TECHNOLOGY: Green Screen

In January we got the opportunity to go visit a green screen room here in Luxembourg. It was a good opportunity because it allowed us to get some more footage and re-shoot some scenes with our black balloons, which we felt we had missed the opportunity on when filming our initial music video Follow You at the beginning of the year. We tried to film the black balloons from as many angles as possible, however the low angle long shot and the medium long shot on the left turned out to be the best ones and so we will be using them. 
Now after having filmed all of our green screen footage, we have been trying to work on what to layer it with etc. This was my first time in working with green screen and so I had to find out all the basic tools from tutorials on YouTube and also learned a lot from my teacher and a fellow classmate. 

From the beginning onwards, we had the idea that we wanted a lot of smoke, fire and color powder in our music video. These should be the main elements. When trying to work with the first green screen footage of our leadsinger Wayne, I tried to use a fire effect from YouTube, since Final Cut Pro X does not have one. I found an effect of fire and a burning car in the background, which I then tried to use.

First step before doing anything, is to remove the actual green screen by giving it a black background. This is done by using the special effect called "Keyer" in Final Cut Pro X. After that, I put the  footage of the burning car and fire over that footage and it looked like the footage above. What I then did was changing the opacity of the shot, which is possible under the word "Compositing".

However, the shot didn't look the way we wanted it to and therefore, I watched a YouTube Tutorial about how to layer fire onto green screen. From that YouTuber, I got the link to a page called Footage Crate, that allows you to green screen. Here is the link.
It allowed me to register and download many different special effects that I can use to layer onto the green screen. It especially had loads of fire and explosion effects.

We will however also be using some special effects that we found on YouTube. 

Rough Cut 4: Throne

This is the 4th rough cut that I created for our track Throne. It contains 2 minutes and 30 seconds worth of footage. 

Some of the things that I have changed include to switch the narrative around so that it is a more linear narrative rather than fragmented narrative. 

Besides that I added in some more pool footage, because it is a good element of the music video as well as the color powder. I changed the look of the pool scenes by adding an effect called Tint, whereafter I then changed the color slightly so it would look more realistic and as if it was an ocean. Andrew Goodwin's theory on 6 features of a music video outlines that one of the main features of a music video is that there is a link between the visuals and the lyrics. This is what I intended to create with the pool scenes. There are several times where the singer is singing about "lost in the ocean" or "blue", which then fits well with the underwater footage. 

Also, I took some of the running scenes out because some audience had argued that there were too many running scenes. I also tried to edit more to the beat and bring in some of our green screen footage that we filmed last Tuesday. My post on green screen goes into detail about what exactly we did that day and which type of footage we got.

UPDATE: Changing Digipack

After having changed our track and the idea for our performance and narrative, we have new pictures for the digipack. We also had to find two new band members due to one drop-out and timing. Right now we are working on what pictures should be on our digipack but also, which other elements are usually included on a digipack.

For the front cover, we were thinking of having a picture of the entire band rather than just having the leadsinger and including the name of the band. This is not the finalized version of the front cover, since we still want to work with color correction of the picture to make the color's stand out even further. 

Another possibility for the front cover would be to take a picture in the green screen room with just the leadsinger in the shot, with his microphone and then layer on top of it and add the title of the band and/or the album. This would be inspired by BMTH album for Suicide Season. 

Another important elemt of a digipack is the track listing. BMTH That's the Spirit album has 11 tracks, therefore we thought we would include these on the back cover. 

To achieve verisimilitude on our digipack it is also important to include other features such as the record label, produced by, copyright details, barcode and serial number. On most digipacks, the barcode is on the back cover, hence we have decided to put it down in the corner on the right side. 

Inside the digipack, we wanted to include some more colors such as BMTH did on their That's the Spirit album inside. We thought that we could do it by having colorful ink in water that looks a bit like colorpowder. Since color powder is also a part of our music video, we thought that we would want to include that. 

When doing some research on digipacks, I found a website, where it is possible to create and design your own digipack with fonts, pictures etc. Once we have all of our ideas sorted and photoshopped, I wanted to try and create one with the use of this website. If it turns out really well, I intend to order it. 

https://www.discmakers.com