Half A Glass - the full video (plus the original scrapped video)

HALF A GLASS



GRENADE



And if anyone is interested, here is the original idea for the video which we didn't really like, and we scrapped.

Grenade - the band responds

Showed the video to the band yesterday. Got a good export on youtube and sent them a private link.

They like it! Thank God! :-D

I showed it to Pablo while we were at work and he loved it and heaped an inordinate amount of sincerely gratifying praise on it. Aw, thanks Pabs!!

A few more tweaks before it's totally finished. It won't be on youtube until I finish the Half A Glass video, but watch this space, it will be up soon ;-)

Editing Grenade

I'm editing Grenade today.
I've noticed while filming I've done a lot of stuff wrong, I cut my camera off too quickly after getting a take, which is making logging the scenes onto my hard drive difficult, I didn't note down what I did as I was doing it so finding the footage has required me to go through all the tapes again, and I left the camera running for ages in between takes, which is just tedious.

From now on I'm going to record the takes only, but make sure I have plenty of time around each take for logging. I'm also going to probably invest in a clapperboard, it really helps with naming and numbering scenes and dividing takes. Plus they look like fun. They also help with synching your recorded audio with your video, which, considering I have no mic input on my consumer camcorder and will be recording sound to a separate source, might become an issue in the future and it would be helpful.

Back to the video itself...

Why is there always a band member smiling nervously at camera, wincing at the spotlights, or cleaning his ears out during the best performance takes??? Gah.

Loggjammin'

Today I started the process of going through the footage and logging it on to the computer using Final Cut. It takes a lot of room on the hard drive, especially now that I'm using standard def rather than my sub-standard camcorder. So I'm only logging what I need. This is my first time using Final Cut to edit a project, I've only been playing around with it before. The logging is really easy to use and understand, and although the software bamboozled me the first time I loaded it up, and I mean utterly bamboozled me, I have since read through a good user guide I got and am now getting the hang of it.

In my iMovie days I'd upload the entire tape to the computer and have a huge wad of video footage through which I would wade through and find the little bits I need. Because I'm trying to be better at this, and because hard drive space is a precious commodity, I am jumping in with both feet to the proper logging procedure on Final Cut, and am labelling my files with lots of info and storing them in folders and bins for easy access. I have small snippets of footage, some only a few seconds long, some several minutes, but it is from these that I will be able to get all my scenes. One thing I need to think about is that I will be taking several small chunks from one file, so I might need to do some duplication because I think that once I've marked a file with an in and out point, then I can't change it for subsequent uses of the same file. I could be wrong. Apologies to anyone who just read that as gibberish.

Footage is looking good, we hired some 300 watt lights as well as the camera and tripod, and I have to say, the one thing that will make the biggest difference to the look of your video is not the quality of the camera, it is your use of lighting!!! This looks like such a step up from previous efforts. If you can get your lighting right then it will look great even on a consumer camcorder like mine. I tried filming scenes with both the big Sony camera and my little panasonic and of course, the Sony looks better and sharper, but now I understand the step up in quality. Even on the expensive camera, a poorly shot/lit scene looks crappy. Even on a cheap camera, a well shot/lit scene looks good!

I'm looking forward to really getting stuck in with editing this video. I'm halfway through the footage I need from the first tape, 3 more to go once I'm done!

The big big video shoot was last weekend!

And man, was it tiring! But it was great! Again I got to play with the big Sony HVR-S270E, which put my shoulder out last time I used it! A few weekends ago I was using it for the first time under instruction from a couple of knowledgable friends of friends, this time I was going it alone.

Luckily, it went really well, the camera didn't give me any problems, and I was actually getting pretty good at finding my way around it. It really is nowhere near as complicated as I feared, despite it looking like a huge weight of dials and buttons! It is still very heavy, but this time I was a little more careful and made sure to be aware of my movements and exertions while picking it up or carrying it around. I actually wouldn't mind using it again, and I was a little sad to lock it away in a flight case for its return to the hire company. It was nice using the big boys toys.

I got about 3 1/2 hours of standard def footage on DV cassette from the weekend. We did the whole shoot at Perry Vale Studios, which has a very nice live room which we used as our performance space for the band footage. We also used the lounge/kitchen to double as a house set for the story sections of the videos. We brought along Mark's digital projector hooked up to a DVD player to project some psychedelic coloured donuts on to the band when they played in the live room. Originally I wanted to get really creative with this aspect, and project all kinds of images and videos over the band as they played, but it required a lot more work than I was able to put in, especially as I didn't own a projector of my own. We eventually settled for some trippy visuals. I hope the effect still looks good, it should at least be a little unique. It looked really good when we filmed the close ups on the instruments and faces of the band. Close up the projections were really bright and sharp. On the wide shots with the whole band the projection was a little more dull because the projector was further away. I shot lots of takes of the band performing including closeups of each member playing the whole song, sometimes twice, to give me plenty of live footage to choose from. In the past I had just filmed the band playing and had moved around a bit myself to cover several angles in the same performance, but it always meant that I would end up just missing the best shots because I was on the move. Better to get more coverage!

One thing I'm noticing as I'm logging the footage from the DV tapes on to my computer, you really need to remind the band to stay focused and dynamic, I kept noticing that one member would have a very bored expression on his face during the multiple live footage takes, or he'd sigh or yawn or look around restlessly. Silly boy!

The story footage was a lot of fun to shoot, we cross dressed the drummer in a dress and wig for one video and slumped the guitarist on the toilet for the other.

After two long days, we finished, and I took my tapes home. My neck and shoulder still hurt, regardless of precautions.

