Bird Cage Stop Motion

After the success of last time, we decided it would be effective to use stop motion again. One line in particular where we think it would work well is when Kate Nash sings 'and I'm trapped'. Although a short line, we wanted to emphasise the fact that she feels trapped.

So, my co-director and I had the idea of drawing a bird cage with a bird trapped inside, but to show the bird is 'trapped' we would use stop motion and show the bird moving as if it is trying to fly away. To do this, we had to take photographs of the bed moving position so we drew the bird on a separate piece of paper that could be moved.

Differently to last time, Chaya could draw the bird cage and  birds off camera and only had to show the bird moving, but the camera was still set up directly above the paper, on a tripod.

LunaPic Online Photo Editor

Once I had downloaded the 'trapped' font, I realised that it needed to be transparent or we wont be able to 'overlay' it onto the shot of the bird cage stop motion.

I decided to have a look online to see if there was anything that could turn a background transparent and I came across LunaPic which is a free editing program online!

It was super easy to use; you simply upload the picture and you just have to click on the part of the picture you want to become transparent and save it!

This could then be used on the bird cage shot! 

'Trapped' Font

With the stop motion of the bird cage, we wanted the word 'trapped' to appear when the lyric is sung. I used a website called dafont.com as it allows you to browse a wide range of fonts within certain categories, I looked in the horror section to see if there were any fonts that looked 'trapped'.

I found this one and thought it was appropriate so I downloaded it.

Stop Motion Finished!

Below are all the shots put together creating our stop motion shot! This is only the rough cut as the one in our final video will be sped up and be split up as it is too long to have as one shot.

Stop Motion

My co-director and I have always wanted to incorporate stop motion into our music video as we feel it works well within the indie-pop genre music videos.

After watching the trailer to the film, 'The Diary of A Teenage Girl' months ago, my co-director remembered a particular shot in which a still photograph of a boy is in the middle of the shot and flowers are drawn around him. 

We used this as inspiration and thought we could replicate this with our own drawings and a picture of the performer's ex-boyfriend. 

As I did the animation of Motion, my co-director decided to draw and take the pictures to create the stop motion. She stuck a piece of a3 paper to the table with blue-tack, also glued a photograph of the ex-boyfriend in the middle and set the camera up on a tripod - directly above the paper. 

Chaya drew flowers, hearts and other random doodles around the photograph, ensuring she took a picture on the camera after every line drawn! 

Here is what the final picture turned out like:

Final Motion Animation

After a lot of working out how to use Motion and experimenting with different ideas, I managed to create the animation we were aiming for.  I made the star spin, arrows bounce back and forth and the hearts appear one by one and enlarge - although very time consuming, it was worth it... even if it did make me realise how much time and effort it can take for a 2 second shot!

Here is the animated clip:

Colour Tool On Motion

For our star shape, I wanted it to spin around and have lines coming out from between the points, almost like a shine. However, obviously, I wanted the lines to match the colour of the star - I tried to match the colours motion provided, but they were either too dark or too light.

I then discovered a pipette next to the 'brush colour' selection. When I clicked on it, I realised that it would make the selected shape the exact colour of anything you choose on the screen!

Google Search Tool

When looking for the images to use in motion I struggled to find images with a transparent background. I needed them to be transparent so they could be greenscreened onto our shot.

When playing around with Google images, I found there is a search tool which enables you to pick specifically transparent images.

This sped up the whole process as I knew all the images could be used, so I just had to pick my favourite! 

Motion Animations

Aside from using Motion for animated lyrics, I wanted to experiment turning still images into animated ones. A shot we thought this would work is the one where our performer is looking at a picture of her ex boyfriend. This clip is framed using the rule of thirds and is to the far right of the shot (see below).

To follow conventions of indie-pop, I decided to work with girly shapes and used a star, arrows and hearts.

Once I had found the images I wanted I could then add them into motion. As I was using Motion on a MacBook and our music video has been edited on an iMac, my co-director sent me a screenshot of the clip we were using the animation for so I could ensure the animated images were in the right place when creating them in Motion.  I will then remove the screenshot so the background for all the animations is transparent and can be 'greenscreened' onto the clip.

Experimenting With Motion

After experimenting with VideoScribe, my co-director and I found another peice of text software called 'Motion'. This software allows much more animation with text, which gives us the freedom to put our preferred lyrics in whatever formation we so wish.

We're going to replicate Cher Lloyd's 'Swagger Jagger' video as we used her animated lyrics as inspiration for ours. To do this we downloaded the music video from YouTube and saved it as an mp4. We then imported this into iMovie and cut the video down so we only have the clip of the animated lyrics 'shoutin' at me'.

Once we saved this clip, we imported it into Motion so we could 'trace' the movements of the 'swagger jagger' lyrics for our lyrics. 

The lyrics we want to use are 'to being along again' and we want the words to appear on each beat. 

We are going to continue working with Motion to achieve the clip we have envisaged. Once we have got the shot we want, we will save the clip as an mp4 and upload it to our music video. 

VideoScribe

My co-director and I found a software called 'VideoScribe'. This allows you to input any text onto any background yet have a hand holding a pen, and letters appear one by one, as if it has been handwritten. We are going to play around with this software and see if it would work in our music video.

