The Editing Begins

Despite not having a digital copy of the song. I have begun to edit the video by using the sound that was recorded on the camera. This means that I can just sync up and replace the camera sound with the sound track later on. I have started off by putting together the intro, which consists of the band walking into the music room and getting set up. I have cut between the two shots of them walking in to create a smooth transition. As they begin to set up, I cut to a shot of the lead singer plugging in his amp. I then jumped back to the shot of them getting ready. Once they are ready, it jumps to a close up shot of the lead singer saying "LET'S GO!!".

So far that is all the editing that has been done. The introduction has been completed. I am pleased with it, but I think it would look more interesting if we would have taken more close up shots and cut away shots of the band getting ready. Unfortunately, at this stage, we don't have enough time to take anymore shots, the band are busy revising for their exams and organizing another filming day would be too much hassle. We have no choice but to plow on with the editing and do the best we can.

During the editing, two problems have arisen. I started off by editing the introduction at home on my own computer, I didn't realize that I was using a different version of Final Cut (the editing software) to the version they have at college. When I tried to use open my file in the college's Final Cut, it said that the file I was trying to upload was to new. This meant I had to re edit the introduction on the college laptop. The second problem that has occurred is to do with the rendering time. The laptops that we are using are slightly out of date, which means that rendering takes a very long time. During todays lesson I have had to wait over an hour for clips to render. This is slowing drastically slowing down the editing process.

Another dilemma

Today we went to go and pick up the sound track from the band. They had planned to record the track in the music studio on tuesday. When we got there they said that they weren't allowed to record the track until after half term. We told them that this wasn't an option for us as we have to complete the video by next friday. We talked to the head of the music department, to see if they could use the music studio during the next few days. She said that she could fit them in on tuesday next week. This is good but it means that we have to wait even longer for the track, and it doesn't give us a long time to complete the video once we have the track.

We finally have a band

Yesterday, we were told that we needed to get our act together. We had been searching for a band for a long while and still had no results. This called for drastic action. We walked over to the music block hoping for a miracle. We approached the head of the music department to ask her if she new of any bands that would be up to the task. To our great delight, she said that she knew of a band that were very talented and would be up to the heroic task. The next day we met up with "Post" to discuss what they wanted to see in the video. They didn't have preference. So it was down to the mighty team of Doug, Scott, Holly and Daniel to come up with the goods. They said that they rehearse on fridays at 10:30am till 12:30pm. On the friday morning we collected our equipment and set off in the direction of the music studio. When we got there, there were only two of the band members present. This gave us a lot of time to set up and make sure everything was working at optimum quality. Once all the band members were present, we started shooting. I was directing the video, it was my job to tell scott (the camera man) which angles to shoot at. It was holly's to set up th equipment, and do a safety check of the room. Once holly had deemed the area to be safe, we were ready to film. The first shot that we filmed was of the band walking into the room and getting set up. We filmed this from two angles so that we could cut between them during the editing process. The next shot was a close up of the lead singer plugging in his guitar amp. After this we filmed the band performing the whole song three times and filmed it from three different angles. We had some good shots but we got the band to perform the song once more so that we could take some cut away shots of feet tapping, interesting angles etc. These small shots will be perfect for making the final video look more interesting.

Choosing a Band

After doing the research for bands and solo artists in the local area, we decided to contact Alice Wilkinson to see if she would be available to film a music video. She unfortunately declined the offer, so we then needed to find another artist.

Recently, choosing a band has been tricky. Even though there are four of us in a group, only Scott new a local band. "Forest" are an indie rock band that have recorded their music proffessionally but have yet to produce music videos to go with their tracks. We contacted them to see if they would be up for filming. This conversation lasted about 5 days because the band couldn't find a day where they were all free. By this time, other groups in the class had already got their footage and were ready to start editing. This made us pick up the pace. We told "Forest" that we didn't need all of them to be in the video, we only needed one or two members to make the video. But once again, the band couldn't get their act together, and they all said that they couldn't find time to film. This was a shame, we had been trying to organise a filming day for the whole week and at the last minute the band gave up on us. We are now at a "loose end", we need a band fast otherwise we may risk missing the deadline for this project.

It is interesting that the two acts we have contacted have declined our offer for a free music video. Many bands would "kill" for a professional music video. Maybe people aren't taking us seriously enough because we are students, they underestimate our talents.

