Post + Filming

So it turns out that Post was available for filming! Yesterday we contacted the band and they agreed to filming a music video today which has been a huge relief to us; we'd be meeting up and filming in a spare room in the music block.We spent the rest of yesterday planning what we could do and concluded that we're going to have to settle for just a performance due to time constraints.

We brought the equipment which included a laptop (for offloading data onto), my camera (plus an SD card), tripod and dolly. We planned to start filming at 10:30 in the music block at the college, but one of the band members didn't show up until after 11, so we took some time to get some shots of the room. To make the time more productive, we asked the present band members to set up their equipment and start playing the song, we could film each band member individually to give us more footage for the video.

Our setting was particularly bland, but that was a consequence of running out of time to find a band and organize early on. Beyond filming the entire performance somewhere else (not an option at this point), we could perhaps add a narrative or a story-line to cut between during the performance (which was also unlikely given the time restraints). The band knew the song and were able to play it from start to finish, they played the song several times and as we filmed it from a variety of angles.

Whilst filming, I acted as the cameraman. I was in charge of ensuring we got a good set of shots and effective camera angles that made the scene look more interesting. I also was in charge of using the equipment such as the trip-pod and dolly which I combined to get some interesting moving shots. I was chosen for this role mainly because I was most familiar with the camera we used which requires a lot of manual setting changes in order for the video to look good. I changed the video quality to be 720p which is high definition (1280x720), this makes the video lower quality than full HD 1080p (1920x1080) but of smaller file size and of higher frame-rate.

 File size for the video was an important variable to consider as it allows us to fill up our small SD card (which is roughly 8Gb) with more video than if we used full HD, which translates to less time spent offloading the video onto the laptop (to allow for more space on the SD card to film) and less time editing later on (larger video files with higher definitions take longer to load and edit on the computer). Halfway through our session the camera's memory filled up and we had to offload all the video data onto the laptop we had at hand; this was frustrating because the laptop was slow and this took 10 minutes or so which was precious time we could have spent filming before we had to leave. This could have been solved by using a larger SD card such as 16GB or 32GB instead of 8GB. Battery power wasn't a concern as I had fully charged it before the shoot, but ideally I should have brought extra batteries in-case we ran out of power.


We got the band to play the song 6~ times, with three of those spent filming the band directly from the front, from the right side and from the left side. With the other takes I moved around the room to film band members from different angles and more obsqure positions such as from the floor looking up. I'm satisfied with the shots, but I can't help but feel we were cut-off by the 12:00pm deadline we had to clear out the room; I think there was more we could have filmed and from more angles and positions. Having more footage would have made the edit more interesting which is something we need to compensate for the lake of narrative or variety of the performance.


Doug was in charge of directing the shoot. He got the band to preform when we wanted to and re-arranged them around the room to get the ideal set-up. For example, he arranged the band members to walk into the room and allowed for me to film them doing so, giving us a shot to use for the introduction of the music video. Holly was with us as well, taking photos of us working and of the band preforming to use as evidence for the write-up and for the paperwork we've been creating detailing our process. She was also assisting us by ensuring all of the equipment was ready to be used and went to Steve's classroom to pickup the laptop and dolly. Unfortunately Dan was not available as he was ill.

Once we were done with the shooting, we offloaded all of the footage onto the laptop to ensure we had a copy of all the footage. Seeing as Post's schedule is more flexible than Forest's, we should be able to get in contact and film something more in-case we don't have enough footage to edit with. Strangely though, Post don't have a recorded version of the music they had been preforming (something you could listen to on a computer). We've asked them to record a version for us, as our task for the music video is to lip-sync the footage with a soundtrack, which obviously isn't possible if there's nothing to use. Hopefully we'll get the recorded version soon enough so we can start editing.

A-band-oned!

We now longer have a band to use! After much discussion with the band Forest, it's become clear that the band as a whole will not be available for filming over the next few weeks. We can get individual members to be available on certain days but unfortunately we need the whole band to be able to shoot this music video; a combination of exams, busy schedules and the run-up to the end of college have been to blame. We our only option now is to look for other bands who will be available to film. We only have a week and a few days to organize, film and edit a music video!

We've been looking for different bands that could fill the role. Holly began by looking at the "top 5 chart in Cambridge" through her work at a local radio station; this was a good place to look for aspiring bands who would be willing to preform in a music video. I wasn't there for it, but Holly found and contacted the local band 'Varsity' who were actually available to film on that night. Unfortunately, neither me more Dan were at college at the time and the other team members didn't have the necessary equipment to film them, therefore we let them go. We're running out of time and we're unlikely to be able to do anything special with this music video which is very disappointing and a bit disheartening for our group. 

