Burnin Fever Treatment

Burnin Fever Treatment

Below is a treatment for my music video which was developed using adobe InDesign. The treatment outlines my idea/proposal for Tropiika's track Burnin Fever. PLEASE FULL SCREEN THE PRESENTATION TO READ THE DETAILS
 

London riots news coverage

London riots news coverage

In the interview above reporters interview middle aged historian David Starkey about his views on the youth who were involved in the riots. In terms of imagery seen during the interview the back drop of the studio features sensationalised and violent pictures such as buildings burning, windows cracked and debris which represents the riots as a very destructive event. In fat to some extent since the images shown are very erratic and omit images of areas which were less hit than others thus exaggerating the destruction caused by the riots and in turn representing it more as some sort of civil war between the youth and authorities.

According to Starkey the reason behind the riots it the spread of "black gang culture" among youths. Such a statement represent youths especially thoses of African decent as synonymous with crime however other speakers during this interview have disagreed with Starkey's comments stating that his generaliastion is very offense.

When thinking about the possible bias of the interview, one has to consider the context of the broadcast i.e the BBC which are funded by the public's money out of the TV license but not only this has to follow a remit for the public to produce "fair, balanced and impartial coverage" of news stories therefore it there should be little bias presented in this discussion. However when thinking in the context that this is a discussion there will be a sense of bias based on each of the speakers upbringing and vie

In this extract although the youth aren't specifically present in the discussion they are given a voice through 3 speakers stating that the riots wasn't based on race or "rap music" and disagreeing with Starkey's comments however since there are no youths present we the audience hear not of there stories and thus their so called voices may be misinterpreted or in fact the full message hasn't been heard.




In the video above Reporters interview a younger demographic to get there view of the riots. Images and visuals shown here show the aftermath of the event  however when looking at the framing of the shots we see many close ups of the destruction to place emphasis on the damage the riots has caused on tottenham, although not as sensationalised as the previous imagery in the other text the use of close ups omit areas which may have been less hit than others and presents the violence and damage as that belonging to something of  a bombing.

When thinking about a sense of bias in the interview, the interviewer talks to two groups one of a much older demographic and the younger demographic to understand the voice of the youths. In the video the youths believed what happened was justified and believed that this was the governments fault. In addition the much older interviewer believes that the riots weren't caused by just plainly gang culture but rather people feeling marginalised.

Filming schedule

 Filming schedule

Due to how the size of my song I have decided to end around the 3:51 mark as due to issues with handling such a large cast I will not be able complete the full video however I am aiming to create a condensed version if my video.

Below is a screen of a filming schedule of scenes that I have already managed to capture on said dates

Today I started to develop a filming schedule for the remaining scenes for my music video using excel. Due to lack of response from emails sent out inquiring about filming a news room and in NUA's animation block I have decided to fall back on contingency plans of filming in C1 for the news room scenes; this will mainly serve as a blank canvas and using post production techniques I plan to make the room look like a news room.

C1 sound booth will serve as my replacement for a news studio

To replace the NUA building for the Robot scenes I will film in Foulsham hall to make use of the brightly coloured walls to convey the Robots environment. Finally for the brief scene involving a weatherman I plan to use a green screen to green screen a custom background to communicate to viewers a news studio.

Below is my filming schedule for the rest of my music video.

Analyising a similar artists video- Daft punk Harder Better Faster Stronger

Analyising a similar artists video-  Daft punk Harder Better Faster Stronger

From listening to Harder Better Faster Stronger without the visuals I managed to count around 35 cuts in the first 37 seconds, this was however based on the beat and pace of the song. When, actually viewing the music video to the track I have noticed that there were only around 16 cuts which is just above half the amount I counted. What the video does is during parts of the track where it would be assumed a cut would take place the video would either pan or track movements to keep viewers interest engaged. Certain shots would also feature the movement of characters and objects to prevent the shots being static and flow with the pace of the song. This movement would also in pace of the beats thus keeping up the pace without using too many shots to overwhelm viewers. Around 11 seconds into the video, it  shows the action of one the pods opening up in different perspectives each perspective changes on the beat of the track. Furthermore during the video one notices that there is still cuts on beat however not every beat leads to a cut. This allows audience the time to consume the visuals and understand what is being shown to them.

From this I have learn't that not all cuts need to be on beat, in fact it would cause a problem for viewers to understand what is happening.

Review of day 1 filming

Review of day 1 filming

Day 1 of filming proved to be a struggle as I found that several things did not go exactly to plan, firstly my initial location for hacker scenes to be filmed i.e. one of the science rooms proved unavailable. Therefore I had to fall back on my contingency plan which was to film in the science office, this however also proved to be unavailable as well since I was told due to specific documents held in the science labs I was not allowed to film ever. Because of this, I had to review what type of room I would need to film such a scene, eventually it was decided that I'd need some sort of office space with computers, which could suggest some sort of computer lab and eventually I settled on IT2. This proved to be a suitable substitute as it features the desired amount of computers and wires to convey a messy computer lab and had the right darkened lighting to connote something sinister to the character we are filming.

IT 2- features dark lighting and a good amount of computers to suggest a computer lab

After attempting to capture some of the Hacker scenes, I then moved onto capturing the more abstract scenes of the video, which necessarily did not need that many people to star in and thus proved to be much more convenient and easier to film. However, these scenes proved to be quite messy as we were using props such as confetti, toys and orange juice to create a strange distorted look for the video. During the shoot however, I did go off my storyboard plan and filmed some experimental shots playing around with the scenes and types of shot, perhaps this will serve in the future as extra footage just in case I run out of footage whilst editing.

An image from the shoot - I believe this image best describes the sort of tone of my music video perhaps this image or sort of imagery would be fitting for the design for the digipak

When I first filmed the hacker scenes initially, they were filmed during midday using the cloudy weather to help with lighting and create a gray tone to the shot making the scene much colder and sinister. However, the weather proved to be something against the shoot and every now the sun would come up, alter the lighting, and in turn the mood of the shoot. Because of this, it was decided to shoot later in the day around 3:40 to use the evening sunset to get dark enough shots to convey something cold and evil but not so dark for viewers. Whilst filming one of the hacker scenes one of the problems I ran into was devising a way to get a close up panning shot of the hacker's hands since the tracking dolly was too large to fit on the surface of the desk. To get around such a problem me and one of my friends built a smaller tracking dolly out of a phone, book and glue sticks.  

The makeshift tracking dolly

However this idea when executed didn't work as much as we planned since the camera would get caught up in wires and our makeshift tracking dolly would fall apart therefore our shots were very shaky. After the shoot we then decided to investigate alternatives to this problem, so far we have devised one possibility which we believe will be the solution to our problems; building a mini tracking dolly out of Lego.

The Lego tracking dolly

Finally, during the shoot we also managed to capture footage in the desired ASCII effect I previously mentioned in a post but when exporting the footage from Ipad to computer I noticed a large downgrade in video quality. On the other hand, this was probably caused by the fact that I converted the footage from MOV to mp4 format, which can sometimes downgrade video quality in the process. I have decided to re shoot said scene and this time I won't use video conversion or perhaps finding a better source for video conversion would solve the problem.

Overall the shoot proved to be quite problematic but most of these problems are easy to solve and some of them have been solved.

Imported footage review

Footage review

Today in class, I imported footage that was captured previously from one of my shoots. When thinking about what went well from the shoots, it seems that my idea for experimental shots was a good thing looking back since I was mostly displeased with the quality of my planned shots more specifically in terms of lighting as most of the hacker scenes were either too dark or too light. For some of the shots I propose editing the brightness and contrast in the editing stage whereas some other shots such as scenes in which the hacker presses the enter key will need to be re-shoot at an earlier time to avoid the shot being so dark. Furthermore, one of my shots concerned filming the front of a laptop screen as code runs across the screen, unfortunately, the camera reflected off the screen and thus these shots also need to be re done; this time I plan to shoot the scene at an angle to solve this problem. In addition, another one of my scenes a panning shot accidentally captured the tripod in the background so because of this, this scene also has to be done. This has shown me however to be much more careful when composing a shot.

The more abstract and concept based scenes however were much more successful as in terms of subject matter and mis en scene I feel that these shots managed to capture more eccentric aspect of my video as I intended by taking two things which normally don't fit together and placing them  in one shot which conveys the desired strange look which really describes the virus' effect on the world around it in my video.

After reviewing my footage I plan to re shoot some of the hacker scenes and now start working on capturing the robot and infected scene of my video.

Props and costume

Please full screen and zoom in on the text as there was a lot of information to compress and organise in a Prezi.

Extra locations and extra notes

 Extra locations and extra notes


For my music video, there are a number of scenes which involve the infected roaming around some sort of urban setting. As a result of this recently I went location scouting around Norwich looking dark places such as alley ways, dark car parks and tight pathways which display a sense of entrapment and isolation within there settings. This should serve well in scenes depicting the infected chasing after those non infected to give more of a sense of horror and threat to the infected creatures whilst contrasting this with their funny and strange appearance.

Below is a slide compiling of pictures taking from my location hunting

My found location for such a shot

During my music video I would like to involve a scene in which we see the infected as a group walk into a city to show the virus' invasion on a mass scale. One idea for a shot for this particular would be a an extreme long shot or standard long shot to emphasis the scope of the infections invasion. To achieve such a shot I managed to find a location in Norwich which features a pathway into the city which with the right framing hopefully I would be able to achieve a similar look to the image below. Hopefully the shot would signify the virus's crossover to civilisation.

A slight exaggeration but idealistically something I would like to achieve

New confirmed location

Food tech - In the College

As mention throughout my planning I have expressed some interest in filming some abstract scenes, some of which revolve around the use of stop motion animation. For such scenes since the main subject and exhibit of the shots will be the abstract imagery offered, specified locations were not as much as a concern as say if finding a house with grand church like architecture to convey a characters affluence. As a result my main priority was looking for a blank wall or surface to film such scenes. This blankness or neutral location would serve more as a blank canvas for me to film these strange eccentric scenes. The closest location which I have found which allows me this blank canvas to film on was the food tech department within school grounds. Not only is this convenient for me and my actors, it allows more of an ease when moving equipment and props to said location. Also the work surface allows for easy clean up for scenes that may prove to cause a mess.





New confirmed location

Art room - in the college

During my video there will be a brief scene concerning an artist as he is infected and transformed into the robot to represent the virus' infection of those around it. For such a scene I would need to clearly communicate to audiences that said character is an artist therefore playing on stereotypes I plan to film said scene within the art rooms to connote an artist studio. Not only is such a room convenient to travel to it also features a range of props such as paint brushes, manikin models and photography books which really work in connoting an artists environment.

Contingency Location

The science office - In the college

If on the possibility that one of the science rooms is unavailable due to the room being booked I have created an idea for a contingency location to film, this being the science office to film the hacker scenes. As seen above the room contains the right type of dark lighting to convey a character isolated from society and to show how sinister the character is. Furthermore the bookshelf and the skeleton model in the room may convey the character scientific personality whilst also conveying the rooms location in somewhere academic. In addition the scruffiness of the blinds and with a few adjustments could show the room as being run down and further illustrate how "on the edge" the character is.



Needed location - News room

For my music video I plan to set a number of scenes revolving around a news report about Frank Sinatra. To achieve such a scene Ideally I would like access to a news room or set, however I have thought of two contingencies; one which is to film in the sound booth in my school which would allow a blank canvas to build a set on. When taking this in consideration I would need simply a desk and change and the monitor could be edited in via after effects however this option I feel may not directly carry across the visuals. However with a fish eye lens effect would help in making the footage look like its being played of a TV monitor such as the image below.

The second option would be to green screen shot by having an actor read the news in a blank room and then during the post production stage add a news room background however this choice would be a problem to plan logistically and I may well achieve the same effect by filming in the sound booth.

Finally in order to locate and possibly film in such a location I emailed a couple of contacts who I believe may know or have access to film in such a facility. Below is a screen grab of the email inquiring about the location

Location needed - Robots lair/hub

In scenes centered around the robot in the digital world I'm particularly looking for a brightly coloured room of some modern architecture to convey the robots surroundings as "not from this world" in the context of the robot not actually living in our world but rather inside a computer. Said blank brightly coloured well should do well in showing an environment that does not exactly exist in our world. To find such a place, once again I went location scouting and found that the NUA animation centre would fit this ideal setting quite well with its bright walls and modern interior design which could give off  cold futuristic effect to the robots environment.

Below is an email to NUA enquirng about such a location.

A contingency if no reply is given soon is to film against a green screen screen and feature a flashing colourful background to communicate to viewers the robots surroundings is not in the real world.


The MinI robot head

In my planning I have previously expressed an interest in scene which involves a bunch of toys surrounding a minature version of the robots head as a way of showing the virus' take over in an abstract way. Hinting towards the idea of inanimate objects worshiping the robot. Below is an image of the process of constructing the head.

 I originally constructed the head using an a4 print out however the size I used I felt was too small as it made the size of the head on a similar scale to the size of the toy figures. I wanted this head to look more like a monument or place in which these characters worship