Stop Motion Animation

Shooting Days

Half-term seemed the best time to start, as well as finish, the entire construction of the music video: we thought we had all the props and equipment we needed, the background was deemed satisfactory by us (as we couldn't find anything better) and we had the time we needed to film on our hands.

The location we chose to shoot in was in my living room, though it is quite small (there were no other available locations for us, and we just couldn't think of any). We were able to block out the daylight pretty well, so no ambient light affected our shots. the artificial lights - we only used 1 Lilliput and one red head because there wasn't any more space to use a third light and place it behind the performer (so we didn't use three point lighting), and anyway, we didn't have enough arm strength to open the third goddamn stand - were placed in front of the performer, quite close to them, at 45 degree angles.

The background was an old duvet cover I found deep within my mother's closets. as we were influenced by the title sequence of the film Amélie (i once watched the sequence while listening to our chosen track, and the visuals and the song went well together), we wanted to create something with a similar feel, but we didn't want to copy it, and so we decided of not using a green background but something of a different colour. We noticed there were three colours dominating the sequence, which were red, green and yellow. Those colours complimented each other well, so we tried to keep to the colour scheme.
We also thought about the rule of thirds while filming, to make the shots dynamic, as music videos need to be full of dynamism.
We had drawn a rough storyboard to follow, but many of the shots we discovered by improvising and experimenting a little (we filmed a shadow shot that I liked but which didn’t make the music video). Me being in front of the camera instead of behind it (which was where I desperately wanted to be) Hafsah was the one who caught the shots.

All of us were busy in one form or another on various days and hours, so we couldn’t all film together every day of the week, but we were able to film on three days of that half term, from 9:30 or 10 to 12 or 2pm, depending on our time tables. Filming was long, as we didn’t have as many hands as we would have wanted, and we didn’t finish the filming in the end.
The footage and photographs seemed fine on the camera, but when we loaded them onto my laptop, they didn’t look very good at all.
We had to shoot the whole thing all over again.
By this time we were feeling very panicky – nothing was going right, time seemed to be against us – our hearts were losing faith. But we would never think of giving up; we already put so much work and effort into it.

We scheduled more shooting days – again we had to work around each other’s time tables – and filmed more shots. This time they looked much better (the colours were washed out in the previous shots. Of course we knew we could manipulate the colours during the editing process, but the original shots needed to be good, too) and we were pleased with them, as they were, we thought, the best we were going to get under the circumstances.    

The Smiths - Star Image

The cultural pessimists said that popular culture has been “dumbed down” and producers of the new media are making more of the boring and un-stimulating same things. Morrissey would probably agree – he stated in an interview that when writing his lyrics and choosing the album covers he assumed that his audience was intelligent instead of dumb, as most artists do. He also said that popular music should be used to make serious statements, and it is a shame that most musical artists sell millions of records but don’t give out a message, they don’t make the audience think, they don’t touch the people’s consciousness. Most media assumes the audience is dumb and gives them a load of meaningless rubbish to fill their lives with.

All of this is important to how Morrissey, and The Smiths, choose to portray themselves in the media.

This is a presentation about Morrissey and The Smiths someone has created, which analyses their sexual ambiguity and political messages and so on. The Smiths have been called an "intelligent" band by many. Everything they have done was self-conscious and thought through - they all knew what they were doing, especially Morrissey.

 http://www.debaser.org/mozskin/mozskin/ms01.htm 

Audience Research - Comments on Youtube

 Comments on the song Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths on Youtube:

 

this comment outlines how important the new media is and how it has changed the way we consume and find out about new music - it's so much easier now!

Music Videos - Purpose

Morrissey said that music is the best form of art – it is better than “slapping paint on a canvas” or just writing literature – music is the embodiment of all arts together. A debatable statement, however, in contemporary society, it can be argued that it is true – music does embody all art forms. Or, music videos do.
 The aural art form is the music itself, the literary art form are the lyrics, and the visuals are moving versions of paintings and photographs, or could simply be seen as the art of film making.

Our society has considerably changed, and has become very visual, with pictures and videos here, there, everywhere. The way in which we consume music has changed; we no longer only listen to music, we watch it.

