Creating a Mobile Film pt 6 – Reflections

So we’ve completed both of our mobile films. They are both uploaded to Youtube and the links are in the post below if you want to take a look!

Also don’t forget to check out how the process of how we made these films on our

Wikispace - http://markxtctaysteppahmobilefilm.wikispaces.com/Home+Page

and my Flickr

- http://www.flickr.com/photos/taysteppah/

One thing I forgot to mention earlier is the importance of crediting Dark Sky for the track we used in our second film ‘From Rave to Studio’. Especially as it looks like Mark is creating the track in the studio. Obviously he isn’t but we wanted to make this clear as we would be very embarassed if the Dark Sky boys happened to stumble across this and think how cheeky haha! So at the end of the film there is a credit to them on the screen.

From this assignment I have learnt that you don’t need expensive equipment to record a decent film and sometimes the effect of a mobile film is more desired than something that looks very professional. Mobile films are more down to earth and maybe that means people can relate to them more easily. The idea is now that anyone can record anything at anytime and upload it straight onto the internet within minutes. Sharing has never been easier. For example I presume everyone has now heard about the mobile film ‘My Tram Experience’. A commuter on the train witnessed a woman being racist to other commuters and filmed it. They then uploaded this film onto Youtube and within days it had been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. The fallback from this is that the woman was arrested and there has been a lot of video responses. This goes to show the power of the mobile phones we have. In one gadget we can record and upload within an instant!

Our films haven’t had that many views. I think thats mainly because they are quite specific, the best way to get views is to create something funny in my opinion. Or a lot of the times you just stumble on something if you are in the right place at the right time like ‘my tram experience’.

The Final Mobile Films…

Scratches and Drums

 

From Studio to Rave

Creating a mobile film part 5…

Today we have been finalising our second video. Its a similar vibe to our fist one only its more focused on being in the studio. We managed to get some great angles using our mobile phones, they are so small that you can place them pretty much anywhere. I have always enjoyed taking pictures with a strange perspective. When I was studying at city college I took this picture of the mixing desk and they  ended up using it as the cover for the ‘City College’ CD they took to SWSX Festival!

So being back in that studio to record videos for this assignment, I tried to create a similar effect with the mixing desk.

We were still unsure where we were going to go with this film and we decided against getting more shots in the studio as between us we probably had about 10 minutes worth of studio footage. In the early stages of this project I recorded some footage from a gig that I played at. We decided to see what clips of this would look like in the film. It actually works really well, especially as more and more of the club scenes come in as the track underneath builds up. The film now has more of a point to it, if that makes sense. Before it was just clips of Mark working in the studio and on the drums but now it shows the before and after of producing a track. The hard work spent in the studio, followed by the satisfaction of pleasing the crowd when playing the finished track in a club. Luckily one of the MC’s on the video footage from my gig, MC Chunky, is very energetic and dances like no one else. I think his dancing adds some more interest to our film. Again we had to get his dancing in time to the track by Dark Sky but luckily we play a similar kind of music so the timing wasn’t to far out to start with! We had fun playing with reverse and saturation effects on the club scenes. Our aim was to build the club scenes up slowly into the film and then end with them. We used a clip of MC Chunky clapping and slowed it down to create the ending which worked great!

The two final films will be uploaded tomorrow!

Mankind is no Island…

This is quite a sad film, the emotions in it are brought across really well. Its all filmed using a mobile phone although which model is not stated. I think the reality of the situation is brought out more by using a mobile phone and not a video camera, the film looks more realistic and less polished. The harshness of the point behind the film hits you more. The idea of filming lots of different signs to create your own message is great, I wish i’d thought of something like this myself although maybe not for such a depressing subject!

This film was the winner of Tropfest 2008

Short Film made with Nokia N8…

This short film was made only using the Nokia N8 Smartphone. Directed by the McHenry brothers, they completed the filming in just four days! They used no extra equipment to help them out and even managed to enlist the skills of some well recognised actors and actresses.

