Posted on December 11, 2017
Casting Process Podcast Episode
In this episode, San and I discuss the nightmarish week reaching out to friends to star in our MV. There were numerous turn downs and “left at seen” situations, however, we ended up meeting an amazing, talented actress at the last minute.
Posted on December 3, 2017
Dawn Shadforth
After looking at some of Dawn Shadforth’s works in class, I went ahead and viewed some of her other music videos over the years just to get a broader idea of what sort of director she is. I found it difficult to pinpoint the type of style or genre she directed in as all her music videos were so distinct from each other. There’s satirical playfulness in Peach’s Kick It, moody reflectiveness in Selena Gomez’s The Heart Wants What It Wants, ethereal jubilance in Florence + The Machine’s Shake It out; so many colours, styles and moods that I figured the aspect that connects all her works together is Shadforth’s ability to reflect on the artist’s personal style and mood of their music.
Reading David Knight’s interview with Shadforth gave me a really good insight into her mind as a director. She clearly expresses a sensitivity to the music and the need for collaboration with the artists which I think is essential to filmmaking.
“My impulse was to do something that had some honesty and emotionally matched the lyrics and the narrative came from my interpretation of them.”
In a sense, I see that Shadforth brings an artist’s music to life in her music videos, which makes it no surprise that she’s such a famous and well known music video director. Aspiring to be a director myself, reading this interview and seeing how she approaches production and collaborations gave me a good idea as to what standard I should be aiming for with not only making Bloom’s music video, but any future productions.
Posted on December 2, 2017
Location Scouting
Aura Vale Lake Park
As part of the narrative, we knew that we wanted an open space with a large body of water to contrast with the tight space of the bedroom and bathroom locations. We were initially thinking of filming at a beach, however I recently visited Aura Vale Lake Park and thought it’d be a nice contrast to DUAN’s other music video that was shot at a beach. The location of a lake also has a more tranquil vibe that I believe will add a nice touch to DUAN’s album. Plus, filming at a beach during summer will guarantee issues with the public, so the pros for filming at the lake outweighed all other locations.
Images of the lake:
Posted on November 27, 2017
Post Pitch Presentation Podcast
Here’s our post-presentation podcast that sums up our pitch but also includes aspects that didn’t make it to the pitch and just general afterthoughts from our presentation. The first 8 minutes or so is the general summary and that’s really all that needs to be listened to, anything after that is less important; just us rambling about our music video.
Posted on November 26, 2017
Angel’s Halo
An in-class activity with lighting
Sophia, the angel of our group
Rim lighting is one of my favorite lighting effects, and who better to test this lighting set up than with Sophia and her adorable blonde pixie haircut. Real life situations where I enjoy using this lighting effect is often when I’m walking around my neighborhood taking foliage shots. Particular flowers have a light fuzz around its stem and petals, so when those are highlighted by the sun that is just setting, it creates a really awesome photograph.
Posted on November 24, 2017
Turn Down 4 Wat
For one of our class exercises, Rohan got us to play around with filming at 60fps and then slowmoing that down in post-production. As I’ve already learned how to do this, I filmed the required pen drop at 60fps, but then decided to have a bit of fun with the editing side of it. This only took me maybe 10 minutes to make, but I think the “meme”ness of the “Turn Down For What” track made it hilarious and really fun to edit to.
Here’s the link to my masterpiece
Posted on November 23, 2017
More Silhouettes
Yay another silhouette exercise!
As a contrast to my first silhouette exercise, instead of using natural light to cast a silhouette, I used the light reflected off a white wall from an LED light panel. At first, I was struggling a lot with getting a good, clear silhouette as I initially had the light facing my friend which would still have some of her features illuminated. But luckily, I had a lightbulb moment to turn the light around to face the wall and thus use its diffusion to cast a darker silhouette of my friend.
In post-production, I simply upped the contrast and changed the highlight colours at certain keypoints that matched the accents of the music. I didn’t expect it to work this effectively, but I was really glad that it came out really well, so now I know that instead of playing around with coloured lights, I can use this technique of post-production colour grading.
