Oh, I’m all alone now No love to shield me Trapped in a world That’s a distorted reality
Reflections of The way life used to be
The Supremes: ‘Reflections’ (1967)
“It’s the end of the blogs and we know it (and I feel fine)”.
Hello and welcome to BlogWiz. Thanks to Ms Ross and Mr Stipe for that lovely intro. This is my final blog for this course. It’s been a highlight of my study year and I’m very glad I did it. I know I’ve overdone the blogs, but it’s what we do this time of year. Besides, the course is blog-worthy. There’s been three broad aspects of it I’ve appreciated. The first was the comparatively summertime informality of the learning material via minimal emphasis on readings and essays, with most time spent doing practical work. The second factor was to fast-track a major Media unit into 6-7 weeks. I’m keen to get ‘Bachelorised’ in a total of 2 or 2.5 years max, so will take any chance to ramp it up. This was made all the more possible without having other subjects rudely interrupting our fun in making music videos(!) – something I could happily do for the rest of my life. Thirdly, if I reflect back on the first day in this class I’m glad I made the conscious effort to mingle ASAP and handpick my team. By November it’d already been a long year and my previous collaborations taught me that effective teamwork is imperative to success. Our band of four steadily honed our creative powers and strengths like some not-so-teenage mutant ninja turtles. Although in hindsight we should’ve had more pizza.
Looking more into the specifics of the finished music video, it all depends on how you see it and who you are. As the creators, we know it intimately, so it is easy to see any little foibles or glitches which first-time viewers may not notice. Or, if they do notice, it’s of little to no detriment because they’re too busy considering bigger things they like about it. An example might be an individual effects frame, or a brief portion of lighting or whatever. These ‘little things’ became more accentuated, more noticeable to us with each twist of the airlock quality hatch. Whereas, a casual walk-up viewer simply sees a music video. Yes, if we had another week or more we would’ve kept tweaking its little nipples off. The reality is, within five hours we’d shot this. And within a couple of weeks we’d edited a complete film clip with effects and colour grading and whatever else. All with minimal time and experience, no money and an ongoing spontaneity of knowledge and resources. All considered, if this piece somehow airs on ‘Rage’ I’d be well within my rights to piss myself.
The final version is reasonably well streamlined with our pitch. We’ve maintained the narrative concepts, visual imagery and the song’s context and timing. If anything, we have enhanced these with some clever editing techniques learned on-the-fly in post production. We trimmed some of our ideas and fine-tuned others as we chose quality over quantity. On many occasions we identified ways we could’ve simplified and enhanced our editing process by altering our shooting techniques. On this, we discussed professional works such as music clips by Hot Chip, or film and TV such as Adaptation or Twin Peaks. We can now recognise many of their mise en scène decisions to be pure logic. As a production unit we did plan our shoot as wisely as possible with good detail. But our biggest obstacle, especially during the shooting phase, was time. However, what was lacking time-wise in our setting, was gained back by its mere access. The bar itself, in combination with the colour grading, becomes another monstrous yet beautiful character of the story.
Merry Christmas everyone and a Reggie New Year.
I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration
Two months ago we only knew ‘Reggie’ as the abbreviated name for anyone who was unfortunately called Reginald. It was also the preferred name of a ditzy female Big Brother winner Regina Bird, a character in the Archie Comics, and the first name of comedian/musician/beatboxer Reggie Watts and former American footballer Reggie Bush.
Urbandictionary.com suggests ‘reggie’ might be ‘regular weed’; or the international colloquialism for an Australian as derived from ‘reject’; or someone who is ‘impossibly awesome, and impossibly talented at everything (except singing)’. Perhaps the latter is why our artist Brett Casey chose to name his autobiographically reflective tune ‘Reggie’. I just hope it’s not something to do with Urban Dictionary’s other definitions involving penises:
So, now Christmas is upon us and we’ve delivered a shiny new film clip. How did we get here? What’s the initial reception been like? And what happens next? Well, buckle up and I’ll tell you.
Week 1:
6 Nov – The first day of the course. Getting to know you, getting to know me. After a bit of classroom Q&A instigated by the teacher Rohan Spong, I begin actively recruiting my team of complete strangers and we identify which class timetable we prefer. Turns out that Tuesdays and Fridays would be an overall smaller class size, which probably worked to our advantage, as per below.
Week 2:
14 Nov – We have no idea what we’re doing. Rohan makes us draw pictures to highlight how poorly we draw pictures. Morale is buried under a deadweight of expectation and cluelessness. We’re f*cked. Although, in fairness I’m completing another course and haven’t slept in two days, so I might be a tad weathered.
