Production

Robot Heads

The best thing to begin with would be the creation of the robot heads themselves considering without them, there would be no robots. I work in a local DIY store so cardboard boxes were not going short due to the number of deliveries every week, so I took advantage of this and took as many as I could over the space of around 2 weeks.

I ended up with about 15 boxes, a few tubs of paint, some paint brushes and some tape, and that was all I needed. I didn't realise quite how mammoth the task would be of creating all of these heads, but overall it took me about 20 hours to stick them all together and paint them all individually. 

Thankfully, my Grandad helped me stick most of them together, however the painting was done entirely by me. I sat outside for quite a long time on a day off of college and painted every single one, and because I was outside they dried off fairly quickly... that was, until it started to rain. I decided to create a couple of time lapse videos to show the creation of them, and you can see them down below.



Overall I am happy with the outcome of the heads, particularly the main robot head! I feel as though they give a really funky feel to my video, and it's very obvious that they are robots! They reflect the robots that I looked at in my research, and that is the most important part! 

Test Shoot

We began filming on Friday the 12th of April. I had initially planned for 15 people to come, but within the week leading up to the shoot more and more people began to drop out and I ended up with 7. Of course, this is less than ideal because the plans I had for my original shoot did not go to plan, and they did not follow the storyboard, however I had to adapt my idea so that it worked to fit the 7 people in. 

We began our test shoot in Bawsey at approximately 10am, and by the time we had gotten to our location and set up it was approximately 10:30. It was at this point that we realised that my camera did not fit in Oscar's steadicam which was a huge problem that we had not even thought would be a problem before which was incredibly amateur. Oscar did not come with me to the initial RECCE, therefore we did not know this was a problem until the day of the shoot. We compromised and used his camera which definitely fit on the gimbal, but the issue with that was that I wanted to film in 1080p at 50fps so that there was the potential to make all of the footage slow motion, however this back-fired because Oscar's camera could only do 720p at 50fps or 1080p at 25fps. I knew that I definitely wanted the ability to put the footage in slow motion, therefore I settled for the 720p at 50fps.

After we had solved that problem, we began filming and soon found that the robot heads (that I had spent HOURS making) were way too big for those involved, which was a huge problem because as the people were walking around the heads were wobbling and turning all over the place. We tried to tape the actual head to the individuals but the tape was incredibly obvious and looked hideous on camera, and that was when it actually worked and stuck the heads on straight.

Just incase all of that wasn't bad enough, it then began to rain so we packed up and walked back to the car, travelled back to college and thought of a plan B ready for the actual shoot. The test shoot that I did made me realise just how important test shoots are, because without the test shoot I would have encountered a number of problems on the shoot day.

Filming Day 1

The first day shoot was the most important part of all of the shoots, because this is where all of the people were supposed to come and it was the finale of the music video. Whilst we were having lunch, me, my camera-man and some members of the cast all talked about what we could do to improve ready for the next shoot. 

We grabbed some of the robot heads and tried to figure out a way to hold them to the cast's heads better. We tried taping it to the cast but realised that you could see the tape too much, we tried taping it on the inside but realised that the tape did not stick to skin very well, and we also thought about finding some string/rope/bungee cord to put inside so that the cast could strap that round their chin and it would hold the head on straight. None of these options ended up working, so we ended up deciding that everyone in the film had two choices- either bite down on the inside of the robot head to keep it in place, or raise up their shoulders so that their shoulders hold it in place. This worked for the most part, and if there were any issues where the cast had to re-adjust their heads, we would just stop that particular shot and restart it.

The other issue we had was with me not being able to use my own camera which filmed in 1080p at 50fps. I was desperate for this to work because I was longing for the quality that would make a music video look professional. I went and consulted the Springboard team at the college to see if they had a longer screw that would allow for me to be able to use my own camera on Oscar's gimbal, and thankfully they did have one. They lent it to us and this allowed for me to be able to shoot with my own camera, therefore the few shots that we did get that morning were essentially obsolete because the rest of the film would be filmed in a better quality anyway.

Once we had resolved those problems, we then headed over to the Walks and began to set up. We headed to a part of the park that was fairly quiet, so that we did not run into any problems in terms of children or members of the public in the background. There were a few occasions where people had to walk past, in which instance we simply stopped shooting and then restarted once the members of the public has passed enough for us to do so.

