Sound

The song I’m using for the video is by the artist Robyn and is called “Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do”. I remixed it down to a 1-minute version of the whole song and also lowered the pitch of the voice for it to sound more androgynous to suit the transsexual character. I also slowed it down to make it sound a bit more slurry and a bit of an intoxicated sound. I wanted the sound to connote of intoxicated mental unhealthiness.

Color Grading

The color grading on the video will be quite heavy for more than one reason. Since all of the clips have been shot over a period of time I will grade them partially to feel more coherent but also to add more to the mood I want out of the story. Because I want a somewhat sickly, melancholic and underground look I am color grading most of the clips into a ocean green hue to exaggerate the feeling of low quality fluorescents. I also wanted to exaggerate the green as a reference to green envy and anger.

Instagram Micro Narrative

The general inspiration for the clips is that they are small instagram video diaries submitted by the character. They’re shot in angles to mimic selfies and private drunken state selfie-videos. And the crop of the video has a 1:1 aspect ratio to mimic that of instagram videos. The choice to shoot it in this way was to give the footage a more personal feel and that it would complement the personal hatred of the character.

Montage & Time-lapse

To portray the frustration built up in the song I will be using a montage of clips and also some time-lapse sequences to emphasize that time goes by. Since the song is a list of things that has pissed the singer off I will let the clips in the montage transition as she states the next thing that has irritated her. For some of the clips I will speed up time even more by using time-lapse clips. For the line “These hours are killing me” I will do a time-lapse video of a watch tossed on the floor next to a bed and speed up the hours as it goes from day to night. For the line “The TV is killing me” I will record a bunch of different TV shows for a longer period of time zapping between channels and then speed it up to mimic the sense of chaotic white noise TV can be come.

Final Assignment - Collecting material

For my final assignment I've made a 60 second remix of Robyn's "Don't fucking tell me what to do".
The idea for the video is to have random clips correspond to the lyrics of the song.

My drinking is killing me
My smoking is killing me
My head is killing me
My mind is killing me
My back is killing me
My neck is killing me
Your nagging is killing me
My gut is killing me
My PMS is killing me
My email is killing me
These hours are killing me
My tour is killing me
This flight is killing me
My manager's killing me
My mother's killing me
My landlord's killing me
My smoking is killing me
The TV is killing me
Your nagging is killing me
Ease up, you're killing me
Let go, you're killing me
Calm down, you're killing me
My god, you're killing me
Don't fucking tell me what to do

Over the past weeks I've been collecting snippets of video when I've been out and about to use in my video. I'm shooting on my phone and will be cropping it to a 1:1 aspect ratio to mimic a sort of Instagram video diary that this person has made.

As an experiment I didn't want to stage any of the scenes in the video but instead record things for whenever something around me made me remember a part of the lyrics from the song.
So far that has only accumulated the straight forward clips such as the lines in the beginning of the song. As a result of this I've decided to stage the scenes since i'm not getting the mood I want for the film overall.

Assignment 1 - Reflective Thoughts

For my first assignment I have been working with layering narrative videos with scenic cut scenes from movies and tv-series to create a narrative of a distorted sequence of flashback memories. By merging and superimposing the different footage with each other I was hoping to create a sense of memory-merging, how the brain sometimes connotes certain memories with other random mental images that do not actually belong together. I decided to use a 4:3 format as a reference to old-school CRT screens and home video with a very light static noise filter on top of the footage as well to increase the sense of memory distortion.

I chose footage from the different movies and tv-series that covers all four seasons of the year to symbolise the progress of time and the laps of years going by.

For audio I wanted music that would enhance the mood of the certain periods of time in the person's life. At the start I'm using a slower somewhat angelic sound for the happier and brighter childhood memories which then transcends into a hectic sort of underground rave music for the darker, decadent  and chaotic parts. The chaotic part has an abrupt high-pitched sound to symbolise an abrupt end to that cycle of events that leads into a melancholic state of seclusion.

Collecting footage

For my first assignment I'm going to try to make a non-conventional narrative using no human expression or dialog. It will be done in the form of a memory flashback, using memory fragmentation.
I will be collecting footage from movies, tv-series and youtube clips to create a jagged storyline from childhood up until the moment of that triggered the flashback. Like mentioned I won't be using storyline but I will be using abstract noise or distorted/fragmented dialogue to go with the clips.
I'm aiming to have the clips ready by next week to start the editing.