Storyboard of narrative

This is the preposed narrative that we will try to film and add into the music video.

Audience feedback on rough cut

Our audience didn't like the exclusively studio based video and most got bored as there was no narrative to grip the audience. One thing that came out of most of the feedback was that there was not enough shot variants as there were only really four different view points. This made the video feel restricted. We were told that to improve it we would have to add more camera shots and a narrative to keep the views interested. Another thing that was pointed out was that all of the transitions were normal cuts which was something that could be improved on. This means that we will have to come up with more shots. The final piece will include some form of datamoshing but i could explore invisible edits or jump cuts to make our shot transitions more varied. It was said that the green screen was not accurate enough and was cutting into the character. Being a rough cut, i didn't spend as much time making the green screen edges clean which is something that i will do to make the video look more professional.

This is another piece of feedback that i got over Skype. This, i felt was better than the survey that i did because I was able to ask follow up questions and ask him to explain it more. This helped me get a better idea of what I had to do without having to read into what people had written on the questionnaire.

Rough Cut

This is our Music video rough cut. We learnt a lot from the making of the rough cut. Originally we were going to have an exclusively studio based music video but after making the rough cut we realised that it was not possible. Unfortunately it has been blocked on blogger but is still viewable on youtube.

Fish Tank Experiment

In a previous blog post i highlighted a video which had an interesting idea in it. The video was Cough Syrup by Young the Giant. In this video they had a fish tank that they dropped dye into which made patterns when the dye dispersed. The video was then mirrored so it was symmetrical.

This would be an example

I decided to try to replicate this so filmed the drops at 60fps so i could over crank the film. This would add a nice slow motion effect to the drops. 

Shooting schedule

Here is the first plan for our shooting schedule. This includes all of the props and costumes that we may need and will also include where we will be shooting and also what times we will be shooting from/until. there are no dates currently on the shooting as we are currently unsure on the exact days that we will be shooting. We have also added in contingency days as well if we do not finish all of our filming in one days worth of shooting:

Fish Tank Idea

This idea is from a music video by Young the Giant called Cough Syrup

In this music video there are intercutting scenes and one of which is a mirrored fish tank.

 Dye is then dropped into the fish tank and because it is mirrored it has a nice dissipation effect.

More dye is dropped until the tank is full with bright colours 

I like this effect and I that it would be a greta effect to replicate. This effect also fits their music video as it is themed around water as they have synchronised swimmers and are performing by a swimming pool.

Audience Research Responce

After putting up the survey on the blog I got 4 responses from it, I will now analyse each result:


 Here is the first of our responses, we found that this person is daily listener of music who is most interested in rap and rock music.










This person is into more alternative genres of music
rather then your normal genres of music. they only listen to music once a day, and they are the only one to this from the responses.











The third person in the selection listens to music more than once day, listens mostly to alternative rock, which is what the RHCP are and listens to music both at home and at college too.











The 4th person listens to a vast variety of music that includes alternative rock. The bands/groups/artists that they listen too also range in a big way. they includes Ed Sheeran, Two Door Cinema Club and also Watsky! they also listen more than once a day and
listens in college and at home.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Audience Research

This is a photo taken at a Red Hot Chili Peppers gig and shows the audience that we will be aiming our production at. From the picture we can tell that the audience is mainly adults. As we can tell by the

This is then shown again in this picture of a different gig. Here we can see the front of the audience so we can tell their age. The crowds age looks like it ranges from 25-40 years old and this is where we will aim our product at.

Risk Assessment

Audience Research: Gigs

I decided to find some information on some gigs that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have done previously and it there are any upcoming as well. I went onto the RHCP website and found that there are, unfortunately no tours that are scheduled for the upcoming months. I did find though that they have been at various different festivals throughout 2014, which includes the Isle of Wight festival.

The band have also allowed people to download the recording of the concert that people have been to. This will give people an incentive to buy the recording of the concert that they went to because of the memories. It also allows people to buy the concerts that they didn't go to.It says that you can purchase the recorded concerts in either mp3, true CD quality, FLAC. I feel that this is a great way to still make money even after an album has come out and also after a maybe expensive tour date.