I briefed Oscar on what I wanted for this part of the shoot and showed him my paperwork, which included the shot list and the storyboard so that he could see my vision and he knew which order in which to shoot. We began by doing the shots of the robots coming out from behind the trees- I gave the cast detailed instructions in terms of what I wanted them to do, which was come out in whatever style they please, but remember how they did so because they would have to repeat it a number of times in order for me to get the amount of shots that I needed. The cast were all very good with this, and we quickly got the shots done where they came out individually and altogether. We then moved on to the ones of them running around Dylan, the main robot, which was the longest shot. They had to come in and run around him for as long as I needed to get all of the shots that I wanted, and the cast found this difficult as they started to fatigue, but luckily they were all fairly fit and I gave them adequate breaks between shots. I made sure to brief Oscar on the amount of movement I wanted in the shots- I wanted him to go up and down on the characters, inside and outside of the circle, follow their heads, follow their feet etc. and most importantly, focus on Dylan and how he is in the middle whilst he's controlling all of the other robots. 

I was happy with this part of the shoot once it was done, and then we proceeded to move onto the shots of Dylan in front of the camera. We did run into a few issues with these shots that I only realised in post- of course I used a proper camera for these shots set up on a tripod as a prop to show Dylan sending out a message to the masses, but I did not realise that the audience would be able to see a reflection on the camera screen. Within the shot, you can see me filming and a couple of members of the cast in the reflection of the camera, but luckily the focus is not on that but more on Dylan and his movements, so this should not be a huge problem. 

The last shot that I had to get was the drone shot, which we had to do quickly because if anyone disturbed the shot we would have to start again, and I wanted to ensure that we disturb as few people as possible. I wanted to get the entire sequence from the robots coming out of their places, coming into the circle and leaving again. Luckily, we managed to do it all in one shot with the help of me shouting instructions as I was filming, but it's okay because I took all of the sound out of the clips as it's a music video anyway and the soundtrack will be placed over the top of all of the footage.

Overall, it took about 2 and a half hours to get all of the individual shots that I needed which I felt was reasonable, and it went so quickly because I had planned proficiently beforehand therefore it was clear what I wanted from my cast and crew.

Filming Day 2

Day 2 of filming was the part of the film that was based in Bawsey. I asked 3 of the members of the cast to volunteer to be in this part of my film, and Corbyn, Cameron and David volunteered themselves. This meant that they would be the three key characters that gave the context to my video, in terms of being the ones that started off as human and ended up as robots after receiving the messages. 

We planned to begin the shoot at 10am and finish at 1pm, however we did run into a few issues and it took longer to shoot than anticipated. We then had to shoot a few more bits later on in the day between the hours of 2pm and 4pm, which included the shots of the people on their various devices and then them turning into the robots. 

We ended up getting to the location on time and began shooting by 10:15, and shooting went fairly well in terms of getting the first shots of the people walking out from their various locations to the middle of the area that I had chosen to be the "circle" area. This part of the shoot went very smoothly, and we managed to shoot all of the bits of the robots coming out and culminating into the circle within an hour and a half. 

The next part that we had to shoot was the parts with Kj in them, and these bits took no time at all. It was simply a case of getting her to listen to the song and just repeat the words "invaders must die" a number of times in a number of different positions including a close up of her mouth, and then her stood next to all 3 different robots. We then had to do some shots from behind her as she was walking towards the robots from where she was hiding, and this included the camera looking over her shoulder as she shouted 'invaders must die" at the robots and then the robots turning and running away. This soon became a problem, as the robot heads didn't allow anyone much room to see, and of course they had vision in front of them but no peripheral vision which meant things like this happen...

Cameron and Corbyn collided and Corbyn fell over, which in hindsight I perhaps should have planned for when doing my risk assessments. However, this did only happen one time, and it was unforeseen, so I would have struggled to plan for it. I should have made it easier for the boys to see, but with a limited budget and limited material to make the heads out of, cardboard was very nearly the only option which did not allow for them to be able to see around themselves. The ideal scenario would have been a planned direction for each of them to run in to prevent any sort of collisions happening.

The most important shot I wanted of her was the one that was due to be sped up which included Kj walking towards the camera from a distance and shouting 'invaders must die" so that it looked like she was shouting it at the robot characters. We had trouble filming this because the ground where she was walking was incredibly uneven, which meant that she kept tripping as she was walking, and we still had the giggles from Corbyn falling over which meant that we had to redo the shot about 6 times before we got it right.

Once I had gotten that shot, that was it for that part and we all went to lunch ready for the shoot in town that afternoon.