Music Video Lesson 1

Today we were told about our music video challenge, and what it involves. This project will be different in comparison to our last music video. Instead of producing a video which we are acting in, we have been set the challenge of approaching a local band and offering to make them a music video. This project is designed to make us approach our tasks in a more professional way, and prepare us for the big wild world of work. Having to contact local bands will vastly improve our communication skills. At some point we will also have to set up a filming date, in which our group and the band/artist meet up and record footage for the up and coming video. This will have to be organised, and therefore will improve our organisation skills. Like the other group projects we have done in the past, one of the main aims for me is to work well with the other members of my group. A group of people that get on well can work quickly and efficiently, this is what I hope our group will achieve.

The first task of this project was to get ourselves into groups of four. I paired up with Holly, Scott and Stephen. Once in groups, we were given a large A3 sheet between us. On this sheet we were meant to note down as many local bands and solo artists as we could. This would give us a wide variety of bands to choose from. Scott was not here during this lesson, but we powered on regardless. With Stephen and I searching for local bands on the internet, and Holly writing them down as we found them, we soon had a sheet filled with bands and artists from all kinds of music genres. One of the artists that "caught our eye" was Alice Wilkinson: a Pop/R&B singer from Cherry Hinton Cambridge. After listening to a few of her tracks on Youtube, we all decided that we liked the genre of music she was singing and her unique voice.

Love Spin Video

When I first saw the love spin video, I was struck by the "seamlessness" of the animation. One of the things I first picked up on, was that there is very little link between the song lyrics and the video. This could be a reflection of the artist's personality. Although the video looked "seamless" the first time I watched it, after watching it for the second time, I noticed that many of the moving objects/characters stopped moving when they got to a certain place on the turn table. As the turn table moves, new objects replace old objects, the viewer disregards objects as they start to move away, and begin to focus on the new objects that have appeared. This is the reason for the motionless objects. I also noticed some "flaws" in the animation, many of them are hard to spot, and can only be noticed when you are looking for them. But I think that this animation should contain a few faults, it gives the video "character", and leaves the audience in no doubt that the animation is stop motion, and not computer generated imagery.

When many people watch this video, they may think that the video has no meaning or storyline. I would definitely disagree with this. The way I see it, the story its based around the little blue character at the beginning. The video is about his search for love. His endless struggle to find love is shown by the countryside, houses and cities passing him by. At the end of the video, it is clearly shown that he finally finds true love. The video ends where it started, the only difference is he is not sitting alone anymore.


The big difference between the beginning and end scenes, is that the plant in the centre has bloomed and grown flowers. This supports both my theories. The flower is a symbol that represents "love", and the time it took to bloom also shows his lifetime struggle to find love.

BLU Style Character Video/Evaluation

Overall I am very pleased with my "BLU" style animation. Like a "Blu" animation, the movement from frame to frame isn't as smooth as it could be. In my mind, this show character, and tells the audience that not everything they're going to see is perfect. Although there is some "Juddering" in a couple of stages of my animation, the animation as a whole looks smooth and is "pleasing to the eye".

One of the things I think I should have done is colour in the fire that comes from the back of the rocket. Although it might not have made a huge difference to the overall image, it is something that "bugs" me when I watch it back to myself. Also during playback, I have noticed a few black lines that appear occasionally throughout the animation. This has occurred because I did not erase all of the background of a specific frame during the Photoshop process, I should have "cleaned up" the Photoshop layers more thoroughly. But this is a minor set back, and can only be seen when you are looking for mistakes. The last aspect of my animation that I should have changed is the length of time the eyes shut. During the animation, the rocket's eyes shut twice, because of the speed of the animation it is hard for the audience to spot. I should have either made the eyes shut for longer, or I could have slowed down the animation by adding more frames and less movement space between each frame. This would have allowed the audience to pick up on the blinking eyes.
Despite it's "floors", with this animation I think I have captured the essence of "BLU's" animation. This project has taught me a huge amount about how an animation is put together. I have learnt how to make an animation using Photoshop. It takes a lot of dedication and time to be an animator, and I have gained a huge amount of respect for people that work in animation.




3P2 DOUG - BLU-STYLE CHARACTER LOOP 2 from Long Road Applied Media Diploma on Vimeo.

Character Loop Video/Evaluation

I was told to go out and take a photograph of a wall around the college, this photograph would later become the background for my character loop. As my animation consists of a moving rocket, I decided to go and look around for something it could fly over or under. After wondering for a while I soon came across a low balcony, I took a photograph of it thinking that the rocket could on to it or even off it. I was pleased with this photo, but I new I could do better. I then walked over to the gym. The gym itself, has a curved roof. I took a photo' of it thinking the rocket could use the curved shape of the roof as a ramp. This was an "ok" shot but I still preferred the previous one. As I was walking back to class I passed the music block, the wall I was walking passed had a small circular window in the middle of it. I suddenly had an epiphany and thought that my rocket to do a "loop the loop" around the window. I took a photo of it and headed back to class.
The Character loop was previously put into photoshop. So I imported the photograph into Photoshop and place the layer underneath all of the other layers containing frames. I then needed to get rid of the white background on each of the frames so that the new background (the photograph) could be seen. This task was difficult at first, it was hard to get rid of all the white on every frame. When I cycled through the frames to check them, there was always specks of white that I had missed when using the Photoshop eraser tool. It took me some time, but I soon managed to get rid of all the white.
The final stage was to place all the separate layers onto Photoshop's animation timeline. Once I had placed all the layers onto the timeline, I was able to play back the whole animation to see how it looked. I was pleased with the outcome, the whole animation was smooth and there were no anomalies or noticeable faults in the animation during playback.
The very last thing I did was to export it as a "Quicktime" movie file. This process was simple, I went up to "file", "Export" and then "Render". I chose a place to save the file on the desktop. Once the file had been converted and was on the desktop, it was ready to upload to vimeo.
Looking at the video now, I am very pleased. The animation runs smoothly, and I am happy with the colours I have chosen for the rocket's body. One problem I have noticed is that the rocket's wheels do not move in a completely circular motion, this problem has arisen because I did not draw out the paper frames as neatly as I could have done, I should have taken more care over the drawing stages so that certain aspects of my animation would have run smoother. Although I am pleased with my character loop, it looks a bit boring when the rocket is moving in a straight line all the time. When it comes to turning into a "BLU" style animation, I am seriously considering making it fly. By doing this, the finished video will hold the audiences attention for longer and keep them interested.

Lemon Jelly History/The Shouty Track

History

Lemon Jelly is a British electronic music duo from London. Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen grew up together amongst the same group of friends, but at this stage they did not know each other as well. Their friendship grew and they became good friends, but soon after this they both went their seperate ways. Franglen gave up his job to become a studio programmer, and Deakin moved to Edinburgh for 10 years to become a DJ and he also co founded a graphics atrs company called "Airside". As their jobs were linked by the same industry, they would often bump into each other at concerts. Their friendship began to form again because of this. The duo then started recording music together. This is when they chose the name "Lemon Jelly", they got the idea for the name when Franglen walked into Deakin's kitchen and said "It smells like lemon jelly in here". The name stuck and they continued to record under this name. Between the years of 1998 and 2000 "Lemon Jelly" released three albums (The Bath, The yellow and The midnight) on their own record label: "Impotent Fury". They were all a key success, which later led to them being signed to XL Recordings. Through this label the duo released an album that contained a collaboration of the songs from their albums. The album "Lemonjelly.ky." was widely released later in 2000.      

Today, Fred Deakin and Nick Franglen are pursuing solo careers. But Nick Franglen stated that they may well work together again in the future. Lemon Jelly's updated website states that they are "Not Dead, But Sleeping". 

('64-'95) -'79 aka "The Shouty Track"

I enjoyed watching lemon jelly's " the shouty track". The intro to the video in my opinion is very strong. The way the characters are drawn onto the page before they start moving is very pleasing and interesting to watch. The intro also shows an interesting transition between each shot, black pen is scribbled over the page until the shot fades to black. I think this is a really clever transition and keeps in the boundaries of the pen and paper theme. The video then moves onto the head banging scene, this is when you first see the characters fully animated. The frames per second has been reduced to give the character's movements sudden. One of the nice subtle touches in this video, is the way the paper background moves slightly between frames. But do not be fooled, the video has been digitally animated rather than animated like a "flick book", the evidence for this lies 
One of the main interesting things about this video is that the visuals hold no relation to the words that are being sung. This renders the video almost pointless, but maybe Deakin and Franglen wanted to put forward the idea that music does not need a point, it's just nice to listen too. 
As the video continues, scenes of graphic violence and random events occur, such as a character being shot out of a cannon, point blank into a wall. The pen scribble is used more and more as the video progresses but in different ways. It is used to resemble a crowed "moshing" whilst various items are being thrown across the room, and it is also used to depict grass. The video ends with the pen scribble chasing the two main characters off the page. In a way this makes the pen their God, the pen created them so it has the power to destroy them.