Below are our favourite fonts we picked out to experiment with:

Editing 11/4/16

As it is the Easter holidays, my co director and I met up for an editing session at my house to edit the footage we shot on 4/4/16. Watching the footage back revealed some good shots we had taken and below is our favourite.

We are unsure what colour background we should have but we like the last clip being black and white against a bright background. These drum shots turned out exactly how we envisaged them to!

I have saved these clips as an mp4 clip so we can transfer it to school.

Rough Cut for Our Music Video

These are all the shots we have so far, some of which are not in the correct place yet.

Intro for the Music Video

In our music video, we want a clock to tick from 2:55 until it gets to 3 o'clock. However, we wanted to speed it up so we used the fast forward tool in iMovie. We placed a big clock on a green screen on a table and set up the camera to record.

After we filmed this we added a YouTube sound clip in iMovie of a clock ticking and an alarm bell for when the clock got to 3 o'clock.

Below is our filming set up:

This turned out well and we gave the clock a girly pink background. 

Once the clock got to 3 o'clock, we added a close up shot of our performer suddenly opening her eyes as if she has just woken up. 

Random Shots!

After watching the footage we recorded, we realised that when we left the camera rolling between takes it resulted in some natural close up shots which we liked and wanted to use in our music video. We edited the close up shot of her eyes into the mirror effect.

In this shot Imogen looks up towards the camera so we edited this so it is in slow motion, yet in sync with one another.

Editing Experiment - Mirror

To add variation to our editing techniques we wanted to create a mirrored effect on iMovie. However, neither my co-director and I had done this before so we watched a video on YouTube on how to do this.



After watching the tutorial we attempted our own version and this was our outcome:

This shot is for the chorus so we had to sync up the two shots so they were in time with one another and also, in time with the music.

Green Screen Issues

After uploading our footage onto iMovie we discovered that the lighting for the green screen wasn't the best as you could see shadows and there was a 'fuzz' around the performer's hairline (see below).

We decided to research further into green screening to make sure the next time we film we can make it look as professional as possible. We went onto YouTube and found a helpful video about how to set up both the green screen and lighting.

The video said to peg the fabric tight to prevent the fabric from creasing thus creating shadows. It also said to 'weigh' the bottom of the fabric down with weights. To replicate this as best we could, we used a metal adjustable frame that our fabric could be put on and used thick textbooks as weights.

This is our new green screen filming set up 

Lighting wise, they suggest to point the studio lights at the screen whereas we pointed them at our performer. Pointing them at the screen prevents shadows appearing.

Green Screen Error

When editing our green screen footage for our 9 frame shot, we discovered that there was a shadow in every clip to the right of the shot. This is most likely due to our performers standing too close to the green screen. However, we overcame this issue by using the 'touch-up' tool which allowed us to erase the shadow.

We also experimented with the colours in the clip, resulting in our performers looking much less washed out by the green screen and the colours appeared more 'sharp'. This resulted in our green screened shots looking a lot more professional. When we next use a green screen we must ensure to tell our performers to stand further away from the green screen.

Editing The 9 Frame Shot

After we imported all our footage from filming on 17th, into iMovie, my co director and I were keen to figure out how to achieve our aim of using a 9 frame shot. Neither of us had ever used this type of shot before so we had to experiment on iMovie to find how to achieve our aim. Aside from just experimenting, we also watched many YouTube video tutorials on how to do it. We came to the realisation that this will be a lengthy process but will be worth it when we see the final shot all put together. Here are the steps we had to take;

1. Firstly we had to choose a background for our green screen, to just experiment with, we chose a white one. At this moment in time, we are just focussing on the 9 frame shot, so only added a background to the shots for this.
2. Then we had to export all our clips (including footage we won't be using in the 9 frame shot) and save it as an MP4 file.
3. We had to then create a new project and insert a screen for text. This is a plain black screen that has a textbox reading 'text here.' We got rid of the text so we were left with a plain black background. This background is meant to have text that goes over clips. This background allows us to then place our own footage on top of it.
4. In the new project, we then inserted our MP4 file and deleted the other footage that was not needed for this frame. We then placed the greenscreened clips (with the white background) on top of the black text background, in the iMovie 'timeline'.
5. Then we clicked on the white background footage and selected 'picture in picture' and the clips then appear on the black background. We re-sized and moved the clips so the girls were in the middle column and in a line; Alicia on top, Imogen in the middle and Emma at the bottom.

My co-director and I, both learnt new skills when editing this frame and when it is complete we will upload this onto YouTube.

Photoshop Experimentation

After researching into magazine advertisements for artist's and their albums, my co director and I thought that we would experiment using Adobe Photoshop to create a mock advert. Neither of us had ever used photoshop before and it was definitely an experience! We decided to do this task separately so we could experiment and show each other how to do things the other hadn't discovered when creating our girl band's advert.

This is the advert I created:

I had to come up with the artist's name, album name and a release date. I also thought it would be good to link the artist's website so readers can find more information online if they want to.

I wanted the advert  to be simple and without much going on. The simple black font stands out and is easy to read. However, I wanted the artist's name 'Forever Lily' to be a larger font size and a thicker outline of the letters. I found that once I had typed what I needed and clicked off, you could not go back and edit what you have previously typed. I am sure this is possible and I will carry on experimenting with Photoshop to ensure that my co-director and I produce an advert of high quality that can be printed in magazines.