Magazine gun HUD

As I didnt use real guns and I wanted to make the video slightly more futuristic, I looked back at my initial ideas and found the idea to give the magazine of the gun some sort of HUD. It ended up being very easy and working brilliantly.

I started by making a simple bullet shape and the number 10 in Adobe Illustrator and placing the image in After effects.

I motion tracked the magazine, attached the image to it and added a small blue glow

In order to make the image look like it fits in with the scene, I added some glow to the actors hand and the top of the magazine. This really made the image work.

Second edit

After I added the muzzle flares and the first SFX, I wanted to upload my first edit to get audience feedback:

https://vimeo.com/54718225

Making my own Foley

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Foley

During the research of my music videos, I realised that if a sound effect was used, it was foley. This goes for shot films as well. After some extensive research, I found two very good videos explaining what foley is and how to make my own foley sounds.

The first video explains what foley is:

How Foley is Made

And this video explains how to do it on a £0 budget:

Homemade Foley Effects

I took it upon myself to try and make some of my own foley effects. After reviewing my footage, the first sound I knew that I needed to replace was that of the plastic airsoft gun colliding with the wooden floor. It is so obvious that the gun is plastic and very light when it hits and ruins the effect for the film.

During my school day, I was scouring the media, graphics and sports department for any sort of small and heavy metal object. It didn’t take long to find this:

I have no idea what it is, but it makes exactly the same sound as a gun hitting wood/concrete. I wanted to get the sound quickly, so I used my Sennheiser PX-200 Iii headphone microphone and the Voice Memos app on my iPhone 4S and went to work:

It didn’t take long to get a realistic sound. I brough the audio onto my computer using Senuti then brought that to FCP7:

I used the sound for this shot and ended up with the gun sounding like it was metal.

Fight Scene SFX

The fight scene in my music video is the most important scene to get the sound right as all the hits have to sound realistic and painful. I looked at some fight scenes, and in the end I used the fight scene from "Losses" as a reference. The creators of this video made a short video explianing how the made the sound for the film, including the foley for the punches, kicks etc.

I used this as a reference for the sound of the fight. I used the software Sountrack Pro which comes with over 5000 foley effects. With some mixing, I was able to get a sound for every hit and drop.

I started by dragging the edited fight scene into Soundtrack Pro

I didnt see the need to show every sound effect I used, but from this image you can see that I had different tracks for each sound and for every hit I layered certain sounds depending on the hit or surface.

 There were so many layers I had to use a second screen shot.

 

 I dragged the final video back into the time line, ready to edit.

Muzzle Flares

Upon seeing my first edit with no effects or quick cuts, I wanted to get straight into the muzzle flares for the gun. I researched multiple gin shots from the real counterparts to the airsoft guns I used. From this, I was able to create semi-realistic muzzle flares when the actor fires the airsoft gun.

I used After Effect CS5 for all the muzzle flares and did similar techniques for each one:

I started my importing the footage needed into AE

 

Then I added the muzzle flare for 1 frame

 

I then added an ambient glow to show that the flare is interacting with the environment

In order to stylize the flare, I added a short lens flare that I made in Video Copilots Optical Flare plugin

 

This is what it looks like with the flare and the lens flare

For the most realistic flare, you need smoke to come out of the barrel. Real bullets emit smoke when they are shot due to the combustion of the gunpowder.

Extra masking for the flare

Everything layered, the flare is almost done

 I then changed the glow and the flare is done.

I repeated this process for all of my other flares:

Imporing footage to make very rough first edit (FINISH)

Importing footage and making 1^st new edit

The second I finished my second filming session with my new actors and filming at night, I wanted to make a very quick edit as fast as possible in order to see if I needed to re-film anything. I wanted to do this soon so I wouldn’t annoy the actors if things needed to be re-filmed which would make directing them very easy and painless.

The Slide

One of the main effects of the video which I also did in my first edit was the "slide" of the chaser when he was coming round a corner. I got the idea from one of my research videos, "Dubstep Guns", where one of the characters slides round a corner without moving and then raises his guns up. I'm not sure exactly how they did this, but I had a good idea as so how. This was one of the more labour intensive effects to do, however due to its un-realism, it works well in a music video.

I used After Effects CS5 for the compositing, these are the steps I took to make it

The first thing i had to do was film a clean plate of the background and then film the actor on a green screen so I could easily seperate him from the background.

I masked out just the actor and some of the green leaving the clean shot to show through.

 Using Keylight, I keyed out the green from the actor so it now looks like it is just one shot and not two layered.

