ASSESSMENT 3 - HILLTOP HOODS + creative commons

Creative Commons

• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S002 – 002 bridge main. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S003 – back of sticker sign Cityscapes: Valley.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S003 – board walk 2. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S003 – Sticker Back Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S004 – traffic lights boka. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S005 – walk arrow buttonCityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S006 – light ally.Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S008 – Chinatown light bulbs. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S008 – Coloured light room. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S008 – Lines Walking. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S008 – Random Grate Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S008 – Reserved. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. S008 – TV pt 2. Cityscapes: Valley. Digital-Video Footage.
• Sanshwe, S. 2008. JR part 1. Justice Rebellion Promo. Digital-Video Footage.

ASSIGNMENT 3 - REFLECTION

Why did you choose this particular music track?
For assessment 3 I decided on using Common Streets by the Hilltop Hoods. Originally I was inclined to use a the Kraftwerk track as I was inspired by the Tour de France music video by the same group, but after a thorough listen of the track I felt that the song appeared to be visually uninspiring and the ideas I was generating at the time were simplistic and was something that I did not feel like exploring. I also attempted to deconstruct the two Beastie Boys tracks, but felt that the two songs had a great level of musical complexity which would be needed to be translated visually, and I felt that I did not have ample time to commit to such a project. I also listened to the other two tracks available and felt indifferent about the music.

However with the Hilltop Hoods track I was instantly drawn to its Rhodes instrumental track, and the song’s obvious cityscape/ urban lifestyle influence. Although I’m not a fan of rap/hip-hip, I felt I could draw concepts and ideas from the lyrics and theme of the music which appears to be a more insightful piece compared to previous releases from the same artists.

What is the identity you chose for this piece and how did you decide on it?
For the identity of the piece I chose to keep it obvious and inline with the lyrical content of the music. I used cityscapes to foreground the identity of ‘common streets’ which is also the title of the track.

I decided to use cityscapes as I felt it suited the style of music (Rhodes driven instrumental, urban sound etc). There are also obvious cues within the lyrics that suggest the song relates to an urban lifestyle. When choosing the identity of the piece I also factored in what ideas I could employ and successfully achieve in the limited time frame I had available, to achieve the most successful result. As I had recently worked on an additional video piece which had a cityscape theme, I felt it would be beneficial to translate some of my experience towards this assignment.

I also researched past videos and the music style of the Hilltop Hoods and found that their previous releases such as The Clown Prince were superficial and light hearted in comparison to Common Streets. The Clown Prince is a party-orientated song, which is accompanied by a light-hearted animated music video. For this piece I decided a more reflective and mature theme would highlight the direction and content of the song and differentiate the piece from the group’s past releases.

What is the style you decided to go with and why?
When I was working on the concept for this assignment I decided I wanted to use stylized live footage of urban areas in Brisbane. As I researched images for the storyboards I was instantly drawn to cityscape photos taken in the lomography style. Lomography is a type of photography which utilises Lomo and Holga branded cameras prized for their consistent inconsistencies and production defects which produce vivid and interesting photos. These cameras are manual film cameras which can also create a variety of effects such as multiple exposures on the same frame of film (overlaying two ore more pictures), taking multiple photos in the same frame of film (eg 4 separate photos on one piece of film), and having the ability to use coloured filters and flashes resulting in colourised photos. The cameras themselves are entirely plastic and produce photos with an artistic vintage look and often vignetted edges.

The music video uses live footage that I have shot on an old DV camera and have made available as creative commons material through torrents (due to large file sizes). The footage was degraded and colourised to reflect the lomo style, which I also believe, captures the essence of cityscapes and urban imagery.

What symbols have you used in the composition and what is their meaning?
I used two symbols within the piece that are drawn from the lyrics. The first is the graphic equaliser, which reflects the ‘vibe’ as described in the lyrics. The equaliser acts as a mask for a drive through shot of the city. It’s meaning reflects the song’s relationship between the music (‘vibe’) and cityscape theme (‘common streets’).

The second symbol is the use of TVs which reflects the second verse in the lyrics. The use of television sets is to reflect the turning of music to commercialism and becoming a prison for the artist. For this effect I superimposed the free flowing ‘vibe’ equaliser graphic into a broken television set which was duplicated.

