17. She's the flutter in my heart, the spring that's in my step...

Ahhhhhh annotating the lyrics ... this really should have been done ages ago. But we've finished filming now, the promo looks awesome, the final thing is going to be even better, so I may as well scratch this off the list.

Tried to import the film to the laptops today but some stupid lad decided not to charge his camera so it ran out of battery while importing ... then refused to even give me the tape.

So I spent the lesson doing the lyrics:



Not much left to do now:

• Research - The institutions The Strokes represents and major convention of indie videos and how we've incorporated them.
• Upload our focus group results.
• Upload our story board.
• One more textual analysis of a video that combines the stars face and visuals that reflect the music.
• Just general editing and burning which shouldn't take long.

The food on shoot Mr M tasted very nice thank you but your views on Final Cut seem to be a little flawed, the capture clips was very rubbish compared to adobe. However the layout seemed the same and I think it has the tool I want so it's not a complete let down hehe

Hope everyone else’s is going well

Laters

16. A Call and Response

Right first off, thanks to the three that commented on the promo! Now I'd just like to respond to Mr. M's comment in particular, I'm doing it here because I also cover some of my reasoning and inspiration behind certain decisions.


1. 'Jack looks the part as white t-shirt chef through the servery 'window' although doesn't seem to be doing much work'

Jack said that "this is what real greasy spoon chefs do! They stand at the kitchen window looking hard!". Haha, well anyway I thought I'd just let him have that one, but I still got him to move around (basically anytime he moves around the kitchen is when I've shouted at him to "move around a bit more!" whilst waving my arm in a circular direction above my head. I wanted him to move around because there's a bit in one of our practices in which someone in the corridor moves past the window of the door of 101, and it looks good because it's a tight framing (that whole thing of stuff moving faster in a tightly framed close-up all applies here). So that was my direction with that.

2. 'Zal does a great job'

Zal is awesome. Acting in slow-motion has never been made to look so easy! I love the effect when he leans into the camera to say something, fills up the frame and really makes it look like he's talking to just you.

3. 'Paul and his disappearing fingerless gloves has certainly got ants in his pants!'

With Paul I'd told him to have an "animated discussion" with Rob (I actually told him to say "Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich" repeatedly cos I'd seen Being John Malkovich for the first time the other day lol, nerd alert), with lots of arm/body movement. I did this because it looks good on camera in double speed. I didn't see the point of using the effect if it wasn't going to be utilised to it's maximum potential!

4. 'Did you snap the camera onto the tripod after your initial handheld track?'

I actually kept it on the tripod for the whole take, as it would've been too difficult to film the opening bit of the guys inside the kitchen steadily. It's a shame because I had an idea to "do a Children of Men" (the car-attack scene in the New Forest, anyone? With the in-car rig swinging the camera in and out of the windows, anyone?) and start the filming in the kitchen (Jake would do that), bring the camera through the hatch (by handing it through to me) and then continue as you see in the promo, but the tripod wouldn't fit. Plus there would've been problems with Jake not being too obvious in handing the camera over, he is acting in the scene after all. But yeah, I was pretty damn pleased with the tracking shots, because that was without a dolly and any minor shakes would've been multiplied in the fast-motion effect. I was also pretty pleased that I managed to settle the tripod down in front of Zal without a horrible, jerky bump. So yeah, bit of blowing my own trumpet, but there you go!


Right what else...nope, nothing, for now...

Just good luck John! But don't try too hard! :P

15. You don't half pick your moments to talk about, the things you never wanna talk about...

Time to feel everyone in it seems.

Guess what ... we filmed everything on Friday morning and it went really well :D.

We filmed in the Woolpit museum instead of the village hall I think because it was cheaper to book and easy to organize.

