Dance Film - Baby Driver

Jack and I have found that one of the most influential pieces of work for our dance video is the 2017 feature film 'Baby Driver' directed by Edgar Wright, the same director of the Mint Royale music video that we previously mentioned in our research. Baby Driver has been commented on its use of sound and music to compliment the action in the film so much so that it was nominated for best editing, best sound mixing and best sound editing at the 2018 Oscars. There are a number of scenes that we could choose to reference from this film but the two that stick out in particular are the opening scene and the sandwich making scene. In the opening scene we are met with Baby himself as he sits in a car, waiting for the rest of his team to rob a bank. Whilst he waits we hear the overlay of the song 'Bellbottoms' by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as Baby listens to it on his iPod. Baby then proceeds to move and bop to the beats of the tune. The whole sequence is a minimalistic dance piece that is captured in the small space of the front two seats of the car. Baby uses the devices around him to compliment the dance; He uses indicators, windscreen wipers and the horn to all help make his dance work and this is something that myself and Jack are trying to replicate in a sense. Baby does this again in the sandwich making scene. He uses the music playing through the stereo system as the baseline of making food for his disabled housemate. This scene is huge influence for what Jack and I actually want to create as the setting for this scene is in a kitchen which is the exact same location as us. It's given us lots of ideas about how we are able to move our dancer around a kitchen instead of just walking. 

360 Film - The Process

The 360 Film project has been a very eventful project to say the least. I started by partnering up with Jodie and we began to brainstorm ideas for the project. I thought about possibly trying something similar to KickthePJ's 'Tiny Planet Explorer' as I liked the idea of possibly making it into a retro video game style of video. I spoke to John and some of my peers about the idea but it didn't seem practical enough with the time we had and John also said that he'd prefer if we had a 360 video where the viewer had to actually move themselves around to watch instead of bending the footage into a sphere. A week or so went by and Jodie came to me with the idea of taking the 360 camera to a local gig. We liked the idea the the practicality was achievable as the venue was close and we knew the band. Unfortunately once we got around to deciding a date to film on, it turned out that I had a doctors appointment back in my home town and wouldn't be able to make it to the gig so due to this impracticality myself and Jodie thought it would be best to break off and do our own individual projects. At this point I became quite worried and stressed as we had 2 weeks until the deadline and I'd had to start fresh. I spoke to my peers and John and Savina suggested that I do something which I enjoy and mentioned trying to do something with cooking which is a small hobby of mine. With a little bit of help we managed to sort an idea out for me which would be for me to 'host' my own 360 cooking show so I booked my equipment to pick up in two days time. Due to having other projects going on at the same time, all of which due on the same day, I couldn't find the time the following day to find Rosie and have her sign off my idea. This all meant that I had to find Rosie, get her to approve my idea, get her to sign me off, pick up the equipment and film all in the same day so I could return the kit the next day. As you can imagine, stress levels were through the roof but nevertheless I managed to pull it off (somehow). When filming I was supposed to have Jack and Jacob lend a helping hand but unfortunately they were caught up and couldn't make it meaning I had to sort the camera myself. The camera was easy enough to film but as it was something I've never used before I was worried that something would go wrong that I wouldn't know how to fix. Filming went fine and I thought the audio was okay too until I got to the edit.

When I got all of the footage onto the editing software the footage looked okay but had a few stitch lines. I tried my best to fix them but couldn't find anything in my notes and couldn't find any tutorial online which is a slip up on my part but in the end all I could do was align the vertical lines to give myself a perfectly straight video. It's a very poor excuse but I think due to having three and sometimes four projects to do all at once just mentally and physically drained me so in the edit I just didn't have enough time to make the changes I wanted to because the whole editing software was completely alien to me. The audio which I recorded separately on a radio mic ended up sounding blown out and because there was a washing machine on whilst I was filming that is all you could hear so the external audio was unusable. I went out of my way to have graphics made for the video but for the life of me I just couldn't remember how to make them stick in their place when turned into 360 mode. I'd even forgotten how to mask out the stand of the camera. My main worry is that it looks like my work looks lazy and I couldn't be bothered to try what we learnt in class which definitely isn't the case. I believe I just had too much to take on in such a short amount of time. To put it in simpler terms, I cracked under the pressure and forgot everything we'd learnt in class. In terms of the final product, yes technically it is a 360 cooking video but it's just a bit annoying when you plan to do it so differently to the final outcome. I am very disappointed in the outcome and in myself for not being able to achieve what I wanted but the only silver lining in this is that I need to make sure that I can manage my time better for future projects and to definitely not to take on so many projects that all have such short deadlines.

   

VFX - The Process

When starting this project there were a lot of ideas that I thought I could approach. I started by looking at very complex title sequences like 'Seven' and 'American Horror Story' but quickly found that it'd be too difficult. In lessons, Phil showed us some examples of work that we could achieve at our beginner level of visual effects. One that stood out to me in particular was the 'Catch Me If You Can' title sequence which had lots of straight shapes and animated characters moving across the screen. I liked the idea of trying to recreate this but after looking into the animation side of things it became clear that it was too difficult of a task for me so I had to think of something new. I was browsing different title sequences on the internet and came across one for '500 Days of Summer' which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. The title sequence stood out to me and gave me an idea to have a chalkboard and have the chalked text write itself on the board. 

