Editing

Over the last couple of days I've began the long editing trawl; I've been working on the section of stop motion where the pile of books builds up/down. It's been difficult getting the shots all the right length, and the right speed, also we need to crop every single one of our shots because they're too wide and radiators and paintings can be seen at the edges. SO yes, lots to do to get the effect right and the clips neat and sharp. Instead of editing each and every one individually, we've worked out how to copy particular 'aspects' of a clip, therefore you can copy the speed, crop, filter etc on to any other clips you wish to, quickly and easily.

Uhoh

Alec hair is officially gone, I'm so worried how our video's going to look now because I've been roughly editing our footage so far together the past couple of days, and although we have A LOT, it only amounts to very few seconds of music.. So we definitely need to film a lot more, meaning Alec's hair will change between long and short throughout the video. I'm really really hoping we twill get marked down for this as it's something we could've helped :/

Update

- SUCH good news - we've been able to salvage the clips we thought were lost, which is SO good as we thought we were going to have to sort out filming them again.. and they took blooomin' ages.

- Alec is living again so we can get on with filming the last shots we need of him.

- Filming is going to be a struggle this weekend as I have to work Saturday and ALL of Sunday, so maybe one day this week? But the workload from other subjects is really heavy at the moment, making it really hard to get this done.

- Annoying room changes; We should be in the media room where the macs are situated so we can begin editing the footage that we already have, as well as editing our Research & Planning video, BUT we're not because the AS group is in there instead.. not even using the macs.. it makes no sense and has happened for a couple of lessons now which we feel is really starting to hold us back with editing. I think we are sorting out a permanent room change to the media room for the rest of the year.

- Today I have a free lesson last, so instead of writing the 2 essays I have for this week.. I'm going to go to media and try and do some editing to make up for this wasted lesson.

General annoyance

Me and Anna uploaded the latest batch of footage onto the mac today, but when we watched through them to analyse which were successful or which needed re-filming etc, just general checking, we noticed that lots of the clips were missing. We looked in every folder on the memory card, and they were nowhere, and when the card was put back in the camera the shots were there? So they definitely exist and are in the same format as the others, but they won't appear on the macccyyy? At the moment we're not sure what's going to happen.. we had to leave it in the capable hands of the media technician.. but I'm so worried we won't be able to retrieve them! ALEC WILL CUT HIS HAIR and we'll have to do it ALL again if we can't upload them!

BUT yes, overall, very annoying as I was hoping to start a teeeny tiny bit of editing today, maybe just cutting some clips, ordering them etc. We'll see tomorrow morning if everything's ok..

Oh and Alec, our MAIN ACTOR WHO WE DESPERATELY NEED has got an ear AND eye infection.. filming is on a definite hold for the forseeable future!

Filming Update

Sunday 21st - Filming session at Anna's

- Dried wet leaves with a hair dryer for about half an hour so they'd float down in the right way.. now that's dedication

- Filmed several shots of throwing leaves over Alec trying to make it look right, either the leaves came in too fast, in too much of a clump, too slow etc BUT we got it about right and got a lot of footage and I think it'll be really effective once we edit all the bits and pieces together

- Attached loads of CD's to a couple of bamboo poles and held them over Alec, got some shots of that

- We captured several shots of Alec just looking into the camera, sometimes miming various lyrics - got extreme close up, close up, medium and long shots of this to use throughout video in quick cuts.

After all the leaf pampering we ran out of time, we're really pleased with the day though and feel like we achieved A LOT. More than it sounds written down.. One day this week we plan to film Alec against the wall just singing/miming the entire song through, so when it comes to editing we will definitely have singing shots for every bit of the song if we need them.

Overall, SUCCESS :)

NOOOOO

ALEC IS CUTTING HIS HAIR. This is extremo bad for us.. we spent ages and put a lot of effort into getting the book scenes last week and now he wants to cut his hair.. meaning we'll probably have to re-do all we have so far for HAIR continuity! kajshd ew8u0 w c3oqkwh salkdha sk.. We have persuaded him to postpone it till after this weekend, and we are all only available sunday, SO basically we have one day to film the entire rest of our music video :| this is going to be HAARRDDD and very very very very very stressful.......

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop

In class we have discussed and watched examples of the different styles of music video; for example following a story narrative, or being performance based etc. Today we were shown the video for 'Can't Stop' as an example of an 'experimental' music video, which is means one without any distinguishable direction or narrative - or more simply defined as random.

This is similar to our to idea in that our video will not follow any particular narrative structure, we will have slight character definitions - the contrast between the positivity of the female character and the negativity of the male character - but there's no real story or relationship established. Our video genre is definitely more in the direction of experimental and alternative than anything else.

We really liked lots of elements of this video and some are similar to our initial ideas. The video is based in seemingly one open space, e.g. studio or warehouse, with various random objects and members of the band interacting with them in whatever ways they felt like, not relating to the song in any logical way. Although we've drawn lots of our shot ideas from some words in the lyrics e.g books, discs, darkness etc - the overall finished piece I believe will have quite a random feel - as intended from the start. We plan to base our video in an open white space, preferably a studio, but due to a non existant budget will we have to find an alternative space to use. This use of plain background I believe causes the attention to be solely on what set and props are featuring in the shot, rather than where they are, why they're there or any deeper reading than the surface appearance - even if that reading doesn't make sense - that is the point, I think, of an 'experimental' and 'alternative' music video.

Below is the music video, however the embedding rights are quite unpredictable and sometimes seem to let it play and sometimes don't.. so if the video seen below does not play, click here to visit the official YouTube broadcast.