Normal Service Will Be Resumed Shortly

Apologies for the lack of updates. I've been on holiday for the last week and prior to that I was juggling doing pre-production and a shoot for a stop-motion animated advert and attempting to wrap (and failing miserably!) an animation for a film festival. This obviously soaked up most of my time, leaving very little space for Calendar Girl pre-production. 

 

However, things did creep along, albeit slowly. Nat, Wyld Stallyons’ outstanding producer was scouting locations and had a couple in mind which I'll be checking out when I get back. Tamara has been looking for costumes and I've been getting the crew together. There is also some other news that I will share once I have confirmation. 

 

Things will pick up speed in a week's time once we have some of the more pressing work at Wyld Stallyons in the can. Stay tuned!

Cameras: Making video look like film

What's the best camera for this video? We're trying to replicate the look of 35mm movie cameras and video cameras tend to work in a different way, but it's possible to get close with a few simple tricks.  

 

Video cameras can have 360° shutters, which is something that's just not possible with traditional film cameras. A 360° shutter means that if you are shooting at 25 frames per second, the shutter stays open for 1/25th of a second. With film cameras, there is a mechanical process where one frame of film is exposed, the shutter is closed, the film advances to the next frame and the shutter opens again to expose the new frame. Typically, you would use a 180° shutter on a movie camera, which at 25fps equals an exposure time of 1/50th of a second.  

Why does this matter? Motion blur is the giveaway. Fast motion on a video camera with a shutter approaching 360° looks smeary. Film motion blur, because it is exposed for less time looks crisper. By setting your video camera's shutter to 180° (or typically to 1/50th second for 25fps, 1/48 for 24fps and so on) you can go some way to emulating the look of film.  

Film is a progressive medium (meaning each frame is shown in sequence in its entirety) while many video cameras shoot interlaced footage, which combine a lower resolution upper and lower field in each frame. With fast motion this can result in a horizontal "combed" look which is a dead giveaway. By using a progressive video setting if your camera has one, you can contribute to that filmic look.

 

I don't want to get bogged down with the technical side regarding angle of view and sensor size, but generally, standard lenses on a video camera have a much larger apparent depth of field than an equivalent lens on a 35mm film camera. You can create a shallower depth of field by moving further back with your camera and using a long lens, but that's not a great solution for every shot. Sometimes you need to get a bit closer. 

 

Redrock Micro and other companies make 35mm lens adapters allowing you to attach 35mm lenses (usually Nikon stills camera lenses) to get that wonderfully filmic depth of field. This is better, but because the additional glass can soak up light, you may lose a stop or two forcing you to use more light or pump up the gain. 

 

In post, you can adjust the gamma curves to replicate how light reacts on film rather than the more linear look of video. With some good grading, using something like Magic Bullet Looks, you can create a fairly convincing facsimile of film.  

 

Finally, do yourself a favour and get a copy of Stu Maschwitz's The DV Rebel’s Guide. Each of us at Wyld Stallyons have a copy and they are referred to often.

 

In the office we have a couple of HV20s and access to Sony Z1s. There are 35mm adapters we can hire, but the HDV format is a bit crappy, with compression artefacts as big as a house. A better bet would be to use an HVX 200a from Panasonic, which shoots to the more robust DVCPRO-HD format, shoots proper progressive HD and has variable frame rates so that slow motion can easily be achieved without using interlacing hacks. It records to Panasonic's P2 cards, which can be a pain in the arse to use or directly to a hard drive. Footage from an HVX with a 35mm adapter can look simply stunning. 

 

The ideal camera to use may well be the Scarlet from Red (makers of the Red One camera, which has shaken up the movie world) but sadly that's not going to be launched until early 2009. 

 

Not sure what camera set-up we'll end up using yet, but I wanted to give you a heads up on the thought process behind our ultimate decision.

White Red Panic

Just to demonstrate what can be done with virtually no budget, a consumer camcorder, some hardcore grading, talented actors and a massive dollop of directorial skill.



Check out director Ayz Waraich's Vimeo Site and White Red Panic's official site. 

 

Sir, we salute you.

Crew

Now that things are moving along a bit, it's time to start thinking about a provisional date for the shoot and sorting the crew and production folk. Parallel to that I need to start working on the storyboard, whilst juggling the other animation and film projects we have at Wyld Stallyons!

Treatment revealed

JANUARY (Stalactite Mix by Max Plank) by CALENDAR GIRL 

 

The video for January features a surreal battle between two seasons, portrayed by Tamara (Autumn) and "Mr Strange" (Winter). Mr Strange is like Death, while Autumn is the slow act of dying. Where one ends and the other begins is the grey area featured in the video. The video will be shot in black and white.

 

We first meet Tamara being dragged through the undergrowth in a forest by an unseen person. We cut to other shots of Tamara opening windows in an old house with woods outside and touching a blank wall that becomes alive with images.  

 

Now I'm really levitating

Tamara begins to rise off the floor

 

Dreams get stuck in my eyelashes 

A close-up of Tamara's eyes with dewdrops caught in her eyelashes like moisture on a spider's web.  

 

...Give me loveliness 

A multi-layered image of Tamara singing this line. 

 

Cut with shots of tree roots winding into the ground and lightbulbs flickering. 

 

Mr Strange has taken Tamara to grungy room with a long table in it. He sits at one end, Tamara sits at the other. A weird psychological battle commences with each season representing death and last gasps of life trying to gain the upper hand. 

 

First Tamara makes multiple copies of herself who sit around the table. Mr Strange counters that with multiple images of himself. 

