The long awaited music video

So after about a month of filming, and 2months of editing, the video is 99% complete, my colleague will be editing the video slightly over the christmas holiday, so allow it to look finished to us both. This includes small things such as removing a special effect and fixing the sound slightly. Anyway, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt-j4q3D-I

The video concists of two separate versions which we had created, one using green screen footage, and one using scenary and locations which we visited. Putting them both together 'well' isn't an easy task, but I think we have been able to do so here. The only problem I have is that I felt the footage with scenary looked alot more professional than that of the green screen footage, as personally it looked cheap and not so well made.

Underneath is the two versions in which we worked from to create the final video, where the green screen and scenary locations are in two separate videos to what we had edited beforehand. They both do not meet the required time limit, but the editing you can see is better, especially in the one with scenary, as it was our original idea, before the artist decided on wanting green screen footage in his video.





(There were a few lip sync errors in the timing of these two videos, but they were incomplete.)

I decided to ask several people who are influenced and listen to this type of music for their opinions on what they thought about both the scenary and the green screen footage. As we know the green screen idea is the modern kind of grime/rap music, as it means you can stay in one place and get it all filmed in one day, and manage the lighting manually rather than being out of control from it. The old school type of music videos for this genre with the streets and grime feel for the locations always felt more effective to me, as it did with those that I asked for their opinions.

Here is a list of some of the people which I asked for them to voice their opinions to the two videos, after showcasing them so that they could get an idea of what both of the viduals looked like;

Lawrence - The first video has extremely good effective scenes which give a good effect and link with the urban style of the music, however, if 1-2 of the scenes were a little darker (less light exposure) it would continue the great effect on from the other scenes in the movie.
The second video's overall effect created is quite good, but the look of it is pretty generic and some of the effects on the singer himself (random sepia, hues colour cycle and rather easy techniques) reduce the quality overall.

Sam - The first video was done well but it was abit dark in places, but the locations used were a really good choice for the type of video. I think that the second video was better, simply because it was basic, and it looked good. It could possibly do with something being in the background though rather than a white one, but apart from that it was good.

Mike - The first video worked nicely with the use of effects and editing, such as the reverse jump which looked cool. The second video seemed to lack what the first video had, it looked plain, maybe because of the black and white I don't know, but I deffinitely preferred the first video.

Chad - The first video's visuals were fine , but there were a few areas where i'd preferablly change. For example, the overuse of zooms in the beginning, and the scene from 2:05 from an angle, it looks almost like a 'Behind the scenes' video. The cutting with the lyrics had worked well however, as well as some of the scenary chosen such as the tunnel scene.

The second video seemed inferior in comparison, it lacked anything good, the camera shots really didn't work, showing 3/4 of the artist all of the time, and having an amp randomly placed there on a white background, it made no sense. There was nothing going on in this version, some of the green screen footage didn't work either, his hands were cut off at one point. The artist's movements from the side shots seemed odd, with him randomly swaying. The angles lacked, and didn't really catch the attention of that in the first video, which created a far greater impact.


In conclusion, the first video was liked due to its scenary, but needed to improve on lighting, and the second video was good due to its simplicity but lacked that little bit extra to 'give the wow factor' which would make it the better version of the two.

Next stage

Now that the music video is complete (will post up a video of it in the following weeks), our next stage is to design a DVD Digipak for the artist, which inside will have a CD with the song, and the created music video which can then be distributed if desired after.

The research that I do will need to be based around the genre in which my artist is based, in the Rap and grime music genre. The problem with this is that DVD distributables aren't too common for this nowadays, and are used in the form of CDs and online shopping websites from Web 2.0 such as iTunes, Amazon, Play, HMV and more. This means that if I do manage to find some DVD Digipak designs from my chosen genre then fine, but if I can't find enough to give me the ideas and creativity, then I will look at CD album covers, as they have the same kind of effect and reason for each thing placed on it to be represented in the certain way.

There are three different types of ways to create the DVD Digipak in terms of its layout and visuals. It could be either text, photography or graphical. As I am slightly knowledged already with using Adobe Photoshop, I will most probably go for the graphical route, following ideas from artists such as Kanye West, with his use of cartoons and bright colour images to represent the young creative side of himself and hip hop.
In comparison, artists such as Kano and Wiley use mainly photography to show themselves in their album covers, to represent the grime scene and their type of music.