As a last-ditch effort we went to the Long Road music department to ask if they had any idea if there were any bands there that would be willing to be part of a music video. They told us that the band 'Post' might be able to preform for us and that we should get in contact with them. Hopefully having a band literally next-door to us should prove to be easier.

Equipment Hire

We are permitted to use the college's equipment, but for the sake of creating this video we decided we would look what professional equipment we could possibly hire for use during filming in addition to what we already had to use.

First and foremost, we needed somewhere accessible we could hire equipment from that was at least somewhere close. With a bit of research we concluded that there was nowhere in Cambridge that was offering professional grade filming equipment, therefore we needed to look outside the box. We eventually found a location near Stansted Airport that offered a huge range of top-tier grade equipment. We then proceeded to look up the various pieces of equipment we needed.

vmi.tv

Camera
We had been using DSLR cameras in our other photography work inside college and we've become quite used to using them; whilst we've been using them for taking photos, they offer the ability to film high definition video. We've been looking at the results on video sites such as YouTube and we're thoroughly impressed at the quality of video produced. Based on those factors, we wanted to use a DSLR instead of a traditional video camera to record our footage. We picked the Canon 5D Mark II as it was a good trade-off between great quality and cost.
Daily rate:  £80


Tri-pod
A tripod is a stand a camera can be mounted on, extended and moved around to get a stable shot. We wanted some of our shots to be still and stable, therefore a tri-pod is pretty much essential for us.
Daily rate: £15









SD Card
Filming HD footage requires a lot of digital memory as multiple video files are large in size. We wanted a large sized SD card (the type of storage a DSLR uses) so we wouldn't have to worry about running out space to record footage. Once we complete filming, we can simply plug the SD card directly into the computer and import the footage; it's easier than using a camera which has storage built into it.
Daily rate: £18




Dolly
Dolly's are movable platforms can be attached to tripods or to cameras. Moving a dolly that has an attached camera translates to smooth movements in the recorded footage. We wanted to experiment with this video a little so we thought it would be a good idea to try using one of these. Dollys come in all shapes in sizes, but we wanted to keep it simple and chose on that could be attached to the bottom of a tripod.
Daily rate: £15






Computer
This will be essential for off-loading and editing the resulting footage that we record whilst filming. We already have free access to school computers and our own personal computers at home that are already loaded with the required software we need to edit the film. But for the sake of this evaluation we will factor in the costs of hiring a computer (a MacBook Pro with Final Cut pre-installed in this case).
 Daily Rate: £100

All of the prices added up comes to about £228 per day which is far beyond what we'd be willing to spend to shoot this music video. We're unsure of all of the dates we will need to be filming on as we may need additional days to film more, therefore our expenses would skyrocket for every additional day we filmed. We decided we wanted to negate these costs by looking for equipment we could readily acquire for free which meant asking our team members and / or college. In the end, we were able to get the dolly, tripod and computer from the school whilst we planned to use my own camera (Canon 550D) and memory card. By doing this, we effectively negated the costs down to nothing. If we were in need of equipment under certain circumstances (such as my camera breaking) we'd be ready to hire out equipment from vmi.tv and pick them up from Stansted.

Narrative Ideas + Film Planning

We took Forest's ideas they wanted for the video and plotted them down on a spider diagram in addition to our own ideas. We had traditional ideas such as walking around cambridge while singing the song, but overall we were most interested in thre idea of filming with an audience of toys as it was an interesting and adds a good degree of humor (which engages the audience well). We decided that we really liked the idea and wanted to focus on that. But before we start arranging for the collection and purchasing of these toy props, we would need to decide on when we were filming. Ideally we would have liked to film it this following weekend (5th and 6th) but unfortunately I'm away for the entirity of it. I wanted to be there for filming so we suggested that we film next thrusday. There was a problem with this as their lead band member (Henry) would only be able to film this saturday while only two other band members (Jack and Peter) would only be available to film on thursday for a couple of hours. We were running out time so I told the band that we would be willing to do something with only two band members available.

With only two members available, we'll be unable to do something sophiscated such as the toy idea because it'll require a lot of effort from numerous people, not to mention it wouldn't work as well with only two members. We'll have to do something more traditional; I was thinking of going to a nice scenic area such as a lake and having them rest thier backs agaisnt a tree while singing. We could then do cut-away shots in our time to another narrative to make the video more interesting. We'll keep in contact with the band to see if anything changes.

