Colour washes

This video is by kanye West and one technique it uses is the flash of colour washes over footage.

These are print screens from the video where the colour flashes appear on one continuous piece of footage.

We decided to use this effect over some of the footage in our video to add pace and colour. Above is an example of somewhere we used this in our video.


We did this by changing the levels on the clips in imovie.




This is a print screen of how we did it. 

Colour grading

While researching different music videos we found one aspect in particular effective in creating a professional and visual pleasing finish. This is the focus on COLOUR GRADING. 

This is a screen shot from the video 'Black and Yellow' by Wiz khalifa. Throughout his video the colour levels seem to have a green/yellow grading over them to create a kind of warm aged look. The style of this grading suits the setting of a hot city environment which is what the video tries to portray. 

These are screen shots taken from another music video which is actually in our genre. Again the similar theme of city and warmth is applied however there are more tones of blue/green. This effect is called 'bottlewash' in many level editing programmes. 

In our video we want to have this kind of effect over some of our footage and so we created a small montage of flips to try this out. We did this by changing the colour levels on imovie shown in the print screen below. 

By using this tool of changing levels we created the colour grading/ aged effect on these pieces of footage. 

Spinning shot

Whilst doing our research we found this video by Digitalism.


This video is made up of one continuous spinning shot around different objects, movements and ideas. Although it may sound boring it is really interesting the way in which the sequences change with a kind of stop animation feel. Having really liked this we created a similar idea for the end of our video.

We realised at the end of our video our main character is meant to feel confused and a good way to create this dizziness and illusion is to make the shot revolve around her to create the idea of her head spinning and it puts the audience inside her thoughts.


How we did it.

We struggled at first to think of a way that we could move around an object quick enough and then we realised we could use a car. Having our ending on top of a car park was the perfect place.


So we drove around Yasmin and filmed then when we put it in to imovie we sped the clip up.

Editing open thing final cut

One idea we had from this video by Metronomy is the opening and the way a moving image appears from the black screen at the very begining.
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After much confusion we found a way we could do this on Final Cut Express.
This is a video of us explaining how it is done.

Opening so far

We have finished our opening Montage! This is the part of our video that will go before the music starts to add to the narrative.

Audio on montage

For our montage that will go at the start of our video we had to include some sounds of the surrounding area. Listening to other montages it seems that natural sounds such as wind, cars and birds seem common. However we wanted to take in to consideration our themes.


URBAN SOUNDS


Living in a moderately urban area ourselves and not far from the city of London we already had a good idea of the kind of sound we wanted to achiever however we really wanted to set the scene for the rest of our video. The sounds we decided on were

• Sirens - Highlights the area and has a feeling of danger
• Wind - creates tension and drama
• Drones - drones are perfect for thickening sounds

Our next step was to find these sounds, although some are available on imovie we wanted to experiment with some more raw sounds.

We found the lgfl sound network and discovered some great sounds on it. The site had a huge selection of sounds and we were able to download them for free and use them on the start of our montage.

Title the futures

While me and joely were researching some new music videos we found this. It is similar to our genre and some common themes being young teenagers and parties.

One thing we noticed that we really like is the way their title goes over their opening.



Taking this idea we have done this in our own video over our opening. We also used a similar font as the clear bold writing sits well over moving clips.

Last filming

Today we completed the last of our final filming. These are some print screens of the footage we gained. With good planning we managed to check the times for sunset and get to the top of the building in order to catch the best shots. The urban setting of the car park fits our video well. 

Colours on lip sinking

We plan to use colour washes over footage in our video and we decided the lip syncing being such high quality. 

These are some stills of the colour washes we used over the footage. We achieved this by adjusting the levels on imovie.

Add caption

Lip syncing

Lip syncing

As our video lacked a performance element we decided it would be worth out while to include some lip syncing. We looked at some videos of our genre to get some ideas of the best way to do this without it looking to cheesy. This is a video by that includes close up black and white shots of him singing to his song.

We liked this style as it was simple and understated and also an opportunity to get real high quality close ups and to experiment with the spotlights.

This is the setup we used to film the lip syncing. We used the bright spotlights on a white background similar to Example above.

More filming / wall shots

For part of our montage at the start of the we will use footage of us as the artists against a brick wall and our main character running across it.  We decided to use a brick wall as it relates to the urban setting and it creates an effective background to merge the two shots.

Filming the footage


One issue we had was that we wanted the scene to be at night to suit our narrative but we also wanted it to be lit in order to gain good footage so we came up with a solution, car headlights. We pointed the car at the wall and put the full beam lights on. This created the perfect setting to film the two images.

