Music Video
Skills Audit
Demo Work
Demo Work
Demo Work
Contents
Demo Work
Contents
> Theoretical exploration of the purpose
and application of research
> Secondary research into
music video genres, codes, conventions,
techniques, and theories
> Primary research with the
client to inform ideas development
> Focus group presentation of ideas for
feedback and review via questionnaire
survey
Moving Demo
Monday 25th April
Today was our first day back after the Easter holidays. And it started in one of the worst possible ways. My actor who was supposed to be playing the body double for the bully has said he now can’t make tomorrow’s shoot, which is the only one he needs to be in. This is very frustrating as I need the body double there as the audio has already been recorded. Additionally, as he has told me so close to filming it’s near impossible to find a replacement. However, I have come up with one solution that could save me. The scene within the classroom is portrayed as one shot quick pans to change the angle. This means the camera will be on a tripod.
So, my current plan is: I still have the actors for Cody and the student. Cody will always be animated which means we’ll never see his real face. So, I will shoot the start of the interview with Cody. When he is “interrupted” I will keep the camera stationary as it is on a tripod, then the actor for Cody can leave his current position and go move to be the body double for the bully. Then I will do the quick pan for the camera over to the bully and student. That will play out and then as I’m panning back the actor for Cody can move to the door as at this point Cody is already supposed to be leaving. Then in post production, because the camera will stay stationary due to the tripod. I should be able to just cut out the part where the actor moves. Then I can use the last frame of animation for a freeze frame to lead into the camera pan. Hopefully, this should mean that there are no obvious cuts. I think this is a pretty good plan and should work. However, I do have a backup idea which will be to use some motion blur within the quick pan to hide a cut between shots if the initial idea doesn’t work. Either way, I’m confident I can work around this problem.
I had a shoot planned for today, but first I had to have our lesson. I didn’t want to waste these three hours, so I began by updating the call sheets with the new weather, now that the weather apps were predicting weather for my shooting days. This was not too hard to do and was important to complete as it prepares me for my upcoming shoots across this next week.
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I then spent the rest of the lesson completing my logging for all the work I had completed over Easter. This included all of the audio recordings such as the voiceovers and Foley as well as the visual production I had produced such as Act 1 Scene 1. Logging is a really important process and comes in particularly useful later down the line during the post production stage. And that’s why getting it completed now is extremely useful. Additionally, I’ve made sure to complete all my easter logging now as it leaves me with time to complete the logging for my upcoming shoots without having to be dragged down by previous work that would also need to be logged. Logging all this work did take a while and I had to finish it off when I returned home however it is now completed which will hopefully help lighten my load in the upcoming days.
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At the end of the lesson I then went to Ash to pick up my equipment. I was able to pick up the camera as well as the boom pole and mic to go with the audio recorder I already had booked out. For this shoot I will be using my own tripod as there were none available to book out. When I returned home, I tested all the equipment before my shoot. The camera and all visual equipment worked fine. However, I was a bit concerned at first when I connected the boom mic to the audio recorder as there was quite a loud buzzing sound. So, I recorded me speaking then listened to it on my computer. The buzzing sound wasn’t there which is good as it means it won’t be in the recordings. I then realised what the buzzing sound most likely is. I think it’s just the sounds of the atmospherics in the room as the mic is a lot more sensitive. This makes the most logical sense, but I have confirmed it won’t interfere with my audio recording so there is no need to worry about it.
So then I was finally able to do my filming for today. Originally, I had planned to shoot a lot of different scenes today, including cutaways for Act 1 Scene 3, shots for Act 1 Scene 5 and shots for the very end of the film. However, there was nice weather today, and many of the shots I’d planned are shot inside, whereas next Monday I had planned to shoot the interview for Act 1 Scene 3 which takes place completely outside. I had checked the weather for my call sheets today and next Monday was also supposed to be nice. However, I thought it wasn’t worth risking it and so I made the decision to switch my two Monday shoots around. This does not impact me too much as they both use the same equipment and I had already planned something similar during pre-production in case of bad weather. I don’t regret this decision and believe it was the right call.
