CONSTRUCTION: PROBLEMS I HAVE FACED WITH COLOUR CORRECTION

I faced several problems during the colour correction process. One problem I immediately was presented with was the ability to create a similar effect on clips in the same scene. For example, a clip of the nerd character infront of the fountain at Bushy Park was likely to appear later in the music video (because of the style of the music video). I would edit one clip of me there and duplicate the entire effects menu onto the other clip of me in the same location later in the timeline. This ensured that the same levels of equaliser, contrast etc. were applied to the same scenes throughout the timeline.

Another problem i faced was dealing with bright colours, mainly by the costumes i wore. After applying effects such as brightness and contrast, the bright pink colour of my onesie was overly vibrant when the background was just fine. I had to find a way of manipulating the colours of my onesie and woody outfit without changing the majority of the colours of the background. This involved my compensating some of the background colours in order to tone down the bright colours. 

A good effect to use in this situation, i found, was Levels and RGB Curves. It was an easy effect tool in which i could alter the line up and down so that particular colours (e.g. bright colours) could be lowered in terms of brightness where other colours in the shot can have little impact or change.

CONSTRUCTION: COLOUR CORRECTION

In this blog post i will describe what processes I have performed for the colour correction.

I have had previous editing experience both as a novice film maker as a child using imovie and working last year by myself for my media AS forced me to learn new aspects of Premiere Pro and the many abilities one can achieve with this software alone.

Put simply, the changes i wanted to apply to the music video were:

1. A more vibrant and comical 'look' and 'feel' to the clips.
2. A higher contrast to make the colours stand out more.
3. Get rid of any dull colours or unwanted defects during the clips.

This is the clip's effect menu. The changes
can be applied to the percentages in yellow.

In order to achieve a higher vibrance in the clips, i needed to apply several effects to the clips. This process was relatively simply - drag an effect from the effect menu and drag onto the desired clip where one can customise all aspects of it. An example of this, would be altering the equaliser, brightness and contrast, and adding RGB Curves. Most of the time i felt i had to play around with the settings of the applied effect to see what works better.

The picture to the right shows just how much a clip's 'look' can be changed with the slight alteration of an applied effect - such as equaliser. I found that, with the higher contrast, the colours were more vibrant and less grey and bright.

A further simple effect i found was important to use was RGB Curves. The RGB Curves effect can be seen to the left - the white line represents the master line in which particular colours can be promoted over others. For example, in order to make the green on my shoes stand out i morphed the green and blue line.

Although strictly not part of colour correction, there were effects to the comic book clips in order for it to fit in the music video well. The main effect came under 'motion' in which the JPEG image of the comic book could be transformed (i.e zoomed and rotated). The main process of the 'swipe' effect that takes place of the comic book was using what is called 'key frames'. I applied a 'keyframe' at a start position of the clip and applied a second 'keyframe' at the end of the clip at a position which i wanted the clip to stop at. The clips would then play the motion between the two applied 'keyframes'.

CONSTRUCTION: OPENING SHOT

One of the very first aspects of the editing process was the opening shot in which the title of the band, song and remix are presented. The very first shot that is presented to the audience was taken on our first day of filming outside Hampton Court Palace around the old walls. We came up with the shot after it was noted by my partner that me leaning against the wall was a perfect shot for the titles to be shown next to me.

For choosing the font, we wanted a very
 clean cut and easy to read style of lettering.

We wanted to stick with our original ideas as much as possible and so we were sure to use the title effect of adding words on the screen one by one (see pictures for illustration). 

Each word was added as a separate import on top of one another so that, when played, there would be an extra word added to the timeline at a specific point.

When the titles were added, it was a simple matter of colour correcting the clip as a whole. I chose, like much of the other clips in the music video, to raise the contrast and equaliser so that the colours would be more vibrant.

Finally, i noticed that i looked up and to the right at a point in the clip and i decided to give a motive for this action. There was no sound apart from quiet traffic noises in the original clip so i went on www.grsites.com/sounds to find a car horn. The process was fairly simple - i downloaded the mp3 file and imported the file straight into the timeline in Premiere Pro.

