Pixel Burst

I gave the pixel burst technique another go because I thought that it looked over-edited. I tried it again with a plain background and tried to give more of a fade on the burst and think that my second result looks better. I am going to have another go at this with one of my own images that I will later upload and compare to my previous attempts.

Group Blog Update

We not have our full group back and we have discussed what we are going to do next in the stages of research and preparation for our video. We have decided that we are definitely going to use the song "Young Again" by Hardwell because it is Hardwell's leading song for his new album, we cannot yet find figures for this because it has not yet been officially released.

This is Young Again:



We have chosen this song because me and Jacob have a strong interest in dance music which Liam did not share, so this song is a bit more mellow and has more lyrics than a conventional dance track. The three of us have agreed on this song and have started looking into different ideas for clips and filming methods.

Photoshop Technique - Pixel Burst

This is a series of print screens from today's lesson where I was taught how to create a pixel burst effect onto an image. In order to complete the effect, you repeat the last 4 steps to each other layer and experiment until you are happy with the result. In each layer you use scatter brushes to make it look like pixels are being blown out of the picture giving off the effect. Once I had learnt the main stages of this I tried to create my own. My result is below:

Filming Ideas

Over the weekend, me and Liam discussed different ideas to what we can do for filming in our music video. As we have access to waterproof equipment we have decided to experiment with filming underwater to see what we can get from it. 

We are going to look at what we can do with this method to see whether it will have a place in our video as we do not yet know what our main style is going to be based around. We have already looked at time lapsing and are also thinking of including slow motion clips during different parts of the song  so we are going to see what these styles will look like when we put them together because we want to make sure that it will all fit together before we set about filming.

This is a video from when I went to Michigan. This is filmed underwater in Lake Michigan using my waterproof phone case, this is something that we may use at some point during our video.

Group Blog

Today in lesson, Jacob was not in however me and Liam have set up our group blog which is going to be where our research will be put up. We will post on that blog about our progress and ideas that we develop as we make our way through the year heading towards the production of our music video.

In our next group meeting we are going to look at the styles of the genre of dance in more detail and we are going to look at a range of music videos, posters and album covers that all fall under this genre. We will analyse and compare the material so that we can create our own ideas for our own products that will be unique but still strongly fit in with the genre of dance.

Last night I decided to practice a different style of filming that we could potentially use in our music video, this is a time lapse of a journey home that I have produced. I think that because of the style of music and the varying speeds of the songs that this could be used effectively in our music video so this was a tester to see if it is a simple enough idea to include in our video.

Style Choices - Hardwell

Today in lesson we created a diagram which split our ideas up into more detail so that we can make a more informed decision on what song we will be doing for our music video. This is our diagram with the choices that me and Liam have come up with. Jacob is not in today but I managed to get in touch with him to get his thoughts and suggestions.

I wrote down the dance music ideas and have come up with the suggestion to do "Young Again" by Hardwell, this is because this song has good lyrics in it and sounds like a crossover genre where we could get some good ideas together to make a video.

This is an example of a poster for a Hardwell tour poster. It is a cartoon version of Hardwell with his name and tour dates and locations on. The colours and style used has made it look like there are strobe lights behind the artist which I thought was good because at live performances you expect to see a lot of lighting used so it all fits in with the genre of dance music.

This is an album cover for Hardwell, it features a picture of the artist and artist name but the background has a lot to do with space. This is in relevance to the names of the songs on this album such as "Spaceman" and "Apollo" which relate to the theme of space so this album is a representation of this.

This picture is taken from a live performance that Hardwell, this is the sort of image that the tour poster has taken inspiration from as this is the sort of view you would expect to see at any sort of DJ performance particularly in this genre.









This is the music video for "Apollo" by Hardwell, the video does not have much to do with the lyrics but I found that the video was very simple and there are parts of the video that relate to the theme of space which is where the video has relevance to the album that it is from.