How does the motion contribute to the chosen identity?
The motion and scene transition reflects the themes expressed in each verse/ section of lyrics as well as the instrumentals used in the background. For instance the beginning of the music video features a colourful and sound reactive equaliser which transitions to television sets as per the lyrics; as the instrumental section builds the scene transitions using a soft fade to cityscape footage until the scratch/remix section which features a variety of motion and past footage remixed.

How does the composition contribute to the identity?
The composition of the scenes all reflect a cityscape/ common streets identity as a whole through the use of street footage which reflect on the content of the lyrics as explained in the various other sections of this written piece.

What would you do differently and why?
Given better time management and preparation I would have liked to firstly added more complexity in the scenes especially within the last 10-20 seconds of the clip which was done rather haphazardly due to time restraints. I feel that the footage I used doesn’t do the instrumental section justice and breaks the flow of the graphics used in the first half of the clip.

Secondly, to have included transitions that are better synced to the music therefore giving the music video better pace and visual diversity.

ASSESSMENT 3 - AFTER EFFECTS TECHNIQUES

In this section I will detail the after effects techniques I used in each scene in chronological order as follows:

1. Graphical EQ + cityscape drive through
a. GRAPHICAL EQ
The graphical equaliser was created using the trapcode plugin ‘soundkeys’ which is available as a free demo. The actual plugin maps the sound pattern of the audio and creates keyframes based on the audio, the equaliser graphic is merely a representation that is supposed to be on a hidden layer.

I created the EQ by firstling mapping the sound, the EQ graphic also has a variety of graph like lines which run across the composition. I used keylight to make these lines transparent.

For the actual affect I duplicated and mirrored the EQ and also adjusted some of the sound response settings to give the graph a smoother and symmetrical appearance. Previously the graph appeared to show only spikes of certain frequencies, no doubt to help capture keyframes.

I also created a reflection by vertically mirroring the footage and also applied a fast blur to give it a faux glow.

b. CITYSCAPE
For the drive through footage I simply made levelling adjustment, then used blending (possibly screen or overlay) in conjunction with the Graphical EQ layer so that only the coloured areas would expose the drive through footage as well as colourise it accordingly. I also time stretched the footage and used a pixel blend.

2. TV screens
a. MOTION CAPTURE
I used a 4-corner-perspective method to motion capture the edges of the television set. In some areas I had to manually adjust capture points frame by frame as the software was unable to accurately track the footage.

b. OVERLAY FOOTAGE
I linked the motion capture track to footage which had levelling and colour adjustments on them. I used an effect called ‘colorize – gradient’ which applied a colour gradient onto some of the footage. I also used layer blending to preserve the TV screen’s scratches and to create the illusion that the footage was being played on the television screen. To further this affect the footage had a feathered round-square mask applied so the footage would not seem like a sharp square was placed inside the TV.

c. GRAFFITI WRITING
The free font “MOST WASTED” was used in conjunction with the ‘write-on” effect which creates a mask based on manually adjusted points that are keyframed along the time line. Once created a time stretch was used to increase the speed of the graffiti writing to about 2-3 seconds.

d. CAMERA / POSITIONING
A 3D camera was used to zoom out while the 4 TVS appeared from under one another. Opacity and motion blurring was used to achieve this affect.

e. Feathered frame
A black-feathered frame is used throughout this scene and through many other scenes in the music video clip. This feathered frame was created using an inverted round mask with feathering applied. The wobble affect was created by applying the ‘wiggler-gelatine’ effect. The black edges would sometimes clip out of the frame and expose the underneath layer so an additional black inverted frame was created to prevent the accidental exposures of layers.

3. Double exposure lomo effect footage
a. OVERLAY BLENDING
The footage was layered and cut using the overlay blend mode and screen blend effect. The variation for both overlay styles was because a screen blend by itself would sometimes lead to the footage appearing to over-exposed and bright when 3 or more layers with the effect appeared on screen (this instance is seen in the ‘dream’ section of the lyrics but was left like that on purpose). Overlay blending was used on some layers to prevent this over-exposure effect happening.

b. TEXT
The text had a bad tv – weak effect applied with the horizontal and vertical wave figures modified.

4. Scratch and remix section
a. 3D CAMERA
A 3D camera was used within the sequence to zoom and pan around the objects and sync with the remix/ scratch effects of the audio.

b. ECHO SPACE
A trapcode plugin called echo space was used to duplicate existing footage such as the graphic EQ and apply random X/Y/Z animations. Each layer of the EQ then had a layer blend effect applied to create a jumbled effect on the footage.

