Despite being the last group to begin shooting our artist, I feel that this week we didn’t allow ourselves to become intimidated by what it was that other people had already achieved and trusted the schedule we had laid out for ourselves.

Going into week five we now have a wide selection of background material and what we are confident to be all our green screen footage of our artist. Ultimately, we have achieved a lot in during this week but we still have a pretty daunting task ahead of us as we enter postproduction. As we prepared for next week we also spent time mapping out a bit of an idea as to what footage we could place where in order to ensure we have a bit of a plan before we get into the edit suites.

Although we have a big task ahead of us in order to start making our ideas come to life, I feel we are pretty organised at this stage and the next few weeks will be mostly a matter of staying motivated and on track with what we need to get done.

The day had finally arrived to enter the green screen room and work with our actual artists. Although, complete, the Pockets are a group of four, upon consideration we decided it would be much easier to work with only the lead singer of the group. Reasons for this included:

• We had a very small space in which we were working
• The other band members weren’t as familiar with the song lyrics
• It would be easier to edit and cut between different shots smoothly and more effectively if it was all the same silhouette
• The shoot would take up less time for everyone if we were just working with the one member
• Finding a time where all four members were available was challenging with such a restricted timeframe to work within

Arriving at the green screen room an hour before our artist we had everything prepared and ready to film by the time he arrived. Dan, the lead vocalist of the group, was fantastic upon arrival and will to work with whatever we threw at him. It took a bit of time to get into the swing of things but once we had figured out the most effective way for him to be positioned in the frame and he had properly deciphered the concept and exactly what was required of him everything ran very smoothly.

Once everyone was comfortable with the setup we quickly realised that it didn’t take all that much time to get the various shots we required. Because of this we experimented more with the different props we had brought, tried different ways for Dan to enter and exit the frame, encouraged Dan to try more vibrant movements in certain sections etc. Pretty much, we realised we were much better off having too many takes to work with as a opposed to not enough and as no one knew how things were really going to come together during post, allowing ourselves options was one of the best things we could do.

We were able to wrap things up in around three hours and with plenty of material and lots of fun had playing around with props such as swimming caps, snorkels, earmuffs and blankets, we all left the green screen room in high spirits. We transferred our footage to the media server right away, returned all our gear and enjoyed some celebratory, well-earned brownies I had baked for the occasion.

Following a break for the Australia Day holiday, we were back in class and spoilt to have Georgia Fields return to assist us once again. In preparation for our upcoming shoots with our artists, Georgia had been lovely enough to agree to come in and allow us to shoot her performing as practice.

I found the whole setup of class on this day to be a really relaxed way to re-familiarise myself with the video cameras. Despite this being the last course of my degree, I hadn’t actually been in front of a camera in over a year, but it was pleasing that everything came back to me pretty quickly. Something that I hadn’t ever done, however, was shoot something live and it was interesting to go through to setup of everything and learnt about how everything would be structure to ensure the best result.

Georgia was great, she was so patient with us and really and more than happy to roll with anything we threw at her. She brought wardrobe options, which was perhaps something we could consider with our artists if we hadn’t seen them within the space that we were shooting before. She also did an amazing job performing; you wouldn’t have known it was her time back on stage in several months. Keeping this in mind though it was useful to be forced to think more from the artist’s perspective, as the consideration of something such as nerves was something that we would all need to be aware of going into our own shoots.

I feel as though the setup of class on this day not only allowed me to find my feet again with the camera but also taught me a few new things and gave me a different perspective on how to shoot/prepare to shoot. I was able to leave confident about having to shoot with our artists the next day.

So you can put a face to the name, below you can view one of Georgia’s music videos – directed by our own fabulous teacher, Rohan!

Following the official pitch of our music video if there was one thing that we evident that we really needed to get onto it was the producing of material to be used in our exciting psychedelic backgrounds. With the feedback from Rohan and Georgia in mind I set myself up to experiment with a bit of stop motion. I hadn’t worked with stop motion before but figured it would be simple enough. I also recognised beforehand that it would be a lengthy process and this became a reality very quickly as it took me up to an hour to produce about 5-10 seconds worth of footage. I also quickly learnt that it was a very hit and miss process with some of my work turning out much better than I anticipated and other stuff just working out to be a bit of a hot mess.

Despite having some highs and lows, overall my stop motion experiments were certainly a worthwhile task as I feel I eventually produced some very usable material. Below you can view my favourite work from the day.

In class this Thursday the time had come to pitch our music videos. As well as having Rohan and our classmates there to provided feedback on our ideas, we were also very fortunate to have musician, Georgia Fields, present to provide a fresh set of eyes and comments from an artist perspective.

Although, as a group we all had a clear idea of what we were aiming to achieve and the ideas that we would be working with, we discovered in preparation for the pitch that articulating our plans would be more difficult than we expected. Having quite an abstract idea, it anticipated it would be hard for an audience to fully visualise how our material would come together during production and with a lot of our work to be done in post there wasn’t as much to plan for before this stage. Having played around with the green screen and already successfully captured several visually effective science like experiment, we quickly learnt that our ideas would be best presented visually. We showed the music video from Tame Impala “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” as this was a huge source of initial inspiration and a lot of our plans corresponded with things presented in the clip (you can view the video below). For example the video uses bright psychedelic colours and movements and also incorporates a profile head and different patterns and movement happening inside the head and in the background. This video was a really useful tool to explain the sort of path we intended to go down, as we were clearly able to identify to the audience aspects that we planned to incorporate as well as areas where we wanted to do things differently. We also showed shot clips of some of the experiments we had already completed and screenshots of some of the material we had played around with briefly after our green screen practice shoot earlier in the week.