17 Nov – I have had some much needed z’s. Our individual presentations (PB2) are made less daunting and more intimate by the fact we only have about 8 students in our class. With that out of the way, attention turns back to our music video and the fact that maybe we’re not completely f*cked after all. After establishing a range of artist options we’ve chosen one, plus an actor and a shooting location. Our own Rohan (Sabaratnam a.k.a. Ro-harn) is coming up with a few ideas and they’re all good. I’m coming up with a million ideas and one or two of them don’t suck. I suggest incorporating something to do with our protagonist’s sexism to show that we’ve read our course material about gender and feminism, but the idea gets punched in the dick. Which in itself is a win for feminists.
Week 3:
21 Nov – Getting to know you: Canon edition. We’re becoming equally familiarised and confused by DSLR filming, dedo lighting and are discovering the options available regarding editing suites and green screen. We are learning words like ‘180 rule’, ‘Snorri cam’ and ‘Chroma key’. Our pitch for PB3 is well under way and our melting pot of ideas is cooking up something nice and grungy. We have been well advised to ascertain specific roles within our group and this is helping give us direction and make creative and productive progress.
24 Nov – Pitch presentation runs smoothly and we receive some useful feedback. Our venue The Brunswick Hotel has been arranged for the following Monday and the other three crew members venture up there for a preview. We prepare all the items we need, ranging from cameras and lighting equipment to our set materials and props like curtains and clothing. The concept of having two cameras is quickly scorched by RMIT Tech Loans. Our outlook is positive: it means we have one less camera to worry about. Communication becomes paramount at this point and our weekend consists of over 70 group messages.
Week 4:
27 Nov – Holy shoot, Batman! We’re filming a music video. It starts off being a little disheveled, then kinda fun, and then a bit stressful regarding time constraints. Lewis (actor) and I were expecting the shoot to be incomplete, as our group had planned about 40 shots in 3 hours. We did do remarkably well to obtain over 30 shots before deciding to return in a few days. The thinking and planning time between shoots would also prove to be valuable…
30 Nov – Shooting Day 2. We’re a bit more organised and it starts off really fun and interesting until we lose track of time and start to panic. Our location’s exit deadline is fast approaching and then the camera decides to join us in freaking out. I get it fixed in a few minutes and we’re rolling again like troopers. Sweaty ones too, considering the weather is 36 degrees and we’re in an unventilated space. We eventually capture all of our required shot list, shooting around 25 shots (longer this time) in 2.5 hours and have worked around the fact our second actor wasn’t available. We are mad dogs. Or hot dogs. Time for a lemonade, that cool refreshing drink.
1 Dec – Editing day 1. The material looks encouragingly good. It will be interesting next week to see how four of us will / can collaborate in the confined spaces of the editing suites.
Week 5:
4, 5, 6, 8 Dec – Edit, edit, edit. We’re pleasantly surprised by the fluidity of our group working together in one suite. And nobody farted. Our emphasis at this stage is on narrative and timing. It’s time to present our rough cut in class. Received some more good feedback, mostly positive. This exceeded our shitty expectations and provided further impetus to continue producing a kickass clip.
Week 6:
11, 12, 13, 15 Dec – Edit, effects, colour, edit. Effects, effects, colour, edit. As Ro-harn and I are assigned effects duties, Alex and Nicole are on colour grading. We are learning words like ‘masking’, ‘feathering’, ‘dot points’, ‘vignette’ and ‘ProRes’. And a bunch of swear words.
Week 7:
18 Dec – Effects, effects, effects, effects, effects, affected; colour, edit, upload, run away. We verbally and mutually backslap, high five and sigh. Then blow each other kisses and dance off into the sunset.
After privately sharing the upload with the artist, the viewing response from him (and later, from the main actor) were unexpectedly amazing. Here’s a screenshot of a message received from the singer:
He later went on to say the L word about the clip.
No, not lesbians.
Love.
‘I love it. I really do’, he said. Although with such emotion he may have been talking about Molly. (Kidding!)
Next, I will apply to get the clip shown on ABC-TV ‘Rage’ and various other platforms. The artist has also expressed an interest in further collaborative work in 2018. Everyone in our team has been informed of web URLs for the video and been credited in the details on the video page. The only thing we haven’t done is any kind of written legal mumbo jumbo, as it wasn’t discussed during the course. We have crossed each bridge as we’ve come to them, so I dare say we may have another small river to cross. This is something we can discuss with our teacher Rohan, whom we also collectively thank for his invaluable input throughout the project.
As Mickey Rooney would say in Barfly (Schroeder, 1987), ‘drinks for all my friends!’
I couldn’t get to sleep last night. Granted, it was still 26 degrees at 2am. And I’d had an exciting evening involving the sudden cracking of my car windscreen. It was whilst driving on the freeway as I ducked an oncoming stone or bolt or something. Couldn’t edit that. But the real issue was that I’d spent five hours non-stop refining every frame of masking effects on our video (a few hundred, or maybe a thousand frames? or a thousand million, same difference either way). So, it seems I had contracted A.E.A.A.E. – the ‘after effects of Adobe After Effects’. It’s when you close your eyes and see an array of skinny luminous lines intersected by tiny luminous squares. And when you move that image aside in your mind, a semi-transparent underlay appears beneath and before you know it you’re mind-tracing a new key frame involving a hand, a leg or in my case a goddam pool cue. Frame. By. Frame. I also found out something else recently upon departing the editing suites. Basically, when you’re suffering from A.E.A.A.E., walking across certain outdoor tile patterns on the RMIT campus emulates the glitch movements which frequently occur within AE. Try to imagine watching The Matrix on chewed-up old VHS tape. In real life, this is really quite off-putting and I wouldn’t recommend it. Anyway, it’s now the night after and I’m fully recovered. But I’m also ready to do what Adobe would do at any given moment. That’s right, folks – I’m gonna crash. And it’s nothing to do with my car or windscreen. Meanwhile, tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is the last day. Tomorrow, I present my final two blogs. Hooray!
And here’s a level of stupid I’d be comfortably happy to produce in my video making career, if I ever get one. Directed by James Chappell and Dan Mac in 2014, it contains quirky humour, a kaleidoscope of colour (and kaleidoscopes), subtle drama, amateur theatre, dodgy costumes, some pissweak choreography, mind-altering effects, stark contrasts of lighting, a bit of throwback to some early Dawn Shadforth videos, a touch of Deee-lite, a blend of good and evil and a sleigh-load of smiley faces which suggests it would’ve been a helluva lot of FUN. It’s certainly fun to watch. Because music (or music videos, films in general and even university) don’t always have to be so damn serious.
Here’s a Melbourne band/duo you’ve probably never heard of and a clip you’ve probably never seen. But, if you have been acquainted with White Hex’s Paradise, congratulations on your superior sharpness. Just don’t judge those who haven’t, for this clip – directed by Devin De Araujo in 2014 – has a relatively low amount of ‘views’ considering its high quality and dark intrigue. The song is good too. The moral of the story? Just make sure you’re surrounded by family this Christmas. Because if you’re alone and answer the door, it might just be these psychos on the other side. Crucifix badges and all. They make Mormons, real estate agents and other sales-folk seem delightfully uplifting. But hey, at least they don’t talk so much.
Because they’re Melburnians, I wonder what uni they went to?
With our current elongated editing process of layers and clones and masks and mattes and whatever else to achieve multiple protagonists running around, I wonder if we’ll gain the opportunity to use rotoscoping this week. Often used in animation, it’s essentially the tracing of a figure in an image which then gets reprocessed for every frame. Apparently it can be done in Adobe After Effects.
Rotoscope was used with great effect in Adaptation (Jonze, 2002) which I viewed over the weekend. In my eyes, the cloning effect for the two Kaufman brothers – both played by Nicholas Cage – was seamless. I payed extra attention to these effects and noticed that although the brothers frequently crossed paths within frame, they never made physical contact. If this was to be portrayed, they obscured the face of the second person (either by leaving it out of frame or simply bowing his head) while this second twin was played in relevant shots by an additional actor.
The screenshots in this post refer to a scene where one brother throws a phone book to the other. In regular speed it was simply some very clever film making, but in frame-by-frame analysis it revealed a minor continuity issue – notice the height and angle of the phone book. There’s probably other existing issues which I’m not going to get bogged down with, as this was the only glitch I noticed in preparation for any potential future use I may have with roto. Plus, I’m hardly in a position to criticise.
Here’s a really basic premise for a ghostly time-shift narrative concept which we now don’t need. So that’s good. If you view it on my blog (not on dashboard), it should look like the page flips up without being touched.
We won’t need to reproduce anything like this to improve our narrative. I still like the sound it makes though. #twinpeaksaudio
I completed my viewing of Mood Indigo (Gondry, 2013) and although it’s unlikely to be considered by film critics as the next Gone With the Wind, I wouldn’t go as far a saying ‘frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’. (BTW, that’s a quote from GWTW, in case you’re like, WTF).
It took me well over half an hour to become accustomed to the acid trip that is Mood Indigo, particularly in its early scenes. It starts off as an arty French toasted mind melt which looks like someone pressing all the buttons on every effects menu all at once, whilst dialogue speedily spills and spews all over the place. I started wondering if I was missing out by NOT being under the influence, but then the film began changing tack in the second half. It becomes more of a cinematic story, thank Christ. By the end, it’s taken some of its own cold metallic pills and had a good lie down. And *spoiler alert* no-one lives happily ever after.
So, here’s my rundown on what’s good about Mood Indigo:
The time shift from tunnel kiss to domestic bliss… via an insta-matic photographic representation of time and space (pic 1 in this post), a handwritten fourth-wall prelude on its flipside (pic 2) and introduction of a new space (pic 3). As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, we need to be thinking while absorbing media to enable creativity. That formula again: absorbing + thinking = creating. For example, Suzanne Collins created Hunger Games by watching reality television and terrorism news stories, put them together and thought ‘wow, there’s a powerfully impactive, hugely successful and slowly diminishing franchise film series in that!’ And she was 100% right. In my case, the above photo sequence of Gondry’s made me think we could’ve used something similar, such as a calendar, to further illustrate our music video’s time shift loop formulae. I now have an idea for that, which I’ll throw into my next blog post and suggest to my team.
The shot of the couple walking through the aforementioned tunnel amongst floating feathers is pretty special. From memory, I think it had some slow-mo in it. I’m going through a bit of a fond appreciation phase for slow-mo at the moment. It’s just so effective. Or special effective. (Sorry).
Acting performances were on point – all quirky but endearing and affecting – especially Audrey Tatou as Chloe.
The second half of the film discards its hyperactive childlike and narcissistic over-enthusiasm, for a gradual stripping down of tempo and colour palette (to the point of being colourless). It provides contrast in every sense (including visually within frames and in the sense of comparisons between its start and end), increased depth of emotion, and conscientious narrative of space (including walls literally pressing in on protagonists).
Dark visual humour with sparkling delivery in the interview and funeral scenes.
It both employs and takes the piss out of Jean Paul Sartre and his branches of philosophy including existentialism, metaphysics and ontology. Sartre’s most famous quotes were ‘hell is other people’ and ‘life is nausea’. It could be said that this film combines those quotes – the first half is ‘life is other people’ and the second half is ‘hell is nausea’.
Probably the only time a terminal illness such as cancer has ever been, or ever will be, represented with a snowflake. Nice crystallised infection scene though.
The song entitled ‘Spring’ by Mia Doi Todd. Enough said.
Adobe is a media monster, but sometimes it’s just a monster. There’s obviously tonnes we can do with Adobe software, but we’re all familiar with the oft-clunky, buggy nature of Premiere and other programs (I’m looking at you too, Flash).
On Tuesday at the very end of a four-hour editing session on our third day in the suite, we unintentionally discovered a not-so-handy shortcut to delete ALL our video files from the timeline. And there was NO undo. We still don’t know how this happened.
Luckily, after the obligatory panic and loud swearing which Premiere is renowned for, we quickly shut it down and located the most recent autosave file before the next autosave kicked in. Together, we recovered the project back to nearly where it was beforehand. Holy Phew.
In hindsight, before we started editing I suggested we use a hard drive to back up all our work along the way, but this didn’t happen. So I’ve started backing up our most recent autosave file in the hope it might be some kind of insurance in case of another panicky, swearing, holy forking mother of God emergency.
We’ve all heard stories about bands losing albums and film makers losing films and artists losing art and middle aged husbands losing porn due to computer &/or user error. Sometimes it’s just a matter of losing our precious shit to hardware-thieving scumbags, or it’s just our own drunken misplacement or damage, or it’s because Adobe says ‘screw you’ for no reason.
I would advise anyone reading this to make backups of your work across multiple devices, as you never know when any of these cockups might happen. Choose backups, not cockups. Virtual/online drives aren’t the greatest storage locations, as you’re open to a Pandora’s box of syncing and connection issues. Instead, if anyone in your team has access to a portable hard drive, or two or even three, make the most of that. We are investing so much time and effort in our productions, it’s not worth risking blind hope in short-sighted technology.
