Monday, 14 January 2008
Evaluation
Overall I'm not happy with my final piece for this project, but fortunately it's not the real thing and in retrospect it's probably best it went this way, instead of the mediocrity it could have been, as it has been a very valuable learning experience, and a fun one too, but I can now take all of the knowledge through to the real final piece of my AS.
Ambiguity, I started out thinking that a music video with a narrative should have a certain amount of this to give it a repeatability factor, as it is then left open to some amount of interpretation and I still believe this as well, the mistake I made was not carefully planning my video through either a shot list or a story board and basically the result was a plot that was incomprehensible. If I were to repeat the task I would plan my shots carefully and have included a mysterious character that could have been just a silhouette, see him start the fire, leave, get into a car and drive off, then when she escaped she would arrive at his house and the audience would know it was his house as they would recognise his car and it would make sense that she was getting revenge by burning him in his house.
I quite liked the Audioslave footage and I successfully kept it under 30% of my overall video but it was the most painful aspect to editing and doubled my time doing it. The problem was that the footage had a lot of crowd shots which I cut out, but I still had to keep the shots in sync with the music which created numerous problems. Then re-editing the footage solely to make it more my work than somebody else's conflicted completely with the first problem. This meant that all of the video had to be rushed and the result shows it. On a good note though this has taught me that my footage is the best footage in most circumstances as I know what shots I have got to work with and this makes the already laborious task that much easier as you enter it with more confidence of how you expect it to turn out. The one thing I liked about what I edited was some of the graphic matches which act as transitions between the Audioslave footage and the narrative, but unfortunately not enough to save it in my eyes.
During the planning and then making of my video the concept of my video had to change. This was due to being on such a short time scale and it was hard to work out a time when every member was available and this affected the overall video and also changed my perception of the song which I wanted to get across, but these things happen and I will have a much larger time scale in the real thing to make it work, as while getting everyone together was a problem, the people I was working with were not.
The cinematography of my piece is all right in my opinion even if the editing let it down. I captured a lot of shots that I really liked, such as the extreme close-ups of Alex at the beginning of the video. What I like about these shots is that because I decreased the depth of field it made the background out of focus giving it a similar feel to actual film, although it's still a long way from it, I like it. The lighting I used was a fluorescent light and it really gave the scene a cold, slightly unnatural feel to it, which was then successfully contrasted by the strong red and orange and deep black of the fire. If I were to do it again I would do some post-production editing to the colour and give it a darker feel by adding a blue tint and harsher blacks but I didn't have the time to do this.
What I most enjoyed about this piece of work was, and I'll try explain this without coming across as a mentally unstable arsonist, creating the fires. It was a stupid and dangerous thing to do, my shoe caught fire and Alex and I probably suffered some extent of carbon monoxide poisoning from the petrol fire indoors, but it was fun and there are certain shots of the various fires that turned out very nicely, unfortunately though I still sound like a crazed arsonist.
Overall I am disappointed with the music video as it looks pretty amateur and worse, rushed which I really want to avoid, but through this experience I have learnt that the only way to achieve something that does not look amateur is plan everything and I will use this revelation in my final piece.
Ambiguity, I started out thinking that a music video with a narrative should have a certain amount of this to give it a repeatability factor, as it is then left open to some amount of interpretation and I still believe this as well, the mistake I made was not carefully planning my video through either a shot list or a story board and basically the result was a plot that was incomprehensible. If I were to repeat the task I would plan my shots carefully and have included a mysterious character that could have been just a silhouette, see him start the fire, leave, get into a car and drive off, then when she escaped she would arrive at his house and the audience would know it was his house as they would recognise his car and it would make sense that she was getting revenge by burning him in his house.
I quite liked the Audioslave footage and I successfully kept it under 30% of my overall video but it was the most painful aspect to editing and doubled my time doing it. The problem was that the footage had a lot of crowd shots which I cut out, but I still had to keep the shots in sync with the music which created numerous problems. Then re-editing the footage solely to make it more my work than somebody else's conflicted completely with the first problem. This meant that all of the video had to be rushed and the result shows it. On a good note though this has taught me that my footage is the best footage in most circumstances as I know what shots I have got to work with and this makes the already laborious task that much easier as you enter it with more confidence of how you expect it to turn out. The one thing I liked about what I edited was some of the graphic matches which act as transitions between the Audioslave footage and the narrative, but unfortunately not enough to save it in my eyes.
During the planning and then making of my video the concept of my video had to change. This was due to being on such a short time scale and it was hard to work out a time when every member was available and this affected the overall video and also changed my perception of the song which I wanted to get across, but these things happen and I will have a much larger time scale in the real thing to make it work, as while getting everyone together was a problem, the people I was working with were not.
The cinematography of my piece is all right in my opinion even if the editing let it down. I captured a lot of shots that I really liked, such as the extreme close-ups of Alex at the beginning of the video. What I like about these shots is that because I decreased the depth of field it made the background out of focus giving it a similar feel to actual film, although it's still a long way from it, I like it. The lighting I used was a fluorescent light and it really gave the scene a cold, slightly unnatural feel to it, which was then successfully contrasted by the strong red and orange and deep black of the fire. If I were to do it again I would do some post-production editing to the colour and give it a darker feel by adding a blue tint and harsher blacks but I didn't have the time to do this.
What I most enjoyed about this piece of work was, and I'll try explain this without coming across as a mentally unstable arsonist, creating the fires. It was a stupid and dangerous thing to do, my shoe caught fire and Alex and I probably suffered some extent of carbon monoxide poisoning from the petrol fire indoors, but it was fun and there are certain shots of the various fires that turned out very nicely, unfortunately though I still sound like a crazed arsonist.
