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Ideas
A few ideas we came up with so far are things like “Ways to mistreat you mattress” and “human dominos” along with things like “How many hot dogs can u eat in 60 sec’s”, another piece wear interested in is the new Pen-tax camera Pen ad’s with the stop frame animation done entirely of photos We are thinking of doing summing similar but with a guy skateboarding.
Were Gonna go with something new, were looking at a guy called Lasse Gjerten who did the human beat box! and we decide to try and do stop frame music piece bassed on similar work he did.
Our Idea
Now that we all came to an agreement for a stop motion music piece we first needed to decide which instruments will be needed to create a demo for the piece we need to play. Without the demo piece we would have no structure when filming and editing so doing this had saved us a lot of time as we were able to have an understanding of the particular notes to play on each instrument.
Once that was done we recorded each instrument separately and then all together. This way we could hear the different instruments on their own and see if we needed to change anything, this also helped us to spot if there were sounds that did not compliment each other or were out of tune. Below are the sound tests of these instruments separately and together.
Filming
At first the filming was slightly unorganised as we didn’t know what to film first so when we were first supposed to be filming we decided to sit down together and plan it so that it would make it easier and everybody knew exactly what they were doing.
We decided to film each instrument separately so we started off with the keyboard. This was filmed at one of the group members house as there was a lot of space and she had access to some of the instruments we required. We first filmed each group member playing the set notes on the keyboard. At first we did not know what was really happening so we quickly wrote out a storyboard in order for us to visulise they angles and positions to film in. As our idea was for each member to play each instrument but one of the members would be a main participant for one instrument we first filmed Myself. I was going to be the main body for the keyboard sequence. I play the different notes but to get a cool stop motion effect we I had to play each note in different body positions. The keyboard being an instrument that is compact, we had to make shore who ever was playing it had to move about a bit more than you would normally. After I had been filmed the others in the group all took our turn in playing this instrument and moving in different positions.
What we came up with
We came up with three lots of footage.
Drums
Keyboard
Sax
Vid test
NOTE: Our group manage to get a room free in the music studios across the road at BU and this is what we manage to get done in less than one evening.
First Attempt at editing
Now that all the instruments were editied individually in premier pro, it was time to compress them together to finish our final piece. The first test we tried to add an effect that would move each individual movie around when another enters. This was done via key framing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOLVpUcOncE&feature=player_embedded
Second attempt at editing
Finale Piece
The aim for this project was to produce a viral video to be posted and viewed on the internet. I believe that we achieved this well as the video has received nearly 200 views already as well as several positive comments, suggesting that the video has been popular within it’s audience.
Our idea was inspired by the popular viral videos created by Lasse Gjertsen. His methods of creating music using video recorded sounds and stop motion style editing are fresh and innovative, making him a recognized talent on the internet. We intended to make our own video taking influence from Lasse Gjertsen’s style, but expanding it to the use of 6 separate characters as opposed to just one. The relation between the two can be seen at the start of the video with the real-time introduction, showing the character’s musical inability when not playing in stop motion.
The music for our video was written by Gina, one of our group members. We shot the main body of the video by filming each member of the group playing each instrument and on each of these instruments playing the separate notes that appear the song. For each of these notes we also filmed each member holding a pose or changing their facial expression to create a variation within the video.
The video shows that anyone can create music even if they aren’t talented with their musical instrument. This idea is reenforced by the style the video is shot it. We used a mini dv camera over a HD to give the feel of an amateur production as well as shooting half of the scenes in a house, suggesting that the musician is filming from their home and further enforcing the amateur theme. However it was not possible for us to film the drums and bass in a house due to lack of time and room. We were able to shoot these shots in a music room which gave the feel of an amateur band practice.
If we were to shoot this project again I would use a boom microphone or a direct input into the computer for recording the sound, as the quality of the recordings were poor in places. The bass and drum kit we used were not to the greatest standard as the action on the bass caused the higher notes to become distorted and the loose snare drum caused it to rattle. We were able to solve this problem by dubbing over the bass sound with a computer generated bass line and the snare drum by shortening the sound to make it more ’snappy’.
Also the initial idea for our video was to have the four instruments being played at the same time and for the musicians to switch between the instruments in a clockwise direction around the screen. However this effect was not conveyed in the ideal manner as the various rhythms on each instrument made the synchronizing of the rotation very difficult. Despite this I still believe the movement of the musicians between the screens creates interest for the viewer.
In conclusion I believe this project was successful as it suited the brief and has received nothing but positive feedback.
Daniel Vincent Sullivan
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