Evaluation - "How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?"

Throughout the course of putting together my productions, I've relied on a wide variety of different pieces of technology. This has been a consistent feature of production, and I've made use of lots of pieces of hardware and software at every single step, from the early research to showing off the final products. In this post I am going to cover everything which has been beneficial to me during this year.

First up is the hardware.

Apple iMac

This has pretty much been the main base throughout most of the project; specifically the video production.

• Supports Final Cut Pro 7 (more on that later) which I've used to actually put the video together.
• Has an internet browser (Safari); necessary for research.

Sony Bloggies

• As I have had access to my own one of these I used this for filming the outside narrative parts of the music video. It has a reasonably decent picture quality for these parts.
• I had initially attempted using these to film the performance shots, however they didn't seem to cope too well with the darkness.

Nikon SRL Cameras

The better, more expensive cameras which were available.

• As I didn't have the opportunity to take these away from the school grounds, I wasn't able to use them for the outside shots... but they were great for the performance parts of the video. During the stationary shots they were attached to tripods, and for the moving shots, I had Sir run around with one (quite literally with the "crazycam" shots...). 
• They can also take high resolution still photographs, so I had Sir take the photograph which I'd use on my digipak and promotional poster with one.

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As for software...

Final Cut Pro 7

This has been the base for everything in terms of putting the music video together in post-production. It has quite a significant number of different parts which I've employed throughout the entire process -

• File management: all the videoclips I've imported are easily accessible in the Browser (and playable in the Viewer), which made the process of critically analysing each shot to determine whether it is usable much easier.
• The Canvas has let me play the video through as I was working, which let me see what I was doing. This is typically a pretty useful thing. The slight drawback with this is that at times it can be a bit laggy (which I put down to the presumably not-so-great RAM on the Mac; unfortunately I can't check the exact specs because the permissions won't allow me to. My nerd self is disappointed...) which makes it particularly difficult to accurately sync up the visuals (my lip-syncing) to the audio. This means that I've had to resort to ultra precise editing when zoomed in to the track to sync the two (otherwise known as the "left a bit, right a bit" method), and I'm still not convinced that everything is perfect because of this.
• The Timeline is where the main magic happens... or something. This is where I've put everything together - as you can see from the screenshot, I've used what some would see as an unconventional timeline management system by piling several of clips on top of each other as opposed to just using a main track and a few overlay tracks - but there is logic behind this. This was in fact to try and work around my syncing problems - I got all of the main performance takes as close in sync as was possible (I stress the "as possible", my lip-syncing isn't perfect, which is another reason why I had to resort to the previously mentioned "left a bit, right a bit" technique") and used the Razor Blade tool to cut the clips to shape.

On top of just using the main parts of the application which are handed to you on a plate, I dug a bit deeper and made use of some other tools...

• Image+Wireframe: some of the shots needed a bit of cropping - one of the performance takes which was otherwise a good take had a bit of an unwanted door in the shot over to the right; I used the Wireframe to zoom in so this is out of view. I also used the zoom to give a bit more variety in how close to my face the camera appears to be - which to an extent followed Sir's suggestion of making the production "more crazy".
• Colour Correction: Most of my video is in greyscale, because DARK and EDGY = cool. For the sake of making the greyscale effect, I just reduced the saturation to the absolute lowest - though FCP's Colour Correction tool can also adjust the balance of the blacks and whites, which I've deliberately tampered with from shot to shot as an additional little touch to support the whole dark vs. light concept.
• Gaussian Blur: Tied with some stock fade transitions to make that cool little flicker blur to nothing effect at the very end of the video.

MPEGStreamClip

This, at first, looks like a basic media player, akin to QuickTime or Windows Media Player; but it has an incredibly useful function which I discovered when working on personal projects about a year or so ago - it can be used for converting and compressing video files. I've used it to convert the .mov output files from FCP into .mp4 files - I've found .mp4 files typically have lower file sizes whilst still being of a decent quality - so I've used it whenever I've had either a draft or some kind of video to post on this blog, so I didn't have to wait a decade for the thing to upload.

Adobe Photoshop CS6

(Photo from elsewhere because I'm not using a computer with PS installed right now to screenshot for myself. I would link to the site for the sake of attribution, but said site appeared to be teaching others how to go about pirating the software, and that's no good...)

