Watership down

Watership Down 

Directed by Martin Rosen
Based on the novel by Richard Adam

Originally U-rated, which is the equivalent of PG today. according to the 'Mirror', the film would not be rated PG today because of the violent scenes but also BBFC David Austin said the language is unacceptable for a U-rated film.

Watership Down is an interesting movie supposedly aimed at children but is full of propaganda for many things. the first is environmental awareness, and how building houses for people, kills rabbits. The second major theme is Communism referring to the dividing line for the rabbit's territory as "the iron road" no doubt a direct reference to The Iron Curtain from the days of communism. Overall I think the film had too many points and was animated in a style for children but the running themes were for adults.

Shooting day

Today I will be shooting...

This post is to update my ideas for the project and help me remember everything I will otherwise forget...

Use warm cards... yes I remembered to hire them out! I just need to remember to take a couple of seconds to shoot them on set.

Currently, I am leaning towards doing all the filming in the park and forgetting the filming in room 211 after seeing the footage from a classmate's, I think it will look too different from the park footage and will look boring.

Use of the sundial... I want to make the sundial a main feature of the music video since the song is entitled "I've Been Waiting For You" the sundial will bee appropriate for the reference to time and light in the lyrics.

My main concern is with the performer's ability to perform... I have seen and it is very evident that she is very stiff while performing and not very animated, I want to try and encourage her to move and articulate the lyrics as she sings.

Things I have learnt about that will help me this week, have been learning more about secondary colour correction, this will help a lot as this will be the main tool I will use in post production. Finding out about the eyedropper + and - tools was a help as some of my yellow props are different shades of yellow.

I will post photos of the shoot as soon as I shoot it.

Apart from the performer's ability to perform, I'm Praying the rain will stop...

Preparing for a music video

So getting everything ready for shooting the music video, Below is a list of things I have done and a list of things I will need to do... I am assuming the second list is longer...

Things I have done...

• Location scouting
• Casting
• Equipment list
• Production design planning

Things I need to do:

• Location permissions and forms
• Talent release forms
• Music rights contract
• Purchase props
• Book equipment
• Organise dolly and long lens from SIT pro

Equipment list:

• Black Magic cinema camera + EF lens kit
• 70-200mm EF Lens
• Mattebox with grad filter
• Memory card x2 and reader
• Battery x3
• Follow Focus kit
• Tripod
• Dolly
• Redhead Kit
• Music player
• Reflector boards

Props, decorations, wardrobe & makeup

• Yellow Scarf
• Yellow shoes
• Yellow nail polish
• Lipgloss
• Mascara
• Eyeliner
• Yellow Umbrella
• Paper umbrella cutouts & Blu-tack

Overall I feel like I am confident to shoot the video I just need to go and do it so my goals for this week are to get all necessary permissions and bookings and then set a date to shoot (hopefully Tuesday next week).

some research I have done into similar styles of music videos have been:

Brook Fraser's Something In The Water. this was good to view as it had a similar style of performance, in terms of movement and facial expression that I wanted to capture.

Another video I was researching was another of Brook Fraser's Betty this was similar in the use of performance as well. I also thought it was one of the best ones that she has done in terms of production design in the use of colour.

Music Video Expereiments

For my music video I have been experimenting with colour correction and learning how to use RAW footage in Premiere. 

Photoshop Experiments

For a start I imported a .jpeg into photoshop to experiment with the colours, this worked well as there is a lot of verticality in photoshop. I used layer masks and and eye dropped the colour to select it. this was relatively easy to do once I figured it out. One thing I noticed I need to be careful to shoot on a cloudy day as some of the sunlight in the background got captured in the mask.

Resolve

Next I Imported the RW files into resolve to try to see what I could do... then I realised I had no idea how to use resolve so I quit, and opened premier.

Adobe Premiere

In premiere it was relatively simple after playing around.

Step one: Put RGB curves onto the clip adjust to try make the yellow stand out most against other colours. I did this by bringing dow a little red channel and a tiny bit if green... this actually made the white balance look natural too.

Next I put the three-way colour corrector on and use the secondary colour correction menu and use the eye dropper to select the yellow subject in the frame. 

 

Then I brought down the saturation levels under the saturation menu.

My first attempt I left the Master saturation at 65% and tried to put a blue grade on just to see how it would look... I don't like it so much.

My second attempt I did all at 0% saturation and no colour grade...

After Effects
Thought It would be ok at first... I was wrong...


I'm really glad I experimented with the footage on location and found what I need to do

Animation History 1970 - 1975 & Emotional Responses

Film examples that evoke an emotional response:


Early childhood:


The Lion King 1994:

Forest Gump 1994: 

Recent:




Boy in Striped Pajamas 2008:

Man On Fire 2000:

Lillian Schwqartz: Artist and pioneer in computer animation.

USA

A Christmas carol 1971

Richard Williams

France
Serge Danot
The Magic Roundabout 1963 TV series
500 episodes made between 1963 and 1970






Frace/Czech republic
Rene Laloux
Fantastic Planet 1973


France/Poland
Piotr Kamler
The Step 1974




Japan
Renzo & Sayoko Kinoshita
Made in Japan 1972




Hayao Miyazaki & Isao Takahata
Heidi 1974 TV series




Norway
Ivo Caprino
The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix 1975
Took 3 and a half years to make
shown daily for 28 years in some theaters




Hungary
William Feigenbaum & Jozsef Gemes
Hugo the Hippo 1975
first international release from Hungary.




UK
Bob Godfrey
Karma Sutra Rides Again 1971