CONSTRUCTION: EDITING THE TIMELINE

 I have now started the process of editing the timeline. Using my skills of working alone last year, i was able to transfer my abilities in a similar way to create our music video. There is a procedure that i use when compiling clips and constructing a timeline:

1. The clips are imported from the folder, 'Media Footage'. From there you are able to see the clips from the archive in Premiere Pro and thus can be directly transferred to the timeline at a specific destination.
2. The clip is transferred onto the timeline, and in my case, when a dance move fitted very well with the beat of the song. The clip is finely scrubbed by zooming in the timeline so any movement of the clip is relative to the nearest 0.1 second.
3. Our choice in what visuals are used was largely determined by the music in which the audience can hear. For example, during a slower tempo segment of the song the clip shown would be slowed down and then reversed if the music was at fast paced part.

The editing process of slowing and speeding up a clip is relatively easy. It requires one to right click on the clip and select 'speed and duration' to which the percentage of speed can be typed in as well as if the clip is required to be reversed. 

The issue of speeding up and slowing clips down is that they change in length depending of what percentage is given. For example, a clip that has a speed of 50% (half the speed of the original clip) means that the clip will be 50% larger than the original. This had to be taken into account when working in-between two clips with limited space and often proved difficult.

CONSTRUCTION: PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

Whilst filming over half term we had the idea to ask members of the public to join in one of our shots. The reason for this is because of our view of the evolution or current trends of music videos. Following our theme we wanted to show that anyone nowadays can be in/ make a music video. This is clear in sites, sch as Youtube where the public can post literally anything about anything. We are now in a generation where people on the internet are no longer consumers but are now also seen as producers. Therefore, this clip enforces this idea that stardom can involve anyone from a 'guy with a camera' to tourists in the City of London.

CONSTRUCTION: STOP MOTION

As part of our music video we have decided to have a stop motion segment. We thought this quirky, popular and stylistic addition to the timeline complements the fast passed music of our video. 

 

In Premiere Pro, the construction was rather simple. The jpeg photos that we took on location at Hampton and Richmond football club were imported into the application. It was then a matter of getting all the required clips together and put them at a similar time length and, by listening to the music, i was able to place the photos accordingly. The end result was a very fluid motion incorporated around the beat and we thought it was a good use of costume change - mirroring the rest of the music video.

CONSTRUCTION: ON LOCATION

We have completed a day of filming on location at Hampton and Richmond football club situated close by in Hampton. We are overall happy with the huge variety of clips that we managed to capture. 

We firstly started placing the camera at various places and angles so we could see if the shot worked using the dimensions we wanted to use. The dimensions are shown in the photo below. The figure, ideally, needs to be placed a few mm above the frame with double the space above his head to the top of the frame. This replicable shot set up entitles us to move from clip to clip/dance to dance without any major disorientation and the video also flows smoothly.

The set up of the camera tended to be rather difficult in terms of the lens we were given. The high mm lens meant that everything tended to be rather 'zoomed' in even when standing far away from the dancer. This meant that:

1. We could not get everything in shot that we originally wanted to
2. The character had to stand far from the tripod and hard communication meant the clips had to frequently stop to confer.

• However, we found that after we managed to get through every required move in each costume we could act more efficiently in terms of how much time we were spending on each costume and thus how much battery and card memory we were using.

• Also, for the second shot at the football club we were able to replicate the rough distance from the camera and the figure more effectively once we had more experience of what the distance had always been in the past.

PLANNING: LOCATIONS - WHERE WE'RE FILMING

We are at the stage of our production where we are preparing to shoot on location around various places including the City and public parks. As we have decided to dedicate a whole day to travel to the City and another around various locations we have decided to plan in detail what locations we would film at and what order/costumes will be used in advance to make our filming more efficient.

A rough idea is as follows:

London eye - Onesie, Kiss costume, nerd
Big ben - Gorilla suit, Kiss outfit, woody
Merry go round - Batman, nerd, nerd with horse head
Waterloo Bridge - Batman, Onesie

For Bushy Park:

Fountain shot - nerd, nerd with horse head, Onesie
Park in background - Kiss, woody, Onesie