Forest's Song - The Great Greens

We contacted the band and found the song they'd ideally preform was 'The Great Greens'. This is one of their feautured songs and the one they feel would be the most benefiticial track to be acomplianed by a music video.

We looked up the track on SoundCloud.com which a social network for music artists who can freely upload their tracks and projects for others to comment and listen to. After we were told they wanted to do this track we went to their SoundCloud profile and listened to the song. This allowed us to gather a general 'feel' for the track to allow us to start coming up with concepts for both the narriative and the preformance.

Using a revived technqiue we used for another music video, we began to map out what happens at particular points of the song. We listened to the and recorded notable events, transitions or changes at the relevant points on the timeline. Vocals such as 'ooohs' and transitions between different parts of the song were important to note down because they would make for good points to include cut-away shots in the edit. Being able to map these out to specific times would help us in the edit to determine how long different sections of the vidoe should be and give us opportunities to cut to parts of the narrative.

We took to Facebook and invited all the members of the band and all the members of our groups into a group discussion we could all contribute to. We asked them straight away about what kind of narrative and ideas they would like for the video and they were quick to provide a potential storyline. Dominic (of the band Forest) brought up his idea; the band could be prefroming in a threatre setting and cut-away shots could reveal that the audience are infact toys rather than people. This would allow for a lot of funny cuts and seqeunces such as Dom's suggestion as a cut-away shot to a particular toy looking into the camera followed by a closeup of a band member winking back. In the later half of the video the band would be shown destryoing the toys, ripping them up, smashing their guitars into doll play-houses. The song could end with toys falling from the cieling and 'attacking' the band members.

Planning - Forest

Stephen's band was unfortunately being used by his own music video group, so we had to rule them out while deciding on what band to use. Another option opened up for us as I remembered I had a group of friends who went to Hills Road Sixth Form College who have their own band. The band is called 'Forest' and is an indie band that preforms in Cambridge at local venues. They're a five member band consisting of several guitar players including a vocalist and a drummer.

The music video would be of mutual benefit as Forest currently don't have one and we would be able to create one and document it for the project. I'm friends with the group so in theory it will be easy to contact and arange the filming with them.

New Music Video

Today we have been given a new task: create a new music video. The video has to be made in co-operation with a local band who preform in Cambridge; it's up to us to organize all the aspects from planning, production to post-production. We've arranged ourselves into groups to work on the project; I'm working with Dan, Doug and Holly.

First of all we would need to decide what band we're going to be filming, then we would follow that up by deciding on the details of filming such as location, time and equipment needed. We created a mind map to see what bands we could ask to film. One of our classmates is in a band himself, which means we immediately have an option.

We came up with this shortlist for bands we could get ahold of:

• Prince Among Thieves
• Alice Wilkinson 
• Lewis Mokler
• Total Emergyency

We then started to narrow down our choices from these four. Prince Among Thieves is a large band, therefore they would be harder to organise and get together for the production so we ruled them out. Stephen's band (Total Emergency), and the solo artists (Lewis Molker and Alice Wilkinson) would make for easier choices. We will then decide between these three then start contacting them in order of prefrence to see if they're available.

Practitioner: Ben Blair

Ben Blair, An aspiring character animator came into class recently to talk of how he got into the field of professional animation and how he's working his way up the ranks in the industry. Currently, Ben is working under the guidance of mentors at DreamWorks with some of the world's most skilled animators.

Ben Blair

He talked about how he became interested in animation after completing a media course (similar to ours) whilst at sixth form. He went on to experiment and teach himself how to use animation software and packages such as Adobe's creative suite and blender, ultimately applying for the 'Maya Fast Track' course at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. Maya is considered to be the industry standard 3D animation software; it is difficult to learn but extremely rewarding to master. Ben explained to us that if we are looking to become experts in animation we should learn as early as possible how to use the tools and software the industry has come to adopt.

 He emphasized learning whilst in and beyond college will give us an advantage over others looking to get jobs in the same profession as employers will choose candidates they won't have to train as much to use their software. On that note, Ben told us an interesting fact that many studios will buy software (such as Maya) and have their own programmers edit and change it in ways that will be suitable for them. For example, some studios may have customized software that allows them to create water simulations for easily than the base software. Despite this, knowing how to use the base software will make it easy to adapt to the customization and again, making you a better choice for employers.