When we got to location, I began by setting up all my equipment. It was only me and the actor for Cody there which meant I was working on both audio and camera. Today, I was using the camera on a stationary tripod which made it easier. Setting up the tripod took a bit of hassle, as the ground was fairly uneven, however I know the importance of having straight shots so I made sure to take my time balancing the tripod.
Once the tripod was set up, I attached the camera, and made sure to correct the ISO, Aperture and white balance. The white balance was particularly tricky as I was shooting outside. This meant I had to correct and re-do the white balance quite often as the sun would go behind clouds or come out more. However, I had thought about this beforehand as I didn’t want to forget to do it.
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Once the camera was set up, I set up my audio equipment. Today, I was using an audio recorder attached to a boom mic and pole. I chose the fuzzy boom mic for two reasons, one was as I was shooting outside and the fuzzy mic helps to reduce wind noise and additionally the boom pole helps me to keep the microphone out of shot.
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Now that I was ready, I turned all the equipment on and began filming. As I was using both audio and visual equipment it meant I couldn’t keep a constant eye on the camera while filming as I was holding the microphone. This meant, I made sure to rewatch each take afterward to check for any obvious errors such as the microphone coming into view. Luckily no major problems occurred and although checking each shot meant I spent more time on set I think it was worth it as it would have saved me later down the line if any major problems had occurred.
Before all of the shots, I made sure to discuss with my actor about their performance. One thing I made sure to point out was about their movement. I requested they kept movements to a minimum while still looking natural. This is due to the fact that the more movement there is the more Ebysnth will struggle. Thankfully, my actor was really good and was happy with the performance I was looking for. Overall, I think they did really well with the slight limitations I had to give them.
I was able to get multiple takes for both of my angles as well as shooting the close up of the graffiti. This provided me with all the visual content I needed for today. In addition to the dialogue recording I also made sure to do about a 2 minute recording of the location natural atmospherics. This will come in handy if I need to stitch two shots audio together or to provide a backing track to the audio.
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Overall, I believe this has been an incredibly successful shoot and I’ve briefly looked over the footage and listened to the recordings and I’m confident that they’ll be able to work well within my piece.
Tuesday 26th April
Today’s shoot was the one I was the most worried for. After losing one of my actors for today there were many things that could go wrong which could then potentially ruin the whole shoot. And with the booking of the location this is the one shoot which would be the hardest to re-organise.
The first problem would’ve been any of my other actors having to cancel. To try to prevent this, I contacted them the day before as well as this morning to double check that they still good for filming. They both confirmed they were and so no problem arose from this.
The other major problem was if the location was in use. I had pre-booked it but there was always the chance it was being used. When we arrived a lecturer was in there, and so I explained that I had booked the room for filming and luckily he already knew and was able to move to a different room.
So, as I had picked up additional equipment, which contained a tripod and the lighting equipment I could begin filming.
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I began by shooting Act 2 Scene 2 which is the interview with the student. I chose to start with this as it was the shortest scene and was very similar to what I had been shooting yesterday which meant that I already had practice. I began with setting up the lighting and camera. I’m really glad I had lighting today as I feel it really helped with the look of my shots.
The only challenge I had with this scene was that there was a slight reflection in the window behind them. I realised about halfway through that part of the other actor (who was behind the camera) was visible. However, it is only very noticeable when the actor was moving. So I made sure that in the next few I recorded the two of us behind the camera stood as still as possible. Aside from this I’m quite happy with how these shots went.
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One of the hardest shots I had for today was shot 28 which I discussed yesterday. Because I had lost an actor the Cody actor also had to step up and play the bully. To do this shot, I did exactly as I planned yesterday and there is a short video on my production page which runs through how I did this. Aside from that I didn’t run into any problems while recording this shot and I’m fairly confident that my plan from yesterday will work meaning the final shot will look how I originally intended. One thing my actor pointed out was that within this shot you see the lighting (that was being used for Cody’s interview) as the camera pans. However, this is actually intentional. This scene is the start of the “documentary” falling apart as well as Cody’s breakdown. And so by showing the lighting, it breaks down the fourth wall showing that everything so far has been part of the “documentary” that’s being made.