Artist Permission

We had to ask the artist for permission to use the song. We did this by sending A few identical messages. One went to their Youtube Inbox at youtube.com/user/rhcptv and two more to Red Hot Chili Peppers contact info and another to Warner Bros Music. This is there letter that we sent.

Treatment

Treatment For Music Video

Group Members
Lewis Armstrong-Jones
Fergus Mcglynn

Song
Can't Stop

Artist
Red Hot Chili Peppers

Record Company
EMI, Warner Bros.

Genre
Funk Rock, Alternative Rock, Funk Metal

Target Audience
Our Peers, 16-18 year old people

Form or Structure

Mainly performance with narrative as well, there will be no story to the video as the Can't Stop video made by Red Hot Chili Peppers video didn't have one. It will be all studio made and will feature little or no outdoors scenes in the video.

Mise en scene- The Video will be set in a studio and will feature a range of different props in the video. The costumes we will use will be similar to those used in many of the Chili Peppers videos which are similar to what is shown below:

As you can see these costumes feature jeans, slim fitting ones for Guitarist Dave Nivarro, and then a casual t-shirt and cap for Drummer Chad Smith, mostly they don't wear shirts.

Camera Style- We will use a range of camera shots in our final video including Low angle shots, High angle shots, Fish eye shots, Pans, Tilts, Close up shots, Medium shots, Long shots, Dolly shots, a shot called a Dutch tilt,  POV shots and also Zooms.

Colour pallet- the colour patter we will use will be the normal colour pallet, we may depending on how the footage looks before editing add filters to enhance the video. 

Editing Techniques- We aim to have a high cut rate in the video as in the original the cut rate was around 200. this means we will have to have short scenes in the video. We also want to try and use green screening in the video as I have shown in previous posts as are shown below

SFX- we plan to use a range of special effects in our music video, on of the main technique will be Green Screening,we will also use Datamoshing and Invisible Edits as well as a range of other effects that will be touched on in later posts on the blog.

Performance Style-  The performance style of our video will be very exaggerated and over the top.

We feel that overall these different effects will add to making the video as close to the original style of the video as well as fitting the convention of the genre. I feel that if we get this right we will be able to appeal to our target audience effectively as we have planned.

Green Screen Test 2

This is the second green screen that that we have done. We took all of the ideas that we had from the first one and improved it.

We covered the green screen so it doesn't interfere with the clip that is playing and we used a longer track to get more time walking. We repeated the action as it is something that we will do in the video. The green screen will be something that we will do at the start of the video as there is a intro bit where there is a build up to a crescendo when the main riff kicks in.

Can't Stop Song

I decided on a song that the song i wanted to use for the music video was Can't Stop by Red Hot Chili Peppers. I have gathered various resources that the performer can use the help him learn the song. One of these is the Original song.

I have also sent him the instrumental which will be easier to play along to. After speaking to him, he seems to be learning the song fine. 

I have also sent a 200% and a 50% speed tracks to him. This is so we can do Under and Over-Cranking. 

I sent him the tabs as well that i got over at Ultimate Guitar Tabs. This will also help him learn the song. 

Audience Research: Related Artists + Survey

I have gone onto amazon and looked at "By The Way" which is an album by Red Hot Chili Peppers. I then went to the "Customers also bought" and took a screen shot of the results.

This is page 4 as the first 3 were all just other albums by Red Hot Chili Peppers. As you can see Nirvana appears twice.  Nirvana is a Grunge band which has some similarities to RHCP. Other Artists there are The Strokes, The Sex Pistols, and Green Day.

I then went on Spotify and looked at the related artists there. This will show me a more accurate representation of the related artists.

This is a survey that we have done to work out the artists that people listen to and also how often and where people listen to music.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Can't Stop lyric annotation

Green Screen test

This is a green screen test that we did in Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut can use green screens by changing the layers. You put your clip with the green screen on top of the second clip that will be played trough the green screen. 

What you then do is chose in the effects tab and drag it onto the first clip. This will add the chroma Key tab to the video. 

The Chroma Key tab looks like this and is used to chose the colour of your green screen. What this does is it removes this colour from the first video and seen as the second one is layered behind it will show through.

