All about the Extras....

Like on most Dvds these days, I too, have an extras feature on my dvd! :)

This includes:

A Train ride in New York! I recently visited New York and kept my camera glued to my hand! I initially thought I'd be able to get some great photos for a background for blue screening effects....but my plans changed into slit screen, so i didnt use those....however some good has come from the atttchment of camera to hand all week...some snazzy footage of New York Train Ride to Cony Island! :) I filmed it in black and white. It shows some typical buildings of New York and has a really nice feel to it because of the lighting and ways its going down into a tunnel. This is featured on the actual music video, being looped forwards to backwards - which has worked quite effectively. I thought it would be nice to have this clip as an extra and have some of the song in the background. Instead of the full track i simply took a section of the music and put it on repeat. this effect is really effective... reminds me of the repetitive pattern of a train on the track....thought it would be quite suitable really! :P

Hair! Hair! Hair! This was a little tester that i did on the stop motion jobby! :) For every frame there is, there is a different hair style! You have no idea how messy my hair was after all of this abuse.... but i think it was worth it! I made sure that for every shot my facial expression remained the same. This makes it look really interesting, as my eyes are focused and looking straight into the camera and my hair is manackly changing all the time. In a couple of frames i decided to shake my head as i took the shot, createing a blur to create some sort of contrast and break it up into sections. To make this look even more intersting, I eddeded the footage with the colour corrector tool and made the film have un-natural colours eg. blue lips. I added a section of the song....the end bit where it's going really fast - to fit with the speed of the footage.

Fast Phone! This has the same theme to Hair! Hair! Hair! It's got a similar look- edited with un-natural colours and filmed with stop motion. It shows the dialing of a phone, a phone conversation and hanging up the phone. This is then repeated for effect and disjointment. I wanted to experiment with the timings of a phone conversation, as I initially thought it would be a nice idea to combine stop motion with film, but decided against it as it didn't have the desired effect that would fit with the rest of the music video. The idea was that the movement of the mouth would look as though it is moving at incredible speed (in the video i simply used a clip with a phone and increased the speed) but with the stop motion it didn't flow as nicely as i imagined. this is accompanied with a verse of the song (almost looks as though i could be miming the words).

Wok! Work! Work! Same effects as above. This extra is a little experiment and joke really. It shows Bex on on our course working really hard on her work! Manicly working as much as she can! In reality i was just taking random shots whenever she moved into a different possition, creating quick and jerky working movments. Fun times!

Doll Dance! I got one of those little models that you use for drawings to get the right proportions of the human form, and painted it, with black and white paint - creating some form of costume for it. An idea that I had for its purpose was to be included in the music video as another version of the puppet character. The idea was that all shots of the puppet from a distance would be the model, and the close ups would be me. I decided against this after this test. To be honnest I got quite impatient with moving the model for each frame and doing it so carefully and in a manner that is gradual so that the movemnts are slick and smooth. I was quite clumsy and got my hand in a few of the shots. The movement of the model did not have the desired effect i wanted it to, and being aware of the time schedual I left this idea behind and focussed on filming. Its just a short clip of the model dancing... what was in my head at the time was the model is trying to waltz with an invisible doll....but i don't think it worked to well... ahhh well... learning from your mistakes an all... :P

Street Dancers! Another reason why im grateful of my camera! :) Street performers in New York dancing to a Michael Jackson song. They are all dancing in a line and one by one are going to the front to do individual breakdancing and freestyling. I couldn't help but chuckle to myself, as their way of dancing was really odd... bouncing around with their hats flying off in the wind. The guy in the sparkly jacket ended up doing a great Micheal Jackson impression with his dancing, moving his legs with little kicks and moon walking. I thougt I'd put this into the extras section as it shows different styles of performance and thought it would be brilliant first hand research! :D

Violin Man! Yet again another clip from lovely NY! :) As we were walking through the subway we heard some music...turned out to be the violin man!....so thought i'd steel a little bit of footage! I think that the song that he's playing is his own ( he had some CDs by his foot, so i presume they are!). His Violin is electric....he was trying to rock out with the violin! I thought he looked like a bit of an idiot really...but he seemed to be having fun! :P

Evaluation! It says it all really....a general overview of the music video....what I did...why I did it...what I liked....how did I do it....that genral kind of thing (realised how different my voice sounds though your ears... very strange!) Anyhow... the plan for the evaluation was, like the music video, to use split screen... having the puppeteer character intereview the puppet character.....but, due to technicahl difficulties, this didn't go quite to plan. Instead I have a genral "so tell us about the music video..." from the puppeteer and then all of the information about the video is provided by the puppet character. The different cuts are faded into each other and all footage is in black and white - the lighting where I filmed was not very good and made it obvious where I changed the cuts, so putting it into black and white helps this quite nicey.