Summary

I have created a video for my Media A2 project which has a storyline about a creature made out of discarded Tic Tac boxes coming to life and trying to discover where his heart belongs, he tried to give it to the telivison but it does not belong here, towards the end he finds himself using his heart to help lift up a feminine looking creature that was made out of a Lindor box, he finds his heart belongs with her.

I used both stop frame animation and puppetry to make my ideas come to life, the rustic, indie atmosphere and the wide range of possible storyline options that come with stop frame animation seemed perfect for the storyline i had created. The final video has over 1700 photographs, probably closer to 2300 photographs were taken but some scenes were cut out or re shot. The choice to use puppetry as well as stop frame animation came after I realised my limitations with the software and hardware I had at the time, which was just a tripod, compact camera, photoshop and Windows media player. After watching a lot of music videos that were all recommended to me by websites and friends I came across warrior dance by The Prodigy, this video showed cigarette boxes in a traditional, run down, English pub turning into human shaped creations and eventually burning down the pub, this video made me realise that puppetry, when combined with stop frame animation was my best option to make all my ideas come alive. Both unexpected and expected problems kept re occurring while creating this video, the main ones were due to Mint the model. I did not design Mint to be able to do a lot of actions that he ended up doing due to high expectations and changes to more imaginative ideas e.g. smoking a cigarette the way that he did, on more than one occasion his limbs fell off or the weight of his head would unbalance him and a whole scene would be ruined, due to this I had to re design Mints way of moving and how he moved half way through the process of filming this video. Some of the ideas on how to red design him were very simple such as increase the amount of white tack to his limbs so i had more control, change the place where the limbs were attached and add more wire to some areas to keep him more stable, it got more complex when I started using a bit of string to take some of the weight off Mints head and body so it was easier to move him around with out falling over or becoming unbalenced, this worked like a dream most of the time however there were minor problems that he could only move backwards and forwards but this was never a big problem. Another major problem was how the light changed from video to stop frame animation, this made the two very easy to tell apart. Unfortunately the stop frame animation and blog work takes up a lot of time and I did not have time to sort out this problem however if I did this again and had more time I would have used computer software to take stills from parts of the video scenes, then put them back together and edited the light and dark settings on the stills which hopefully would have given the footage the same jumpy, rustic feel that the rest of the video has. There were a few other problems such as the heart, at first I drew on a picture of the heart on the tic tac box however when I re watched the video I realised a lot of people would not be able to make out what it was, because of this reason I decided to cut out a heart in card and place it on top of the red tic tac box, this would have been better if I thought of this idea at the beginning, because I did not there is a lot of footage where the cardboard heart is not on the red tic tac box which more visually aware people would pick up very quickly, since stop frame animation takes so long and so much of the video has scenes where the heart is visible however I decided re doing all those scenes would be impossible with the time I had, I have done everything else in my power to tackle this problem. Another problem was with some objects appearing in some of videos, e.g. the lighter during the smoking scene, this frustrated me t however I really like how the rest of the scene came out so I decided not to re do this, the lighter itself is not the problem, it’s the colour of the lighter which makes it so eye catching and frustrating however one review pointed out that this added to the ammature, indie atmosphere which I was looking for however next time I would like to be more careful.

This video is full to the brim with metaphors that I thought artistic, imaginative fans of The Shins may appreciate. Mint is created out of discarded, damaged pieces of rubbish, he is confused in the video and does not know what to do with his heart, his heart is a metaphor for his own emotions and feelings the rubbish represents damaging experiences and emotions that people face in life that we all want to throw away and get rid of however they make up apart of our character, personality and generally who we are at the end of the day. On the first draft of the video Mint tried to give his heart to his wallet as well as to the television, this is self-explanatory, this was my slight dig at modern life where people are trying to fill the hole inside with money and material possessions which fails for Mint in this video, the only place where his heart belongs was with another living being.

Another problem I found was that I was trying make lots and lots happen in a very small amount of time while making this video, there are so many story blocks and turning points and the video is not even 4mins long, I thought this could become frustrating for the viewer so I cut out quite a few scenes and ideas e.g. at the begining I was going to have the first Tic Tac box fall off the table and explode into 20 other Tic Tac boxes but I realised that this would have been too much for the viewer to take in and make sense of and this is the reason why my final result is very different from my animatic. Looking over the video now I have realisedt that I was trying to make a small film for the target audience of the Shins which mixed in with the lyrics and atmosphere with one of there songs, there are points where I found it very hard to make the music and video mix and be on the same level due to so much happening in the video. Overall I am rather pleased with the outcome of this project, I have learnt a huge amount about editing, overcoming problems, some computer software, lighting, composition, how to right a storyline for a target audience, how to capture a visual atmosphere from audio and general directing.

Reviews

Room Mates-

I first showed the video to my house mate, he is not a fan of the shins or that form of music but I thought his opinion on the editing and movie style may still be valid and help me progress my work, he looked blankly at the screen and then stated that he did not understand a lot of the video, this could be seen as a good thing since The Shins fans like to see there video and music tastes as being something less than mainstream. Him being confused by it may mean that fans of the shins may like it.

A friend of a friend who is well known for his short movies and editing:

I “actually really like this! It's really creative.

It's got this really weird, indie quality to it...like something Gondry would do.

Is it suppose to be a music video, a short film or an advert? Because honestly I think it works as all of those, the music you've put to it definitely gives it an edge!

Really well done”

I posted the video on The Shins facebook page and my own to try and get some responses from my target audience, these are the reviews:

- Your video is adorable :)

It is actually amazing. :)

More screentime for the Lindt character! I demand it! (came from the version I posted on youtube before the editing)

Conclusion

Very positive feedback from the fans of The Shins however not that positive from those who are not, this can be seen as both a good and bad thing, bad thing because it means that the people who like this will be only a select audience of people who appreciate strange, alternative videos however this can be seen as a good thing as well since the people who like these kind of music are Shins fans which are the audience I have been trying to make the video for, which means I got the style of the video right.