Here is what it looked like when we got there:


Then after we built our set from basically scratch (we only had tables and chairs to work with) we managed to create a sorta greasy spoon looking set:


Although dad said that there should have been tomato sauce bottles on the tables rather then just salt and pepper shakers. However, for the first set we've ever created out of nothing we were pretty pleased. To light the place we made filters by shining light onto tin foil sheets, as shown in the pictures here:


So with the set ready we had to prime the actors. Appearing in the kitchen would be our two Jack chefs Mr Stanton and Mr Brown, appearing as two cafe customers would be the keen animator Mr Cooper and our good friend Mr Miller (returning for a part longer then half a second this time), I was a somewhat camp waiter and Mr Sibley filmed the whole thing with the help of my camera (dad wouldn't let me borrow his in the end) and my tripod. Our star man being the legendary Zal Jones, a somewhat student film veteran now. The crew:



Filming went well we had about two or three dress (not filming) rehearsals to make sure everyone knew what was going on. We then had a filming re rehearsal, James went around holding the camera and everyone started to act. We then took two takes with actual acting and real food for Zal to eat (cooked by me and Mr Stanton and prepared by Mr Brown), they both went really well and I managed to edit the footage from take 1 into a small promo here:

Watching back the footage highlighted a few problems:

• In both takes (you can see in the promo) as Zal walks out the cafe you can see our lighting stands, however in the second take Zal has finished singing the song by this point so by some careful editing we should be able to edit out any notice of this to the audience.
• My fear that the table was too over exposed may be in affect, in youtube form it does defiantly look more exposed however it looks good on the computer screen.
• The sped up part will be very difficult to edit using iMovie. I used Adobe Premier Pro CS3 to edit the promo which has this handy tool that can stretch video clips to fit in any gap, so I jus edited the speaking parts, left a gap and then plonked the sped up sandwich eating bit in there and stretched it to fit. Whether final cut has this tool is a different question though.

However negative this may seem, I was very pleased when I finished editing, as we played the Strokes at half speed in the background of filming and made Zal mime to that, then speeding it up was very easy as I only had to had to set the clip 200% (speeding it up by 2x). I had quite the jig after first look and after the final thing was edited down I was very happy with it. It is obviously a very rough edit, for example the stills at the end could change to match the drum beat, but never the less I was throughly pleased with it.

Hope you enjoy ... more still I hope when we edit take two into the real piece of coursework it will look truly awesome ... things are looking likely to that fact.

Now filming is finished, I'm planning to start the evaluation soon, all the way up to editing, as all the planning has been done now. Annotations of the lyrics will also be posted shortly.

Yay ... hope everyone else's production is going great ... see you all soon.

Laters

14. I came, I saw, I conquered ... so Mrs B if you want this encore, I need you to scream, 'til your lungs get sore...

Hey everyone,

Hope everyone’s half term owns as much as mine so far. So happy to be taking time off school ... really needed the break from intellectualness if you get me? Right as there hasn't been a post on here for 10 days I may as well give an update to our current situation.

To do list:

• Research - We still need to do a focus group and look at the institutions behind the Strokes and the general indie scene they represent.
• Finish the storyboard (We shouldn't take long as our production is only six shots long).
• Textual Analysis - Already done "Heart In A Cage" and "Ayo Technology", still gotta do "Sledgehammer" and one where the music is reflected in the video (any suggestions).
• More themes of professionalism to add to the general pile - Currently just using a really decent camera.
  

Also after looking at the previous student videos I created a "Things to avoid list":

Things to avoid list:

• Bad exposure - Classic mistake for making the video look really amateur.
• Young kids or trying to act - We're young we can't act yet ... FACT!
• Video effects - Ghost trail just looks rubbish because everyone uses iMovie so the real skill is making it look original.
• Lyrics shown too obviously - Not everyone watching is intellectually challenged ... keep it subtle.
• Make up - You've just been hit by a car ... your body has been scrapped across the road and your bones are broken ... but no wounds ... who you kidding?
• Darkness - Unless you’re making a foreboding video ... and to memory none of them were ... don't use darkness because the camera we use are so bad at night ... trusts.
• Poor ending shots - I've just sat through an awful song and you've presented me with a very weak narrative ... at least try and end on something memorable.
• Room to "talk into" - Mr Morrison put extra emphasis on this ... and of course he's right ... it does look very silly if you have your basic close up and there’s half the shot behind the person's head.
  