Overall I am disappointed with the music video as it looks pretty amateur and worse, rushed which I really want to avoid, but through this experience I have learnt that the only way to achieve something that does not look amateur is plan everything and I will use this revelation in my final piece.
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
Change of Plans...again
Due to Max not being available the story has had to change, but its nothing too big.
FADE IN
ALEX is tied to a chair in an dark, empty, concrete room. The music starts and petrol is being poured on the ground. A match is lit, falls to the ground and the petrol is ignited. She regains consciousness and struggles to free herself. She escapes and runs to safety.
ALEX regains her strength and plots her vengence, gathering cloth, a stick and petrol.
Arriving at the unknown villian's house, she smash's a window, throws the petrol about in a rage and lights the stick and cloth and goes to light the petrol...
FADE OUT
Thursday, 13 December 2007
Inspiration from Art
My plan for the video involves a lot of imagery of fire, so I went looking online for images of fire in art that could inspire a few ideas. I found an expressionist artist called Moin, a bit pretentious but anyway, the pieces are actually quite good.
What I like about the pieces above are the figures distorted by the fire and the heat that comes across through the colours. This instantly conjured up some ideas for shots in my head that I will hopefully be able to carry out.
Inspiration from Filmmakers
While I know of quite a few good examples of characters being tied to chairs, the one that sticks out most prominently in my mind is Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs . Even from the treatment alone the inspiration from the film is apparent. The famous Ear Cutting Scene is were I got the idea to let the viewer know somebody is going to be killed at the end of the video but to not let them see it so it draws the gore from their imagination.
If you haven't seen the scene:
I mentioned that I knew quite a few examples of this as well as Reservoir Dogs, so many so that it is quite cliché but this is intentional on my part as I will then be able to use the viewers own experiences of the cliché to create a bit more depth to the video.
Wednesday, 12 December 2007
Treatment
Before it's even asked, me and Alex have already worked out all the kinks to lighting fires so 'filmability' is dead on. Here it is:
FADE IN
ALEX is tied to a chair in an dark, empty, concrete room. The
music starts and petrol is being poured on the ground. A match is lit, falls to the ground and the petrol is ignited. A silhouetted character walks out the door.
MAX wakes up groggily from being knocked out. When he realises ALEX is missing he starts to running. He runs through various alleys ways when he notices smoke pouring out the doors of a small warehouse. He runs in and pulls her out.
They regain their breathe and both start to run again. They find themselves in another garage, where they gather petrol, cloth and sticks. They arrive at the unknown villain's office, light the sticks and smash open the door.
FADE OUT
Basically the song sounds quite heavy and fast, so an action packed, fast paced music video is exactly what I'm going for. It also sounds quite raw and dirty and that's what gave me the idea for dirty-warehouse-type locations and the strong focus on the elemental imagery of fire (it also mentions fire in the lyrics as well).
During the narrative, clips of the band playing the song are going to be included to fill in the gaps of the boring parts that can be skipped. Also, the narrative is purposely lacking a motive to why it is happening to the main characters as well as a conclusion as this leaves it open to speculation and therefore gives it repeatability.
Thursday, 6 December 2007
Bit of the Ole Research
Audioslave have a good few music videos so I went on to youtube to refresh my memory, gain a bit of inspiration and get the feel of the band's music videos.
Heres some links to different types of their videos:
Performance - Like A Stone, Be Yourself, Cochise and Revelations
These videos, although purely performance are very good in my opinion because the cinematography is ace. They also have the repeatability factor because there's not story you'll see and not care about seeing again. Revelations is my favourite video in this type as its edited extremely well with some interesting effects.
Narrative - Show Me How To Live and Doesn't Remind Me
I like Show Me How To Live as its a really exciting video which gets its inspiration from the 70's car chase film, Vanishing Point. Doesn't Remind Me isn't such a watchable video as, despite its making a strong political point about Iraq featuring a son who doesn't know his dad is dead while the mother worries about what's next, it's quite dull.
The Best Video - Original Fire
Original Fire is on it's own because it's the best video of them all, it's mostly performance mixed with tons of images and it's all edited together really well. It's extremely repeatable cause it looks class.
Unfortunately for my video I will have no control over the performance aspect as I obviously cannot get the band to play. But despite this I believe the performance aspect to be essential in an interesting video, so I will be looking for resources that I can use for my project but definitely keeping it my own work with the majority of it the narrative aspect and any resources I do find re-edited.
These videos, although purely performance are very good in my opinion because the cinematography is ace. They also have the repeatability factor because there's not story you'll see and not care about seeing again. Revelations is my favourite video in this type as its edited extremely well with some interesting effects.Narrative - Show Me How To Live and Doesn't Remind Me
I like Show Me How To Live as its a really exciting video which gets its inspiration from the 70's car chase film, Vanishing Point. Doesn't Remind Me isn't such a watchable video as, despite its making a strong political point about Iraq featuring a son who doesn't know his dad is dead while the mother worries about what's next, it's quite dull.The Best Video - Original Fire
Original Fire is on it's own because it's the best video of them all, it's mostly performance mixed with tons of images and it's all edited together really well. It's extremely repeatable cause it looks class.Unfortunately for my video I will have no control over the performance aspect as I obviously cannot get the band to play. But despite this I believe the performance aspect to be essential in an interesting video, so I will be looking for resources that I can use for my project but definitely keeping it my own work with the majority of it the narrative aspect and any resources I do find re-edited.
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