This was also applied to another set of TV footage with motion capture, however instead of duplicating just a single sequence of the TV footage, different instances of the TV footage was used. Once again there was random X/Y/Z animations applied as well as a time delay between the animations.

The footage was pre-rendered and imported into the comp.

c. MIRRORED FOOTAGE
The existing footage was time-reversed and existed in a 3D space to create a sort of 3D room/ corner.

5. Other Techniques
a. PRE-RENDERING
I pre-rendered each comp, scene and graphic element as I created them thereby creating standalone *.mov files which did not need rendering from scratch each time I previewed them or imported them into the main clip. This prevented extra long render times and system crashes and reduced the ram load on the system.

b. FOOTAGE CAPTURE/TRIM
The footage was captured using final cut pro 6, and was trimmed using quicktime as the original footage was not time coded and split into separate *.mov files.

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED
The biggest problem I encountered was system crashes often caused by inconsistencies in the plugins when translating from mac to pc and sometimes between incremental saves. I also experienced a lot of crashes during ram-previews and rendering. I solved this problem by firstly switching all my work to my mac OSX install (which runs parallel to my PC install on a pc machine) and by using pre-rendering which helped me to micro-manage each scene, effect and graphic of the comp which required rendering. As mentioned earlier this allowed me to work on a section and then render and import it as a lossless video file into a comp which would not require rendering the entire set of footage and effects from scratch.

I also experienced a minor problem with capturing the footage in that my camera had depleted its clock battery and therefore was unable to run a system clock and apply a time code. As a result I had to capture the footage as one large file and manually trim and cut scenes in quicktime. However this was beneficial as it let me review the scenes and helped me to select scenes to be used.

Week 10 Tutorial Exercise

PART 1: Mood BoardI was motivated to use a 1970s inspired mood board for this piece. The mood board was created in inDesign using images obtained from flickr and deviant art as well as google images. The first row is the mood for the colour swatch, ie hyper colour. The second row contains images that I wanted to use to develop themes within the clip; and the third row is used to highlight human behaviour in the 70s and its quirks.

PART 2: video manipulation according to mood board

I achieved the gradual discolouration effect by using the 'colourama' plugin in After effects. The effects samples colour shades and alpha channels in the source video and applies a coloured pattern to it. I used this effect across keyframes at 2 second intervals, in conjunction with layers and transparency to achieve a hypnotic, hyper-coloured video. I felt that this was fairly successful considering the original footage was gray scale.

PART 3: motion tracking

For this peice i used a simple exclamation mark accompanied by a sound alert from the 1998 playstation one hit, Metal Gear Solid. The motion tracking wasn't straight forward for this piece as in 3 seperate areas AE was unable to accurately track the movement, to counter-act this I ran the motion tracker in three stages. The first tracked the inital movements, the second tracked movements from the zoomed out view, and the third stage tracked the motion of the turtle falling into his shell into the 'duck and cover' position. I also used a subtle transition on the exclamation mark. I found motion tracking to be a very easy and effect way to include dynamic graphics into motion video and think it has many useful future applications.

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CatskillsGrrl. 2005. Summer of 1970. http://www.flickr.com/photos/catskillsgrrl/62829466/ (accessed October 6, 2008)
Cleared. 2004. Tie-Die. http://cleared.deviantart.com/art/Tie-Die-9444679. (accessed October 6, 2008)
Kaiack. 2007. Isla Vista 1970. http://kaiack.deviantart.com/art/Isla-Vista-1970-70217672. (accessed October 6, 2008)
Kspatula. 2007.Tie-Die-Shirts. http://kspatula.deviantart.com/art/Tie-Die-Shirts-72228861. (accessed October 6, 2008)
Roadsidepictures. 2006. Colgate Toothpaste coupon and "tuffy tooth" offer, 1970. http://www.flickr.com/photos/roadsidepictures/92430363/ (accessed October 6, 2008)
Rizzo, A. 1951. Duck and cover. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au. (accessed October 6, 2008)
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QUT REFERNCING: HAVARD http://www.citewrite.qut.edu.au/cite/harvard/examples/other.jsp#artwork