So yeahhh keeping the ball rolling. I do seem very negative about the student productions however I did particularly like:

Now to a weekend of disappointment to look forward to.

Don't get wrong I would love England to win the rugby world cup and Hamilton to win the F1 but come on we're English therefore we always fall hard when we're playing well ... just look at Russia. Rooney's goal was just orgasmic though :).

Laters...

13. There is lightning in this room, above our heads, waiting to strike, I'm a thinker not a talker...

Ha this is like last year all over again. The joy of studying such an awesome game. I don't care how nerdy it sounds San Andreas is just awesome. Now if you had told me like 3 years ago I would be studying San Andreas and voyeuristic 50 cent videos I doubt I would have believed you.

Ah yes a fresh new video for you to pour your sizzling opinions on. I doubt I'm the only person in the class to prefer mainstream music videos to the award winning directors we've been studying. No offence to Michel Gondry or Malcom Glazer or the rest of them, they have made some very inspiring videos. However for me music videos need a high energy to them, without that being a live band playing. Not saying the Aphex Twin didn't have a beat to it, only I prefer something I could watch with my sister in the background. Something for people with simple needs and very simple audience pleasures.

Although it was quite worrying earlier my 10 year old sister explaining this song is about how a girl wants sex but that’s more a subject for Cat and Lauren's CRS.

50 Cent - Ayo Technology

Firstly this video is set in London, which is a city I love buildings wise, so the shot where they pan down from a bridge to them in cars, even if it’s all CGI, stirs my coffee very well. Also the quick opening helicopter shots of the London eye and the house of parliament in the dark are also very pleasurable.

Ultimately these wonderful shots are pointless, along with the shot of 50 cent at the start holding a sniper rifle for no reason. These are quite obviously used to promote the wealth (rich well respected trademarks of London and the flashy expensive sports cars), power (being able to pleasure women with the touch of a button) and gangster prowess (the sniper rifle) of the only and only 50 cent.

On that little sheet we were given, Goodwin waffles about:

There is likely to be reference to voyeurism, particularly in the treatment of females, but also in terms of looking (screens, binoculars, cameras etc.)

Now Goodwin must have been theorising about this video as it contains lots of these features. At one point (1:24) Justin is even looking through X-ray binoculars into a women’s hotel room for goodness sake!

There is also a lot of inter-textuality in the video, whether it’s meant or not. Such as 50 cent is dressed like he's out of Reservoir dogs without the glasses, Timberland has the glowing glove moving screen board thing (which if I'm very much mistaken is "borrowed" from Minority Report), and the dancer at 2:38 is wearing exactly what Fergie did in her video for "London Bridge" minus the union jack underwear.

Now the lyrics are quite self explanatory, so much so as I said my sister understands them. The video is much dictated on technology and how these three maestros use them to pleasure the endless women that surround them. However I think I heard the original lyrics were about pornography rather then technology. So the slight change works well for creating a MTV showable video.

All in all it is a very stylistic video of Joseph Kahn's works, and if you've seen the "Britney Spears - Toxic". Very loose narrative that relates to the songs title and nothing more, random shots of loose women, technology/spy themes and random shots of the leading artists dancing to a plain coloured background.

Now for some questions, answers with opinions would be appreciated much better than just yes or no replies...

1) Is the opening shots of London too short or do you prefer the quick introduction of location, thus the video concentrating on the song more?

2) This opening shot is book ended by another similar CGI effect, did you enjoy this shot or would you have preferred they ended the video with a conclusion of narrative? I.e. what happened to the girl Justin was playing around with behind a door.

3) Were the lyrics reflected well in the video, or would you have preferred the video to be more narratively dominated?

4) General opinions on costume? Was it looking smart for the point of looking "cool" or do you prefer the artists to be wearing an outfit suited to their genre?

5) Is the fast paced editing too much or does it reflect the energy and upbeat feeling of the song more?

Saying all I've said I still like this video, although it's not Kahn's best works. Watch this space...

P.S After some more messing around we have our second film full of tester shots. This time instead of lip syncing we tried messing around with walking at normal pace with people in the background moving in fast motion. Anyways this was a productive use of a double lesson ... honest: