DANCE FILM: INSPIRATION (MUSIC VIDEO)

To further my research I decided to look at music videos for my dance film, as you could say this are the most related in terms of length, composition and choreography. As there are hundreds of music videos out there that I could talk about for days, I decided to pick 4 that I felt inspired me in different ways.

The first music video I found was by Sigrid called Strangers. This music video is a strange one as you see some behind the scenes in the music video. Such as the people holding the wind machine etc. I felt this was quite a nice part of the music video as it makes the audience aware this isn't reality, even though you know it isn't. The set I also really like in this music video as it is very minimalist, just a massive room or infinity wall with some furniture and props, that the singers dances around and interacts with the set. I was thinking of maybe including some behind the scenes in my dance film as I feel it adds a sort of reality into the video and that is what I am trying to do. I am also taking inspiration from the set and its minimalist style and will only have the paper mountains and a clean white background, so the attention is focused on the dancers. Below is a link to the video.

SIGRID STRANGERS

Another music video I found was Dua Lipa's latest music video IDGAF. This video is incredible in the editing as they almost clone the dancers and they interact and touch each other. But I am taking inspiration from the colour in this music video. They have gorgeous gels, with blues, yellows and reds being the main colours. The gels and lights are soft on the face giving a nice glow and I will want to try and use this to inspire my piece and have beautiful soft lighting.I also really liked the choreography, as it requires a whole dance crew, even though I am only using two dancers I will still take inspiration from this choreography. Below is a link to the video.

DUA LIPA IDGAF

Although I am not a massive fan of the Chemical Brothers, their song Wide Open is incredible. A friend showed this to me and I just couldn't get my head around how it was done. You see a dancer slowly turn into a hollow structure with holes in her, and you can see her heart. Although I am not aiming to do something as technical as this, I felt the choreography was beautiful and well crafted. The dancers movement was so elegant and complimented the music so well. I will be taking lots of inspiration from this choreography for my own work. Below is a link to the video.

CHEMICAL BROTHERS WIDE OPEN

Again I am not a huge fan of OK GO's music, but I find their music videos, clever, sometimes simple but very funny and surreal. There were many music videos I could have chosen to talk about but I felt this music video had the colours I wanted. I have talked a lot about colour palettes, but not much about costume and although simple, the costumes in this music video have really nice colours. They are wearing quite bright colours in this video but it works. With the plain background of a muted toned aeroplane, they are able to be the focus of attention with the bright colours. Taking inspiration from this, I felt that if I were to have quite a plain background, my dancers should have quite bright clothing so they don't get lost in the scene. I was thinking still minimal and easy to move in clothes but with bright and complimenting colours to the set. Below is a link to the video.

OK GO UPSIDE DOWN AND INSIDE OUT

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM - EDITING PROCESS

After collecting all the rushes we needed for our film, we then moved on to the editing process. we knew this was where our film would really come together as lots of the film relies on post production visuals. Some challenges we would face were the use of three different softwares, but so far this hasn't seemed much of a challenge. Calling on my skills from Audition I created a soundtrack to enhance and fit our film to create an atmosphere. I used the sound of Dial up internet, the notification sound from MSN and a few other sounds. When I felt happy with the track i showed Danielle to make sure she was happy with it too, luckily she was. So then came editing day 1.

Firstly, I put all of our rushes into the same folder to make sure the project file could find them all. Then opened a Premier pro project and imported all of the clips. Danielle and I decided to make a list of the order we wanted the film to take so it would speed up the editing process. Once we were happy with our list and order I trimmed down the clips we wanted to use then dragged them onto the timeline. We then had to scale to frame size all the clips and unlink the audio as it is redundant in our film. After this, we then started to cross cut between archive and our own footage and experiment with the video opacity to layer two clips on top of each other. Then we selected which of the robotic voiceover we wanted , and where we wanted them and started placing them on the timeline. As we recorded the robotic voiceover you could hear a lot of background noise, we wanted to make the audio sound as clear as possible so I added exponential fade to each side of the audio clips so I could mask the background noise better. After this we had to adjust the volume levels of the voiceover as she was peaking too much and overriding the soundtrack so we leveled it all out. We were then incredibly happy with the film so we exported it out of Premier Pro into after effects ready to start glitching. 

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM - DAY 1

This week is filming week for the experimental films, Danielle and I had a very clear and concise structure and schedule which has come in our favour. We have scheduled this film to only take two days to film as most of the it is effects in the post production, and all the production footage is archive, and film shot ourselves with a DSLR.

So, this morning we scheduled to meet at ten am this morning to collect a sufficient bank of archive footage we felt was relevant. We wanted to source clips that showed old technology such as old computers and televisions to show how much technology has changed. The first video we came across was Steve Jobs presenting the first Mac computer. We agreed we both liked this as everyone has an association with Apple products, most people own a piece of Apple technology, people will be able to connect with it. 

From this clip, we went on to find an old mobile phone commercial we felt was fitting, and a Gameboy advert that we could use for our archive footage. We then decided to look for Glitch videos for inspiration to get ready for filming. We found so many videos for inspiration, as we liked the abstract shapes, and also the saturation of the colours, so this is something we are drawing inspiration from. Listed below are some links to the videos we got inspired from:

fluid glitch video

windows glitch

glitched lake

ink and water

focus glitch

subliminal glitch

From our initial Digital Materialisation short film, we used an online robot called Eviebot to record what she said. As we liked the robot likeness to her voice and lack of depth and a monotone sound to give a cold sinister feel to the words. However with Eviebot we couldn't get her to say exactly what we wanted, you just had to type things and use chance that she would say something we felt was good to record. Nevertheless, we did some searching and found a website that we could type exactly what we wanted and use some effects on the website to change the pitch, tone, length and gender of the person and their voice. Here is the website listed down below:

robot voice over

Using this website we found a voice, pitch, length and gender we felt was best suited to create the same sinister, cold tone like Eviebot. Using this website was far more effective as we could get the exact results we wanted and didn't have to leave the results to chance, like with Eviebot. We recorded a preview of what the website gave us and the sound we wanted to achieve:

After realising we could get this robot to say exactly what we wanted, we came up with a script of things we think would be best suited for our voice over. listed below is the script we devised:

1.You are being watched

2.Slide to unlock

3.Digital overload is now central to the human condition

4.Our brains are wired

5.You have forgotten where the off button is

6.Are you feeling overwhelmed?

7.Just check the internet for five minutes

8.Control alt delete

9. Escape

10.You cannot escape

11.You have no identity without the internet

12.Who are you without the internet?

13.You’re hiding behind a screen

14.Don’t be afraid we’re all watching you

15.You let the world comment on your existence

16.Hashtag no escape

17.You have a notification…

18.Share your location with me

19.Don’t you trust me?

20.Lol

21.Lmao 

22.Omfg 

23.Fml

We then went on to spend the rest of the day recording the voice over exactly how we wanted ready to cut down and edit in the post production. 

I hope you enjoy. Thank you. 

EXPERIMENTAL SOUND FINISHED PIECE

For the experimental sound piece we were asked to create a soundtrack between 30 seconds to 1 minute inspired by a piece of artwork. Previously I explained I chose Francis Bacon's art piece and took inspiration from Eraserhead by David Lynch. I wanted to achieve an unsettling background piece with some unusual sounds breaking the white noise. I feel I achieved what I wanted it to sound like and I am quite happy with the end result.

I wrote up a list of sounds I wanted to record such as running water, squeaky doors, rice shaking and fingers clicking. After recording these I imported them all into Audition and decided to graphic equalize most of the sound clips with either 20 or 30 bands. Then attach convolution reverbs to most of sound clips. I used effects such as massive cavern to create an echo or backwards cavern to make it sound unnerving. I created a few tracks just as background noise to try and take my own approach on Eraserhead and then added in little snippets of other uncomfortable. I then had a few tracks to add in the uncomfortable sounds so they could fade in and out with the background noise. I feel with the steaks in the painting it inspired me to drag the sounds out to replicate the paint marks. Overall I am quite pleased with my end results as I feel it fulfilled my interpretation of what I thought the painting sounded like which was to create an uncomfortable ambient background.

Here is a screenshot of me exporting my sound piece at 24bit and 48khz and turned down the master track to -3 so it was at the right levels and formats to be submitted. I feel I picked the right painting for me as it gave me lots of sounds to explore and be adventurous with my sound manipulation.

Here is my finished experimental sound piece:

I hope you enjoy. Thank you. 

EXPERIMENTAL SOUND RESEARCH

As I have decided to select the painting Pope Innocent X I wanted to research sounds that could inspire me to create my own experimental soundtrack. In lesson James showed us a classic Lynch film Eraserhead (1997) When watching it I loved it. I loved the atmosphere it created, and the apparent static noise in the background that was so loud but after a while just merged into the background. I enjoyed how uncomfortable, claustrophobic and tense it made you feel. So when recording my sounds I tried to source sounds that could create an atmosphere similar that I could make my own. So I manipulated the sound of running water and squeaking doors to try and create this uneasy atmosphere.

Eraserhead (1997)

I hope you enjoy. Thank you. 

EXPERIMENTAL SOUND DESIGN

For our experimental sound project, we have been asked to create a soundtrack between 30 seconds to 1 minute inspired by a piece of artwork. We were given 8 to choose from and I decided to choose Francis Bacon's Portrait of Pope Innocent X. I like this piece a lot and enjoy Bacon's work so I thought it would be a good idea for me to choose this. When looking at the piece I decided to think of sounds that I could record and manipulate in Adobe Audition. I created a short list and will add to it as I record this weekend:

• Washing machine 
• Microwave
• Squeaky doors 
• Cupboard doors slamming
• Dog barking

Portrait of Pope Innocent X

I shall record sounds this weekend and start my own Adobe Audition project to start creating my soundtrack. I hope to have a nearly finished piece by the end of the week for a tutorial with James.

I hope you enjoy. Thank you.