Stopmotion:
I became very interested in the art of stopmotion animation and the effect the visual treatment has only the portrayal of a text ( see dissertation)
Digital Photography
big issue
panoramics
studio shots
special effects:
some small works using After Effects
glum
Old Film Work
dissertation:
Video
Camera script
set
shooting
image Treatment
How does a visual treatment enhance a textual narrative?
Introduction
The aim of this study was to explore narrative, the advantages of explaining these narratives through a visual treatment, and how this visual treatment enhances the narrative. The study is based on the music genre and the evolution of music videos. They started as an accompanying piece of visuals showing the band perform their song in often a crude and static manner, for example The Sex Pistols video for ‘Anarchy in the UK’ (1979). It shows the Pistols performing their song, but apart from their behaviour on stage and their dress sense as a visual piece it doesn’t offer any insight into what they are trying to say. So by viewing this piece it was learnt was a definite content and concept was needed to create a worthwhile visual for music to help portray the concept of the track.
As technology and the demand for the understanding of music has grown, music artist have began to use this medium as tool to explain and amplify the message encased by there music, like when Rage Against the Machine worked with controversial director Michael Moore to complete their music video for Sleep Now In The Fire (Moore.M, 2000). It was shot on the stairs of the New York stock Exchange. The song was all about the greed of man and incorporates a parody on who wants to be a millionaire. Overall the visuals show very well the bands viewpoint on this matter with a brilliant mix of staged and live footage, this is a factor I wanted to explore for the purpose of this study.
The Treatment
The genre of music this study will be involved with will not be of a popular nature, as it is felt that the branding and orchestrated style the bands are put together in the pop charts are more about money than the music altogether, this study will be aimed at a more honest and raw genre not found in the mainstream of England, hardcore punk. Hardcore punk is an evolved state of punk rock, with a much faster and heavier sound. Black flag (1977) and Minor Threat (1980) were at the forefront of the movement back in the 70/80’s,nowadays bands such as The Chariot (2004) and Converge (1990) are still using outlines layed out by the pioneers of the genre.
For this study a music video will be constructed, by attempting to develop empathy to the song by using nonconventional methods’. Further it was felt that a band that had written a track with real events in mind was needed, so the piece would add an extra dimension with a mixture of non narrative (documentary) and narrative (story) explained in a non-literal sense. So in a sense the visuals produced for the songs will be attempting to evoke the feelings of the song without providing a visual representation.
Examples of this can be found as far back as David Lean’s Oliver twist (Rank, 1948) when the character Sykes is killing Nancy. Instead of the literal portrayal of the fight, we are shown a dog desperately scrambling at the door trying to get out of the room due to the horrific incident happening in front of it. Yet another example is in the sopranos forth season (HBO, 2003) the story unfolds that one of Tony’s latest ‘goomah’ have committed suicide by hanging herself from a chandelier, in the episode ‘Everybody Hurts’ we are taken into Tony’s dream where he is sitting at the recently departed Gloria Utrillo’s dining table, while small pieces of ceiling is falling like confetti into his large glass of wine. The camera takes a point of view shot and shows that the plaster is cracking around the chandelier due to the excess weight it is supporting, you don’t see the dead woman hanging there but this focus as in Oliver Twist on the supporting factors to both scene’s delivers a much more powerful message than a blatant shock value shot would. This clever and innovative technique of using non-conventional methods to portray a certain event or feeling is a perfect addition to what it trying to be produced for the purpose of this study.
Due to style of music that will be used in this study, the right treatment had to applied. As we were pushing away from mainstream techniques and ideals the idea of applying a Stop Motion/Pixilation piece to local hardcore punk was born. As in my research studies module I looked into Pixalation and its uses in music videos, for example it’s used in Slipknots music video for ‘Vermilion’ (Petrossian, Tony.2004), Petrossian uses the treatment to enhance the idea of solidarity, been surrounded by people but to have no connection on a physical or mental level, he does this by getting the actress to move at a much slower speed that the surrounding actors witch automatically gives the piece a feeling of loneliness and detachment from the world. This again is a good example of how a pixilation treatment can be used to evoke feelings that maybe would not be successful by applying another sort of treatment.
Stop Motion, the art of constructing animation from a series of stills, Pixilation is the method of completing this with the use of pictures of people, This Technique is affective when done in conjunction with a lot of forward planning and with all the above factors to consider a lot of planning would be needed. The next step of this study was to find a band and song that filled the criteria
The Band
Deacon Birch (2004) is a hardcore punk band situated in Malvern and has had success on a local level for the past 5 years. Due to a mixture of bad luck and line up changes they are still to write a full-length album. Over the last 6 months they have reformed and reshuffled to put together a set of ten songs. One of these songs is called ‘Copses in the Walls’.
Mitchell Clulow is the lyricist behind Deacon Birch. He likes to write about personal experiences and events that have happened around him for example in ‘A Pushaski’ (Deacon Birch, 2005) a song off their self titled E.P he tells the story of his friend who went on a religious mission for 2 years to expand his Mormon faith. For ‘Corpses in the Walls’ Mitchell tells a story of loneliness and feeling trapped through a tragic event that happened in his hometown of Gloucester, the story of Fred and Rose West.
They came to fame in the 90s when skeletal remains were found in their back garden. It transpired that Fred had been raping, torturing and killing girls in the mid 70s and then concreting them into the walls of his house and also burying them in the garden at the back of the house. This tragic story inspired the song with such lyrics as ‘Alas, we are all copses in the walls’.
Deacon Birch are different than most of the bands in the surrounding area, due to there intensity and professional sounding set, with the use of samples, amazing guitar sounds and math approach to timings that blow away the competition. All this with their deep thought to all aspects make them an obvious choice band from a possible few. Other bands included As Zeros We Are Infinite (2004), Pork Farm (2005) and Zebedy Rays (2006). A lot of effort was put in to find the best possible band to work with, in the end the choice was simple due to their musical content and their willing to participate in the project.
The connotation and feeling of this song was perfect for a pixilation treatment and the purpose of this study, due to its intense message and staggered timings. The finished piece had to be produced with all this in mind. The colour had to portray decay and anguish, the shots would had to be racy and jittery to amplify the music’s sound, this distorted view of humanity and its downfall will have to be replicated by lens choice and shot type also the location would have to be a lonely and secluded place, uninhabitable and dirty.
Pre-Production
As the location hunting was the main concern, scouting started in the summer of 2008. Working with a budget of nothing, hiring space could not be considered, and due to the time factor application for usage of derelict buildings due to licensing and insurance was not feasible. So hunting for a location in the immediate area was the best idea. Location searches were made from into rural and urban locations, from fields to quarry’s to warehouses and old huts found on the Malvern Hills. All possible locations were scouted, documented and their advantages and disadvantages discussed. A lucky search led to the discovery of unit 21A , situated in the Malvern’s on a plot behind the 3 counties show ground, it was beat up and filthy looking and therefore fit the criteria. It also it could be used on the weekends when no one else would be on the yard. It had power, which was a massive bonus. Throughout the next few weeks time was spent in the unit to tidy and rearrange the set until it was fully prepped.
Numerous tests were undertaken to make the day of the shoot run smoothly. Continuous shooting was tested at numerous occasions to clarify the way the camera should be set up. The main area of development in my skills working with pixilation came with the study of lip-syncing. As part of my research skills module I developed a good understanding of how to capture lip movements to later sync to music. It was found to use each photo held at 2 frames gave the best results, but to sync to vocals we had to get Mitch to sing at 50%. To get this completely right I constructed various tracks to coincide with the lip sync parts that were to be recorded. I ran the tracks through Pro-Logic, and with use of the time and pitch machine I was able to slow the tune down without changing the pitch. Tests of this were completed and showed to the band in order to keep them as involved as possible.
With this area of the technical side understood the next stage was to create a shot list to arrange how each segment of the song should be recorded. This was done by listening to the track and imaging how each piece would be constructed. This was achieved by breaking it down in to 13 manageable chunks. This coincided with the CD track list that was used on the day of the shoot. Inside these chunks there were various shots that were needed to completed, shot from various angles. This was a vital piece of preproduction, the truth of the matter was that the video was not going to contain no story, and was simply going to be a video of the band performing their song and it was the stop motion treatment that was going to explain the narrative of the track.
The visuals still had to be interesting and work with the song enhancing the intense and the slow areas of the tune. The camera script also gave an overall understanding how long the shoot would take to complete. The camera script had a few stages of evolution, eventhow the main shots stayed the same, a lot of rearranging was done due to trying to keep the pace and interest through the piece. To get a visual understanding of the composition of the shots that we wanted, further research was made into other artists work. The video that was closest to what we wanted to do was by the band Norma Jean, for their track ‘Bayonet Works’. The track is amazingly shot, with the use of vivid colour. It uses a mixture of about 9 different angles which was used as a guideline for the shoot as this was effective and a manageable job for a crew of one.
The next stage was to organise the band. As they all have fulltime jobs the best time to get together to shoot this was on the weekend, so Sunday the 15th February was selected. This was chosen at the beginning of January to give everyone enough time to rearrange any other plans, also give myself something to aim for with the planning, tests and booking equipment. Time management and organisation was the key to completing this task professionally and efficiently. To kept in constant contact with the band, the use of phone calls, emails and conversations on a page opened on the social network Facebook (2004).
Production
The day of shooting went very smoothly, and lasted for 6-7 hours. The pictures were shot on a Nikon d60 and through test shoots it was determined that shooting at a high res jpeg was the best idea due to camera speed and storage. This was more ideal than shooting on Raw, eventhow the quality wasn’t as good I felt the grain again would add an interesting texture to the piece. Also through tests, it was found that using a manual focus was again best as the automatic focus setting can delay the speed of the camera. This also gave more control on focus, it was easy to dip in and out of focus to add a more distorted view. This was also backed up by the choice of lens. A sigma 10-20 lens was used to add an extra dimension of distortion to the piece. There were a few additions to the initial script, for example the introduction to the piece where the equipment moves into position was thought up on the day and done on the fly. Not enough time and care was put into performing this piece of animation and due to this it wasn’t executed very well so the speed of the animation had to be greatly increased, which in hindsight ended up been a good thing as if it was too slow it would have been a greater contrast to the overall feeling of the piece. Also it was felt that to set the scene of the piece it was best to get some establishing shots of the area, as on the script. But it was felt more was needed so a separate shoot on the hill was completed later that day. The shoot ran alongside the plan that was set, each individual time phrase was executed at each angle. Between shots the band were give sufficient time to have a break and this allowed the photos to be exported off the camera and arranged into their individual folders. Over 5200+ photos were taken from two cameras, including all the lip sync and special shots.
Postproduction
Postproduction started with organising the photos into folders inside of the shot folders, organised by their similarities in light levels, the plan was to batch process the photos to colour edit and level them out to a similar level to get continuity throughout the shots. The colour was edited to give a green and yellow decaying look to the video. Allowing for small fluctuations with the light and colour to add a more intense and almost strobe feeling, batch editing the photos with the use of adobe Photoshop cs3 was a great advantage and time saver. So instead of processing every individual photo, over 180+ batch process were completed. This still was a very time consuming task. When this stage was completed, the next task was to animate each shot folder into an uncompressed QuickTime video.
The reasoning behind keeping it uncompressed was to lose no quality throughout the individual stages of the piece. Final Cut Pro was used to animate the files, as all the other software available didn’t have as many attribute controls. This again was a lengthy process as there were 180+ shots to be animated and when all was done there was 110+ gigs worth of animated files. With these files animated, creating a cut could commence.
3 cuts were completed in total, after each one a meeting with the band was held to make sure the video was correctly portraying their views on the chosen topic, and also to make sure things like channel changes with peddles were correctly placed. A lot of time went in to cutting the video correctly, working along side the initial camera script and using the discussed shots and cuts. By the third cut it was felt that any more editing would take away the rawness of the piece. This area of the project was defiantly the most time consuming but because of all of the decisions made in preproduction it was just a case of executing previous plans.
Conclusion
The aim of this study was to explore how a visual treatment can enhance a textural narrative. It was to be completed in an unconventional way by trying to evoke feelings of the text rather than give a visual representation.
It’s believed that the music video created evokes feelings of unease and confusion due to its intense treatment of Pixilation working in conjunction with the cuts and fast edits. So if understanding isn’t found through listening to the lyrics you will still leave after viewing, with the intended feelings. Its felt that the intention of this study was executed well, the animation was completed to a professional standard. The steps taken throughout the study were carefully constructed to fall under a negotiated time frame, such as the location scouting, theoretical understanding of the treatment applied, locating and organising a band to use, creating and evolving scripts, shooting and postproduction. All stages were completed with this time frame in mind.
If this study could be conducted again there would be some changes made that would better the outcome. A proper size production crew would have helped the overall quality of the animation, due to it been manned by one person, there was a lot of stress felt to produce quickly due to amount of preparation put in to one day of shooting.
There was also going to be an extra step in postproduction. The application of ‘Twitch’ in After Effects (video co pilot, 2000). Twitch is an after effects filter that allows you to control stages of shakes, blurs, light flickers and frame size. With the use of a few at a time you can construct some really interesting transitions. The main reason for not using the filter was that it took away the rawness of the piece so a decision had to made quickly to not use it in the final edit. It was felt that this was the best thing to do as it took away rather than added anything. Overall it is felt that the animation is the only area that would be expanded on if given the time and not the application of the treatment as it is felt this was executed well.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
A.Pusharski, 2005, song. Created by Deacon birch, http://www.myspace.com/deaconbirch; MySpace
As Zeros We Are Infinite, (2004), http://www.myspace.com/aszerosweareinfinite; MySpace
Black flag, (1997), http://www.myspace.com/blackflag80shardcore; MySpace
Converge, (2000), http://www.convergecult.com/; MySpace
Deacon Birch, (2004), http://www.deaconbirch.co.uk/; river running backwards
Facebook.com, Deacon birch Pixalation (2004), http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/group.php?gid=28387429022&ref=ts; Facebook
HBO, The Sopranos, (2007). Directed by David chase, http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/; HBO
Minor Threat, (1980), http://www.minorthreat.com/; MySpace
Oliver Twist, (1948) film. Directed by David Lean, Rank
Pork Farm, (2005), http://www.myspace.com/porkfarm; MySpace
Rage Against The Machine, Sleep now in the Fire, (2000) video. Moore. M, http://video.ez-tracks.com/videos/sleep-now-in-the-fire-rage-against-the-machine.html;EZ.tracks
Slipknot, Vermilion, (2004) video. Directed by Petrossian, Tony. Rockhard films http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdZCN1eynRk; YouTube
The Chariot, (2004), www.myspace.com/thechariot; MySpace
The Sex Pistols, August 28th (1976) video. Granada TV, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8szRgIcYlY&feature=related; YouTube.
Video co pilot, (2009) Andrew Kramer, http://www.videocopilot.net/;
Zebedy Rays, (2006), http://www.myspace.com/zebedyrays; MySpace
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