The Wombats Music Video Running Experience

As I know that Jasmine is coming into our lessons later in the term to talk more in depth about her music video and I'm sure we'll do some sort of case study on it I'll only briefly cover the events of last Thursday.

I got to be a runner on Jasmine Blackborow's music video shoot for "Let's Dance To Joy Division" by the Wombats. It was a really good experience, mainly getting to watch directors and crew at work from very close quarters. I may have spent the morning watching out for on coming cars but the rest of the day was a lot more eventful, filming the on set location in the apartment. It was really cool getting to see all the equipment and talking to the crew about their various experiences in the filming industry. Can't really thank Jasmine enough for the experience!

Can't wait to see the finished product

Always - PERFORMANCE

The Performance of Always (Architects, 2007)

The performance part of the video takes up around 60-70% of the video. There are 8 different shots throughout the performance and 220 cuts. Each band member gets one beauty shot and there is a second shot from a different angle of the drum kit. There is one wide shot of the whole band and a worms eye shot which is used only once at the very end of the video.

There is a black screen lasting 11 frames at 01:54:20 of the original video where there is silence in the music. I linked this with the Performance cuts.

The ratio of band members is very interesting. The vocalist got 97 cuts lasting 01;17;15,and the drummer got 54 lasting a total of 00;36;10. The guitarists have a very odd ratio as well. One guitarist and the bassist get about 5-7 seconds each whereas the other guitarist gets 15 seconds, basically double what they had. This may have been a choice from the band because one member did not want to be seen so much, or maybe that the other guitarist gave a much more interesting performance. The beauty shots are very interestingly done, all hand held from the looks of things and zooming in and out on important details of each member. The drummer's beauty shot is especially odd as it is at first an almost static high angle shot on the kit, but at 02;21 in the original video it changes to a beauty shot to get tighter angles on the drummer.

There are two shots in the performance which feel like they shouldn't be there, one at 01;42;16 and another at 02;19;04. My theory is that they needed to fill up space and these shots looked especially convincing. I think this as I doubt that they would have filmed a whole other take of the vocalist and only used it for a total of 25 frames!

Here is the shot list;

Always - NARRATIVE

The Narrative of Always (Architects, 2007)

Above is the Narrative as a short film. Obviously it is very badly cut due to the way it was in the music video but I think it illustrates very well the way to go about making a narrative. Make a short film! It needs as much care as a short film and should not be treated as just a space filler. The narrative of Always shows an architect struggling to design something, until he finds an unusual pattern on his neck which completes his sketch.

The narrative is made up of 21 different shots (video below) and 112 different cuts. It lasts around 01:25 in total which is around a third of the video, a fair proportion of music video to take up. It works well in contrast with the fast paced band performance as it is quite a slow paced story. The video starts with a plain black frame which makes up the 112th cut.



The roaming shots may look very different between each cut but it safe to assume this was all filmed as one big take where the cameraman went around the subject zooming in and out to get lots of different angles of the action.

Always - Architects, Video deconstruction

I have been deconstructing the Architects video for "Always" off of their 2007 album "Ruin" (Century Media). This deconstruction will be split into 3 separate posts. This one (general information), a post on Narrative and a post on Performance.

Here is the video;


Frame rate : 30fps
Length : 04;12;00
Narrative : 01;25;18 (around 30-35%)
Performance : 02;44;26 (around 65-70%)
Total Cuts : 335 of which 112 are Narrative and 223 are Performance

8 different performance shots
22 different narrative shots

1. There is never more than 1 narrative shot in a row.
   
2. The vocalist is shown for 01;40;13, which is more than the entire narrative put together.
   
3. The guitarists together don't even merit 30 seconds of video.
   
4. The drummer is the only band member with more than one shot of him adding up to a total of around 35 seconds of screen time.

Dethroned, The music video experience

Today I thought I should do some blogging, and the thing that has been on my mind constantly has been about different angles for shooting. So in my boredom and summer time I have made a guitar music video for Architects song Dethroned off of their 2009 album Hollow Crown. It is made up of 5 different angles of the guitar as well as some establishing shots. I tried to focus on these things while shooting and editing;

-Different distances and cants/slants on the shots, make them interesting
-Fast cutting, slow cutting, the whole deal.
-Cutting rhythmically with the music and using the pace of the song to determine my cuts.
-Focusing on what is most interesting to watch at a particular point.

Hope you enjoy!

Performance techniques

For the genre of music that we wish to do for our music video, there are certain aspects of performance that we need to make sure we pull off to give off the right representation and atmosphere for the genre. In heavy music the performance is all about energy and movement from the vocalist all the way to the drummer. Seeing as we want to do a mainly performance based video we need to pay close attention to detail with this.

Vocalist
The vocalist is the main focus in most music videos, however in this genre they get a lot less coverage than other genres. This is because the performance is a lot more based around a band as a group rather than a single individual. However, especially in bands like Architects where the guitarists are playing very complicated music it is essential the vocalist is constantly full of energy to put across the mood of the song. Head banging is a very common feature with the person moving their head violently in time with the song, working especially well if the vocalist has a full head of hair! (refer to the video - Early Grave, Architects) Although it may feel ridiculous to do it conveys the energy very well. Some vocalists use the microphone and its lead to create interest and movement, e.g. swinging it round their head, doing complicated movements with the lead (refer to the video - Make Damn Sure, Taking Back Sunday).

Guitarists (refer to the videos - "Vices Like Vipers, Oh Sleeper" and "Early Grave, Architects")
The guitarists all tend to work around the vocalist, but generally just move around the performance area so that although they may not be doing lots of fancy moves, the audiences is constantly kept interested. However in certain bits of songs sometimes the guitarists will find the music easy enough to play and also perform. Sometimes guitarists will head bang and even fling their guitars around them, over their shoulders, behind their heads and even all the way round their neck. Their job is generally to move around, not distracting from the vocalist but creating interest on the stage.

Drummer (refer to all three videos)
The drummer's role is to play the beat with energy and to convey interest to the audience much the same as the rest of the band. Obviously they cannot move from where they are but rather than just keeping to themselves they can be over the top with their movements. We found from the Wheatus video shoot that what you think to be a big movement on camera looks very weak and so everything needs to be completely over the top.

The general conclusion is that not only is it very difficult to write about performance techniques and much easier to demonstrate, but that for the genre of music we wish to do the vital thing to have is energy. If the band all move around the performance area and constantly engage each other then the performance will be interesting to watch, whereas without energy, it will become boring and repetitive

Architects - The music video experience in Colchester

Yesterday I did something I never thought I would; Got a return ticket to Colchester from London Liverpool St. and went to the Colchester Arts Centre. I did this however for some amazing research and brilliant networking opportunities which I'm going to talk about now.

Architects (the band who's song we want to use in our music video) were shooting their new video for the track "Follow The Water" off of their new album. The video is a performance based video so they sent out a request to any fans who wanted to be involved to just turn up. It was a very interesting and fantastic experience.

When I arrived Architects were mid way through shooting all their band shots on the stage. The first thing I saw was a huge light behind the building shining through the back window (which was stained glass as the venue used to be a church) from outside. When inside, you could see this was done to create some really cool light effects that made the whole back wall glow and gave the whole room an orange tint. Before going in we had to sign consent forms basically saying that whatever happened was our fault not Architects, who weren't to blame if any injuries occurred.

Before going in I saw the guitarist Timothy Hiller-Brook who I've had previous encounters in from buying his guitar earlier in the year. I talked to him about our A2 coursework and how we were planning to do their song, and his and the fellow band members reply was that they thought it was a brilliant idea, and that they had absolutely no problem with us using their song.

When inside, we as a crowd did 3 takes of the song, 2 where the band were miming along to the CD and one where they played the song live. However there were about 6 or so different cameras in use so that from those 3 takes the crew got lots of shots. The crew consisted of a director, a director of photography and two runners as well as the venues sound and light team. One camera was placed above the edge of the stage on the lighting rig facing directly down to get a complete birdseye view of the band performing and the crowd responding to them. Another set up used was 3 cameras on an arced piece of metal to get three different perspectives of the same shot. There were also 2 handheld camera rigs that the runners were using just roaming and filming the band and the crowd whenever they thought something suitably interesting was happening for close ups.
Also, when the band performed their live set later, the camera crew came on and got lots of random footage to montage in. They could do this by just making sure they never showed guitarists actually playing specific riffs or the vocalist singing lyrics etc.

However, by far my best achievement of the day was managing to talk to the director after the shoot, Stuart Birchall who has directed many other videos of the hardcore genre. He was very helpful and I managed to get his email off him, after telling him also about our A2 media coursework, which he said he would love to help out with if we have any questions or specifically as I asked, help finding a location.

I asked him mainly about the band shots earlier in the day. He told me these things;

• The crew got to the venue at 9am and the band got there about the same time. They set up for 2 hours and started filming from 11am until 5pm, where they got the crowd in and did another 2 hours of filming.
  
• He took about 40 different shots of the band of which about the same amount of takes were taken. He said they did this to save time on the shoot, as with that many different shots it would be quite easy to throw out any rubbish footage.
• To plan the shots, he drew up some storyboards before hand for his ideas, but also made the band run through the song first to see what they were like as performers. He then took notes on important factors (how they move, exciting riffs to watch, drum fills) and planned out more shots that would relate to the band as performers.
  
• They took 4 different wide angle shots of the entire band performing the whole song.
• For each band member they took 2 different "Beauty Shots" (it was nice to hear familiarity in the way he talked and also how Jake has talked to us, seeing a mutual understanding of filming between directors) of each band member, focusing on their faces, not only in CU but MCU and MS also, for which the band performed the whole song.
• Each member also had 2 general roaming shots of them taken where the camera would follow them as they performed from different angles.
• The 3 camera rig used in the crowd shots was also used here. Stuart said that at some points they had all 6 cameras mounted on the rig for what he called "Bullet Shots" which I will have to research some more. He did they to get 6 different shots of the same performance at one time, especially useful for the drummer as he can focus on certain drums when they are being used, and with Dan Searle having such a big kit and large number of drums and cymbals this is very important.
• They used the lighting to reflect the moods in the song. During the heavy first half of the song the light is a very harsh orange/red with strobes to give it a very harsh feel. However when everything drops out except the guitar and the song slows down, the light suddenly changes to a spotlight on the band with a slight blue tint. When the rest of the band drop back in, the lighting returns to its previous state.
• When asking Stuart about grading I asked if he was going to grade it similarly to Adam Powell's Architects videos in which there is a ver contrasted low saturation grade. He said, not only did he want to make his video stand out, but he wanted the grade to reflect the energy of the crowd, and therefore would use a very colourful grade for impact and energy, really making contrast between all the different colours.
• I asked him whether the whole video was going to be performance and he told me that he was doing two cuts. A directors cut with a narrative in and one video which was solely performance. He would then show both to the band and they would decide amongst themselves which they liked the best.

I really enjoyed the day and it was brilliant being able to talk to the director and find out more about the shoot, and I hope I can use some of the techniques he told me about in my own music video later this year.