I think the quality on this video is amazing considering its made on just a mobile phone! I honestly wouldn’t have been able to tell. The only point in the film where I think the quality slightly drops is the car chase. It looks like at points they have attached the mobile phone to the bottom on the car and the filming is a bit wobbly. As you can imagine normally for shots like these, video cameras with special stabalisers would be used. However taking into consideration that this is a mobile phone and not a video camera, I think they did an extremely good job.

Who knows this could be the future of films? Maybe not mobile phones being used as standard, but technology is obviously improving massively by the day. Soon video cameras maybe not need to be so big and heavy, which I’m sure would ease the backs of a lot of professional camera men and women! Im sure we will see mobile films grow in popularity over the years and the quality will just get better and better. This film proves that.

Mobile Films…

This video was most probably taken on a mobile phone, and highlights just how handy having a camera on your mobile phone is. Without it we wouldn’t have been able to see this video; possibly the worst thing that could happen whilst you’re DJing!!!

Creating a Mobile film part 4…

This week we’ve been editing again for our second mobile film. We’ve been using i Movie to edit this film, considering its free its a great program. It comes with a lot of effects, visual and audio, you can load in your own audio tracks and numerous video clips. Carrying on from last week we decided the shots of the mixing desk make a great intro and work well with the intro to the audio track we chose. One problem with using the audio track however is then having to get the clips in time. For example there’s a clip of Mark in the studio, using the mixing desk and he’s nodding his head. It was hard work to get him to nod in time with the music, but to have him nodding along to the wrong beat just wouldn’t look right or believable. Using i Movie we had to move the parameters in tiny amounts to perfect the timing. In hindsight it would have been a lot easier for us if we’d chosen the music first and then recorded the video clips with the track playing in the background so that they would all be in time instantly.

We started to play around with some effects in this film too as we were still not sure where it was going to go. So we were just playing and seeing what happens really. We decided that next week we were going to go back into the studio to record some more shots and see what we come up with.

We originally thought we’d finished our first mobile film but on showing it to our tutor she thought it could be more interesting, so Mark had the idea of me beatboxing a hi hat to go alongside the kick, snare and scratching. I wasn’t to keen but I said I’d do it for the sake of our assignment haha. It didn’t take long for us to record it and squeeze it into our original film using Final Cut Pro.

The making of a mobile film in pictures part 2…

The making of a mobile video…, a set on Flickr.

Just added some more photos from the process of making our mobile film, check them out!

Creating a Mobile film part 3

On to our second video and again its going to be musically influenced. We’ve still got a lot of shots that we recorded in the studios and on the turntables that we havn’t used. We started importing some of these shots into i Movie. Still very unsure of where this film is going to be honest but we thought we’d start by putting some clips together and see where it goes. As we were working we were listening to a mix by a local DJ called Dom Hz and there was a track that seemed to go really well with the clips we were editing. It really stood out, nice melodies and a huge focus on the drums which I loved alongside the footage of Mark playing the drums. We were very lucky to stumble across it in this way. The tracks by Dark Sky and its called High Rise – you can listen to it here

We still need to record some more footage for this film though, and to decide where the second film is going to go… what’s the theme behind it etc.

One of the shots we really liked was a shot I’d taken sweeping across the mixing desk close up. We started to play around with effects on this such as the mirror effect which worked really nicely without looking too obvious.

Creating a Mobile film part 2…

Yesterday Mark and I met up at City College where he works and took some footage of us in the studio and live room. Mark was using an I phone and I used the Blackberry Bold 9900. Both have good quality video cameras built in (1080hd) so getting a good shot wasn’t hard but we still managed to keep the ‘mobile film’ feel. We took some shots of us working in the studio, some shots in the live room and some shots of Mark playing the drums. I really enjoyed filming and getting some geeky shots.  We used Final Cut Pro to chop up the movie, and make a beat out the drums and the scratching. We decided against using any transition effects between clips, the sharpness of the changes between the shots worked really well with the theme of the film. We also thought that the sounds recorded on the video clips were sufficient enough to be the only sounds on the film. We didn’t any extra sounds that hadn’t been recorded with the clips.

Below you can see some pictures from our session in the studio.

Here’s our movie hosted on Youtube