Used for the creation of both the digipak design, and the poster design. I've covered more specifics into how I used the software for the poster in the video here, but I should clarify that I used similar techniques for the digipak production as well. 

I used Photoshop because a) I've been using it for years for different things and so I sort-of have an idea of what I'm doing and b) it's a pretty powerful piece of software with a lot of editing options.

Microsoft PowerPoint

I'm going to be honest - I don't like PowerPoint in the slightest because it has a hideous UI and I have to look at one of the things every time someone wants to present anything, but I will grudgingly admit that it can be beneficial in some very specific situations (by which I mean laying things out in bullet point format with the odd picture). Hence why some of the blog posts here have PowerPoint embeds.

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I've taken advantage of this by using social media to gain input from potential future audience members as to what they want to see in productions, for the sake of research...

Web forums

As seen when I conducted early research into fans of the rock genre, web forums can be useful for collecting feedback from specific audiences - this is because most forums revolve entirely around specific areas of interest, and in this case I was able to ask the members of two music-oriented forums for their opinions.

Social networking (e.g. Facebook/Twitter)

We're at a point now where practically everyone in western society uses a social networking site of some kind, and if we ignore the fact that a great deal of what you see on them consists of invites to play stupid Flash games and fifteen year olds going on about how they want to go out and get drunk, they can be pretty useful tools for asking your friends for their opinions on different factors which help shape a production. They were also useful for promoting polls (see below) as I could prompt people I know to go and fill them out.

Polldaddy

Polls and surveys can be pretty useful for getting generalised overviews of people's opinions, and Polldaddy is a particularly great way of doing this as it gives good numerical breakdowns of the responses gathered, as we can see to a degree here.

YouTube

Over the course of production, I've been able to upload my drafts as a kind of production log, as well as upload other videos (such as my Photoshop poster video) explaining how I've done certain things. We may moan about YouTube whenever they change the layout etc., but at the end of the day, it's a very useful site for sharing videos.

Blogger

This really goes without saying, given that you're reading this on a blog which is hosted on Blogger, but I've made use of it to document my progress on both the music video and the ancillary tasks. I've also been able to get feedback on my work, as Blogger has a comments function.

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So, ahem, I didn't realise this post would be so long. Eh. I hope it has filled your minds with plenty of informatively informative information about the ways in which I've made use of technology throughout the project.

-HM.

Ancillary Production - Let's Play Photoshop

My Zero desktop is the best thing.

Production Update 10 - Draft the Second

With the feedback I'd received from Sir a little while back I've been able to get a second draft exported for your viewing pleasure. Or something. I don't want to make him feel too great about this after all, I've spent a good seven months now crushing his spirit but his feedback has been useful in prompting me to make some changes.

So as it stands, this is what my video is currently looking like.

Looking better, no?

Now whilst I could do my usual here and write up several paragraphs about "well, I've changed this because x, and I replaced that because y" etc., but I know you folks love a bit of dynamic media presentation. Therefore, I've employed the wonderful Picture-in-Picture tool in iMovie to have the first draft playing in sync with the new version so you can easily see the differences between the two (the big image is the current version, the overlay in the bottom right is the first draft).

It is necessary, however, to bring up a couple of notable points:

• The intro has been changed as per Sir's suggestion of having a short shot to draw the audience in without the intro looking awkward.
• I've thrown in a few rapid flicker cuts (such as those used as a transition between the first shot and the start of the performance) to make the video "more crazy". This was achieved simply by using the blade tool to make a few cuts to the overlay track, which were then deleted.
• A few shots have been shuffled around to fix some of the syncing issues; though as these have been fixed, new and exciting syncing issues have been discovered which need fixing before the next export. Huzzah.

-HM.

Ancillary Update - Poster mockup

This is only an initial mockup, but it gives an idea of my mind stream (is that a thing? It reminds me of a time stream. Only I can alter it without causing any paradoxes...).

The idea is to have a very similar approach to the digipak's front cover; this will help promote my 'brand' and will make my face recognisable. The little PIP-style digipak overlap is to enforce the idea that beside all the flashiness, there is a product to be sold, and that it is a good idea to go out and buy said product.

Obviously I'm going to pretty this up a lot yet, but I thought I should show a rough idea first. The photograph is the same one I'm using on the digipak; I'm so grateful that the media department's DSLR cameras take high resolution stills.

-HM.

Production Update 8 - Music video first draft WIP

Analysis to follow later.

Ancillary Production - Album Cover Photography

Alongside filming for the music video, I've also started designing a concept for the digipak. There are a number of factors which I have taken into consideration; this post will cover said factors.

Firstly, I want the album cover to be dark. This is because of the dark and 'edgy' imagery I've been going for with the Dark Flame artist, as well as the fact that from my findings this appears to be a common convention of rock album covers - a while back I looked at Muse's The 2nd Law cover, however since then I have looked at more rock covers and have found that quite a few of them have darker aesthetics -

Because of this, it seems fitting to follow suit; whilst it may appear to be a lack of originality - it works as a marketing technique in that rock fans associate the dark imagery with music they enjoy, so when they see a new album with a similar kind of cover they will assume that the album will feature the kind of music they enjoy.

Another reason why I have went for a dark setting is for the sake of sharing traits with the music video; this will reinforce the artist's imagery through another form of media, making it more memorable, therefore more marketable.

After filming the music video footage the other week, I asked Sir to take a few still photographs of me with my guitar in the same costume I was wearing in the performance sections of the video, with the best take being the one which I'd use on my album cover. These are some of the poorer versions:

Whilst some of these are somewhat acceptable, I'm not too keen on them because a) some suffer from mild motion blur (I can't stand still) and b) show me looking slightly distracted. The one I've settled on to use is this:

Why? I like the lighting, I like the way my hair is all over the place, and I like the fact that I look pretty spaced out. It goes with the whole DARK ANGST thing I've had going on. I'm going to greyscale the photo when I edit together the cover in Photoshop, which will exaggerate this more.

-HM.

Production Update 7 - Let's try this again!

This update is, once again, about the process of filming the performance element of the I Am... All of Me video. Yes, I know. Again. But this footage has to be good before I use it. I don't want a repeat of that abysmal Porcelain recreation. Ugh, that was bad.

So, the first time we tried this I wanted to try it in front of the green screen. That didn't work. The next time, we tried filming in an actual location that actually exists with the Bloggies and... that didn't work either. Will this be a case of third time lucky? Let's find out...

We've taken a couple of measures to try to get better footage this time:

• Remember those big sheets of black paper we used last time, because we thought the room would be too light? We didn't use those.
• We used the media department's fancy new SLR cameras instead of the Bloggies.

Here be the footage. Once again, thanks to Sir for helping me out with the filming.

 

This first video shows the main playthroughs of the song. As you can see (if you bothered to watch the whole forty minute video...) some of the early takes were first a bit blue, then completely black - these are unusable. After realising this, we did a few test shots and we found a lighting setup which seems to work (those being the more 'yellow' shots).

We also decided to take some more strobe light footage - although I felt the strobe footage from last time was good, it made sense to try for better now we had the shiny new cameras out.

It looks good! What you will notice in this video is some of the footage has some... unique... shots. This is what we've dubbed as "Crazycam" - this is because as the strobe light shots will be used to produce a chaotic-feeling pace to the video, I thought it would make sense to show a variety of seemingly random camera motion shots for very, very brief periods of time to act as transitions. It was quite entertaining producing this part - Sir was running around with the camera like an eight year old who had consumed waaaaay too much sugar, which was made even more funny when you consider that with the strobe running, my view of him looked like one of those amateur stop-motion films that has some of the frames missing.

Oh, one more thing. Have a collection of both random things we filmed to test out different camera setups and things which were left in the time between turning the cameras on and starting the performance.

Enjoy!

-HM.

Production Update 6 - Performance filming mk.ii.

So yes, on 17th January I had another stab at getting the performance element of the video filmed, after the unsuccessful green screen experimentation.

With many thanks to Mr. N. for staying around after school for several hours to help me film.

I think the main problem here is that we overestimated how much work we'd have to do to block out the outside light to get the right dark aesthetics, and therefore made it too dark to be usable. The preview screen on the Bloggies seems to show the footage much different to how it actually turns out; so it appeared to be usable as we were filming.

Because of the whole dark concept I'd been going for, it seemed like it'd be necessary to completely black out the room and use only lighting from a small torch for the shots - whilst filming this footage, we used this SUPER PROFESSIONAL dark room setup in the media suite in school:

Yes, that is black paper over the windows. Lots and lots of black paper. Too much black paper.

As mentioned in the video, the strobe light shots could potentially be usable. We have since refilmed the performance once again; however the footage for those is on the cameras and computer in school so I don't have access right now to put together an analysis montage for that footage. It will follow during the week!

-HM.

Production Update 3 - Electric Soldier Guitar

A day earlier than promised! Huzzah.

In this video, I decide how I'm going to go about filming with the strobe light, and then have a go at testing the editing effect I wish to use in the final piece.

The idea behind the shots in that test at the end is that the guitar on the stand is a placeholder for me. I couldn't be in this as I was in charge of the camera and the torch - when I film the final thing, I'll have someone else covering those duties.

From this I've established a few things -

• The qtxlight strobe light seems to be the most practical to use when filming the video; so I will use that when recording my main performance.
• The rapid cuts to the strobe shot actually work well! This is something I'm really glad about; it creates the 'detached' feeling I've been aiming for since my original concept.
• The contrast between static and moving shots work well - the regular shots are static (well, as static as they can be when I'm holding the camera without a tripod whilst also moving around a torch...) whilst the strobe shots have a degree of movement to them. In the final piece, I will use a combination of pan and zoom shots - more variety will re-emphasise the detached concept.
• The torch also works well! I wasn't expecting this; I just used it for the test due to a lack of better lighting. I could use the torch to create a similar effect to what I was originally going to use the chroma-keyed backgrounds for - to show the light floating around, representing the clash between hero and dark in the performer's mind.

-HM.

Production Update 2 - File Management

So yes, I have imported the clips from Thursday's performance recording session into Final Cut, and have separated them into bins based on the kinds of shots.

This may not be a conventional organisation manner, but I have my reasons - right now I am focusing solely on the performance section, and will worry about narrative later. Because of the untamed nature of my character's mentality, I want to borrow parts from as many takes as I can, to give a disjointed tone to the video. Provided they can all be chroma keyed properly, I hope to use something from each of the clips (excluding the PRODUCTIVITY files; those are ones from the green screen test montage which I imported by accident. Failure.).

-HM.

Green Screen Experimentation

So, I plan on using the green screen for the performance element of my I Am... All of Me video. This is because I intend to make use a background which using some creative lighting effects to represent the confusing of the character as they try to choose whether to take the pathway towards being a brave-hearted hero or the pathway towards black-hearted evil.

Before I can start planning which shots I should use for the storyboarding phase of production, I need to know what is technically possible with the green screen in school. Because of this I thought it'd be a good idea to film some test shots from different angles to see what works well post-editing. There possibly are some obstacles I'll face as the green screen in school is very small - however this is a challenge one must face when they don't own a film studio.

Therefore, here is nearly two minutes of me acting like an idiot in front of said green screen (with backgrounds I happen to have saved on my computer - don't ask):

Many thanks to Mr. N. for sticking around after school to act as cameraman!

What worked well here then?

Static shots (where the camera stays in the same place) seem to work fairly well, though there are still some green reflections over my body. I'm guessing this is down to the lighting in the room at the time, but I may have to experiment more to pin down the exact cause.

As for what is in the shot itself, the first three shots show that I can get away with -some- movement myself, with only minor chroma keyer glitches showing through (usually near my hair and fingers). I did have problems with shots where I moved a lot though - there was one shot we attempted which featured me walking from outside of the shot straight past the camera, however this ended up being completely unusable when I tried editing it in iMovie. Because of this it will be necessary to keep the movement limited during the performance scenes.

Shots where the camera moves are a different story though; as we can see in the shot at 0:40 where Sir tried rotating the camera, the chroma keyer software struggles to keep up with it (resulting in some unwanted background and some moments where it clips through my jacket), which seems to be down to the way the visible lighting appears to change as the camera moves. This is also apparent in a later shot where Sir tries to pan the camera past me.

The very close up shot doesn't work on the basis that the software struggles to cope with the extra detail of my hair against the background, which makes the cut look like a bad magic wand job.

Because of this I should avoid using unnecessary very/extreme close ups during the green screen parts of my video - some will be necessary (Goodwin's conventions; plugging star image etc.) but I don't want to overkill it because I'd hate for my artist to be associated with terrible visual effects. I also still need to sort my eyes out, as we can see in the screenshot above.

Getting the chroma key to work in iMovie was a tad fiddly; most of the shots didn't want to work off the bat, so I had to reduce the Green Gain in the Inspector until it looked right. There was no formula for each shot, I just had to tinker until they worked. This could be annoying.

-HM.