Editing #2

Through the editing process we have been using the computer program ‘Windows Movie maker’. Windows Movie Maker is a basic video and audio editing program that allows us to upload our footage and cut and move it. It also offers basic effects such as transitions, fade-ins/outs and scene-splits.

Once we had our footage filmed on our camera I plugged it into the computer and uploaded them to Windows Movie Maker. The audio track was loaded to the bar underneath the film footage so that we could cut and move our film to fit in with the audio. Between scenes we added transitions and particularly made the flow smoother by introducing fade-ins.

On the positive side, Windows Movie Maker has a friendly interface and is easy to use. Negatively it is easy because it is basic and doesn’t include features we wanted to use such as ‘Green Screen’. The software is very slow and frequently crashes which can be very frustrating.  The crashing usually occurs when I try to import an mpeg-encoded video file despite Windows listing this type of file as compatible. We have found that we have had to convert these files to either AVI or WMV files to make it run smoother.

Despite these flaws we have been able to get positive results so far- and it’s the only program we have. I'm finding the editing process is going well as we match our footage to our audio and try to match the lip syncing.

These are photos of me editing our work on Windows Movie maker. Here I am ordering the shots we took and dragging and dropping them into the time line below. I can create fade-in transactions by slightly over lapping the shots; I think this type of transition will work well with our video.

Mood Board



This is a mood board I designed to display our influences and remind us of what direction we are heading in with our work. The centre photo is the infamous photo of the man kicking the window as the student protests of 2010 turned violent. This is particularly emotional for me as I was one of the peaceful protesters in London that day. Photos of the protests and of the first televised election debates reminds us our political themes are very relevant and topical to this day- it are these factors that keep influencing us with new ideas throughout our project. Contrasted with these photos are pictures from: Spitting Images, Peep Show and The Simpsons which represent the humour aspects of our piece. Cleverly these are all comical shows that have all had political aspects and great influences for our work.

Filming #4 / Editing

We have now completed our filming apart from two short scenes and small tweaks. Through out the filming process I have kept to my Focas Points of:

      Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate
      Shooting material appropriate to the task set

I have made sure the camera was always charged and ready fro filming, the tri-pod was set correctly and the tape was safe. While filming I made sure we used a variety of shot distances in our video aswell and more interetsing shot-types such as Birds-Eye-View.
    This week we have had a kep focus in Editing as we've loaded all our filmed work onto 'Windows Movie Maker' and worked on cutting out un-needed footage and putting in transitions bewteen shots.

Star Analysis

In earlier posts we have already looked at many professional musicians and described how they influenced our work, these have been musicians such as Michael Jackson to bands such as McFly and Fall Out Boy- but I have decided to do a full analysis of a band that has heavily influenced me personally though our journey: Tenacious D.

     Initially they were low-key and performed local gigs until Jack Black made a name for himself as an actor, which lead to the bands infamous 1999 television series and instant cult fame. The bands comical styling’s were a hit with their songs consisting of humorous lyrics and themes- these included 'F*ck her gently' and 'Karate' as well as their best known 'Tribute' which were all released in their 2001 album 'Tenacious D'.
     In 2006 the band released their first feature film and second studio album both entitled 'The Pick of Destiny' which included cameos from stars such as David Grohl and Ben Stiller. Their Music Videos and Film use a lot of Goodwins' Points as they name their songs after comical lyrics and act in their videos accordingly, this can be viewed as them using the 'Intentional Theory' as the pair are using those lyrics and acting in a humour manor intentionally to meet the expectations of their audience.

'Tenacious D' Album Cover

As you can see their debut album used a very similar cover concept as ours, the black and white contrasted with colour (their devil and our title) to bring emphasis to the coloured object.

This video gets a lot of its comedy value through contrasting its mise en scene in a similar way to us. The video starts with Tenacious D starting a gig at a talent show, as the narrative progresses the mise en scene gets wilder and wilder- their costumes become more stereotypical of ‘rockers’ and their actions become those of rock and roll fantasy, such as jack screaming at the man who’s head explodes.