In order to actually make the slide, I keyframed that layer with the actor on it to come in from the right of the screen. Motion blur was added so it looks less fake and then I ramped the speed

To make it look as if he was coming from behind the wall, all I did was duplicate the clean plate, mask out the wall section and put that on top of everything.

Finally I added a shadow to follow him, keyframed the camera to bulge in and out and then added it to my edit.

Fight Scene SFX

The fight scene in my music video is the most important scene to get the sound right as all the hits have to sound realistic and painful. I looked at some fight scenes, and in the end I used the fight scene from "Losses" as a reference. The creators of this video made a short video explianing how the made the sound for the film, including the foley for the punches, kicks etc.

I used this as a reference for the sound of the fight. I used the software Sountrack Pro which comes with over 5000 foley effects. With some mixing, I was able to get a sound for every hit and drop.

I started by dragging the edited fight scene into Soundtrack Pro

I didnt see the need to show every sound effect I used, but from this image you can see that I had different tracks for each sound and for every hit I layered certain sounds depending on the hit or surface.

 There were so many layers I had to use a second screen shot.

 

 I dragged the final video back into the time line, ready to edit.

First attemp at an edit

After storyboarding my music video, I decided to go straight into filming the whole video in one day using my chosen actors. For my first edit, I didnt want to add and sort of special effects. It was supposed to be rough with some simple colour correction. There are no sound effects either, however I focused all my effort on putting every clip I filmed into a narrative. This is the outcome:

https://vimeo.com/53435328

As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done. After a long think about what is missing to make it convincing, I realised what it is. Not only is this film too similar to my last video, but also I didnt think the acting was good enough to give a convincing role.

Main points to take from this edit:

• I need to film at night time. This will fit with the song more and give it a more tense atmosphere.
• The actors need to be changed along with having 3 instead of 2. I have changed my idea significantly. I want to still have a stong female lead, however I only want her to show up at the end and be a mysterious figure. I will have a similar story but the chase will be between two men who are both angry at each other instead on one who is simply chasing one. This means the I will need two weapons.
• One of the new actors will be a professional MMA fighter, this means that the fight scene will be far more convincing. This is the scene that will be the hardest to get right. Also, I need to make the fight longer.
• The gun recoil need to be more realistic, it doesnt look powerful enough. I will need to research realistic gun recoil from internet videos and try to get in contact with some weapons handlers.
• If I use CGI, I can easily practice on the footage I have filmed.
• Re-filming will be easy as I have already filmed most clips. Nothing will be down to chance.
• The two characters have to be equal in skill and both have to be chasing each other. The female lead will only show up at the end. She will shoot her henchman as she does not need him anymore.

I will be getting on with the re-filming and second edit as soon as possible.

First day of filming

I decided to get filming as soon as possible when I finished my storyboard to a point where I could improvise a lot of it. I didn't know how long it would take to film and I knew that I only had my actors for a few hours which wouldn't be nearly enough time to film everything, however I got as much done as possible in the time available.

These are some behind the scenes shots of the day:

I wasnt able to get too many pictures of actually filming as there was no one to take pictures, however on my second shoot I took a few, but again I was short on people to take BTS picures.

Overall, we spent around 4 hours filming on this day and got around 1 min of footage. It was a fun day and became relatively productive.

Gun Tracking Effect Test for Music Video

In my free time, I decided to see if I could really pull off the effect where it shows the amount of bullets in the gun. I did this because you obviously cant show bullets in a magazine of the handgun as it is an airsoft gun. This is the video I made (I added SFX also):

https://vimeo.com/53033139

In my opinion, the effect works quite well. Much better than I though it would. Here are some behind the scenes of the editing:

I used AfterEffects CS5 and Illustrator CS5 in order to pull it off. I filmed the gun with my Canon 600D and 100mm Canon L.

Actors

Actors I will be using:

Before I get anywhere with this music video, I need to pick my actors. Last year, I used me, my father and a family friend. I dont want to use the same cast (even though my father and friend are incredible at playing henchmen) so I decided to use two of my teachers who I thought would fit well. One of them is my media studies teacher who has seemed very keen to be in the film for a while. The female part is my form teacher who has agreed to be in it.

This is a picture of both of them (Holly Hames on left, Samuel Cullis on right):

 This is not what they will be wearing in the video, in fact they will be wearing quite the opposite to this.

Target Audience

Target Audience:

In order to create a successful music video, I need to know who my target audience are going to be. I need to be able to aim my characters and storyline at a certain demographic of people so that I can produce the best possible video.

What my audience is:

·      14-30 year olds

·      Male and Female (due to female protagonist)

·      Urban, international

·      Dress normally, wears hoodies and other casual clothes.