Ben introduced us to various websites that offered online courses and tutorials for us to use if we were interested in learning the various packages that the industry used.

iAnimate.net

This site offers numerous online workshops and tutorials to help aspiring animators get their character animations up to studio-level quality. Participants use top-tier grade software and engage with professionals currently working in the industry to review their work and improve their skills; they engage in 1-to-1 online video chats in which the mentor can see and comment on their work in real time. Ben recommended this choice as it was a great way to get experience from those working in top animation studios and learn how to polish their animation to levels that would meet employment standards in the animation industry.

The Gnomon Workshop

This is another site that users can kind tutorials and online workshops by those already in the industry. Ben personally used this site for their 'Maya fast track' to quickly learn how to get to gripes with the program. They offer many specialized workshops and tutorial courses in different areas of animation and model design. The site uses a subscription based model that varies depending on what courses and tutorials the user is interested in learning.

Animation Mentor

Instead of individual workshops and tutorials, animation mentor focuses around a more 'traditional' model of having courses students can apply to for certain amounts of time and for terms for example, a course could take over 10 months whilst another could take 3. The courses vary from the 'complete' package that teachers students everything they need to know to work as a professional animator from beginner or more specialized courses such as animal animation.

Ben also showed us a variety of other websites such as more common video tutorial websites such as Video Co-pilot which is focused around visual effects and other sites that offer tutorials for all major design programs.



Ben also gave us advice on creating demo reels for use when applying for university or for a job in the industry. He told us we should treat it like a story, progressing in a way that shows off your 'creative flair' and has maximum impact for the viewer, only showing off your best work. To maintain the rhythm for the demo reel, Ben recommended we put some serious thought into what kind of music we overlay the presentation with; music sets the tone for anything its associated with therefore what we chose should reflect what we're trying to portray. Using music that is too 'mainstream' will reflect badly, unless it is somehow directly related to the content of the demo reel, using beats are lesser-heard music will go further in helping to sell your demo reel.

Beyond animation and software, Ben also told us a bit what it's like following his dream and being outside college; working for real clients and making money has changed him and his behaviors and no longer finds himself procrastinating from his work. The message he wanted us to understand was start working your way into creative professions - such as an animator - as soon as you can, whether that's building a web of useful contacts or learning the tools of the trade. Overall, I found Ben's talk very insightful and helpful for deciding on how to get into the studios that power the creative industry.

Final BLU style animation

I have completed my BLU style animation using Adobe After Effects. I attempted to try and re-create some of the elements from the BLU graffiti video. Below is the animation combined with a simple audio track:



I started off by taking my distorted ghost animation (see previous post) and implementing it over a photograph. I went out with a digital camera and took many photos of a particular spot in the college; my original plan was to have the ghost flying around the side of a wall and off into the distance. The animation was disorientating as the ghost moved past various photos (like a scrolling game) that looked alike . I tried to fix the animation by stiching the photos together like a panorama which had poor results - I stuck to using only one photograph.

Example of a panorama photograph

Photograph I used for the final animation

Using the same principles as animating parts of the character in Adobe After Effects (see this post), I animated the position of the ghost animation to move about the screen. I grouped the animation into its own composition so it could be animated as a single object rather than a collection of body parts (also explained in aforementioned post) so I could animate the position property (move it around over time). I created the movement animation for the ghost and applied motion blur and eased the motion to make it smoother. For some parts of the video the ghost also moves through 3D space; I did this by enabling the ghost animation to be a 3D object giving it the ability to move and rotate along the Z axis as well as the X and Y axis's. The usual animation principles still apply even in 3D space.

There are paint splatters on the wall where the ghost appears. I achieved this effect by taking paint splatters from my licensed stock footage pack (Riot Gear - shown below) and placing them over the wall and resizing them. I set them all to be 0% opaque and animated them in a sequence to appear once the ghost moved over them; I wanted to try and re-create the paint effect that BLU used in his video when a character moved along a wall.



The video shakes as a whole which implies it was filmed as a video without a tri-pod or support. I did this by creating a null object (an object with no information) and applied a random movement expression (called a wiggle) to it. I parented all of the other elements of the video (the photograph, ghost and paint) which allowed them to move along with null object - this creates the illusion the video is shaking as a whole as if it was being filmed when in reality it is a still image. To make the pseudo-video effect I added a subtle brightness colour correction that randomised to make it appear as if there was a camera that was receiving different levels of light as it moved around.

Overall I am pretty satisfied with the animation. I think if I had more time there would be more I could do to it to make it more convincing. I think with the camera shake I could have made it very jerky in the same fashion as the ghost animation to make it seem as if it was a series of photographs rather than a video that was being taken. If I wanted to get very serious with this I could animate the paint so it appeared around the outlines of the ghost at a given time; this would be a convincing effect but would take up a lot of time.