Update 14th December

After a meeting with my colleague we watched over the new video that he had put together from the green screen footage over the weekend. It was nicely edited and some nice effects, but again it was not long enough, although we had already spoke about lengthening the music to allow us to include enough footage for it to be long enough to reach the 3 minutes limit. This means that he did not do as we had agreed, and are falling behind.

We now have the problem where we have two videos in which we have spent time editing, but neither of them are long enough. Although the artist likes the green screen work, I feel that the original video is nicer in terms of the scenery and editing involved, as personally I don't think that footage with the green screen work as well as footage with real scenery, especially in terms of this genre of grime/rap. 

Our next plan is to add some more to the music, whether it be adding one of the verses to play again, to create a new verse, or to just use the original last verse from the song. The reason why we need to add more length to the music, is that the artist doesn't like the last verse of his original song, so he took it out for this video. We agreed that he would add the chorus to be repeated again, so that instead of being around 2:20, it will be close to reaching three minutes, which is what we needed initially. 

This means that more editing will need to be done, but luckily we have enough footage, and with working on two different types of footage, scenery and green screen, we should be able to have more than required to fit the length of the song with video footage. This is a bit of a problem that his far into the project we need to keep changing ideas and now do a lot more editing to fit the length rather than it being too short, but if it is completed as intended then we will be able to create a polished music video which will visually be really good.

One problem down

I spoke with my colleague today, concerning the music side of the video, and how we need to make it longer to reach the 3:00. As he made the song beforehand, we agreed that he should be the one to change it to reach the time, due to it being his own song so it would need to have him being happy with the change. He told me that it should be done by Monday, so hopefully we will be able to make the last minute changes just in time. The second version which would include some green screen footage may not be created in time, but if it is able to also be done for Monday then that would be ideal.

New problems arise

After a further look at our video today, from the editing that was done yesterday, several small issues, and one large one arised;

- The glowing effect of the character created a black border, which will need to be removed
- A fade in needs to be included so that it fits with the other areas where it has been included
- Some slight lip sync errors from the editing of yesterday
- The video is only 2:23 long, it will need to be ATLEAST 3:00 for it to be complete.

In order to allow us to make the song 3:00, the verse that was removed will either needed to be added back into the song, or a new verse/chorus will need to be added somewhere in the song to enable it to reach that 3:00 which we now desperately need. With the Monday next week as our deadline, we now have a rush to get these adjustments implemented so that we can finish this and then concentrate on the next part of the coursework, the advertising with the CD cover.

Update 9th December

Our deadline has fortunately been extended until next Monday. Although I felt that we could finish our video at the original deadline, like the others I also had more to do than I had thought. We did manage to do some green screening on Monday, which was a new experience to me, and was very successful. It was recorded with a High Definition video camera, which meant that we would have to render it to standard definition for it to match the video clips that we already have.

Due to having so much footage of the green screen, myself and my colleague decided to create two versions of the music video, one with the green screen footage included, and one without, to allow there to be a decision during the screening of the music videos, to then decide which one looks better.

(Click image to view full resolution)

As far as the completion percentage is concerned, the music video without the green screen footage is roughly 98% complete, it just needs some slight touches of the lip-synchronising to fix it, and to include a few more effects to keep the video more 'pacey' to the beat, in which I was including some today. I did encounter an problem as there was a server problem in the suite and some of my footage became corrupt. Luckily I had backed the files up on several other medias, so was able to import another copy of it and continue with my work.

Hopefully we will be able to complete both versions by Monday, if we do then this would be great.

Update 2nd December

After another catchup with my colleague we went over where we had gone to so far, and what was left to do. We made a few adjustments such as fixing the timing on some of the shots, and adding some new footage into it for more variety. Due to our quick cuts being successful, we made use of this by cutting between some foot stomps and the artist moving in the camera before the chorus. This worked really well, the quick cuts keeping to the pace of the music. All we have left to do is to film an intro for the video, rather than just using up some spare footage. We also considered using some new footage to put at the end, to meet the conventional types of rap/grime music videos, allowing a use of a new song to be included at the end of the video.