Music videos are now essential in various ways, such as showcasing the artist’s individuality and creativeness to attract audiences and win fans. Artists can choose how they represent themselves through their videos; for example, Lana Del Rey’s “video games”. Her music video was home-made, a montage of various found-footage of archived vintage Americana, with webcam performance shots of herself. The music video became popular on the “hipster” website pitchfork media, and then went viral all over the web; she was able to promote herself quickly for free with the internet. 

As artists can choose how they represent themselves in the videos, they then construct a star image of themselves - they want the audience to have a certain perception of them. In the music videos, the artists can attach various iconographies to themselves - symbols that audiences can link to them such as hair, clothes, jewelery, images, postures etc. For example with Morrissey, flowers have been associated with him, as well as loose fitting clothes and awkward dancing. These symbols are now part of Morrissey's star image and self-identity in the media. 

Artists can create these iconographies through other mediums and ways such as interviews, live shows. The music itself is of course important (the sounds, the lyrics) as well as the record covers. Richard Dyer says
"A star is an image constructed from a range of materials".

Music videos can be illustrative, and can help the audience understand and interpret the meaning of the song and the lyrics (they can tell a story); they can amplify the meanings and make the various symbols polysemic and give subliminal messages to the audience and make the video and their star image more interesting; or the music video can have nothing to do with the lyrics - disjuncture between the two.

There can be the illusion of closeness between the audience and the artist. If the artists stares directly into the camera while performing, it breaks the fourth wall and includes the person into the video, instead of the person watching in from behind an imaginary fourth wall like a voyeur. The artist can use music videos to connect with their fans, and even simply to just give them something more than just the song, however good it is.

Music videos are also about making money and profit - companies pay enormous sums to get their products placed in various music videos as a form of advertisement. The products may not be overt, but the human mind is easily suggestible.     

Definition of the term "Fan"

The term "fan" is used quite regularly in daily life, however, finding an absolute definition is difficult, as the term is widely debated.

Cornel Sandvoss says "I define fandom as the regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text".

Matthew Hills elaborates and states emotional attachment is key where fandom is concerned; some have even compared it to a form of love.

Post-modernism talks of how the media is now being used as a means of creating an identity for yourself - people use music, film, books etc to define who they are. Jean Baudrillard observed that our society has become media saturated and audiences can no longer tell the difference between media representations and reality - people believe that how their artists are represented is how they really are. This is called "hyper-reality". 

Conceptual Shot List

Before constructing the music video we had made a conceptual shot list and we had randomly wrote down some of the shots that we wanted. This list contains all of the conceptual shots that we used in our music video:

- ECU shot of half of the mask
- CU shot of estelle holding lots of dice
- Long shot of estelle hands picking up a card
- Long shot of estelle holding a card
- CU shot of the same card that estelle was holding
- CU shot of dice shaking in estelle hands
- CU shot of shuffling of cards
- Long shot of estelle's legs - standing on a table
- CU shots of toys in estelle's lap, her playing with them
- CU shots of spreading of cards
- CU shot of estelle's face - whilst playing
- Long shot of estelle's legs spinning on a table
- Long shot of estelle - holding finger puppets

                                                                                                                                                      
 1ST INSTRUMENTAL
- CU shot - russian dolls
- shots of estelle playing chess by herself
- CU shot of wooden model - dancing
- shots of estelle playing chess by herself
- CU shot of russian dolls
- shots of estelle playing chess by herself
- CU shot - wooden model
- CU shuffling card shot
- shots of estelle playing chess by herself
- CU holding cards
- CU russian doll
- wooden doll waving to camera
                                                                                                                               

- russian dolls CU shots
- CU wooden model dancing
- russian doll shot
- CU shots of dice moving
- estelle holding bubble bottle
- mid long shot of estelle throwing cards in the air - then spinning


                                                                                                                                

2ND INSTRUMENTAL
- CU dices
- CU shaking dices
- stop motion - letters
- estelle spinning on table

                                                                                                                               

-  stop motion - bigmouth
- CU card shots
- stop motion - bigmouth, strikes again
- CU of finger puppets
- Shot of estelle playing with clown
- blowing bubbles CU and long shots
- Long shot of cards

Performance Shot List

Here are all of the handheld moving performance shots and other shots with estelle just wearing the suit:
- CU spinning shot of the suit
- Mid-shot of estelle holding the mask
- CU shot of estelle singing
- Long shot of estelle wearing the suit looking awkward
- Long shot of estelle
- CU shot of estelle singing
- CU shot of estelle fixing her mask
- CU tilted shot of estelle face - singing
- CU tilted shot of estelle singing - touching camera
- CU shot of estelle - mouth
- ECU shot of estelle - touching camera with fingers
- Mid Shots of estelle fixing her mask
- CU shots of estelle looking awkward - in the first instrumental part
- ECU shots of the suit
- ECU shots estelle singing
- High angle shot - singing
- ECU shots of mask
- Long shot of suit
- Lots of CU shots of estelle, mask and suit
- ECU tilted shot - estelle face
- Long shot - estelle putting hands on her mask
- CU shot of mask

Genre Research

What is Indie Rock?

The term "indie rock" is a genre of alternative rock and it refers to the category of music in which most artists are signed to small independent labels compared to major labels. Many indie rock artists have a strong ethic about their music and are confident that they can appeal and stand out in order to attract different audiences, some are aimed to niche audiences whereas others tend to be larger, and so they don't worry about changing their music to fit in with popular and larger artists.

The Smiths are an english alternative rock band formed in 1982 in Manchester. The group's distinctive style of their album covers usually had pictures of famous film stars which was designed by Morrissey. The choice of simple covers reflected Morrissey's interest in filmstars, and portrayed very little about the band itself. This shows us the unique style they had and how they reflected their interests through famous faces, rather than express the band themselves in a different way for example putting images of all the band members.    

Random pictures of Estelle

Random pictures of Hafsah

Choosing the right costumes

 The decisions on which costumes we wanted in our music video continued to change all the time. We wanted two costumes, one would be for the performance of the video reflecting the character's feeling of awkwardness, isolation and exclusion from society. The other would be for the conceptual and that would reflect the character's childhood and how they would create a different world through their unique imagination.

For the conceptual, we considered using a simple red top along with a dark blue shirt however once we begun filming we disliked how the colours of the costume and background weren't blending together, causing issues for lighting. Another costume for the conceptual that we considered is shown in the picture below with Estelle wearing a dark green and black checkered jumper, immediately we had the same issue with it and so got rid of it. The costume that we used eventually was a dark purple dress from Rebecca which we felt reflected the theme of childhood perfectly.
We didn't have any issues in deciding a costume for the performance as Estelle had bought in a suit and everyone agreed that the colours and the 'oversized look' of the suit would help portray the awkwardness of the character (As shown in the picture with Hafsah trying her best to look awkward and sad)

Editing video diaries

Editing Process

 The editing process was definitely challenging and interesting for us purely because of the fact that we had very little knowledge and understanding on how to work the software on the computer. At the beginning of this process we encountered many problems such as technical issues with some of our shots, considering whether to repeat some shots etc. But most of all actually finding our way around the software.

 However, as we were growing more familar with the software we were finding the editing slightly easier. Here Estelle is writing down notes on the technical skills that we have developed and the creative decisions we made and why.We also had made the decision to cut some of the card shots as we felt that this shot had been repeated alot.

Writing notes in our editing books was vital as it could help us remember what we did with all our shots and we could change them if neccessary.

Each of us having a turn to edit, so that individually we could learn and develop skills from this experience.

Each of us having a turn to edit, so that individually we could learn and develop skills from this experience.

Estelle also writing down important editing notes....

Here we were editing and cutting all of the shots so that they would flow well with the beat of the song.

 We learnt how to use all of the different effects to help make our shots bold and stand out. In particular, we used a contrast effect and applied it to each of our shots so that the colours in each shot would show and stand out. We made this decision in reference to the title sequence of "Ameile", as in that the colours used help reflect the concept of childhood.

Another technique which we learned was how to zoom in on a particular shot. The zoom in effect was useful for us because in some of our shots there were moments in where our certain parts of our mise-en-scene that we didn't want in the video would show, for example the carpet and the whiteboard.

To zoom in you have to:
- click on the shot that you want to expand
- then click on image and wireframe
- then expand the shot outwards according to your requirements

Here we are editing one of the conceptual shots, we are changing the lighting and colours in the shots so that each can blend in well.

This was what we were using whilst changing the colour effects of each of the shots. As some of the shots looked yellow to us, we decided to add a redness effect so that this contrast would make each of the colours audacious.

Changing the speed of some of the shots was essential for us because we had to ensure that continuity of each shot would flow well with the beat of the song in order for it to be successfully edited.