Before Christmas, dismayed at my university not teaching us moving image (since complaining, they have confirmed there will be Final Cut Pro classes, o yeah!), I decided I was going to carry out a project that involved learning how to film and do post-production. I asked Shaggy Marchant, who is not only a musician but also a media student, to help me create the project. He agreed. Later, I had the idea to do a music video for his song White Sand.
After looking at the meaning of the song and thinking about Shaggy Marchant as a personality, I looked at some music videos for inspiration. Here are a few that I saw:
O and also:
Art Attack
Tactile: High Touch Visuals by Sven Ehmann
MuteMath album cover
After researching the personality, music videos, design and a few other subjects, I came up with a concept. My theme is individuality and originality. It is based on Shaggy’s personality (<–note amazing rhyming there! ;]), I was going to feature a room that looked like a cardboard box. Anyone who knows Shaggy as a person knows that he is big on being individual and not being caved in by mainstream society. My box is a metaphor for individuality. Inside the box, I had lots of motifs related to the song/personality made out of painted cardboard and various found objects. The set looks humorous to accompany the spirited personalities of both Shaggy, and his brother, Pta Marchant, who is the session musician on the video. Here is my set design, made on Illustrator:
Set design for White Sand music video
Over about two days at my house, Shaggy, Peter and I made the set out of cardboard, paint, glue, sticky tape, plastic bags (for the music notes), and various other bits and pieces. Some of the props came from elsewhere, such as the vinyl LP (a painted-over Queen LP), push pins, the postal paper and the frog hat, but otherwise, most of it was our own handy work. It was a very time-consuming process, but I think the props looked interesting and eye-catching on the video. Although not as beautiful as the things I had been influenced by i.e. Tactile, I was pleased that it had a home made feel and reflected the personalities of all the people working on the project, adding to the theme of my concept.
After that, I listened to the song several times and created a storyboard. Here’s the first two pages of my storyboard. It’s incredibly attractive haha:
First two pages of storyboard from my sketchbook
We decided to film in Shaggy’s house in the band room. It took about half a day to set up the room as we first had to clear out the room and then set up according to the set design. However, we had big problems attaching brown postal paper to the wall without blue-tacking pieces on to the wall (we weren’t allowed to as it had been recently wallpapered and was delicate). Eventually, we were allowed to use large pieces of sticky tape to stick the edges to the ceiling. After that, we just put the props in their places around the drum kit (which I originally wanted parcel wrapped, but we didn’t have time) and we were ready to film.
For the filming, I used a Canon HV30 video camera with a mini DV tape, a Manfrotto tripod and studio lights I had borrowed from my university. The filming process took two days. Here are some photographs from the filming process:
Set props
Shaggy Marchant performing his solo work. Peter Marchant performing as session musician
The production crew
Shaggy holding one of the props featured in the video
Shaggy, Peter and their Dad
After the filming process, we went in to post-production this week on Monday right up until today. I was lucky to have Shaggy show me the ropes of film-editing, but it was new for both of us as neither of us had used Final Cut Pro (Shaggy had used Avid before at his university). I found there were problems with continuity due to a lack of footage. Although I had at least 45 minutes of footage, I found that this was not enough, but could not have filmed more due to time constraints. Synchronizing the clips to the original soundtrack was relatively easy, although having absolutely no sense of rhythm, I was terrible at lining up instrumentation to the music (fortunately, Shaggy was better at it than me).
We both took turns to edit different sections, giving creative critique on parts we did agree or disagree on. The final edit was done using Final Cut Pro 7 on an Apple Mac computer at my university. Overall, it took 6 days to complete (although I have yet to burn it to DVD for the television. I’m going to have to wait to get the high quality soundtrack off Shaggy next time I meet him).
Overall, I found the process stressful, frustrating but rewarding and fun all at the same time! The stressful parts included time constraints, limitations of the room (size and capabilities), learning how to film properly and editing without really knowing a great deal about the software. However, I found it incredibly rewarding as I have finally learnt how to use the software, created a project I can be proud of and for a song that I really love. It was great having Shaggy and Peter to help out, and turned out to be fun in the end.
From this project, I feel that I would definitely take up more moving image projects and, as cliché as it is, learn from the mistakes and positives I’ve made during this project.. I will look at doing more music videos, perhaps some other film projects and doing some animation in the future.
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