The Final Video

After much time spent editing and procrastinating...this is the final product.

Looking at dance videos for inspiration definitely helped me with he development of mine, and the vision that I had for it. I wanted to have the contrast of the lighter clips with the darker clips. I tried to match the choreography to the lyrics of the song to give it meaning.

To avoid copyright restrictions

click here for music used in video :)

The Editing Process (Challenging)

After I had found the perfect song to use it was time to edit the video. I had an idea of how I wanted to edit the video and that was to have the darker clips that we shot on filming day. I had originally planned to edit the whole video with the darker clips but I found that as the bass of the song changed I could play around with that a little bit. So, I combined clips of both the light and dark lighting because the contrast to me gave the video meaning.

Process
I started off by adding clips that I thought would flow well together in a sequence. I kept doing that till I was happy with the positioning of the many different clips.

I then moved onto thinking about how I wanted the beat to go with the video. I used markers to mark every time the beat dropped and then used one of the clips of Arturs' flash going off in the studio and layered it over different parts of clips when the beat dropped.

After fixing that and adding a few more effects like slow motion and speeding it up, it was time to add the colour bars and colour grade. Because I'm not great at using Premier Pro it was time to seek help from my peers. With their help, I did some colour grading.

It doesn't show on the screenshot above but I used the blue curve to give a cooler tone to the overall video.

All that was left then was to do the credits and export the video :)

Finding Music: A Journey (complete)

Music is one of the most import aspects of my life. It has the ability to influence people's moods and it would have set the tone of the music video. I wanted to pick something upbeat like TRNDSTTR by Black Coast but at the same time I wanted something more chill with more of a deeper meaning that would make people feel something.
I spent hours upon hours listening to music on soundcloud which was a great experience, but everything I found I wanted to use so this was a problem.

It came down to 4 choices...

A remix of Hotline Bling
An instrumental of Thinking About You by Frank Ocean
A remix of Here by Alessia Cara
and The Foxen Remix of Whiteblood

I originally wanted to go with the instrumental of Thinking About You but I then decided I liked the style of Tim Milgram's TRNDSTTR video so much, it inspired me to go for the remix of Whiteblood because it had a good beat to it but the lyrics also have a deep meaning.

Dance Video Inspiration

After skimming through the brief of this project, I thought I should watch several hours of dance videos on YouTube to gain some inspiration so I can finally get started on the video. I had previously watched dance videos on YouTube so my initial thoughts were to search for names that I already know e.g. Willdabeast (choreographer) and Tim Milgram (director and cinematographer) first.

The first video I found was on WilldaBeast Adams YouTube channel and it's titled "Michael Jackson Dance Cover | You Rock My World | Nathan Maas"

These are some screenshots from the video 

I liked this video because of the way that it changed scenes and the use of different lighting. I also like how they added effects to it and the movement worked so well with the sound. The continuity of the choreography by different settings/editing sequence gave the video an interesting feel.

The second video I looked at was filmed by Tim Milgram and is on his YouTube

 

Black Cost - TRNDSTTR - Marie Poppin Choreography 

I was instantly drawn to this video because a friend has introduced me to this song over the summer and when I watched the video, I was inspired by how the clothes the dancers were wearing flashed/strobes to the beat. I knew this is something I wanted to incorporate into my video somehow.

Third Video was also Directed and Edited by Tim Milgram

James Bay - Let It Go - Dance

This video is less like the others, because the editing is more simplistic and the choreography itself tells a story. I think it's a beautiful video that shows off the choreography's narrative really well. With my video I wanted to tell some kind of story as well, with the help of music and the dancers choreography.

Final Image

"there's nitrogen in our DNA, calcium in our teeth, iron in our blood, even carbon in apple pies...we are made of star stuff."  - Carl Sagan

I chose to use this idea for my final idea because I always have my head in the clouds. I also wanted to add stars as an element to this image because I'm into astrology and stars, the moon, the planets and just the galaxies and universe in general fascinates me. It's a part of my strange personality and ever since I was a little kid I've always found astronomy captivating. As I got older I started reading horoscopes and eventually finding out stuff about my sun sign, moon sign and ascendant sign. Now, I'm more into astrology and how the way the planets aligned when we were born may have an effect on our personalities. 

That's probably a little something about me that you didn't know :)

Editing Process #2

Editing on Photoshop

starting point

gradient overlay, stars and moon done with Photoshop brushes.

final product

Fail...

Trashcan

Selection Process for Shoot #2

I used Lightroom to edit the images from the Photoshoot to black and white. From these I will choose a picture to edit for my final photograph.

Idea #3 - Creepy

Originally when I was brainstorming ideas, I had the idea to do a Halloween inspired shoot. I wanted it to be a bit creepy/scary so I went out and did a shoot in the graveyard at night time with a mask on. there is something very unnerving about any kind of mask because they hide the face.

The imagery and mythology of paranormal being has always interested me, so I thought about doing something a bit creepy and eerie.

When you can't see someone's face it is hard to read people and you don't really know their intentions. Also, the thought of graveyard makes some people feel uneasy because that's where people were buried when they died and the thought of that is unsettling. To think that their spirits may be somewhere around in that graveyard fascinates me so I was inspired to do a shoot there for that reason.

Idea #2 Cubism - Beauty Expectations

Cubism

Double Vision

I was playing around on Photoshop with an idea I had before when I thought about incorporating cubism into my work. Looking at cubism on google images, I found this picture that inspired me to edit the picture above.

[images found here] These images were Photoshoped by students.

I wanted to use the idea of cubism because I was inspired by a song called Mrs Potato Head by Melanie Martinez. These particular lyrics from the song inspired me to want to pursue with this idea "It's such a waste, when little girls into into their mothers face but little girls are learning how to cut and paste; and pucker up their lips until they suffocate"

The song basically talks about plastic surgery and that if pretty hurts, cutting and pasting is not worth it because down the line you may not like it.  She explained the message of the song to VICE:

"[Cry Baby]’s becoming more confident and comfortable in her own skin, so she’s forming opinions. I had the idea for “Mrs. Potato Head” for a long time and the whole visual I had in my head was the fact that you can pull toy pieces off the face and that could represent plastic surgery. It was not me bashing women who get plastic surgery, but more of, “Why are you doing this when you’re beautiful without it?”

I relate to the quote above because I'm comfortable in my own skin but that hasn't always been the case and I want everyone to be comfortable too. 

I had this idea because it represents my views on the standard of beauty and the expectations that young people grow up with from media and society. Beauty is pain but it already exists within us all even without having to go through the pain. 

Shoot #2 Contact Sheets

I went on a 2nd shoot because none of the pictures from the first shoot were working for the idea I had in mind and the lighting and positioning of light wasn't quite how I wanted them to look.

Finding Inspiration - David Talley

David Talley

David Talley is a self-taught fine art and portrait photographer, event photographer and cinematographer. He lives in South California.

His firest interest in photography was the summer before he started high school and he would his parents' camera to take pictures of various things. He took part in the 365-day creative self-portrait challenge a couple of years later and developed a love for photography.

On his website it states "David's work explores the darker side of a positive change - the fright before a new adventure, the uncertainty of a new love, and the mystery contained within every new situation faced by the characters he has created through his imagery."

He enjoys travelling and hiking. I read an interview he did back in August 2013 and learnt a lot about his imagery and his inspirations.

Swept

David shot this image for a concept collaboration titled ‘Losing Ground’. I really like the concept of this photo and I like how he literally made his subject float and defy gravity. He titled it swept because he wanted to portray his subject as being swept away by all her problems in her own little world. I think he portrayed this nicely because the photo is dark and rather than floating freely it looks like gravity is fighting against her and dragging her back down to the ground. It has connotations of trying to let go of everything that’s weighing you down but getting swept away by the problems.