What we have found out about doing this effect is that we need to use a tripod and a track. This meant that out video was steady and moved forward at a constant speed. We needed a longer track than the one that we used in the test. A longer track would allow us to have a longer starting video and also set the scene. 

We also need to use a better clearer green screen so we can isolate the colour of it more effectively. This will avoid the graininess that the video has. We could have also faded out the first clip to make a cleaner transition between the two. This would finish the effect that we have actually travelled through the wall. What i want to do in the music video is to have a framed green screen so it would look like a picture hanging on the wall.

Datamosh Test

This is my first datamosh test.

To achieve this effect you first have to download 2 programs. The first one is called ffmpegX and what it does is converts the clips that you are trying to datamosh. What ffmpegX does is it removes all of the I-frames and put them in every set number of frames. If you set the number to an amount of frames like 9999. It'll make a video with an I-frame at the start of the video and the rest will be P-frames. 

After you convert the two clips that will be datamoshed they will have the file extension mov.ff.avi.e.avi. This shows that the video has been converted correctly. These can now be used to datamosh

The next program is avidemux2. This is a simple editing software that can is only useful for deleting individual frames.

The frame type is shown at the bottom and you can use the buttons to move frame by frame. A and B select parts between frames which makes it easy to select individual frames. You delete the I-frame at the start of the second video and moshing process is complete.

What i found out after doing this test is that the second clip needs more movement to properly distort the video. Otherwise, it is only distorted a little bit and doesn't use the effect to its full potential. Fast movement makes the second video come through, whereas a slower clip will keep the pixels intact. 

Video Analysis- Watsky!

Exploring other techniques that Artists use is quite a challenge as bigger artists are under pressure to release content so may not have the time to some of the stranger videos. However Independent artists have to show their uniqueness so have to try stranger techniques to stay different. 

Jump Cutting

Another effect that Watsky! uses is jump cutting back to something hat has just happened and keeping the video lip-synced. This is show in his video for "Whoa Whoa Whoa".

 

In the video the jump cuts are going back about 0.5 seconds but the video stays lip-synced. This is because of instead of being just jump cuts they have put it trough after effects and taken a full video of him singing the song and deposited the mouth over. This gives the video a strange effect, plus the whole thing as also synced to the drums in the backing track. 

Translation On a Pan

The video for "Dent in The Moon", the premise is that Watsky! is throwing a baseball from scene to scene and the camera tracks the ball in flight until it does a sideways translation to him catching a ball thrown from the opposite side. This gives the impression that he has thrown the ball to himself.

This effect also works because he uses a variety of locations. He goes from places like a farm straight to New York and then transitions to somewhere in the countryside that has snow. This would mean that he would have first have to have gone to all of the locations and thrown a ball. This would require a lot of planning.Although it is a nice effect I don't think I will be able to do it as it would require more time than I have. I could use elements of this do do one or two cuts but I don't think I will be able to do a whole video of translations. 

Props

The video for fireworks is only props made of ice that are being played back by a high speed camera. There are also cuts to the beat showing the ice exploding. The video is also in parts played in reverse which give the impression that the ice is reforming. The props used are also the lyrics of the song so it's not like its just some random props. 

This is all done in a studio with very good lighting as you can only see the table that the ice is on and nothing else. Although this is a nice effect I don't see how i would incorporate it into my music video as my video would have to be all props as well, and I don't have the correct equipment to be able to playback high speed video (or explosives to blow up ice). 

Reverse

The video for "Stupidass" is all one take played in reverse at half speed. The video played nromally shows someone throwing up on Watsky! and Watsky! taking off all of his clothes to get rid off the sick whilst walking away. This creates a strage effect as a shoe comes flying into the scene, whilst played in reverse, and lands on his foot. Because it is all in reverse it means that the physics don't look quite right as everything is falling up.

This effect is a good effect however it is only one shot so would not get me many marks as there is no shot variant. however another notable video that does the same thing is Coldplay's "Scientist". This is done in reverse and also lip-synced as well. This means that the singer learnt the words backwards and sang it like the for the video.

If I was going to do a video all in reverse it would be more like "Scientist" but i liked the effect that the falling objects had in Watsky!'s Video.

