CCTV Effects

As I have not yet shot all my footage for the complete editing, I have been creating the CCTV-like effects of my filming on Adobe After Effects with the help of this video.

Creating the flicker effect

First I opened a new composition, added the video –already cut- changed the tint and the framerate; then added noise and a timecode.

Then made a new layer black and added fractal noise and changed the width and contrast. I added it on to the composition and changed the opacity to 10% to imitate the flickering of real CCTV cameras.

Then, after looking at another video, I decided to add the animation preset "night vision",  changed the preset colour from green to a blue-y grey,and turned the opacity down put the venetetian blinds setting as "Bad TV 1: Warp" which added lines across the screen.

 



"night vision" effect

 

Magazine Advert Update

I have added Facebook and Twitter logos to make the reader aware of the artist's online presence.

Magazine Advert III

I've made some slight changes to my magazine advert, this is the most up to date one.

 

I've make the quotes slightly smaller as they seemed to be taking the focus away from the band/album's name. I also added the website and changed an error with the review bit - it had four star ratings and only three names..

Filming Update

My actor has cut his hair really differently so as well as being worried about continuity, I don't think he'll have time to film on Sunday. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, so I'm just going to film lots of shots of the location when I can next and see what I can do with the footage I already have. D: 

"The Fall" by Gary Numan

The scenery for this video is really cool, though I haven't been quite that lucky in location, I was thinking if I could some similar camera angles and techniques as this when filming more on Sunday, it would be good. :)

 

But obviously mine would be mixing that kind of scenery with scenes in crowds and in the streets like I've filmed, too.
 

Magazine Advert Draft II

As well as correcting my spelling on the advert, as a part of audience feedback I asks members of my family and some people online what they though of my first draft. Though it was mainly positive feedback, the reoccuring answer was mainly regarding the lightness of my advert and how it should be darker, so I used curves to darken the picture, making the text easier to read. I also changed the order of the "reviews" as people said the BBC Music one would be the most eye catching.

Magazine Advert Draft

I've been trying some things out on Photoshop regarding my magazine advert, though I originally thought I wouldn't want a picture of my artist, I found the gaussian blur effect and noise, with the colour selection making it more blue and cyan to look kind of cool.

I tried out the font Mom's Typewriter and though it suits the genre conventions, it seemed a little overused and cliche, so instead I used the font Devil Breeze as it looks modern which sort of shows that the music isn't just industrial and also reminds me of the How To Destroy Angels font a little bit. Here is my first draft.

I think it might be a bit too basic looking at the moment, so I'm going to try a few more things this week beore the deadline. :)

edit: just realised I've spelt "fascinating" wrong, I'll change that next time D:.

Update

Though I'm happy with what footage I've collected, looking at it at school, I think I'd need a lot more before going into editing. This week I will try to collect some more clips of cameras and city stuff, then again on Sunday, I'll get some more footage of my actor, more focused on using the tripod.

 

Until then I will work on my advert for the first deadline.

My Artist's Logo

After looking into logos more, last week I went onto Dafont to look for fonts for my logo, just realised I forgot to upload it, I mainly looked in the sections Techo, Barcode and Typewriters: 

I really like most of these and think they fit into my genre, though I'm unsure on which would look best right now; I'll wait until I have a better idea of how I want the aesthetics of my advert and digipak to be. :)

Pictures From Nottingham

Whilst driving to where we had planned, we saw a really old, looking kind of garage room thing (which we think might be the back entrance to a store called Whistle and Flute Menswear on Wollaton St.) that looked really perfect for filming in, so we filmed some of the vocals we had planned to do in that factory place. I haven't taken many pictures, I was obviously focusing more on filming, but I've taken a few. 

 

Filming in Nottingham from Ashleighhh-x

As well as more abstract pictures or stills from my filming, I tried to take a few of my actor that I could use in my magazine advert:

I could mess with colours on them, and change the focus maybe. :)

Filming Today

Going to Nottingham to film in a few hours; just getting everything prepared. I've not completely finished my time plan as I was struggling to visualise everything that exact. Though I've annotated a printed out sheet of the lyrics to take with me as well. I'm going to try film some lip syncing today, but hopefully the most of that can be done in that factory place next week.

Snapshot_20121118_1

This is my only chance to film all the Nottingham bits and I'm a little worried about it, but hopefully it should be fun still.

Adventures on Private Property

A misunderstanding with when I was going to film, so we're going into Nottingham tomorrow to do the filming there. Though, looking for the "dark room" mentioned in other posts I was kind of out of ideas when my brother mentioned some abandoned warehouses/factories and places he used to hang out in, so we went to explore and take some pictures. 

The first place was locked up, but I took some pictures from outside.

The next place was really cool, after walking the muddiest path ever and thoroughly ruining my shoes (annoyingly we found a better way to get there after we'd left). We kind of crawled under a door and found really cool room, my brother filmed the majority of it, it's a reaaally wobbly, and our voices sound weird. 

We stopped filming in a rush as we heard someone outside and panicked, he was a bit scary and told us to leave. But still, hopefully, we'll be able to sneak in there again next Sunday to film my actor doing the vocals, it would definitely be better than my living room. :) 

Equipment and Technology



 Sony HDR-CX190

In planning the making of my video and the ancillary texts, I needed to have a knowledge of what equipment and technology is used in the industry, and what I can used to get the same effect. I would think that in making a real music video, the would have a bigger crew thus more cameras, probably better/more professional ones too. 

I will be using the Sony HDR-CX190 and a Jessops Tripod. 



When closer to editing I'll look more into that. :) 

Band Name

Thinking of one word "modern" names, I really wasn't sure but I looked at lots of other band names and they were made up words or slang, and I knew I didn't want that. 