First draft of the Grenade video filmed and edited.

Yesterday I took my camera, tripod, notepad and dog (I was babysitting!) to Mark's house to film the draft for the Grenade video. First of all, we took a detour to Perry Vale Studios to meet Pat Collier, the owner, and to check out the studio as a possible location to film at. My dog Louie marched on in to the studios and made himself at home. He even barked at Pat a little. He's 6 1/2 months old, despite his size (he's a big boy, an Estrela Mountain Dog) but he meant no harm. He's just... barky. Even when he's being friendly.

The live room looked good, the walls weren't as light as I remembered, and we might need to set up some kind of screen for the projection because there are some light fittings we need to think about too. There is a skylight, but Pat has assured me it would be no problem to climb up to the roof and throw a tarpaulin over the skylight. Pat also has a nice kitchen/lounge area for musicians to relax in which will be great as a set for one scene in the video that will be taking place in the hero's house. We were originally going to use a purposefully minimalist set up for the interior scenes (a living room and an office) but by using Pat's lounge we now need to find a realistic office.

Back at Mark's, the draft went well, filming was much quicker than before, I guess every bit of experience helps! I filmed all the "story" sections of the video very roughly, one take per shot and in chronological order (to save time when i edit it together), and then several takes of the band performing the song in the basement.

At home the next day, I put the video together very quickly using iMovie. I plan to use Final Cut Express for the proper video but iMovie is still the editing program I have the most experience with, and because I wanted a very quick, rough edit, I stuck with iMovie for speed.

The video works, it needs more story scenes because the performance footage dominates and drags, mainly because I didn't have enough good takes for different parts of the song to keep it interesting.

I also found when it came to filming, that the final act of the video actually wouldn't quite work. I hadn't given it much thought, and expected it to come together by itself quite naturally, but when it came to it I realised that I needed a lot more planning. We talked and worked some ideas in on the fly. It took a long time but we actually got some good stuff down that was nothing like what I thought the final scene would be like.

The finished first draft is okay, the reason I'm doing it is to find out what works and what doesn't. And I'm really seeing it. Doing these dry runs with a camcorder really helps to show you the holes in your work and the areas you need to think about. It also lets you see things in a new light as you're doing them, and lets you go back to the drawing board and come up with some stronger ideas. I've also seen some flaws in my plan to use projected patterns on the actors, which I should be able to fix by filming them individually in places and by having greater control of the light, which is something we didn't have at Mark's place.

At the moment the video is for my eyes only, and the band. Nothing to share, sorry everyone! Looking forward to the getting the video together, the next effort should be something I'll be happy to share!!!!

Shadows and illumination

I noticed while reviewing some footage shot from a video test at Mark's place for the Grenade video some footage of my moving my hand through the projected light. Because the camera is pointing down at my hand, the background is that of the floor in the dark projection room, so it is completely black. My hand was illuminated brightly and had swirling colours moving over it. It looked really good. I think I might try some of this technique when shooting the live performance material, have them appear without the projection hitting a screen behind them but rather disappearing into nothingness or perhaps hitting a screen or wall off camera. That way the only illumination appears on the people and instruments themselves while they are surrounded in darkness. The opposite of a man silhoutted by bright light, if you will.

I think a mix of techniques would be interesting.

When shooting the band in front of a screen so that the projection appears both on them and around them, I will try to angle the camera to minimise the appearance of their shadows. Or, if possible, to frame them with their own shadows so that they are outlined by them and seperated from the image on the screen.

I think I need to spend a lot more time trying stuff out.

Working on the GRENADE video today

Just some basic prep work... I did this for the previous video and it felt like a good way to work. I break the song up into lines and verses and instrumentals and number them all and note how long each chunk lasts in seconds. This gives me a good idea of how much time I can give to certain parts of the song and lets me see if I'm going to need to run out of footage or if I need to cull scenes to make them shorter.

This is just basic structure work and can of course change completely or even go out the window when it comes to the final edit. The previous video, Bangers and Mash, had a story that fitted the lyrics quite tightly, so this was a useful way to work. This video won't be anchored so tightly the lyrics and will be less literal so I don't want to paint myself into a corner by doing this, but it's a good a first step as any!

I already have some ideas of the scenes I want to see, so we'll see how this fits!

Music video for GRENADE - The Explorer's Collective

The grenade we ordered arrived in time for the first meeting with the band. We're going to do a test run of the video in Mark's basement and then film the actual video in a live room of a recording studio the band has hired for a weekend. We're still going to use the projector and I brought some stock explosion footage samples I downloaded from a really really great website called Detonation Films (see below post). We put the stock footage through the projector and projected the explosions and flames on to the band members. It looked good, I hope we're on to something here.

We also came up with a basic video plan, which is currently open to change, so I won't go into any details until we're finalised. But basically we're going to shoot the video entirely in the large white room of the studio, including the story segments.

Also, we have an experienced camera guy on board who is going to supply us with a high quality camera to use. The band would like to try and get the video some airplay on the television, and to do so you need to meet a minimum spec which my consumer camera doesn't reach. So I will get to play with some big boy's toys!!!

Here's our brilliant grenade prop. It's cast from genuine US WW2 moulds and has a removable pin and handle:

I was nervous carrying this around London in case it rolled out of my bag and I got myself killed by armed police. I also thought about using it to demand a pay rise at work but thought better of it.

Here's where I bought the grenade from, it's all legal and above board. It was £18 including delivery and came really fast. They sell a lot of very interesting stuff on the website, great props.

SURPLUS AND OUTDOORS SHOP