I had been personally asked for by Rachel Noble one of the drama students to film her Fire Safety film as part of her course. Then it transpired that the rest of the Drama students also wanted me to film theirs as well. So I went along to a meeting in the drama studios with the 2nd year drama students. There they talked me through each one of the scripts 5 in total explaining the basic plot and any special effects or requirements that they thought I should know about each script.
It was quite a daunting experience walking into that room as drama students can be quite loud and basically not what i’m used to. I survived to tell the tale though. Rachel took down notes for me about each script and sent them to me. She is going to be my liaison with the Drama department for this project. My next task is to assemble a film crew of which I will be leading as director. I already have Dave Hale as my Assistant Director.
It’s coming to the end of January which means that it’s time for another Episode of ‘Nine Stories High’ The Welsh National Opera’s Opera Soap Opera that I film with Minimal Media This month we are in Tesco. It was again a surreal experience, I find each one a surreal experience. Just as the first out of three performances I realise I’m filming a opera soap opera in the middle of a busy Tesco on a Saturday morning and I say to myself ‘ What am I doing this is just weird ‘. Even though it’s my fifth episode the feeling I get from when we start to move into position for the performance to begin does still not go away, I’m not sure it ever will through out this whole project, right up to the last one in May I’m sure I will still have the same feeling.
This month proved slightly challenging when trying to decide on positions to film from as the store is so regimented with the straight isles there not much variation you can do without getting in the way of the Singers or the customers, but even though part of the flash mob surprise gets ruined by the fact that there’s camera in the isles people are still not exactly sure what is going on and get surprised when the singing begins and surprised again when the performance is in full flow but someone from behind starts to sing and become part of the story.
This Tesco store in particular had an upstairs with a balcony of sorts so for the last performance I was positioned up there so I could capture some shot from there.
I know that I say this every time I do a post about an episode of ‘Nine Stories High’ but I really enjoy my time when I’m doing that work, It’s something different , can be challenging at times but still fun to do I look forward to the two days a month I do with them from the rehearsals to the performance it’s all a really good time.
I recently finished work on my Negotiated Study 1 (Neg 1) which was a music video for the band Portlights. I thought i’d do a blog post going into some of the details how how it all came together.
The video is made up of two main parts, a small narrative that runs throughout the video and some studio based work with the band on both a green screen and a plain black background.
The narrative that runs through it is about a guy and a girl, but the guy always just misses the girl making him unsure wether she is real or imaginary.
The name of the song is eclipse so when the band are on the green screen there is a eclipse happening in the background in the style of an old super 8 film projection. I wanted to try and keep that feel or similar throughout the whole video. Which I feel that I have done. I directed and produced the video with Nathan Stewart a student on the music technology course.
We spent one day in the television studio with the band and filmed on both a normal black background and on a green screen.
Most of the backgrounds I created in After Effects like the one that I have right at the beginning which is an old movie style countdown before the band start to play I have the audio that was taken straight from the cameras of what was going on at that moment before cutting to the audio track of the song as the band start to play.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
Above you can see the differences between the raw footage and once the footage had been worked on in After effects adding the background and colouring the footage. One problem that did appear when we did a test shot of the green screen before actually starting was that the floor in the studio was reflecting the green screen meaning that when it came to keying the shot the floor went partially see through. So I had to make a decision on wether to try and light the floor as well which would take more time and we were already running behind schedule or I could try and compensate for it in after effects. I decided that I would make a reflection of what ever was going to be on the background on the floor to compensate for the floor being slightly see through and I’m glad I did because I quite like the way it looks.
A Problem I only came across when in post production was that on the green screen we shot in to the corner for the maximum floor space meaning the floor line is angled and not straight so meaning that if I put the background straight it would look odd and just wouldn’t fit with the shot. To solve this problem I but I split the background in half and angled them so they looked right. It’s only a small thing but with out it the shots on the green screen would not look right.
There were some changes that I made to the shots that were filmed for the narrative. The Narrative was filmed over a two week period depending when the actors were free.
The changes I made were only small but I think they help to up the production value of the music video.
The first change I made was that I got rid of some branding on the side of a vending machines and just made the whole side of the machine black.
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After
The second thing I did was change the sign on the front of the building I did this to again up the production value slightly as the music video is going to be the official music video for the band I didn’t want the video to give any specific locations that can be easily noticed. I wanted the video to of been able to happen any where really.
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After
The third thing I did was I edited out some people from the back of a shot as I wanted the park to look empty. I achieved this by taking a still image from the shot and used photoshop to get rid of the people. I then put the shot back in to after effects and had it over the top of the video.
Before
After
One of the biggest parts of post production involved the train station scene. The shot was not filmed on any green screen at all which looking back on it filming it on green screen would of made it a lot easier in the edit stage but not using green screen didn’t make it impossible just very time consuming when editing it.
Original Shot
This is the original shot that I filmed at a train station I then had to mask around the the guy in the foreground so that only he was on one layer
Masked Layer
I then placed the masked layer over the top of the original clip meaning that I can put something in between and the guy would still be on top. The train in the video is not a real one it is a high quality picture of a full train that I have put in between the two layers
Train added in
Then to give the effect that the train is going past quite vast I put a motion blur on it.
Motion Blur
To then give the impression that the girl has disappeared i then placed footage of the empty train station underneath the masked layer to create the illusion that the girl has disappeared.