Overall, I feel our pitch was a success. We were able to effectively explain our concept and reinforce our decisions with reasons and examples. Some of the feedback from Rohan, Georgia and the class included:

• Good work on incorporating the brand of the artists and developing a concept that fits with the image they want to portray
• Make sure you have a lot of material to use as backgrounds/visuals to go inside the profile heads
• Think about what you can do in the intro section of the song before the lyrics begin (quite a bit of time to work with here)
• If using props in the green screen shoot maybe pre-warn the artist to ensure thy feel comfortable with the things you want them to work with (we plan to mix up profile head shots by having our artists wear hats and other things that you might bring to your face/head to make shots more interesting and also tie in the idea behind the song referring to the multiple sides/”names” that people can have)
• Ensure you have everything worked out and ready to go with the green screen before the artists arrive
• Think about what you can do to give yourself less work to do in post, eg. Making sure the artists are wearing appropriate clothes so that the green can be easily keyed out, maybe get them to gel their hair/trim beards if necessary and possible
• Consider effect you could create using tools like stop motion – these could work really effectively as background even though they step a little outside the “experiment theme”

For those interested in our initial inspiration see video here:

During classes this week the director in focus was Michel Gondry. We looked at a variety of his work, but I think my favourite was his famous Kylie Minogue music video for her song Come into my World.

I remember watching this particular video on TV when I was quite young and not thinking too much of it other than “wow so many Kylies”, but I found it really fascinating to watch it again now, considering it from more of a production side of things. It was interesting to think about how Gondry went about setting up the film and learn about how it involved shutting down several roads in busy Paris. There were also heaps of things to think about in terms of how postproduction would have been approached, how they went about achieving the concept of the duplication of everything at each chorus and the challenges they would have faced and the inconsistencies that can be seen in the final product.

This music video was something that at the time no one had really seen before and its concept and construction was something that fascinated, confused and excited a lot of people. I think this is what makes it so successful as it is something so different and as a result memorable and ultimately it is a piece of work that still leaves audiences having to really concentrate and think about the content even years later.

The music video can be viewed below.

In order to create the desired effect with our artist appearing in silhouette and having our cool experiments making up exciting and colourful backgrounds, we were going to have to use a green screen. However, no one in our group had ever worked with green screen before so naturally, class this week presented the perfect opportunity to discover a bit about where exactly we had access to green screen facilities and how to use them – with the assistance of Rohan of course.

Three years in a Media course and I had never once been inside the green screen room in building 9! It was exciting to go inside for the first time and see how everything in there worked. We played around with getting the lighting right in order to be able to create our silhouette idea most effectively in post and took notes on which buttons to press, where to situate our artist, instructions to give them, where to set up the camera, what settings to film on etc. Having gotten everything worked our we even filmed a little of ourselves to ensure that we would have some footage to practice with to make sure that we would be able to produce the results we after in Premiere. With a quick play around below you will find what we managed to put together in order to present some form of visual example of ideas going into Thursday’s official pitch!

As explained in the previous progress post we have decided to use simple backyard/home experiments that involve different textures and colours in order to create content to use throughout our video. These videos would work as a background alongside the profile heads of the band.

Below is a video of me experimenting with very simple stuff to begin… food colouring with water and ice.

It’s amazing how in such a short space of time so much can be achieved. This week we certainly made significant development in terms of the content we would require in order to produce our music video for the Pockets and also started to begin forming some significant structure in the lead up to next week’s pitch.

As things stand we are hoping to incorporate the logo of the group into the video by using the profile heads that represent each member of the band and bringing them to life. We want to use this in combination with the interesting and engaging effects of some backyard science experiments which will provide interesting colour and textures to create the slightly psychedelic effect the we envision. We aim to break down the elements of the song so that we can coordinate different experiments and the visual effect they produce with a section of the music that it is best suited. Below are some of my notes made while brainstorming ideas during the week.

• Backyard science experiments (potentially progress throughout the song), can look at varying speed and reversing play
• Use the logo as a base to come back to throughout song, start simple and build with more heads, shapes, colours, movements
• Potentially have the profile face’s mouths (of the logo) moving in some sections with the lyrics
• One head represents each of the band members
• Filming using green screen – have band member(s) heads in profile like in the logo and have them singing lyrics. Potentially use different props (hats, glasses, lollipops, windmills etc) to make the profile view more interesting and varied)

Next week we plan on experimenting with the green screen in order to see whether we are able to create the effect of isolating the profile heads of the band members. We plan to test this with each other and also see what kind of effect using the different props mentioned above could make.

This week in class we were required to present a short presentation on a music video of our choice. I think the biggest struggle of this whole task for me though was actually managing to select a music video to present on. Adding up the hours spent working on this task I would probably find the majority were spent watching countless videos of making mental pros and cons lists.

I did, however, eventually decide on a video to use. It was a song by the New Zealand group Naked and Famous called I Kill Giants; the director of the music video was Joel Kefali. The reasons for me finally deciding to go with this particular video included:

1. I found it incredibly beautiful. The location, the lighting, the dancers, the dance were all captivating
2. It was simple but engaging
3. I really liked the song
4. It was very different to all the other videos I had considered
5. I found myself wanting to watch it on loop

If you want to have a look the video can be found at the end of this post.

I really enjoyed this task, not only because it was an excuse to spend hours watching film clips on YouTube, but also because it was really interesting to watch and learn about the film clips that others in the class had selected. I found that I hadn’t seen most of the music video that people presented on and it was exciting to be exposed to new styles and to learn about how they were interpreted by my classmates.