In our music video we shot on two locations, one of them, and the first one you will see was shot in the studio.The studio setting of our music video was filmed in a warmly lit environment, and when we got around to editing the video we realised that we didn’t like how orange the footage had come out. In order to change this we used a programme called ‘Color’ to pull down the amount of reds in the footage leaving it with the cool blue colouring. This gives a similar atmosphere to the other examples of indie films we had watched, from artists like Bright Eyes and Patrick Wolf that we looked at on online sources such as YouTube, MySPace, google, soundcloud, iTunes and official websites to make research into the indie music industry to collect inspiration and knowledge about existing artists and especially their music videos which contributed to some stylistic ideas of our video.
For most shots in the studio we used a Sony F3 camera with a prime lens as it is very useful for so called beauty shots (For smooth skin etc.). For the focus pulls we had to change the lens as you cannot zoom with it.
When changing our location to the house we noticed that the lighting was quite warm again and therefore we put some blue tones on top of the lights to make the images look colder. Again we used the Sony F3 camera, because of its clarity and amount of details when having a close ups. When shooting the ballerina we took the Sony NX5 camera, which does not have the same quality like the Sony F3 one but it was useful for us because we were shooting two scenes at a time in order to get more material done in less time. So while one part of our group was shooting Peter, the other group was shooting the ballerina dance sequence. This time we did not have the equipment of a CD player so that we had to use our phones in order to make use of a playback.
For the special effects when bringing the flowers back to life we used After Effects in Final Cut Pro which allowed us to cut out Peter and arrange the background so that it the fading into the live flowers look ‘natural’ to us. We put everything back in place and created a change that look ‘right’ for our eyes. In order to lead the viewers look we made use of a zoom as well. This process is called Masking.
After this scene we had another bit where we made use of after effects. That was when he is finding the Polaroid picture between the books which is then starting to move. In order to create the impression of a moving image we had to do a similar thing to the still image in After Effects. We used an empty Polaroid so that we were able to cut out the black bit and place the video clip into the empty frame.
Even though Peter tried to be still, his hand was still moving a bit, therefore we had to freeze the image (his hand) and only have the inserted clip moving. The interest of the audience will be focused on the clip so that they may not notice the fact that we froze the other image. Over all we had to images in one.
Looking at the very last bit of our video you might notice that we had to slow him down a bit when walking out of the door. Again we did that with the help of Final Cut Pro. (Slowmotion)
We wanted to repeat the theme of having a Polaroid in the Digi pack, because we thought it could be one of his trademarks that is going to be repeated throughout his image. Therefore we took a photograph of him wearing a wolf hat and change the colours in Photoshop so that it had a vintage style to it. After having turned the photograph into an old fashioned picture we inserted the image into a digital Polaroid frame. On the front cover we decided to leave it with a Blanc front cover with nothing on it but the Polaroid and on the back we did the same thing but with the back of a Polaroid. On the back we had written the tracks of the CD in his handwriting. The inside included lots of his personal writings that were thanking the people that supported him. In order to make it personal we had him coming in again and he had to write some the track list and the tank you … list. After he had written all that we scanned it into the computer so that we were able to work on it digitally and insert all the letters etc. into the Digi pack. On the other side of the cover, as well as on the CD itself we put in the wallpaper of the house setting. We took a picture with a Canon camera beforehand and then we did some colour changes as well in order to create this vintage look. In this case we made use of Lightroom which helped to change and contrast Hue and Saturation as well as the colour settings.
On the set, we also made a short video diary t5o show some behind the scenes footage. We filmed this with an iPhone 4S and cut it on iMovie on a Mac.
For most shots in the studio we used a Sony F3 camera with a prime lens as it is very useful for so called beauty shots (For smooth skin etc.). For the focus pulls we had to change the lens as you cannot zoom with it.
When changing our location to the house we noticed that the lighting was quite warm again and therefore we put some blue tones on top of the lights to make the images look colder. Again we used the Sony F3 camera, because of its clarity and amount of details when having a close ups. When shooting the ballerina we took the Sony NX5 camera, which does not have the same quality like the Sony F3 one but it was useful for us because we were shooting two scenes at a time in order to get more material done in less time. So while one part of our group was shooting Peter, the other group was shooting the ballerina dance sequence. This time we did not have the equipment of a CD player so that we had to use our phones in order to make use of a playback.
For the special effects when bringing the flowers back to life we used After Effects in Final Cut Pro which allowed us to cut out Peter and arrange the background so that it the fading into the live flowers look ‘natural’ to us. We put everything back in place and created a change that look ‘right’ for our eyes. In order to lead the viewers look we made use of a zoom as well. This process is called Masking.
After this scene we had another bit where we made use of after effects. That was when he is finding the Polaroid picture between the books which is then starting to move. In order to create the impression of a moving image we had to do a similar thing to the still image in After Effects. We used an empty Polaroid so that we were able to cut out the black bit and place the video clip into the empty frame.
Even though Peter tried to be still, his hand was still moving a bit, therefore we had to freeze the image (his hand) and only have the inserted clip moving. The interest of the audience will be focused on the clip so that they may not notice the fact that we froze the other image. Over all we had to images in one.
Looking at the very last bit of our video you might notice that we had to slow him down a bit when walking out of the door. Again we did that with the help of Final Cut Pro. (Slowmotion)
We wanted to repeat the theme of having a Polaroid in the Digi pack, because we thought it could be one of his trademarks that is going to be repeated throughout his image. Therefore we took a photograph of him wearing a wolf hat and change the colours in Photoshop so that it had a vintage style to it. After having turned the photograph into an old fashioned picture we inserted the image into a digital Polaroid frame. On the front cover we decided to leave it with a Blanc front cover with nothing on it but the Polaroid and on the back we did the same thing but with the back of a Polaroid. On the back we had written the tracks of the CD in his handwriting. The inside included lots of his personal writings that were thanking the people that supported him. In order to make it personal we had him coming in again and he had to write some the track list and the tank you … list. After he had written all that we scanned it into the computer so that we were able to work on it digitally and insert all the letters etc. into the Digi pack. On the other side of the cover, as well as on the CD itself we put in the wallpaper of the house setting. We took a picture with a Canon camera beforehand and then we did some colour changes as well in order to create this vintage look. In this case we made use of Lightroom which helped to change and contrast Hue and Saturation as well as the colour settings.
On the set, we also made a short video diary t5o show some behind the scenes footage. We filmed this with an iPhone 4S and cut it on iMovie on a Mac.