This is a video from Hardwell's set at Tomorrowland 2014, this is the sort of environment that you would expect to see from this style of performance. It is a very loud genre that uses a lot of strobe lighting and pyrotechnics which makes it a very bright genre. In this video there are a lot of good examples of filming techniques such as crane shots, long shots, close ups, handheld, zoom in and zoom out.

Hardwell is a DJ from the Netherlands and was the number 1 DJ of 2013. He  found his love for music at the age of 8 and at age 13 began remixing popular songs at the time. He is currently a progressive house DJ and producer, he broke his way into this scene back in 2009 with his Bootleg remix of "Show Me Love vs Be". Since this he has produced his own material such as "Spaceman" and "Apollo" and made collaborations and toured with Tiesto. In his earlier years when he performed live, he was too young to get into the clubs where he played so he would have to be escorted by his parents. He is now 24 and often headlines major events around the world and is considered one of the world's best DJs.

Hardwell now hosts his own radio show which is now also a podcast which is aired every friday night called "Hardwell On Air". His music is sold online through iTunes and Beatport, however a lot of downloads are often free and he makes his living through ticket sales from live performances and festival appearances.

First Group Ideas

This was the first group meeting that we had where me, Jacob and Liam came together and created a mood board based on our personal music interests including types of music and artists within the genres.

Green Screen

I have updated my green screen video from last year's attempt. I have done this in front of a green screen this time instead of a white screen which is better and I have used iMovie to insert an introduction title and credits at the end of my video.

This is my lip sync draft for this year. I had issues inserting an image to the green screen so I am going to research tips on how to solve this problem and update this video with an image behind me. 

Lip Sync Feedback

These are the notes that I took whilst members of my class presented their lip sync videos. I have not yet got a completed lip sync video so this is my task to do now. I am going to lip sync a song and I will include titles, credits and I will use either an image or a video instead of having a green screen behind me.

Update

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties at home I have not had access to the internet outside of school to produce any blog posts. So that I do not fall too far behind I am going to make use of the Mac suites in sixth form to complete my coursework and upload it to my blog.

Photoshop Practice - Wakeboarding

As well as using Photoshop for coursework, I use it a lot for personal projects mostly based around the sports that I do. In my spare time I have been practicing using Photoshop to enhance images to get better quality from them and to make them stand out more. This is an example of a before and after that I have produced:

This is the original picture. 

This is the picture once I had finished editing.













To produce this photograph, I used image adjustment controls to change the exposure, contrast, brightness and saturation levels. This allowed me to brighten the image and bring out broader colour to make the image really stand out. I will likely use similar techniques when I create a poster for my music video with the same idea in mind to brighten it up and make it stand out more to attract the attention of my target audience.

This is another technique that I have learnt through my use of Photoshop which is to layer images on top of each other but lining them up to create a series shot. This is something that I may not have to use for this particular project. However, I have the skills ready for if I need to do this or if my group decide that we want to produce something of a similar style.

Further Green Screen

Today in lesson I was shown further editing skills in iMovie. Here is the example that I have created to show how to include titles, credits and audio over a video that has been created using a green screen technique.

This print screen shows how you would insert a title to a video by selecting the "T" at the bottom right of the screen. You then select the option that you feel is appropriate and then drag the box to where about you want to insert the title. I have chosen to put it at the start of my video as an introduction.

You can also insert transitions between clips on iMovie by selecting the transitions tool by the title tool which will allow you to add transitions to fade between clips to keep an even flow going throughout.

To add audio you select the musical note next to the title button and then go through samples or iTunes libraries to find audio that you want to import. You then drag the audio over the video and it will then play over the top.

Once you have completed the editing of a video you go to "File" and choose "Finalize Project". This then saves the project as a video file that you can use as you like.

Lip Syncing

Foo Fighters - Learn to Fly



This is a clip of a lip syncing practice video that I have done in research for music video. This was done as a group and helped us to understand more about music videos an how they are filmed from the artist's perspective.
This was my first attempt of a lip sync which I thought went well, except it has been filmed on a white background where me and my group are wearing white. Therefore, I am going to do it again so that I can edit the background and practice green screening on the same video.