Having decided to use Duan’s ‘Bloom’ as the track for this studio’s music video project, I got my friend to sing and dance along to the chorus just so that I can maybe suggest this concept to my other group members.
Posted on November 22, 2017
Macro lens experiment
Taking advantage of this fickle summer weather and its tedious storms, I grabbed my macro lens and ran out into my garden to record some b roll. It was really beautiful the way the water droplets clung to the leaves and flowers, and in utilising a macro lens, I was able to really capture that crystal like imagery. These gifs are just some highlights of this experiment shoot.
In part of our concept ideas of reversing the structure of time, I played around with pouring water over some leaves as well as lighting a dried rose on fire, and I was very pleased with the results. It’s a simple idea, but its visual concept is very strong and conveys a solid message in an abstract, figurative way.
See full experiment video here
Side note: If it wasn’t obvious yet, I discovered Imgur Gif maker and I’m kinda obsessed. So forgive me for the bombardment of gifs
Posted on November 22, 2017
NAO || Bad Blood MV
Bad Blood by NAO was the alternative music video that I considered using for my PB2 presentation. Not only is it one of my favourite songs, but the visuals are so striking in this music video and has such strong thematic concepts on humanity and nature.
The plot of the video follows a dark-skinned woman, some ethereal otherworldly being, roam a broken down building, meeting various people situated throughout the ruins. There are distinctly three groups of person/s she approaches which divides the MV into sections or like short chapters. The first, a middle-aged man in torn up clothes all by himself beside some industrial machine. He seems frightened by the woman and backs away from her, only to fall under her spell as branches sprout from his mouth just as the beat drops for the chorus. The next group is three men in trench coats looking over a deceased blonde woman. Different to the first man’s frightened expression, these men seem skeptical of her and unafraid, but nonetheless, they too fall under her spell as branches and flowers erupt from their throats. The imagery is repeated in finely detailed veins spresding out from under the blonde woman’s eyes just as she comes back to life and turns to the first woman with a somewhat understanding and grateful expression. The final group the woman approaches are a man and woman in rather luxurious clothing; the woman with a fur coat and the man in silk robes. However, despite their rich appearance, the man is scraping at the dirt with a fork whilst the woman lies over a worn out chair with a look of defeat Once again, the woman approaches the two and as the beat drops for the chorus, their lips part for the branches to sprout. As for the last chorus, the woman crouches on her own, heaving and lurching till finally branches sprout out of her own mouth, and then ending the video with the same establishing shot of the building, this time with vines and branches crawling and sprouting through the windows.
The visuals and concepts of Bad Blood’s MV are so compelling and the fans have developed multiple interpretations of the song and video’s lyrics. Some interpret the black woman as god who gives life and takes it away, hence the trees and branches working as a symbolism of life itself. Others see the video as a comment on social status and the hierarchy of powers within society, the consequences of decadence and money and how we as a society are “dreaming of a past that couldn’t last”. Ultimately the true meaning behind the lyrics composed by NAO is something completely different and the video below explains it all…
Thus, as there was quite a removed visual theme to the official meaning of the artist’s lyrics, I thought that it would’ve been a bit more difficult discussing the connection between the video and the song. Definitely an interesting topic to discuss, however I figured I would have had a stronger presentation on a music video with a stronger relationship with its music. Another reason why I chose not to present on “Bad Blood” was simply to have more diversity in presentations amongst my group with San and Sophia. San chose a fabulous music video that was shot in black and white, thus having visual similarities with “Bad Blood”. Furthermore, “Bad Blood”‘s music video utilises many wide angled shots with slow pans, tracks and zooms, which is mesmerising (I bow down to you, Ian Pons Jewell). However, I don’t own many wide angled lens for my camera and often only use my 50mm f1.4 lens which is much more appropriate for close ups and shallow depth of field shots that SBTRKT’s “Wildfire” (the video I ended up presenting on) uses.
Despite all that, I still needed to get my thoughts out about this video, because not only is NAO such a talented artist, I strive to create such striking and bold visuals in my future projects.