Filming in town was always going to be a problem because of the amount of pedestrians in the background, however it was supposed to be set in a normal environment because that showed that the characters were normal people that got hypnotised by what they had seen on their various devices.

I tried my best to ensure that as few people got in the background of my film as possible, by focussing closer on the subjects of the film and trying to cut out the background space as much as possible. There are a couple of occasions where people are in the background but we had re-done the shots so many times that it was near impossible to get a shot without any pedestrians in the background. As stated before, however, this added to the mood that it was set in a normal day to day setting, so it worked out okay in the end.

After we had shot the parts in town which went well, we headed back to the college to film David's bits which went very smoothly, apart from the shot of David walking out in the robot head into the foyer area. We did not realise that the block at the top of the robot head was too tall to get out of the door, so it ripped off. In the final piece, it isn't very noticeable luckily because the shot is from a slightly lower angle than the rest, but I should've seen what the height was like before I even shot that bit.

After that shot, I had got everything that I needed for my piece, and editing began!

Post-Production

Thanks to the extent of my planning, editing together the piece took next to no time at all. Of course, in order to get the continuity right it took a little bit of time, but because it is a music video it does not matter as much is there are slight jump cuts and bits missing. The hardest thing was editing to the song itself, however, once again due to the extent of planning, I marked up where on the timeline the shots should change and that made the editing a lot easier and quicker.

I unlinked all of the clips when I placed them in the timeline and removed all sound from the clips, so that there was no feedback or background noise when I was trying to edit- the only sound that I wanted was the song itself.

Once I had edited everything together, I needed to find some little pictures on the internet of the peace signs and hazardous signs that I wanted, so that I could photoshop them and place them into my video.

I found two off of Google images that stood out to me, and I took them into Photoshop, removed the background so that all it left was the icon itself, and then saved these as .png's to put in my video.

I am not good with any sort of graphics, and decided that due to the time constraints involved that I would not learn how to use After Effects but would instead use key framing as a way to get the icons to move on the screen. I liked the idea of them moving with the main character, or moving to the beat of the music, so this is how I made them.

At the beginning when they were coming out of the various devices e.g. earphones, , I made sure to edit them to the time of the music so that they did not look so random. However, later on in the video when the signs are coming away from the main robot, I made sure to time them with his movement so that it looked as if he was almost throwing out the icons. I simply did this by placing them where I wanted at the beginning of the movement, scaling them down, and then key framing them so that they got bigger and flew out of frame in whichever direction seemed best.

One part that slotted together well was the part where the phrase "Invaders Must Die" is repeated a number of times. For this, I simply laid down the clip of the 3 robots walking towards the middle underneath the separate clips of Kj saying "Invaders Must Die", and you can see it in the timeline below. This was the easiest way of editing this part together, and it fit well because although there were big gaps in the clip where Kj was in the shots, the audience was still able to see the circle coming together.

The last thing that I had to do was the credits- I knew this would be a challenge because I had never done credits in this style before, so I referred to some video tutorials on YouTube (linked in my research page) and used these tutorials to find out how to create credits properly. I created them previously using keyframes however it did not look like proper credits, so using the correct rolling credits graphic made a huge difference to the professionalism and aesthetic of the credits.

I also wanted to place on a glitch effect on the end credits, and I did this by cutting parts out in random increments, and by replicating the parts that I did not cut out, lowering the opacity of the one on the top and moving it slightly in any direction. This ended up making it look like it was glitching really well, and I really liked the final look of the credits because of this. I also wanted to place an effect on the final credits because I knew that the video quality itself wasn't too good, and the glitch effect did a really great job of hiding the bad quality. In fact, if anything, the bad quality enhanced the final look of the credits.


Final Product

             

The Advert

The advert was the key part within my marketing strategy, so the final outcome needed to entice the audience. Creating the advertisement was fairly easy in terms of skillset, and was simply a case of cutting up the original music video, taking some of the best bits out without giving too much of the plot away, and then putting it all together.

I downloaded some non-copyright bass boosted sounds off of YouTube that are reminiscent with all action style advertisements, and placed these short bass sounds at the beginning and the end of the video to add a bit of tension and texture to the advertisement, rather than it just being a short section of the song.

I also added a title at the end that details what the video is, who it is by, the time and the date of the release as I felt as if that was the most important information. Of course, the advertisement will be released on my YouTube channel, so although the details on the end of the video are fairly cryptic in terms of not detailing fully where the video will be released, it is fairly obvious as the people who access the advertisement on my channel will also have access to the full music video on the 20/05/2019 at 8pm.

You can see the advertisement below: