creative and Media, five days a week, the same song, every single day. It's becoming more and more tedious to listen to it, and anyone elses song. It feels like the rest of the class hasn't heard of the idea of headphones, or that touching them would bring about an allergic reaction or something. If I could make one rule in this project, it would be when editing, but your freaking headphones on. I do it so you don't have to listen to my crap over and over, and I sure as hell don't want to listen to yours.
-It'll make us all sick, eventually. Songs stop becoming songs, they become pieces of sound, visual material made up of words and notes. Waveforms to be dissected and mixed around, just so you can put it back together with visuals while only listening to the song, only REALLY listening to the song, subconsciously. Consciously, you're very aware of how sick you're becoming of it.

And just like Pavlov's dog, we'll feel sick and annoyed at the sound of it. I know this all too well, because I did this last year.



And I guess this is the part where I write about what I did today.

Sven and I took the camera out along with a wider, telephoto lens to try out some practice shots with it, and to judge the diffrence. We shot some bits in two locations, a stage, like one we would like to use, and a open room, purely for shot varietys. We took a lot of footage with both the stock lens and the telephoto lens, and for ease of editing, I took the camera with the wide lens, and Sven took it with the stock lens.
We totally had some pictures of the diffrence between them, and of us recording stuff, but I guess we forgot to upload them to flickr. I'll stick them on when we get back, if I remember.

This was a good test overall, and I got a lot out of the test footage week. I took out the dolly, and got to try out the telephoto lens, which is what I wanted to do. We also got a performer, Chloe, and two videos of test footage are on Vimeo. The test footage fror today can be seen below.

L3 TEST FOOTAGE - Everywhere Test- Elliott and Sven (Different Lens types) from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

'It's like a CD case, only with way more to think about'/' Design a poster, Link it to the Digipak, makes a Campaign that's 'Everywhere'. How ironic.

Linking 'Em together is apparently a 'Campaign' to marketing folk, but to most people it's 'That twatting advert that's all over the place nowadays.'
(That was actually a Title idea, but I thought it would make a good opener)

Being someone who wants to go into Media, I understand that if that's the effect my campaign gets, then I've done my job.

Take the people that go on Big Brother for example, they're looking for a boost that will start their media career, (that will undoubtedly short lived, best case scenario they get a late night reality show on ITV2) and yet the majority of people watch them and wonder how they fit their ridiculous ego through the front door.

It's the same principle, marketing folk want to create original campaigns that'll sell truckloads of product, and probably bump them up a notch in their career. Whilst everyone that sees it gets sick of seeing the promotion day after day, getting it stuck in their head and buying product.

A bit like the DFS sale.

For my Digipak/Poster campaign, I am going to expand on the idea of the Music Video, that this man is everywhere, and explore the ideas of that further on both the Poster and Digipak.

Rough idea for Poster, this might be a little tough to describe, so I'll do my best.
The performer in the Music Video is standing in front of the same poster that she's in (that the audience will see), but in the poster that she's standing in front of, it's the man in the music video in her place. He's standing in front of the poster as well with him in, and this continues. It's a lot like when you have two mirrors facing each other, or when you point a camera at it's own monitor.

Rough idea for Digipak- I'm still working this one out, but when you open the whole Digipak, it'll be one wide picture of the performer, and everyone around her being the same person. I think this could be done in a street, in a park or somewhere, but i haven't totally thought it through yet.

I'll come up with some sketch ideas.

Test Footage, all edited up

Here is the Test Footage I shot and edited on Tuesday, I just rendered it and uploaded it today though.

Everywhere Test- Elliott and Sven from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

Test Footage for 'Everywhere'

I only blog when I have no other option, or something close to that effect.

Well, that's not entirely true, I've the gospel of luke sitting next to me, but it's not like i'm going to read that anytime soon.

I set up email blogging, neat! I can now blog what I did from the bus home, which is usually extended due to traffic, so I've time to really make these posts good(ish).

So today went well enough, I managed to get the camera dolly shots in and filmed my friend chloe singing in two diffrent places, using camera shots like what we would use in our music video. Later in the day I edited these and put it to the chorus to the song, and I will upload this on thursday.

Today is the second day without Sven at college, and even though it has been more difficult, I think I've been able to take the test footage well without him, though I did have to adapt some shots, however these also came out well.

Also I got mcdonalds and chocolate fingers, but that's not relevant.

Any excuse to move things around quickly.

I have the camera dolly booked for now, and will soon be picking it up, and taking test footage with it, I will also be seeing if I can borrow a microphone stand from the Music department, to use as a point for focusing on.

I intend to go somewhere open, such as the main hall, because it is like the location we will be using for the actual music video, open and wide, with lots of room to move the camera dolly about.

I had hoped to use one of the wider lens from Coleridge today, but because we are at Long Road all day, this is not possible. I hope to use these on Friday.

Also later on i'm going to edit this, and post it here.

A little bit of optimism never hurt anybody, probably.

We came up with three things about the Music Video project that Sven and I are looking ahead towards. The first thing is something we're excited about in the project, the second is a problem that might arise in the duration of the project, and the third thing is a solution to that problem. We find this is effective in our planning and thinking ahead stages.

Something we're looking forward to- Seeing the video completed. It's far ahead, but we're very much looking forward to seeing the end result.

A Problem- Finding convincing performers, as this will MAKE OR BREAKKK the video

How to combat that problem, like listerine combats plaque- We will hold Auditions, so we can make sure we've got the best people we can get.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, then why did we have to write a treatment?

As we have the song 'Everywhere', we were given a stills camera to try out some framing, seen below.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4031/4313386637_eed02abedb.jpg
Used as one of the shots for the canvas scene, nice focusing

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4314109538_bbe083ea30.jpg
Shot type for acoustic performance

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2684/4313372659_c719beb340.jpg
If we could get this kind of weather, i'd be thrilled

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4314107160_6015f8db24.jpg
Like above, but with a load of grass (refrence to the park scene)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/4313369541_7e6f7c7bd9.jpg
The performance will be filled with close ups, like this

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4025/4314105542_1fbb30ce2a.jpg
Acoustic performance example, would like to go much wider though

We pitched for '1234', and got some feedback.

Here is the feedback for the pitch we did for '1234', as we pitched for both this and 'Everywhere'

Don't understand switching idea

Difficult to lip sync
Placement might be tough

What costumes would we use?

Tough to understand
Location ideas?

Like the concept

Might get repetitive
Where would we find the band?

Guess what, we got Everywhere

Our pitch went well, and we got the song we wanted, thankfully.

The Class gave us feedback on our ideas, which we intend to work with when creating our final piece

FEEDBACK:

The concept is obvious

What are your location ideas
Dream idea is good, overall idea is good also
Effective idea with writing on wall
Strong plot
All a dream ending is preferred
How to get water dropping from ceiling?

Good to have two ideas for a song

Linking lyrics with video is good

Sven and I are happy with this, and are happy to push forward with our concept

Storyboarding, with Post-its

For our draft storyboard, Sven and I drew it on Post-its, and stuck them on top of a timetime of the first 30 seconds of the video that we drew out. We are using this to draw out a bigger, final storyboard, and finding that the post-its are good for referencing with.

Ideas, and a Moodboard.

Sven and I decided to listen to 'Everywhere' through once, and write down whatever came to mind for creating the music video. I feel this was a good way of getting down ideas as they flowed, and was very productive in further creating ideas.
It can be seen HERE-http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2774/4295731540_aa41f7f854_o.jpg

We also decided to create a Moodboard for Everywhere, which can be seen HERE- http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4295731532_baf9f0e3b0_o.jpg

Picking a mad tune.

From the inital list of songs, Sven and I have narrowed our song choices down to four songs that we feel would make a strong music video

Everywhere- Michelle Branch
Shadows- Au Revoir Simone
Number One Enemy- Daisy Dares You
1234- Feist

We were able to take this list down from four to two, and have decided that we will write treatments for the songs Everywhere and 1234.

These are the songs we will pitch for.

Working Together, Seperately.

Sven and I decided to seperate our jobs up, so even though we are working together, we have our own roles in the production of the Music Video
Some roles we have decided to do together, as we feel they should be a collaboration of ideas.

PRE-PRODUCTION:

• Previsualition: moodboard, timeline, - together. storyboard, - Sven. animatic. - Elliott
  

• Production Design: locations, costumes, props, make-up, set. - Elliott.
  

• Production Manager: logistics, budget, cast & crew, organisation. - Sven.
  

PRODUCTION

• Director: shotlist, directing. - Switch between us both
  

• Cinematography: camera, framing, lighting. - Switch between us both
  

• Production assistant: lyrics, music, props, costume. - Elliott
  

• Performance/Choreography: dance routine. - together.
  

POST-PRODUCTION

• Editor: lipsynch, colour correction, special effects. - together.
  

• Digipak/Poster: together.
  

My Generation Task

My Generation Music Video- Elliott from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

As a class, we created a test Music Video, to the song 'My Generation'

We all had individual roles, and had to work together to create the finished scene, then worked individually as Editors

For this, I was in charge of Lighting, which meant I had to gather, set up, and put away lights. I feel that I did a good job on this, as I had never done it before, and learned a fair bit about how to light a scene.

In the Edit, I quickly threw together a cut, as I was late for lesson, but still feel that it was good practice overall.

Everywhere Treatment

Posting this so I can see the treatment from college
The video begins with the singer sitting down in an empty location, playing an acoustic guitar, singing to the beginning of the song. Camera shots mostly on her face and guitar, and a wide of the whole body. Cut in with shots of a double bed, with the singer on one side, singing the song. During the line ‘And when I sleep’, extreme close up of the singers eye closing, and then opening up. When the singers eye is closed, begin a filter that makes the situation seem more dream like, and cut to a wide of the bed, revealing someone in it. The singer rolls over. Cut back to acoustic performance for a static camera shot of the singers face for the line ‘You’re everywhere’.

Singer begins to wander round house, and sees the same man in a room, as she double-takes, we see that he is no longer there. We see her leaving the house and wondering down the street, and seeing the man talking on his phone/ upon looking again; we see it is a different looking person talking on his phone. During this we intercut with acoustic performance singing the long. At the line ‘Always there’, we are at the acoustic performance and track into her face, and then pull back out to reveal our first band performance, where the singer is standing, and has no guitar, but a band instead. For this first chorus, mostly static camera angles should be used, with slight, sharp tripod based movement on some parts, and camera angles on all performers (Singer, Guitar, Bass, and Drums). A small amount of performance on the chorus should be on the acoustic performance. Close up of the singers face for the first ‘I’m not alone’, and on the second ‘I’m not alone’, QUICK flash cuts of the singer writing/spray painting the line on a wall or sheet of canvas, but because of the flash cut’s we shouldn’t be able to see too clearly what she’s writing.

For the second verse, we see the singer sitting alone at a park, singing the song, and on a shot from behind we see the man, running past, cut back to the singers face, and then back to the runner who is just a normal runner. Singer still singing the song, out of focus is a bench, with two people, both are the same person, as the singer looks over, it is just two people having a conversation. This verse is designed to explore the use of the line ‘You’re everywhere’.

Second chorus, we have band performance again, but the camera is moving on a dolly around the performers, focusing from one to the other, intercut with the singer sitting in the park singing, instead of sitting down at the acoustic performance. At the ‘I’m not alone’ at the end of the end of the second verse, we see her writing it like we did at the end of the first verse, but it is clear what she is doing, and we keep cutting back to this throughout the solo, cut with band members on a stage? playing the music. At the end of the solo we see the singer standing next to the wall/canvas. For the slow bit after the solo, cut back to the acoustic performance, and cut that with singer sitting at park.

For the final chorus, the band is in full swing, with big movements from all performers, and fast dolly panning throughout the performance, and handheld camera shots of the area, with the singer singing in front of the ‘I’m not alone’ wall/canvas. This is intercut with the singer seeing the man at the park, and after seeing again, it’s still him. She chases after him, but he fades away, along with everything around her. We see the singers eyes open, like at the beginning of the song, with her alone in bed, revealing that the song was a dream.

My Generation Class Music Video

As a class, we all pitched in and shot a music video for 'My Generation', as we were all assigned different roles. EDIT THIS POST, ELLIOTT. DO IT. SOON. butiknowyouwont.

Ancillary Task

For the unit, we need to create a 'Digipak' and Promotional Poster for the artist we have chosen, along with the final Music Video. As practice for this, we were randomly assigned a song, and told to create a practice Digipak and Poster, to boost our skills. I had the artist Butch Walker, and so I searched the internet for design ideas and pictures of Butch. This is what I came up with.

12/1/10

Today, we looked at student music videos from Long Road, and saw what students did well and not so well.

We were told to nominate videos for 'awards', and put them into different categories.

For 'Best Band Performance' we chose 'Kicks or Consumption', we felt that it most accurately portrayed a bands performance in a music video, and was very convincing.

For 'Best Male Vocal' we also chose 'Kicks or Consumption', the performance was strong, and we liked that the group obviously chose actual band members, instead of just choosing to do it themselves

For 'Best Female Vocal' we chose 'The hot one in the Red shirt' from 'Science is Golden'. Being hot, she did a good job of being a vocalist, regardless of what her actual talents are. Whatever they are, it's obviously not being a performer.

For 'Best use of Location' we chose 'Fake ID'. Though they didn't go all out with the camerawork or planning, we liked that they shot it in London, using some cliches that are seen in music videos, even if they didn't quite pull them off.

For 'Best Editing' we chose 'Kicks or Consumption', we felt it most resembled a professional music video with the pacing and shot choices, and they were clearly reflected in the editing.

For 'Most innovative concept', we chose 'Science is Golden', even though the techniques were not original we felt the way it was put together had a certain charm about it, and a rather 80's feel. We like this.

The 'Wooden Spoon' award goes to those with a whiter soul than Jesus himself. 'Side to Side' features three Tim Westwood wannabes in various 'gangster' locations, such as the side of a travelodge, a quiet suburban street, the quad at long road, and a sports hall. Congratulations, you wiggas.

Music Videos

11/1/10

Today, we used Photoshop and Final Cut to create a simple music video test animating shapes.
Using Photoshop, we created shapes in different colours with a transparent background for importing into Final Cut, once we had that, we were given a music track at random to animate the shapes to. I tried to make mine not to be cut to the beat so much, but also for it to feel like it fits the music. I mixed fast moving with slow build ups, like the music does to create my effect. I feel that this was a good exercise in trying to understand what to do by just listening to the music, and it worked well.

Elliott Shape Music Video from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

CMDIPLOMA, TBH.

Homework 10/1/10

The Music Video I have chosen is called 'Meddler' by 'August Burns Red'. I chose this because of it's artistic style, and it's fast pacing. I love that you can tell that every shot has been thought through, and not one single shot looks bad. The camerawork is consistant throughout, and the style is like you would expect listening to the music. The colour scheme is one of my favorite things in this video, only using bright colours in the more artistic shots, and even though the colours are somewhat bland, the way they work together makes a strong combination. The editing/pacing in the video is very fast, which works with the nature of the song, and the effects such as filmburn in places looks fantastic. The concept is performance based, with cutaways to people with big balloons, which is also seen on the bands album cover.