 

As Tamara, with a transparent veil over her head, makes movements with her hands, Mr Strange mirrors them, blocking her power. 

 

Tamara finds herself in an empty room, wearing a long white dress in the middle of a large pool of blood. The blood begins to creep up the dress. 

 

Tamara sings the words to the song with her face obscured by tracing paper, so that only a blurred face is recognisable.

 

Finally Tamara crawls along the table to Mr Strange, who appears perplexed as if expecting a trick. He bursts into flames. He smiles. 

 

Tamara wakes up in the woods. The battle is over.

Treatment approved!

Just had word from Tamara that she likes the treatment, so I now have to start pulling a crew together, getting the storyboard done, thinking about art direction and location scouting. When I have time, I'll upload the actual treatment.

Haymarket

In non-Calendar Girl related news, we just added another video we recently completed to the Wyld Stallyons website. It's for Haymarket Networks and features a giant animated gorilla, which is always a good thing. 

• Wyld Stallyons website
  
• Direct link to half size Quicktime
  
• Vimeo (The Wyld Stallyons web server is really slow right now, so this may be your best option)
  

Enjoy.

Treatment

I've sent Tamara my treatment for the video. It's quite dark, surreal, abstract and unsettling, but I think it has the capacity to be quite a beautiful video. 

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a treatment is simply the director's vision for the video, outlining some basic narrative points and setting the tone. Frequent Wyld Stallyons collaborator Mark Walker (and BAFTA nominee) creates some excellent treatments for his music videos, so I have shamelessly cribbed his treatment style.

Linky Linky

Just in case you're curious about the author of this blog, here are a few links that may help: 

• My own site (Not much to see yet, but expect big updates soon)
  
• Wyld Stallyons (The moving image and animation company I co-founded with Richard May and Chris Sayer) 
  
• Flickr (Personal images of me, my friends and family, but also Wyld Stallyons related stuff too)
  
• Computer Arts Columns (I'm not sure how many columns I've written for Computer Arts, but I've written a lot. If the opinions of a fat hairy bloke interest you, look here.) 
  
• Twitter (I'm a hopelessly addicted Twitterer. Check Twitter for the more random and opinionated minutiae of my daily life) 
  
• Vimeo (I've tried a lot of video sites trying to find the best balance between video quality, speed and design. Vimeo meets all my criteria. You can find a selection of Wyld Stallyons videos there, as well as experiments and personal videos that may not make it onto the main Wyld Stallyons site. If you sign up, you can also download Quicktime versions of the videos, which is nice.)
  

I also have a MySpace page and a Facebook account, but don't bother trying to scope me out on there because I use them infrequently, and only really keep the accounts alive to check out things I need to be signed in for. Both Wyld Stallyons and I also have virb.com accounts, but I don’t use them often enough to suggest you check them out. I quite like Virb and really should try and use it more...

Radio Mix

Max Plank’s January remix is a wonderful re-imagining of Calendar Girl’s original song, but I felt that the lyrics came in a little late for a music video. Often the lyrics propel the action and I asked if Tamara and her remixer could create a Radio Edit of the track which trimmed off a couple of bars from the beginning so that we could get into the meat of the video sooner. 

 

On Friday evening I received an email from Tamara letting me know she had an edited version of the song for me. I look forward to getting it. This new version of the song will become the backbone for the forthcoming storyboards and animatic.

Making a music video

I'm directing a music video for the wonderfully talented Calendar Girl (also known as Tamara Barnett-Herrin from Free Form Five). Calendar Songs is an interesting concept: Tamara wrote twelve songs named after and tangentially inspired by the months of the year. She released the songs under a Creative Commons licence and invited people to remix the songs. She now has hundreds of remixes on her site, most of which are of an incredibly high standard. It's astonishing how her deceptively simple tunes have been reinterpreted in any number of different ways. The same song might appear as a lazy Sunday afternoon jazz piece or a hardcore house track. 

 

Tamara has released an album of the best tracks, Calendar Songs Vol I, and I'm creating the video for January (Stalactite Mix) remixed by Max Plank. It's a haunting mix with great lyrics (“Dreams get stuck in my eyelashes”) and has a wonderfully evocative atmosphere. I'd had some vague ideas about the kind of video I wanted to direct for Tamara, and luckily this song fits perfectly. 

 

I thought I'd use this blog to take you, gentle reader, through the process of creating this video from start to finish. If you're curious about how this sort of thing is done, or at least how we make music videos at Wyld Stallyons, then you may find this interesting.  

 

As a general overview for a mainly live action video, the process is usually as follows:

• Treatment (a written overview video concept with some key scenes mapped out. The treatment is sometimes accompanied with images to help convey the mood)
  
• Storyboard (The video laid out in the form of rough sketches with things like camera moves and other directions indicated) 
  
• Animatic (Essentially an animated storyboard, in this case set to the music. Helps identify pacing and editing problems ahead of time) 
  
• Shot List (Part of the pre-production process with the shots from the animatic broken down into the order they will be shot) 
  
• The Shoot (Usually one or two days, depending on the budget) 
  
• Edit (Once the footage has been captured, we first do a rough assembly, then a final version) 
  
• Visual Effects (This could be as simple as wire removal, but could be as complex as building 3D cities or creating giant robots) 
  
• Grade (Minor colour correcting and adding a “look” to the footage) 
  
• Online (Adding clock, checking video legal colours, checking sound balance and dumping to digibeta) 
  

Many of you may have noticed that I've glossed over some of the steps, but I'll clarify and expand when we get to them. Currently I'm finishing off the treatment which I'll be sending over to Tamara today. 

 

More updates will follow shortly.