I started by converting the text into a smart object, giving me the ability to move it about independently. After this I made a trim path (which essentially was the effect of the self-writing text) on the new text. I then had to set a marker at the beginning and end of the clip and change the amount accordingly. After all of this was done I was left with chalked text that wrote itself onto the chalkboard. For the actors credit I simply found an image that I liked and thought resembled their characters the film and painted the image completely white in Photoshop before importing it back into the After Effects project. When in After Effects I simply added a fade in for the images using the markers with the opacity tool and that was about it. 

Obviously I know that given more time I could've looked into more challenging tools and techniques but with my limited knowledge of After Effects already as well as my tight schedule to finish other projects on time, I feel this is the best I could produce. Given the opportunity again I would love to try something more challenging as After Effects is such an amazing software and gives users the ability to do almost anything.

Dance Film - Character Development

With this project, there are a lot of things that need to be thought about that isn't including the dance itself; One of which is costume. Myself and Jack spoke and between us agreed that for the video to be believable we need to have the character be believable too. For the choreography we have planned we know that having for example a builder do the dance just would not work as it doesn't fit the mood or the aesthetic of the film. Jack and I began by giving the character a name, we threw a few names about but decided on calling him and the production itself 'Earl'. We stuck with this name because of two reasons; One, it's known that Earl has stereotypically been used in the past as a name for a 'dorky' or 'nerdy' kind of individual. The second reason is because there is a type of tea called Earl & Grey which is just a subtle pun which we hope that some people may notice. After deciding on a name we started to handpick the costume one clothing piece at a time. We agreed that we wanted bright colours so that the viewers eyes would never sway away from the dancer. Jack was certain that he wanted an 80's style ringer top, much like a similar fashion sense to Napoleon Dynamite who was a heavy influence of character development for Earl. We also chose to have Earl wear 'Mom jeans' and colourful vibrant socks purely because we want him to have boring mannerisms when not dancing but once moving have his outfit suit him and his surroundings. After we sorted out the costume that we wanted, we got a mock up done of how Earl would actually look. We were both very happy with the outcome and are looking forward to begin filming.

Dance Film - Continued Research

Another video that Rachael showed to me in my tutorial was that of a clip from a film called Hot Rod starring Andy Samberg. In this scene, Sambergs character is in a forrest after being told he can't do what he has always loved and breaks out into a powerful, limb-flailing mob-like dance in the middle of the woods. The reason why this scene in the film is so funny and entertaining is because of its impulsiveness and unpredictability. The last thing we expect to see in a film about an amateur stunt performer is a footloose style dance in the middle of the woods. Another part of this scene that is very humorous is halfway through the dance, Rod (Andy Amberg) just trips and falls down a mound of mud but the falling/rolling is elongated so much that it just becomes very funny because of how steep the mound actually is. Watching this clip has made myself and Jack think that it would be a good idea to implement something like this in our own video. We think that because our dancer is going to be dancing to what's playing on their headphones, we could have a housemate try to ask them something, meaning that when George takes off his headphones the music will stop temporarily and as he puts them back on he is straight back into his routine in full force.

Continued Research for Dance Video

When having my tutorial, Rachael and I began discussing more examples of work that linked to mine and Jack's work. Rachael mentioned looking at at television advert by Florette called 'Bags of Feelgood' which focuses on the element of synchronisation in movement. The advert looks at a young couple preparing dinner for themselves and shows them doing movements like picking up & putting down, throwing & catching and getting out & putting away objects. This video helped out quite a lot as it's given myself and Jack an idea of how to approach the dance in a different way to what we originally planned if we decided to bring in more people to the dance. Obviously we know that the majority of the stunts performed in this advert were heavily relied on by After Effects as the odds of everything happening as we intended would be ridiculous odds. I think that possibly using after effects to help show a throw of an object would be manageable especially whilst we are still having the VFX lessons with Phil, I'm sure he would know how to help us with that if needed. 

Research - Comedy Portrayed Through Narrative

After discussing with Jack and furthering our research, Jack started showing me a different option for how we could approach the dance film. It began very clear that there are multiple ways to portray comedy and humour through film, one of which is through narrative. Jack found two videos in particular which really stood out for me, one being the music video for the Sundara Karma song 'A Young Understanding' and the other being the music video for Catfish and the Bottlemen's 'Hourglass'. In A Young Understanding there is a fine balance between the video being a spoof or a legitimate music video. It shows the band setting up in their location and the crew getting ready to shoot but there's a man in a purple shirt who keeps entering the background, not really knowing what's going on. This is the gag that makes people laugh whilst watching the music video but also uses the kind of elements that we want to implement into our own video. The use of popping colours, the use of subtle comedy and the ability to maintain focus on the main spectacle of the video whilst using comedy around them to make the video more entertaining. Admittedly this video takes a wild turn after the man gets ahold of the camera which is something we are not aiming to do but would definitely be open to trying something of a similar nature if we had a budget and and were briefed to do that. 

The other video that I mentioned was the 'Hourglass' video by Catfish and the Bottlemen which stars Ewan McGregor. This video really stood out to me as it's not so much a generic music video that people are used to but it also isn't exactly a dance piece either. It stands out because of the story it tells; It's almost as if we're watching a short film unfold. The thing that prevents it from just being a short film is that the actual song is played in parts of the video but its chopped up and is only played when it suits the narrative of the video. Again, there are things with this video that we would not take into consideration such as the whole things being in black and white. This is because as I've said before we want the colours to stand out in our video. The sort of humour that is in the resolution of this video is much more toned down compared to the Sundara Karma video, it's almost like a warm feeling that is give, forcing a chuckle out of you. Overall the majority of elements in this video aren't going to be included in our own but we like the video as a whole and its ability to tell a light hearted story.