Scenic footage/ more filming

Scenic Shots

We continued to gain footage and our next step was to film our scenic shots which will make up a large amount of our video.





The main thing we had in mind for this footage is the urban enviroment we want to achieve.
This is a short video of the footage we collects



These are some stills of the best footage we shot.

first filming!

Filming has begun! Our first project has to been to gather some of the more difficult and challenging footage first being any that involved people other than us in our group and the use of equipment here being balloons.









These are our first shots we managed to get. After blowing up many balloons and then realising we didnt have enough to fill up a room we opted for the bath!



The footage worked really well, the bright colours add life and depth to the footage and the lights beneath them make creative lighting. We have rewound the footage is it creates and interesting flow of the balloons.

Concepts and Themes

Having finally chosen our song we have begun to look at what kind of concepts, themes and subliminal messages we want to portray in our video. Taking in to consideration our genre and style of the song we have chosen we have decided on.....

YOUTH



YOUNG LOVE



IDENTITY

URBAN

FREEDOM





we looked at a quote by banksy that said 


"A lot of parents would do anything for their kids except let them be themselves"


This inspired us to also explore the idea of youth against adults and how youth is displayed so badly in the media. 


Overall our main concept is being young, youth and how freedom to be young is paramount over the control of society, parents, boyfriends and negative media.

new narrative idea

Now we have chosen our song we have started to consider our narrative with our themes and concept in mind.

Most music videos in our genre are very different to each other and it would be difficult to find one particular reoccurring story line so we decided to form it based heavily on our concept of youth, freedom and identity. Our idea is to create the story of a girl that escapes from a destructive relationship.We want to create the illusion she is taken in to a completely different lifestyle by the three people in hunt the noise who will always conceal their identity. We want to create an idea of her escaping at the start of the video them have majority of it made up of the life our of it. We are still unsure of how it will end but we do know we want it to be dramatic and mysterious.


An example of this story line could be Rihanna and Calvin Harris' 'We Found Love'

Choosing our name

Having chosen our song we started to draft some idea for our band name. We wanted the name to fit the style of music and video. One idea we had is to include the word noise as we liked the child like association and playfullness of it. We created a  chart and asked the members of our class which name they preferred as it is a really good form of audience research.

Chosen song

Finally we have decided on our definite song!





The song we have chosen is a remix of a the Fleetwood Mac song 'Rumors'. Although this may seem like a strange choice working from the alternative genre we used our imaginations and found a song that would probably be completely different to most A2 media students would have done before which is what the alternative genre is all about, being different. The original song is a classic and so fairly well known but by using a modern remix of our song it creates the perfect basis for our concept of age and youth by mixing two sounds from two different ages of audience. This paticular remix also has no current music video which helps our audience be completely free to interpret our video as they see it with no idea of what amusic video to this song may look like.

Choosing another song

So we've got busy and started searching for another song. Looking mostly at the pace and what we can really fit our ideas with. What we are looking for are songs that appeal to our age, songs that are reasonably unknown so we can be completely original with our ideas and that our viewers don't already have a preset idea of what out theme and style should be similar to,  a song that we can keep in our genre which is the indie/alternative dance, preferably a woman singer as it would be so much easier for us to find characters and film and one we can all agree on!


Our first discoveries.....




this video is amazing! It has a good beat but maybe the pace is too slow...also we'd love to use some of the video ideas.





This is another song that suits our genre but yet again we dont know if the beat is going to be fast enough.


These are a few more possible options

Experimenting with techniques on first footage

Having gained some of our first rough footage we decided to experiment with some of the techniques we plan to use in our video.



An extremely rough and rushed composition of clips rather than a video we used this to try out some techniques we wanted to include in our actual video.

Techniques we have tried...


Flash screens






Firstly the idea of flashing to black screens on a beat somewhere throughout the song as we found it creates an effect of flashing back to memories or maybe that it even adds to the pace and beat of the song. We got this idea from this music video by the artist of the song we had chosen......



Jumping and rewinding


At about 36 seconds in to the montage we have rewound the clip of the girl dancing which gives it a kind of jump effect and then continued it. This almost creates the illusion of stopping time. We find this really effective as when put in sync with the right part of a song it can really highlight the beat and create tension before the main part of a song drops.


An example of where this has been used would be Nicola Roberts video at 45 seconds

Contacting new producers

Since we changed our song we had to contact the new producers