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My penultimate shot was the shot that has changed the most. For Act 2 Scene 3 Cody storms out where the cameraman and boom operator follow him as he leaves he tells them to leave him alone and animation bursts out of him. Originally I had planned to do this outside, however there were a lot more people moving around outside than I had predicted. This led to me altering my decision and instead opting to shoot it outside of the classroom location as it had a long corridor that would also work for this scene. However, here I ran into another problem. At the end of the corridor a class was working with the door open. And not wanting to disrupt them I opted to change it yet again. Instead of rushing down the corridor, Cody would now rush down the stairs which he came up to, to get to the classroom. There is a small landing which I felt would also work for the exploding animation. And although this scene has differed quite drastically from the original plan, I’m still fairly confident it will serve it’s purpose as part of the climax in the story.
And so to finish off my shoot I shot a couple videos with my phone and gimbal of the Cody actor walking up the stairs to the classroom. This was fairly easy to do and will simply be spliced up in the edit to create the shots leading up to Cody’s disrupted interview.
Overall, I’m very happy with how this shoot went and the footage I’ve gained from it are definitely what I was aiming for.
Now that my shoot was finished it was lesson time. I began the lesson by John informing me of my results for the Options project. He told me I had got Distinctions throughout and I was very happy with this result. He also explained that he was the lecturer who has been assigned to monitor and mark my work for the FMP. This is probably a good decision as John has the most experience with animation and my piece contains a decent amount of animation. John also had a quick look through my pre-production work and said it all seemed to be there and to a good standard. This is really good and hopefully means there won’t be too many things I need to change about it.
Finally, I spent the rest of my day logging all my shots and audio recordings from yesterday and today. This was quite a long process however, it’s really good to get this completed today as it allows for me to continue production with less on my plate as well as meaning I’ve 100% finished all the work needed for the productions I’ve already shot.
Wednesday 27th April
I had a dentist appointment today which meant I had to miss the lesson. Luckily, the work I planned to complete today was able to be completed from home. Today was the start of making the smaller animated sections for my Project. However, today were focused on the drawings for Cody’s animated room and the Images of Cody growing up.
I started with making Cody’s animated room. This is for Act 3 Scene 2 when the Director visits Cody. On the day I shot this scene, I made sure to record a small clip of the room from the POV where the director stands at the door. I then took a frame of this video and used it as my reference for creating the animated version. Avoiding the door and side of the wall that was in shot I outlined everything in black. I did this all freehand using my drawing tablet as I felt if all the lines were perfectly straight it would remove some of the animated feel to it. And I didn’t want the drawing to feel to artificial. I then coloured this drawing in and added Cody in his breakdown costume. I completed this all in photoshop as I have a large amount of practice and experience within Photoshop thanks to my GCSE’s as well as I used it for a large amount of my options project. This drawing is what will be added onto the greenscreen from the original video for Act 3 Scene 2.
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The second piece of animation work today was the creation of Cody’s childhood photo. I needed 5 different drawings in total for these. One each for; Baby; Toddler; Primary School; Secondary School and Cody currently.
For current Cody I used a frame from my Act 1 Scene 3 production as this image will be used to transition into that interview. However, for the other drawings I decided to use stock photos. I felt this was the best decision as they’re free to use and I wouldn’t need permission from the people in the photo. However, as an additional precaution, all the people who weren’t acting as Cody in the images, I blurred. This was just to make doubly sure that no problems arose from the use of stock images.
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To actually create the images, I used photoshop and the same technique that I used for the animated room. To make sure all my colours matched, particularly Cody’s skin and hair colour, I used the character designs from my pre-production, and these came in super useful. Between the animated room and the childhood photos, I thought of the idea of using a screen recorder to make a timelapse of my creating the drawings so if you want to see the timelapses for Cody’s childhood photos head over to my FMP Production page. These childhood photos comprise Act 1 Scene 2 and provide some backstory to Cody’s life as well as being a comedic part of the piece.
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Overall, I’m very happy with the work I completed today, especially the childhood photos and they were definitely what I was aiming to create. The work from today will be used next within my post production and help to bring Cody’s side of life into the final piece.
Thursday 28th April
As I had completed my drawings yesterday, it meant the only piece of work I had to complete today was the short animation for Act 1 Scene 4. In this scene the Doctor briefly mentions their theory about why Cody is animated, mentioning TV Waves. Then a short animation appears demonstrating what the doctor is saying.
To create this short animation, I used the skills and techniques that I had developed during my options project. This involves drawing all my frames within photoshop and then exporting them individually as PNG’s and finally collating them into the final animation within Premiere Pro. I created this animation within College which meant that I didn’t have access to my screen recorder, so for the production today, I had to resort to just screen captures.
I began the creation of my animation by first finding an appropriate image of DNA. While looking through potential ones, I realised a lot of them would be unusable as the images already looked drawn or animated. In the end I found one that looked like it could be some form of CGI, but it looked appropriately different enough to what my final one would be.
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Then taking this into photoshop, I first cut out the strand of DNA and began duplicating it and placing it around the frame to create multiple copies. I then duplicated this layer and moved their position slightly so that when put together it would look like the DNA was moving slightly.
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I then created the TV drawing that would come into frame to project the TV Waves. I used rectangles to form the base frame and then duplicated the drawing positioning them all slightly apart to create the final wave movement which is what I was going for. I then created the TV Waves which are added on once the TV stops. These contain about 12 frames of drawing each and I planned to repeat it later on to keep the wave effect.
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Then it came to the creation of the animate DNA itself. This was quite an arduous process. There were three components for it. The first DNA line, the second and finally the Chromosomes. Each of these had 12 frames and then I had to duplicate each layer and resize and reposition it onto each of the other DNA strands. This resulted in me having lots of different folders containing dozens of frames each. But thankfully because I’d put them into folders they were easier to navigate through.
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Now that all my frames were complete, I exported all of them. I separated them once again into folders to correspond with each part of the animation. This was not difficult but did take quite a long time.
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And now I could finally start the process of collating the animation. Thanks to my research into Ebsynth I now knew that you could tell Premiere to interpret PNG sequences into an image sequence which allowed me to convert the PNG’s into videos a lot easier. I had to do a little positioning and speed duration adjustment to make sure everything played in time with each other but once that was completed the base of the animation was created.
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At this point I knew I needed a background video to provide a backdrop for the animation. I found a good one which was a video of blood cells flowing throughout the body, and although the video is not scientifically accurate, I felt it worked well for what I was going for. When I put the video into the background it created a couple of problems which I needed to fix.
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The first was that because the background was comprised primarily of reds, it made the blue pieces of DNA stand out and look quite out of place. To fix this I adjusted the colour of these frames to make them more red. This made them blend in a lot more and make it seem more like one whole video.
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The only other problem was that the animated pieces of DNA had black lines which slightly blended in with the background near to the end of the video. To fix this I simply slightly turned up the exposure and black highlights in premiere just to make it stand out slightly more and this helped to fix the problem.
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And with that the animation was complete. Overall, I’m very happy with what I’ve created today and I think it will definitely work and fit in with Act 1 Scene 4 as well as the piece as a whole. I also feel the style of animation that I’ve developed through options and used today will blend in quite well with the rest of the animation that will be within my FMP final piece and that’s a really good thing.
Friday 29th April
I was a little late to College today as my bus was running about half an hour late. And as I walked in I saw everyone was surrounding one desk. Turns out we were looking at other people’s work and progress so far.
This was a really interesting thing to do and it was good to see how other people were working and the other ideas people had come up with. I also had the opportunity to display some of my work, and I showed some of the shots I had already shot as well as showing my Ebynth primary research and explaining my idea and how it will all work.
This was quite a good experience and I was able to get some good feedback and the work I’d shown. People were very interested in Ebsynth and how it worked. I showed the animated room that I created on Wednesday and people said they really liked the style of drawing that I am using and compared it to things such as the Adult Swim TV channel. One person mentioned the hand drawn style of the animated room and that is something I mentioned in my journal on Wednesday and how I wanted it to look slightly rough and so I was really glad someone picked up on that.
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On my production schedule, today was a pretty easy today. With over half of my productions behind me and a couple more in the coming days, today was a chance to check over everything I’ve done and complete any work I’d fallen behind on. However, I was up to date with all my work, particularly logging and so there was no work I had to catch up on. So I spent most of the day checking work and tidying up my WIX website.
The only major difference I made was adding to my animated room drawing, where I had realised Cody’s legs weren’t shown behind the bookcase and so it looked like he was just floating. This was a simple fix and I was able to just add them in within photoshop.
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Overall, today was useful to just collect my thoughts and work that I’ve already completed as well as looking forward to the next three days, after which my production should be completed.
Saturday 30th April
My task for today was shooting for Act 1 Scene 4 which is the Doctor’s interview. Prior to this shoot I had shot several other interviews so I was able to get the framing a lot quicker than previously. Before I shot I changed my mind about the framing and thought that I’d prefer to have the Doctor framed to the right of the screen rather than the left as I had originally planned. However, after playing with this thought I realised it wouldn’t work as the wall to the left of the actor is a shade of blue and I needed the light yellow that was consistent with the back wall. This meant I had to go with the original plan of framing the Doctor on the left. However, I’m considering flipping these shots in post so that the doctor would be framed right. But, I will experiment with this idea later on down the line in post production.
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The actual shooting of Act 1 Scene 4 went pretty smoothly. It was only me and my actor so it meant once again I was working both the camera and audio, but I had experience from last Monday on this so I was prepared. I was able to get multiple takes of both the primary and secondary angles and so I think I have enough possible options for myself to choose from in the editing process.
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The only major problem I faced was the lighting, and I’m still not entirely sure if I’m happy with it. When I originally placed my lights, I realised there was a similar problem to the one I had on Monday where it almost looked like the actor was on a green screen. To fix this it meant I had to move one of my lights from the side of the actor to slightly behind them, so that the lighting would separate the actor from the background. And although it fixed the green screen problem I felt it harmed the lighting slightly. However, I think fixing the green screen look was more of a priority.
Overall, I am happy with what I produced in today’s shoot and I feel it will be able to achieve what I wanted from it. Although I also feel this may have been some of my weakest work yet. I think by fixing the colour grade a little bit in the editing process, the final product will look a lot more like what I was originally aiming for.
Sunday 1st May
Today was the day of my penultimate shoot. This was for Act 3 Scene 1 which is the Director’s interview. At this production there was only me as I was acting as the crew as well as the actor. I chose this as this half of the “documentary” kind of falls apart and breaks the fourth wall and I felt it was fitting for me to play the director as that is what it is in real life. But as it was only me on set it meant taking BTS Photos was a bit harder. So instead I filmed a timelapse to show me setting up the equipment as well as short videos of me explaining my idea.
When it came to setting up all the equipment it wasn’t too hard, mainly because I’ve had several shoots before this one so I have become fairly comfortable with the kit as well as setting it all up. But additionally this scene is also supposed to be intentionally more simplistic than some of the others. This is due to the fact that at this point it is only supposed to be the Director there as the rest of the documentary has kind of fallen apart around him. To symbolise this I used more simplistic lighting, simply having two lights on the right and left of me shining at me as well as making the framing more simplistic and making the character sit in the middle of the frame which juxtaposes to a lot of the earlier interviews where all the characters were framed slightly off centre. I also made sure to speak to the camera more, whereas I directed my actors to look slightly over or next to the camera. Hopefully this’ll make the scene feel more genuine as well as helping to convey the message that the “documentary” that is supposed to be real within this world is truly falling apart. And one final way I tried to break the fourth wall was by including the microphone in shot which once again reinforces the idea of the idea falling apart.
When it came to actually filming the scene it wasn’t too hard. I had already learnt the lines and there weren’t any complex camera movements so the actual recording went quite smoothly. It took me a little while to get the camera properly set up and framed though. This was mainly due to the fact that it was only me there. In order to properly frame myself I took a couple of test videos of me sitting in front of the camera. You can see my trying these out on the timelapse as I was setting up. But once I was able to get everything set up I was good to go and I didn’t run into any other problems.
Overall, I would say I’m very happy with this shoot. I think it definitely achieves it’s goal of breaking up the flow of the documentary and the framing as well as the lighting are exactly what I was picturing in my mind. And now that I’ve finished this shoot, it leaves me with only my final shoot tomorrow. Hopefully everything will go smoothly then and that’ll mean my production will be fully completed.
Visit my production page to see all the behind the scenes videos from this shoot.
