Where I am now

Over the weekend I recorded half of the song 'White Winter Hymnal'. Because the song includes three people singing, I need the harmonies to be pitch perfect. This is the most time consuming as I have to go back and listen to the song to see if any notes are out of pitch. Once I have done this I will have completed the cover. I have recorded the guitar and tambourine which sound pretty good! As I may have mentioned earlier on my blog, I will have a shot of footage which will be recorded on the top of my car, I will have someone sitting in the passenger seat, holding a tripod out of my sunroof. Because I have a 'steady mode' on my camcorder, it should run pretty smooth. I will drive down bendy roads, country roads etc. to capture the location! This should hopefully keep the audience entertained!

Quick 5 minute attempt

This is my first attempt of animating the cut out heads. The heads were printed using my home computer which isn't very reliable due to the fact that the colour isn't always correct on the printouts. You will see in this video that the colour of the head changes colour throughout! I will hopefully overcome this by either using someone else's printer or simply buying a new one! Also I haven't correctly aligned the heads to make it more smooth, however if I were to use iStop-Motion for the whole process, I could align them with ease using the onion skin tool. This allows me to see a ghost-like preview of the last image taken.

Quick Test run! from Jordan Bezants on Vimeo.

Audience Response - After viewing this video to my media class, I gathered some answers which were highly beneficial, some were advantages, and others were disadvantages. However this will help me when I eventually film the final music video!
Many students agreed that the contrast of the background wasn't very strong, therefore I need the landscape to have a higher contrast to the faces when recording the final piece. The guitar head was rather off-putting and people seemed to have lost concentration to the moving head. I will have to be careful as I wish to have interesting landscape settings, but I do not want to distract the audience from the singing heads. Luke and I, when planning our storyboard, need to pay special attension to focal point, depth of field, and cinematography to ensure that our audience get our prefered reading. One of the key ways of achieveing this will be to ensure clarity and form in our still shots that we will use to create our animation, we may use the studio and chiaroscuric lighting for this.
However after the feedback, people seemed to enjoy watching the clip, and said it wouldn't get as tedious if the location changed every 5 seconds.

Folk Genre Research

As we split up our tasks 50/50, Luke has found some ideal research on the Folk genre. It includes the history of folk, the different styles of folk including folk rock, electric folk, and folk metal, Artists such as Bob Dylan etc. Also it includes the instruments mainly used in a folk song.
Here is the link to his research:
http://a2medialukebamber.blogspot.com/2010/12/folk-genre-research.html

Camera Angles

After researching music videos made by folk bands such as Fleet Foxes, Bombay Bicycle Club, Grizzly Bear, The Maccabees etc. I concentrated on the camera angles used. For the majority of Bombay Bicycle Club's music videos, the shots consist of extreme close ups, long pans, and jump shots. Also I noticed that the camcorder is purposely handheld without the use of a tripod to give their videos a more amateur look, possibly? I think this technique works as it makes the video seem more quirky and rustic! I believe the more complex music videos are made by Fleet Foxes as they have an older style of work e.g. overlaying shots, slow panning, medieval fonts etc. Here are a few screenshots of their work:

Bombay Bicycle Club - Dust on the Ground

Fleet Foxes - He Doesn't Know Why

The Maccabees - First Love

Lighting

I do not wish to concentrate on the lighting for this music video. This is because I will be using iStop-Motion, therefore it would be extremely tricky and almost impossible to keep the lighting the same all the way through a shot, especially when recording outdoors! Even indoors.... I could black out windows in the room, but I believe it would be more interesting if the lighting would change. An existing music video 'End Love - OK GO' record the whole music video in what seems to be a public park. The lighting continuously alternates throughout the video, but the main attraction is the subject matter, in this case, the four men dressed in vibrant clothing! Because I am using more than one person in my video, I believe the video would look more interesting if the lighting changes!.

OK Go: End Love from Rockonlelkek Staff on Vimeo.

Next Week's Achievements

By next week I intend to finish recording our own version of 'White Winter Hymnal' using GarageBand, start recording the first few scenery shots, and record me and Luke miming my version! Because of the weather conditions, I am debating on whether to use less outdoor scenery as I did not intend to include snow. Also it would be a challenge to keep the paper heads in the same place, same angle etc. with the wind! To overcome this I could either take a wind-braker and place it close to the heads, or I could record the majority of my footage indoors. I believe this would still be effective, and interesting. I had an idea of someone holding my camcorder out of my sun roof of my car whilst driving. Going down bendy roads, and capturing awesome scenery! I could then delete the clips I do not wish to use (using iMovie).