·      Enjoys a good action film and some fighting

·      Appreciates heavy drum and bass

·      Doesn’t mind quick action and fast paced editing

·      Can keep up with a quick single strand

·      Music video watchers

·      Not fans of generic pop music / music videos

Essentially, people like me.

Pre - Storyboard Narrative

Essentially, this is a idea sheet of how my music video is going to pan out. It took a while to do due to the fact I had to bring all of my ideas into one narrative, but from this I am very happy to do a storyboard for it. I still need to find some better locations however.

Incase you cannot read the handwriting:

• Begins with a buildup to the chase scene, one of the henchmen has been killed (means for revenge), henchman checks his gun and realises that he is low on ammo.
• Hook kicks in, chase starts
• Chase continues for about 1 min until calm (mid) of the song
• At calm, the hiding of the MP (main protagonist) occours. Fits with the song.
• Continues hiding, trying to devise a way to get rid of the henchman
• Noises
• Fight/chase starts slow-mo intro, zooms into the eye of the henchman then cuts to the eye of the MP and zooms out.
• Hench uses gun and shoots at MP, misses all three times and so is out of ammunition
• Throws gun in last effort, hits her/his foot
• Trips MP, fatal mistake for hench
• After a bit of time, MP picks up the gun and gets ready to strike
• Cocks arm
• MP shins hench, hench falls to the floor
• MP swaps gun to the other hand, pins him down and in the same motion swings gun at henches head
• END

Music Video Analysis - Losses

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Short Film Analysis

Losses – FilmRiot:

Narrative:

·      The location is not too clear until you get a few minutes into the film. We start with a 4x4 vehicle driving up to the camera which pans round to the back and shows a man taking a hostage out of the boot of the car. The main title shows and we cut to the first location. It is an interrogation room that is harshly lit. In this room, we first see the main protagonist and the main villain. Some aggressive lines of dialogue are exchanged until the villain gives the protagonist a chance to find him in five minutes after he un-cuffs himself with a paper clip. The first henchman approaches the agent (protagonist) then he is smoothly killed by the agent with the paper clip. The agent walks out into a corridor of a large building and this is when the action starts. He disarms one henchman, kills him then shoots two more in the same location. Another appears who he also kills. He then enters a second location (looks like a balcony) where a cover gunfight takes place. He does some skillful moves and eventually kills all of the henchmen. The next scene is probably the best done. It is a one on one fight scene. It begins with a powerful fist fight then the agent acquires a pool cue. This is what he uses to kill him. The music here fits perfectly and when the fight is over it seems to seamlessly move into the next scene. As the agent walks up the stairs he grabs a revolver to kill the main villain. He enters the room, the villain tells him that hes got the job, he doesn’t like it and shoots him. End.

Music / SFX:

·      Seeing as this is a short film and not a music video, multiple songs are used in different sections of the video, however they all follow the same tune and are all in the same genre of music.

·      The first song is a collection of strings, drums and what sounds like a few electric guitar notes. It is absolutely brilliant score to start the video, it sounds very “special ops”. From multiple modern warfare games I have played such as Splinter Cell or Rainbow Six Vegas 2, this song very much reminds me of music from the games.

·      During the interrogation scene, it sounds like only a bass guitar plays a few notes in the same style as the song before. Some very faint electric guitar notes come in again. It sounds absolutely perfect with the scene.

·      As the action builds up, the strings and guitars become louder and louder. When the first shot is fired, the main song comes in along with louder drums. It really gives a sense of the action.

·      The next scene has a similar song but with stronger guitar sounds. For the rest of the film, the music stays like this until the end where is builds up so much tension before the final kill then cuts off for a stylistic effect.

·      The sound effects used in this video are all incredible. There is actually a behind the scenes video which explains more than I could made by the same people who made the film. It is amazingly informative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSZvs8hecI0&safe=active

Lighting / Colour:

·      The colour and lighting in this film fits to the codes and conventions of other action films. The first shot is very dark and desaturated to build the tension and to show the genre. There was also a faint cyan filter over the image.

·      The interrogation scene was very well lit. For all shots, there is a warm back light for the actor and a cooler font light. This is a very generic convention of almost all films if there is an object in a darker space. The contrast is also very high and the grading is done very well.

·      The lighting is constantly very harsh on the actors and room to show the gritty and urban environment.

