WIP Draft... like a flower

UGH.

Yes, I will have an update with a WIP draft of my video up either tonight or tomorrow. I would like to post it now, but FCP is taking its sweet time.

(Post being made to kill time whilst the thing exports. Note my perfectly conventional file name for the export. Because pointing out the obvious is like my job or something. I'm not going to ramble for the remaining two hours so I'll end this now.)

-HM.

UGH pt. 9001

So I'm trying to put together a nice little montage of the footage I got filmed the other day.

This is the second 'batch' of videos. This may take a while. Huzzah.

/pointlessposttokilltimeuntilIcanactuallydosomethingproductive

Why are jewel cases still a thing?

This is a slight digression from the other R&P posts on here but it relates to the way that music is distributed and I know we have to design a digipak to sell the CD for the final coursework artist even though I'm the only person in the world who still buys CDs...

Why do some publishers feel the need to sell their discs in plastic jewel cases, even though better options are now available?

The photos I'm using are for the sake of examples of how publishers have chosen to distribute their products rather than to comment on the artists featured.

First problem with jewel cases: this can happen.

Plastic can get scratched or cracked really, really easily. And when it does, it looks awful. See those two lines in the bottom right? They're there for good now, which is a major frustration for anyone who is fussed about the presentation of their music library (yes, my CD drawer is organised first by alphabetical order and secondly by year of release of the original copy).

Another issue is the general effort put into the presentation. Jewel case presentation is pretty much limited to the front cover artwork and the track list page on the back, whereas digipak presentation seems to be much more detailed. Let's have a look at a comparison -

The digipak looks so much tidier here - the way the inside artwork has been carefully cropped to fit the shape of the box, the way the booklet has its own little slot cut to shape, the way the disc is hidden away to improve the art's presentation whilst still being easily accessible etc.. It just looks so much more appealing than the typical "book goes here, disc goes here" situation we get with jewel cases.

There is the argument that it would cost more to produce more unique artwork for the insides of a digipak, though personally I believe it would still be more appealing than a jewel case even if they use basic cheaply produced graphics like simple snapshots of the band etc..

In my eyes record labels do need to realise that they need to put some effort in to persuade people that they're getting a better product in the long run if they own a physical copy of an album as opposed to just pirating it; and as someone with mild collection tendencies I feel more 'proud' to own albums which have had great care put into their presentation on top of their musical value.

Another point is the long time wear. Any CD case you own is likely to get a bit worn after a while; that's nature. It's just that from my experience digipaks seem to age more respectfully than jewel cases. Whilst card digipaks do get a bit dog-eared in the corners and some of the colour can fade, they don't end up being anywhere near as bad as scratch and fingerprint smothered jewel cases (all of which occur from typical everyday use).

Some albums try to counter this by having the jewel case inside a card cover -

- though this doesn't work. Why? Because the card gets tired out instead, due to the thin edges.

This is probably more of a random ramble than anything productive (yay for writing inspiration at half-past two in the morning!) but I think it's definitely necessary to look at the pros of the digipak format.

-HM.

Porcelain Recreation Evaluation - Oh dear...

So I exported the final version of the Porcelain recreation today. It is terrible.

First thing I'm going to note: yes, this post is overly self-critical, even though I received a lecture about this kind of thing in Thursday's theory lesson. Reason? Because I would much rather reward myself exclusively for absolute perfection as opposed to settling for mediocrity.

I was supposed to be recreating a minute of this:

Instead, I spewed out this:

As the purpose of this task was to get a feel for how to go about creating the final piece I am going to look at each individual problem with this and hopefully highlight what I'd need to do differently in the final piece so it doesn't look like My First Final Cut Project in the way this... thing... does.

Cinematography
If we look at the eye shot which stays throughout the video, we can see one fault in particular: it looks like it was filmed with one of those Game Boy cameras from 1998. That's an exaggeration, but the point stands - the quality is really, really poor. I'm not sure whether this is down to the camera (the Bloggie) or the filming location (it was in my bedroom, which has poor lighting), but either way, it's something I need to work around.

The overlay shot, however, is of a good quality. This is probably because I resized it, so any blurriness the original had is not visible here.

Editing
Holy Arceus, I royally screwed this up. I can break this down into two significant problems:

1) The cutting away. Whilst in theory it would be possible to cut away at the overlay bit by bit so it looks like the eye is closing over it, it is not practically possible due to time constraints. It wants to render each time you make a cut - and when you only have about two hours with the Mac at a time this just doesn't work, so I took the easier choice and just cut it in and out roughly in time.

The result of this practice is that it looks absolutely AWFUL. It's like my head is just popping in and out randomly, which is completely out of place with everything.

2) Consistency, how does it work? Because I couldn't keep my head still in the eye shot, I've had to shift the overlay crop around at different sections in the video. It is highly noticeable, and it is WRONG. To avoid things like this I need to ensure that the cinematography is spot on to avoid having to use bodge-job editing techniques to work around it.

Honourable mention in the hall of failure: some of the lip-syncing if off. This only became apparent after exporting as the FCP window is fairly laggy.

Mise-en-scene
In regards to make-up: no, I am not wearing mascara or eye liner. Ever. At all.

Sound
At least the song is nice, I guess.

So yes, I believe this shall suffice for an evaluation for this absolute abomination to the art of music videos; I think it's fair to say I'm highly dissatisfied with the outcome of this. I need to step it up.

-HM.

Rendering. Again.

Here's a new problem which I have never, ever experienced before /sarcasm

The rendering is taking ages. What a surprise.

So yes, I'm working on the Porcelain recreation in Final Cut Pro. From today I've established that I need to redo the shot of my eye because it's too unstable to use; I need to find something to rest the camera on.

On the plus side, I have managed to get the lip-sync shot cropped and feathered and right now the thing looks like this:

(The original clip is underneath to help me with timing; will be replaced by my own eye clip once I've refilmed it).

-HM.