Name finding

To try sound modern for some reason I thought computing terms or something might work so I googled that and came across "Subroutine" I'm not sure why but it already sounded like a name to me, so I've decided to use that. :)

"Lofticries" by Purity Ring

Though this music is really different from the song I have, there is an effect in the video that might be interesting to try when in the editing stages of my video..

Purity Ring's "Lofticries"  dir. AG ROJAS


That effect of scene changes from person to person, kind of glitchy, melting effect, though  I think it might be quite difficult to do successfully.

Survellience Themed Shoot (Inspiration)

Survellience Themed Shoot of Trent Reznor

Band/Song Name

For the name of the song I think I will just go with the obvious choice as a main lyric: "Strange Days".

I really really need to think of a name for the band to get on with both the advert and digipak. I wasn't certain on anything at the moment other than it being a one word name, so I asked some family members and friends to listen to the the song and look at the moodboard and tell me things it made them think of. All I have really gotten from them is that it would be modern sounding.. 

And so, I'll be looking into possible names in the next few days!

Moodboard

I collected images to help me map out ideas about my work, including locations, costume, adverts, album covers, actors and logos, I also added some general imagery for how I'd like aesthetics of my work to be:

(Click to enlarge)

More Actor Photos

I found some more pictures of my actor that kind of look a bit more like him.. so I thought it might be helpful to put them on here. :) 

Magazine Adverts II

I found some adverts in magazines in class I could use, mainly Q, Uncut and The Guide: 

 

 

Other than the Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan advert, each has at least one bright colour making it eye catching for the reader of the magazine and use a memorable font, if not the band's actual logo i.e Muse. Some, with any marketing, might use inter textual references to interest a wider audience, for example Massive Attack's Heligoland looks reaaally related to A Clockwork Orange.

 

Again, with each of the magazine adverts, the title of the band, album art (or similar artwork) underneath, and nearby the title of the the album. Underneath each is the further information such as the reviews, record label and where to buy it, such as HMV, Amazon, etc.

Location ideas

I've added some more points to my Google maps in preparation for filming, just hoping they will look at least a little bit similar to how they did in 2008.. 

Actor for my video

Just got my laptop working properly after a few days, but finally I have a definite actor for my music video, my friend couldn't get her drama school friends to help so I've managed to convince my sister's boyfriend to do it, it might actually work a bit better, looks-wise as he's a little older (he's 25) and it might look a little more convincing. 

Some picture from Facebook, with his permission

Once I have sorted out exactly what is happening in each part of the video I should start filming,  as he's going away soon and will have a tan, and I feel like it might be better if he was pale. So within the next two weeks, hopefully!

Costumes/Make up in Videos

From what I've seen in similar music videos so far, the costumes aren't anything extravagant, but really simple: in most of these videos the vocalist, or any other character, is wearing dull colours, greys, blues, whites or darker shades. Usually just a long sleeve shirt or plain t shirt and straight legged jeans or trousers and maybe a leather jacket, shoes don't seem to be filmed all that much. 

(printscreens)

Depending on what the actors (sorting it out this week) will already own, I think I will keep it pretty simple in recreating that, no visible make up or maybe just natural if any blemishes or anything upon filming.  

Magazine Adverts

For my ancillary task, I will have to make a magazine advert for my bands album/single. So I'll need to research how it can be marketed to suit the genre; I was struggling to find some in magazines I had at home/sixthform so I've found some online that might be of use.

 

The advert for Tricky's 2001 album Blowblack uses a simple type face, and colour scheme: black grey and white, with the part saying 'back' reversed to link to the ideo of it being backwards. It gives detail on the release date so fans know when they can buy it, what looks to be different test shots of the album cover as the background and all the necessary publishing information near the bottom with the ANTI- record label logo and reviews.

In this second advert, the design looks reasonably simplistic; contact and publisher information at the bottom and reviews nearer the top. The main focus is the artwork, the same as their album so people will recognise it from the advert.

 

With both, and most magazine adverts for albums, the name of the artist or band is at the top, and the name of whatever release they are advertising. The album art, or something similar is usually included. I will bear in mind this conventions when making mine, but before I do so, I will try to look out for more magazine advertisments to help me a little more.

Research into Band Logos

Not sure on what I had to research within band logos, I tried to look at them overall, then went in to focus on some similar to my genre/to what I want to create. 

Band Logos from Ashleighhh-x

I don't know what I will name "my" band yet so I don't know how much further I can go with looking into logos at the moment. Right now I'm thinking a colon in it would look cool, I think influenced by Global Communication's album 76:14, though I know that's not very related..

Lighting In Music Videos

Now I have a slightly better idea about my video I need to think in more depth about how I want each scene to look. From looking at some videos I've noticed that if the focus of the video is on the vocalist, they may be alone in a room, like what I've planned for mine, the idea of darkened rooms, shadows and silhouettes has interested me as I think it looks kind of personal and feel it kind of mirrors how the music feels in parts, dark and mysterious.

 

 

This particularly seems to be the case in the first forty seconds in the video for Massve Attack's Risingson and the first forty seconds of We're In This Together by NIN.  In fact the lighting in a lot of Massive Attack videos is pretty interesting, I'd like my video to be quite inspired by theirs as the sound really appears to be. :)

 

The effect of this is both done by outside lighting shining in, or high contrast and dark clothes. Also, keeping the room dark and only using the light to shine of certain parks might be hard to do subtly but I willl try to create this effect. Also, in looking at the first forty seconds or so of the NIN video is a good example of how I would like the intro for mine to be, with lots of close up images of parts of the face/hands etc.

 

 

Nine Inch Nails: We're In This Together (1999) from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.