Camera Track 

In the video for "Never Let It Die" the whole premise is that Watsky! is inside paintings and the camera travels through the painting to interact in the scene. This requires lots of props as he is dressed up to fit into the paintings. The effect is done by having a scene with a very tiny green screen on the wall, about the size of an A4 piece of paper. This acts as the next painting and that's what the camera is going to "travel" through. The camera is on a track through out all of the painting scenes. and Watsky! walks backwards and interacts with things in the scene. 

This creates a very nice effect as it looks like the video is all done in one take whereas it is changing scenes. however this would require lots of set building as it would need to look like a different location each time. I may use this technique for a transition but not for a whole video. To make the painting look like it is going past the camera they first need to start the next scene with a Trombone shot. This adds the effect of depth the the video layered onto the green screen and makes the transition easier. 

Passing props from scene to scene

Like in "Dent In The Moon", Another video by Watsky! uses a similar effect. "Strong as an Oak" often has three videos playing side by side and they pass props in between them whilst staying lip-synced. The aspect ration is also smaller than the window that it is played in and there are three colours that show which character is on scene, as they are all played by Watsky!. There are actions that are synced in the video that can be jump cutted to from any of the characters. This creates a very nice effect of a fluid video between three narratives.

Experiments with Over Cranking DRAFT

This is the video that we got after doing a group exercise on over cranking. Over cranking is where you record and double the frame rate but play it back at half the speed. However, you also do all actions twice as fast creating a strange effect of almost slow motion but not. 

Lighting

We used a range of different techniques to try and create this video. We started by learning about setting up the area which we would be shooting. We learnt about lighting and key terms such as key lighting, which is the most important light in the scene and we had it on a 45 degree angle to the camera. This highlighted the subject in the scene but not the area around him. We also learnt about back lighting which we used to highlight the background of the scene in our video. We also used a fill light to fill a part of the scene which was dark to give the scene equal lighting throughout.

Datamoshing

Datamoshing is a term used when you intentionally used compressed artefacts in a video to create a "glitch" effect.

This effect can be done in many ways. to understand how it works you first need to know how videos work. Videos are made up of two types of frames. I-frames (or key frames) and P-frames. I-frames are still images and P-frames are just instructions for the I-frame.

 P-frames show a plan of where the pixels are going to have moved in the next frame. A video will always tart with an I-frame and then depending on the set-up of the video but it will have a set amount of P-frames before another I-frame. The I-frames repeat as P-frames tend to lose the video quality.

Onto Datamoshing

Datamoshing takes advantage of the I-frames and P-frames and makes it so when you make a timeline of clips there is only one I-frame at the start. Normally there will be I-frames all the way through but an I-frame will remove the effects of the Datamosh. When you add clips in a timeline the program will convert the first frame of the clip into an I-frame. however if you set up the video in a spectific way you can delete the I-frame at the start of the new clip. This will make the last frame of the previous clip say on screen but move to the P-frames of the rest of the video.

This has been used to create music videos in the past 

The Video that brought Datamsohing to my Attention was again a video by Watsky!. Watsky! is an independent artist who uses YouTube as a for of distribution. He has recently (02/09/14) released a new album called "All You Can Do" and has been using different techniques in each of the videos. This is the video for "Bet Against Me" 

There are different ways to do the effects that are happening over the datamoshing like the water effect at the first chord of the Guitar. This is done by taking the last P-frame and copying it over and over again. This will creat some problems though for me as i will be trying to lip-sync my video so I will have to be careful because i will need to replace frames or the video will be out slightly. 

I feel that this technique works with this song as i has a distorted Guitar that is playing the song but the guitar isn't playing often to force multiple cuts, as the transitions are happening on the chords. The effect also works as the camera isn't stationary while shooting. All of the shots are done on pans or zooms. what really interested me about this video was at 1.49 where its coming to the end of the song and the background singers are just repeating "bet against me" but Watsky!'s head is spinning but it will datamosh to it spinning the other way. This is done by Watsky! standing on a rotating platform. I really like this effect and will try to use it, if i have an option to do so. 

Age restrictions on music videos

This link will take you go the article in the guardian where it is discussed

This shouldn't effect me as my music video should be done before this comes into action but it is something to bear in mind as music videos would have to be tailored differently to even get to their target audience without being blocked.