·      When the first scene ends, we move onto where the action first starts. The lighting here is just practicals (lighting that is shown in the shot) from the hallway, however the muzzle flares are very detailed when broken down. Again, there is a great behind the scenes video on how they do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDx83vsLLKk&feature=bf_next&list=SP5F218CF0B697F371&safe=active

·      In addition to the green/blue tint to all the clips, some faint and realistic lens flares have been used to give the stylistic effect of an action/sci-fi film.

Characters:

·      Similar to “Dubstep Guns”, none of the characters have names, if they had names it would be too much to remember for the narrative and would take you away from the elements.

·      The main protagonist is dressed in a black leather jacket, dark trousers and black shoes. Seeing as the first time me is introduced he is in the trunk of a car, we assume that he has been captured by villains and forced to kill his way out of the building.

·      He keeps a serious expression throughout the whole film and nothing seems to phase him.

·      The next character appears to be the boss of all the henchmen that attempt to kill the main protagonist. He is wearing a suit and smoking what seems to be a cigarette holder. He acts very casually and treats the main protagonist like an item talking about the “money” he put into him. He acts the same in the two scenes we see him in.

·      The other characters all appear to be henchmen who one by one are killed by the main protagonist apart from one. He is still killed but gets far more screen time that other characters.

Genre:

·      Being an action short film, there are multiple codes and conventions that the film follows. First of which being the use of guns and over exaggerated muzzle flares for a stylistic effect.

Video Analysis 1: Dubstep Guns - Corridor Digital

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Music Video Analysis:

Dubstep Guns – CorridorDigital

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDlif8Km4S4&safe=active

Narrative:

·      Set in an abandoned stone ,the video starts with giving you a background as to what will happen later on in the video. One of the “agents” is escaping from the villains of the video and calls for back up. Its quite cliché, but it works as story building. It cuts to a shot of a dark room multiple times with two men sitting, silhouetted, in front of bright computer screen. The music becomes quieter and one of the men tells the other that the “drop squad” is on their way. The video then starts to get into the music portion. Three futuristic looking soldiers come into the warehouse from the car and start to walk in towards the henchmen. When the music beings to drop, the camera zooms in on one of the men as he unleashes the lasers from his gun. These laser are synced with the music playing so it sounds and looks amazing. A few more scene like this go on until they reach the main villain who they cannot harm unless they combine the weapons which they do. This results in a large neon plasma ball with burns the villain while synced to the music the whole time.

Music/Sfx:

·      There are multiple songs used in the video.

·      It starts with a generic, tension building song, heavily based on drum beats.

·      With the gun shots, its not just a gun shot. There is an impact and a ricochet sound to show verisimilitude.

·      When it comes to the laser beams in the video, there are no sound effects for that. Its just the soundtrack. This is the theme of the rest of the video.

·      The speed ramps have their own sound effects to emphasise the ramps. It also fits with the song as it’s a noise that has bass and is deep.

·      In the video, there are actually 6 songs used overall. One at the start to begin the video, then the next 5 are just edited together from different songs. They are all by the same band so you don’t usually notice it.

Lighting/Colour:

·      The colour for most of the video consists of natural colours. Some of the shades of dark-light may have been adjusted though.

·      At the start of the video, the scene has very dark and warm lighting to show the tension of the scene. Also, not a lot of the light is softened, the harder the light, the more serious it looks. 

·      With the dark room and monitors, light blue is the dominant colour. Using blue as the main colour shows a sense of technology because we associate technology with blue. Also, having the rest of the room and characters silhouetted gives a feel of the characters being secluded and secretive. 

·      Whenever a character is at a doorway, the light behind is always over exposed and the interior of the room in very under exposed. This is a typical convention of action movies.

·      Each character has a certain colour to match with them. This is carried out at multiple intervals in the video. When it split-screens at the start, what the characters are wearing, the colour of their beams and more.

·      The use of red when the main villain is laughing at the protagonists is a very obvious and stereotypical visual way of showing what he is planning/what he is like as a character.

Characters:

·      None of the characters are named in the video. The names of each character aren’t necessary however as they way they are portrayed makes up for this.

·      The first character we see appears to be some sort of special operative that is on the run from two other men, assumed to be villians. We can guess this because of the way they dress and when the spec op talks.

·      The first character is wearing a white top with black soldier-type gear. In the next clip, we see the two main villains.

·      When the first song of the main music video soundtrack comes in, we see the three main characters. All the themed the same way, just denoted by different colours. Green, blue and red. In addition to this, each character has their own unique beam so that you can easily tell who is who.

Genre:

·      This music video is aimed to be a short action film. With the stereotypical characters and the way they act, this is easy to see.

·      This could also be a sci-fi video due to the inclusion of beams as weapons, however the location used does not fit the codes and conventions of a sci-fi film.