Director Research Task (Homework 2)

Cody Blue Snider who directed "Devil's Night" by Motionless in White. The other is Shawn "Clown" Crahan who directed "America" again by Motionless in White. 

Reason why Cody interests me is by the edits and effect he uses in the music video "Devil's Night" as there are some very interesting edits such as rewinding scene making them look like the band is playing normally and the camera flare in certain parts of the scene. Not only this, but the main 'story' to the music video is quite interesting, the band wonder around what appears to be an scrap yard to find civilians with no eyes mouth. The band then proceeds and approaches/chase these civilians to then free them from being blind and silenced. The way this is done is by butchering the skin covering the eyes and mouth which does have very brutal scenes in but will go along with the feel of the song. As the song progresses more and more people are freed and then create an army of sort to escape the scrap yard to the normal world. 

The editing sections really do grab my attention as they create such a powerful feel that flows with the song. Two edits which appear very often in the video is slow motion and rewind, these two effects and the rain in the song really do work well together. 

This really catches my liking as is shows freedom to those who are trapped and bound by such fate of being blinded and silenced but then show a much darker side by showing aggression and brutality. 

Shawn or otherwise know as "Clown" from being in the band Slipknot caught my attention when he directed "America". After listening to the song, it becomes very clear that he primarily focused on creating a video to match the lyrics exactly. The song itself is aimed at America's society and how corrupted it is, for example, "Making saints out of useless pop stars, where the intelligence". Shawn tried to capture that image and try to put it into the video. This is the reason why i am interested in this video and director, most video's don't really stand for anything or have no relation to the song while Shawn tried to make it related. 

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Final Edit - Preliminary Task

This is the final edit of our preliminary task.


Overall I am happy with the outcome of the preliminary task, there are times where we could have saved time and would have been a lot easier to edit and get the lip syncing right first time. I have learn't a lot from this creating this preliminary task such as lighting and how to save time lip syncing, i will learn from these mistakes and try to make less faults when creating the music video.

Bully by Three Days Grace

'Bully' by Three Days Grace has the most potential as this would be the easiest to record since I have access to school grounds.

Main idea for the video is to have a male student who appears to bully people and acts rough but on the inside the song explains the issues of the bully and why he acts like that. The next verse of the song focuses on female bully and her insecurities and explains why she's a bully or why she is being bullied.

During the verses the camera will be focused on the bully while the singer follows them around singing at the same time as though he's invisible or his/her self conscious beating at them in it's self, bullying them. 

Idea's for Music Video

Finishing off the preliminary task I started planning and thinking of songs to choose for my music video.

The songs we have to choose have to be song without music videos and after long thinking I've had a rough idea on what song to choose. 

'Whore' by Get Scared has a lot of potential for a music video which will be easy to make and already has it's own theme around the song.

'Brains' by Mark Tremonti also has a lot of potential since the song's title is 'brains' this could encourage ripped clothes, make up and fake blood as we assume brains to zombies.  

'Bully' by Three days grace has possibly the most potential as the main place where bulling happens is in school which is easy to access and film. 

What I need to do to improve my grade. Music Video

After looking back at the preliminary task I know what lies ahead when it comes to making the full music video.

What I would need to do for my music video is to be better prepared and plans days before shooting by making storyboards, include camera angles and edits.

Implicate more mise en scene such as costumes, props and the setting. A rough idea for my music video would be to have musical instruments such as guitars, drums and bass. Costumes will depends on the genre of music and what era the song was released in.

Explore more with lighting such as using filters, white balance, contrasts to create the right atmosphere and feel of the video that links to the song. For example a Gothic rock songs would be gloomy, dark and miserable which a dance track would be bright with lazer pointers everywhere.

Reflecting on the Preliminary

After looking back at the preliminary work me and my partner did, I think we could have improves several things.

I think we could have planned the shots and and camera angles before hand so we could have saved more time in filming. Also to save more time by using two cameras and shooting the whole song in one take instead of filming individual sections of the song.

We should have implicated more mise en scene in our piece as we only used two props (Headphones and Mic).

To also save time in recording and to avoid re-shooting scenes we could have looked at the scene we shot back on the camera to make sure that it's accurate and looks right.

Editing

After quickly syncing the lips to the song and doing minor edit I then allowed my partner to finish off the video with some final quick edits as this will give her credit towards the work.

Lip Syncing

Lip syncing was a problem for us as we had used multiple shots which then most of them weren't used since other shots had better lip syncing. After further research I found that it would be better and easier to either have two camera on set to record from two different angels, or have a 5 second pause before we start the song and play the song all the way through with no breaks, then leave another 5 seconds at the end so when it comes to putting them all into premier pro everything will be in sync and will be easier to cut sections out while keeping in sync.

Effects

We had decided to go for a warm look to the studio and actually look like one instead of two students infront of a white board. For this we changed the cameras white balancing, the camera was set to around 6000K so we can get a warm orange feel, although this sometimes makes the images or videos look bad i feel that it well suited the scene.

Camera angles

We decided to have the camera facing slightly away from the center of the face and just below the head facing upwards. We did this as this would focus more on the singers mouth and facial expressions.

Preliminary Filming

Me and my partner learned the lyrics to the song that had been given to us and we started recording.

During recording we experimented with different lighting using filters as well as lighting positioning. After going through several positioning we had decided to have two lights, one facing the singer and one on the opposite side. We put the light which wasn't facing the sing further away,we did this to remove shadows that were showing up on the backboard. We did use several filters to try and get different lighting but we decided that not having a filter mean we could get a more natural looking effect.
Photos below show me and my partner filming our preliminary. These also show the camera angle and the lighting positionig. 

Filming plan

We had decided that the scene which the recording would take play would be a studio, we tried making this clear by having headsets and a mic to replicate a studio feel.

We use 2 shots, close ups of the face and extreme close ups of the mouth as this would focus more on the lip syncing.

Preliminary Task Planning and Ideas

For the preliminary task we are asked to work in parts to plan, film, direct and edit a song to which we will have to lip sync. The song which we have been given include a male and female role. This suits our group as my partner is a females so we can have both roles match.

Idea 1:
The idea I came up with is to have an extreme close up of the male and female's lips as they mime one at a time or when both singers are singing at the same time with the females lips on the left side of the camera and the males side to the right of the camera. Along with this idea I thought that having the lyric flash on the screen as the singers are singing the lyrics.

Idea 2:
This idea is very similar to idea on but have a white screen with both of our heads the other side shining a light so it casts our shadows. Same with idea 1 the females head will be on the left and the males on the right. This time around this will be recorded in one take, then take individual takes closer up of the shadows. This idea will not have lyrics running through-out the song.

The image above kind of shows how the shadow effect will turn out.

Both ideas will include fade ins and outs as each singer's sings. Including in this, having both singers in one frame but have the one not singing faded out a little as this would make the one who is singing stand out more.

Idea 3:
This idea still carries the same concept as having the female and male roles filmed separately, this time around have their faces in this. The set will be in a recording studio as though as they are recording live. This includes a mic on stand and headphones to make the set look authentic.

The image above shows the exact set and props I am looking for. The reason for these props is to make the video seem like it is being filmed in a recording studio.