                The filming and editing is initially basic with cuts between mid-shots to close-ups but as the video becomes wilder so do the shot types with zoom-ins of the band and tracking-shot of a woman collapsing. Our video starts with a faster pace but in a similar way our shots get more interesting as our narrative progresses and our 'party' gets wilder.

Here’s a two-shot from the video showing Jack and Kyle (Tenacious D) dressed in their stereotypical 'rockers' clothing. As you can see in contrast to the photo of the pair at the top, they are wearing metal bands, sleeveless tops and make-up. The Lighting in this shot is also that of the rock and roll mise en scene, with deep purple and bright lights.

Tenacious D are still producing cutting-edge comical music, that influenced bands such as The Midnight Beast and our work, as well as touring the world with live performances.

Filming #3

We have now completed our office-scenes and will film our exterior shots in Oxford this Friday. We have started editing, but getting the filming finished this week will allow us to concentrate completely on the editing process to get optimum results.
    While filming yesterday evening will managed to capture scenes that we created from scratch as we try to improve upon the original video, these consisted of a tracking-shot down a flight of stairs, an ariel shot of Paige ascending stairs and extreme close ups of us clapping. We did this as we want to make this video our own and put our own creative ideas into it.

Easter-Eggs

A virtual Easter-egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game. The term was coined- according to Warren Robinett- by Atari after they were pointed to the secret message left by Robinett in the game ‘Adventure’

I and Liam first discovered the concept of an Easter-egg in the film ‘Dead Silence’. The film is based around a young man who is followed by the ghost of Mary Shaw who has died but lives on in her ventriloquist dummies. The director of this movie is James Wan who also directed a selection of movies from the ‘Saw’ franchise. In a scene of Dead Silence where there are over one-hundred dummies in a room, the director has placed the infamous ‘Jigsaw’ doll from the Saw movies in the foreground of a shot that focuses on the background. This is a common example of an Easter-egg where the director has linked his past work into a current film.

Here is the scene from 'Dead Silence' where Jigsaw can be seen in the fore-ground in front of a pillar.

This inspired me to discuss with our group about the possibilities of putting an Easter-egg into our work. We decided we should do this through the changing of Liam’s tie colour (as his is the least visible as he wears a waistcoat). So through filming Liam has been bringing in different colour ties from the original baby blue to an electric blue to a classic black tie. I think this also mirrors our mise en scene of adding somthing a little-different to our political environment.

Digipak Evaluation

I have finished our Digipak which is of a three-cover fold out design. The outside covers are in a black and white effect which continues the continuity of our poster , while the inside covers are blue, yellow and red to represent the three political parties- each of us are mirroring one of the three party leaders on these covers. The contrast of black and white and bright colours has been a running theme in our products as it represents the contrast of political and humorous themes in our music video.

                The Digipak front cover clearly states our band-name and track-name in bright orange and green as they stand out from the black and white backdrop; this follows the conventions of a mainstream musician who will try to self promote and make their name visible at all oppertunities. It is consumer friendly and comes with free ‘bonus’ merchandise in the form of our promotional poster (located in a flap I designed).

                Creating the Digipak has been a long process that has come through research, planning, development, different designs and compromises before finally reaching our final piece. We looked at Digipaks from established artists to get inspiration, it was here I decided I would like to add merchandise to ours and that a black and white colour scheme can be effective, this was used effectively on a Michael Jackson cover. The planning and development stages allowed us to experiment with various designs that you can see on my earlier blog posts, it was through this development of ideas that we finally came to a design we liked and found powerful and effective. We then took our photos in wooded areas to achieve a natural effect and in front of green-screen and plain backdrops so that we could edit in the bright colours of the political parties. We loaded these photos onto the computer and began editing them on Photoshop before transferring them to Windows Publisher to put together the final design.

I feel it is important to keep CDs and Digipaks around, as in the world of Web 2.0 they can easily be forgotten and swapped for Mp3 downloads. Sometimes, to have a physical case and CD can be a joy and so am happy to have created one myself.

                I have annotated our final piece so it is easier to understand how it all fits together and where the poster and CD are slotted in.