Story Boards, Risk Assessment and Equipment List and Story.

Storyboards 1-2-3

Risk Assessment

Shot List 1

Shot List 2

Story and  Equipment List

Self Review of My More Soon Tribute

Well my first shot was of me listening to music through headphones while nodding in the beat. My second shot is of me smiling really awkwardly and looking around the room then focusing on the camera. The emotion in the first clip I was conveying was joy at listening to music, which i normally feel when listening to music, and for my second clip I was conveying apprehension as i made it look like i didn't want to be there.

When it came to the editing of the video I really wanted it to sync mostly to the music so every solid beat it would change shot. This actually worked and on some of the clips the actions of the actors synced with some of the changes in the music. Over all to me this was an exercise to get better at editing but the stuff i was doing isn't new to me so its was just good practice.

To select the clips I used it  had to have a form of humor that you can see easily by watching them. When it came to some videos they just didn't cut it and seemed way to boring for the video. If i was going to put them in it would have had to been for about 2 seconds so not to bore the audience. Overall I think the ones I chose where the right ones too choose add they actually made it interesting and because of my choice I didn't use all of the clips because I fear it would have been too dull if I did.

Positioning some of the clips is definitely something that I considered and did. My most obvious one is the use of Liam at the beginning as his entrance onto the frame is both comical and a good way to start the video. Other example include using video of Axel on the bass when the solo is being played on the music and when the Skate board wheels are being turned to the sound of the beat.

By leah for the review below

Having watched someone else’s edit, what are over overall opinions of it? Both positive and/or negative.
I really enjoyed Will's edit. The way he timed it to the music made individual parts pop out of the video. Especially at the end when the music has died down to a basic beat, he placed a video of himself listening to music, which gave the effect of it all being inside his head, i have no idea if this was intentional but it is great part.

If i had to give one negative, i would say a couple of the clips lasted too long, compared to others and made the video tense, but that could be his desired effect.

Highlight a ‘best bit’ that you think was edited particularly well. (Either it was in the right

place, or worked well with the music, or simply has ‘impact’.) Explain why you chose this.

... at the very beginning the beat is building up and it hits its highest intro point when Liam appears moving from the bottom for the screen upwards, this creates a good start too the video, conveying disapproval at the beginning allows the audience to laugh more at funny parts as they are introduced with a stern clip, which makes people get ready for a darkbeat video.

Is there anything you would do differently, if you had edited it? Can you explain your reasons for
this?

I honestly don't think so. maybe including more funny clips, but that is only because the comedy factor of this project is too damn high. 

Review of Ratatat and Obsess by Carl Burgess

Lets get started with Ratatat. It is basically a music video that took inspiration from the many archive footage of actors smiling that are used in adverts. The video itself consists of multiple different actors posing and smiling either on their own or with others, at some points in the video the characters faces are actually modified to make the eyes and other facial features look smaller on the face by squishing them down on the face. Its a very well edited piece simply to say as the way it swaps to the next scene in time to the song is executed perfectly.

Two thing that helps the video to be just a little creepy is just the incessant smiling, its just so creepy which is really I think what he is going for in the video because that's his style as mentioned in the earlier post, and the smoke effect on the fringes of the video that creates a really dark thought in your mind. The smoke is almost invisible unless you spot it but it really just adds to the overall effect of a darker image behind that hides behind those incessant smiles.

While the music is not composed by Carl himself I want to make mention to how the music effects the  video on a deeper level then just the cutting between shots. The way the music effects the video is very odd because the music is way too rapid and is not really suited to the type of video because of its relatively . Yet with its use it works really well because of the synchronization to the video. To me I think the music effects it by again making the video look out of place. Everything about the video screams "help" and "I'm not meant to be here".

The way its was done is a great example of how weird and wacky Carl Burgess likes to make his work. None the less the video is a great example and as an overall rating from me it gets a 8/10 because of how his style is to weird you out and it hits the mark perfectly. As for the music it does strangely fit to the video and it just seems right. 

What and Who is "MoreSoon"?

(http://moresoon.org/kap-bambino.htm)

More Soon simply is the name of the production company set up by Carl Burgess the director. Carl is a UK based director, film maker and sculptor that specializes in making very stunning and visually crazy videos that amaze the viewers, as well as ones that are designed to weird you out much like his Ratatat Video (http://moresoon.org/ratatat-drugs.htm)

The Biography on his website mentions "His dark, simple aesthetic lends itself to creating new worlds out of the mundane, turning objects and perceptions on their head to make visually rich, slightly twisted work." He is a very skilled artist/sculptor and the work he does, as said above, is very twisted and in no way looks normal. one example I found featured a human head sculpture that has been warped. Like you would on picture editing. This effect makes the sculpture look completely different and makes it visually disturbing (to me anyway)

Simply Put for More Soon and Carl Burgess's style is just pure emotion and visually twisted. The main style i see for his art and photography is the way he can manipulate each and everything to look weird and mesmerizing. This is probably linked to how he wants the pictures to be easy to remember. The easiest way to do that is to create things that people haven't seen before and will likely never again. The weirder the more likely they are to remember it. Carl definitely has it perfected as his work is some of the weirdest and frankly creepiest I have ever seen. Like this example below.

I am still not sure what it is. My best guess is that its a disfigured and warped human face and skull. Its a perfect example of how he likes to warp simple and normal things to a level not before seen. His videos do not tend to be as bad as his sculptures are but they do hold a certain level of weird that makes it stand out to me. For his video Ratatat he organised a group of archive actors and made them perform a variety of different poses and emotions centered around the camera. This is to sort of show how weird they can be as they are often used for adverts. He also did a version called Obsess the was made specifically to show how stock actors and footage can be really creepy and just weird.

(video is a link)

Lev Kuleshov And His Effect On the Film Industry.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lev_Kuleshov.jpg)

First lets get an understanding of who Lev Kuleshov was. Lev Kuleshov was a Russian director who was born on the 1st of January 1899 in Tambov, Russia. He suffered from bouts of depression and a poor speaking ability, these problems were soon overcome by the fact that he had a strong will, persistence and determination in anything he did. Up till the age of 15 he was home taught by his father who had a degree from Moscow Art College. At 15 his father passed away which caused him and his mother to move to Moscow. When he arrived at Moscow for the next years of education he went to the prestigious Stroganov School where studied art and history. From there he went to the Moscow School of Painting, Architecture and Sculpture focusing on oil painting.


After this he got his first job in the film business as a set designer at the Moscow film studio of Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. During his time working at the studio he had decided that he wanted to work on being a director. His ambition was rewarded when he met Akhramovich-Ashmarin a successful director who introduced him to the American School of Film-Making.


Over the course of his life in the film industry he made many films. But his biggest impact on the world of film was the Kuleshov Effect. Very simply what this means is when a clip of someone is used with several different clips or images then it changes the meaning of the film.

To quote an account where this is used by Lev Kuleshov "one in which a jailed man is shown an open cell door, and one in which a starving man is shown a bowl of soup. Kuleshov switched the shots, so that the starving man saw the open door and the prisoner looked at soup, and there was no noticeable difference." (http://kubrickfilms.tripod.com/id21.html) This is an example where the effect of the films switching does not change the emotional state as they are both exhibiting the same emotion. An example of one that does work was done by Alfred Hitchcock called "Hitchcock love Bikinis" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCAE0t6KwJY) 

In this video he also explains how it works. To put an explanation here what it does is uses the recycled clip to show reaction to a certain stimulus. In the Video the first stimulus is a mother holding a baby. To which he smiles at which shows he is a "Kind old man". For the second stimulus he uses a women in a bikini. Because of how the clip still smiles the reaction is that he is a "dirty old man". This is the perfect example of how Kuleshovs Effect works. By changing certain stimuli to a characters expression you change how people perseve that character and his emotion.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI) This video by Charlie Brooker goes into significant detail on how reality tv shows are edited to show different responses. A really good example in the clip is where Charlie Brooker tells a really terrible joke to the other flatmates. With some quick editing you take a recording from elsewhere along the day and use that clip to add a fake reaction to the joke, where as the real one was terrible. Many shows like Big Brother (like the example he uses) do this to help people perseve characters in a certain way. They also use this with alot of audio clips too. For example in the clip he uses the audio from one of the interviews over the top of a scene to show you how they view a character.

Thats my detailed analyse of the Lev Kuleshov Effect. 

what is single camera technique?

Single camera technique is very simply a focus on filming a scene in multiple takes. This is what sets a lot of Tv and film apart.

Films are in general always single camera techniques purely because they have the time and the money to spend time redoing each shot and working on each take. Because of the way its done for films it means the scenes are often filled with a lot more in depth acting then those on TV reality shows or soaps. My favorite examples for single cameras are Films and TV shows like Zombieland, Teachers and Doctor Who which all use single camera technique to emphasize Comedy and Drama and Horror, in Zombielands case. When Filming with single camera movies and shows it basically in an action sequance to exactly the same thing again so different angles ca be filmed. Like in the shot below, from Zombieland, the characters spot the zombie and Jessie Eisenberg (Coloumbus) starts to run from the zombie with out sliding under Woody Harrelsons (Tallahasse) bat, so they cut to a new shot and film Jessie Eisenberg Sliding under. Its basicly continuing each scene after each cut again and again.

(http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/zombieland03.jpg)

When it comes to  other TV shows it is only reality shows, soaps and competition shows like X Factor who use multi-camera as they have to produce an episode on a tight schedule like on a weekly basis. In my opinion this makes the acting seem less convincing and wooden. Many dramas on TV use single camera as it makes the acting look much more real as the actors have the chance to work for the camera and the emotion. Another place where multi-camera is used is in TV comedies like Friends and Big Bang Theory.

(http://simplifyingfabulous.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Sheldons-Apt-BigBangTheory-1024x682.jpg)

Overall the difference is about the actors quality and emotion really. As well as the way each scene is set up with the cameras. Without a doubt both types fill the role they are intended to fill really well.

Shynola Vs Gallagher

To really decide who has the best argument you have to look at both sides of the story. Because of the nature of the dispute i will look at the side who claims to have had their work stolen first, Gallagher.

Andy Gallagher's video is very well done. The use of chalk in his video is the biggest similarity to shynola's Strawberry swings. Some scenes in which the chalk is used can be seen as similar. Similar is as close as it gets. Dan Gallagher claims there are "striking similarities" between the two videos.(http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/22/coldplay-video)

Looking at these pictures side by side, yes they are similar, are they identical? no but the are clearly inspired by something in both cases.  

From Shynola's point of view they do also see the similarities " Looking back, it has enough similarities to Mr. Trevor's video itself."(http://www.shynola.com/originalityexplained.pdf). its nice to see them admit is is similar but they also explain that they did not see the video till it was mentioned " Having never seen Mr. Trevor's video before, we can categorically deny that his video was any influence on our video." (same place as above). The rest of the site has loads of pictures showing the similarities of the works but also shows how they got the inspiration for their piece without watching Gallaghers piece.

Looking at both videos its clear to see that they are similar to each other but i think personally its is wrong to criticise Shynola of stealing an idea when they are not identical. Yes in many situations people have claimed that because its similar its a direct breach of copyright. Both films have their own merits and in some appearances they do look similar. But that is the case for some very small clips in the whole films and not a huge percentage.