One Rode To Asa Bay

Here's another film that has a lot in common aesthetically with my Client project idea, the music video to Bathory's song 'One Rode To Asa Bay'. The whole thing was shot in Norway, and apparently cost Quorthon, the band leader, $5,000 to film. Around 60 hours were filmed, but most of this was apparently erased by the director, leaving the band with around 18 minutes of footage....whoops!



There's a lot of fading transitions in here, some of which work really well (the bit near the start where the viking stands up, layered over the monks, looks great) and some of them are almost disorientating. While the story that's being told here (settlers bringing a new religion to a land) is quite different to mine, a lot of the shots of people walking through woodlands are quite similar to what I had in mind for this project.

Client Sketches

Here are a few sketches for my various client project ideas -



This is a storyboard for the viking idea, here's a quick sketch to illustrate my idea where there are two screens on screen, and the viking walks between them -



And here's the first half of a storyboard for the animation idea, along with a few ideas for the little animated character -

Client Research

Here's a few adverts I found on YouTube, there don't seem to be an enormous ammount of adverts for small independent record stores, so some of them aren't entirely relevant, but still quite useful.


This one is fairly straightforward, just says where the shop is, how to contact them and what they stock, and consists pretty much just of shots of the store. Doesn't do anything flashy, but serves it's purpose.


Not for a CD shop this one, but for a local, independent business nonetheless. Again, quite basic, just shots of the store again, but this time we have the store owner talking us through it.


This is truly horrible. A song and dance number for K-Mart's media section. I'll make a note to make my ad absolutely nothing like this one.


This is an ad for a compilation album, and again, it's pretty terrible, but it's a simple idea based in and around a CD shop.

Most of the ads I found seemed either very straightforward and to the point, and the few ads I did find that tried to tell a little story or do anything else (like the previous two) just came off seeming really cheesy, so I'll have to find a fine line between the two I think.

Njorl's Saga

Here's a Monty Python sketch that bares a large of ammount of similarity to my viking idea for the client project -



Around 2 and a half minutes through is the bit that's like my idea, with Njorl riding a horse through the wilderness before ending up in North Malden. The transition between the two locations is class, there's a zoom into a close up of Njorl and then we cut straight to the sign, and voila, we're there!
I don't have the budget to get a horse however, so in the ad the viking would have to wander about on foot. To make this idea work, I think I'd need a really good location too, maybe Sherwood Forest?

More Client Ideas

I've had another idea for the client project for The Heavy Sounds. We open with Clint (the shop's owner) sat in the store, reading a magazine or checking some stuff online. A series of different people walk into the shop, starting off with a few music fans, and then progressing onto some kinda iconic metal figures. I'm still a little unsure as to what I could have here, maybe people dressed as identifiable musicians, the viking from the first idea, and then maybe ending up with someone dressed as Satan walking in to browse through the CDs. Every person who walks in is greeted with a casual "hey man" from Clint.
I like this idea as it shows the shop as a kind of meeting place and kinda shows more of the social aspect of record stores. I don't think it's as good visually as the viking idea though, and the ammount of costumes needed could be problematic and would look really naff if the costumes looked bad.
I'm trying to think of some way of combining the epic voyage of the viking idea with the community element from this one, I'm not really sure if this current idea is the best way to make the idea of community look more visually interesting.

Artefact 1 - Fridge Inspection Survey

Here is the first of my PRP artefacts, a short film called Fridge Inspection with two different edits, the only difference between the two being the soundtrack.
If you could watch both these films (which will take about 2 minutes) and then fill out this short survey - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WPP9MZS (which will take about 2 minutes too, if that!) it would help me out a lot. Thanks!

Fridge Inspection A -


Fridge Inspection B -

Online Location...?

I've been looking through a variety of different independent music shops' websites, and the vast majority of them are very basic, serving as an online catalogue of what's in the store, and none of them utilise any kind of video at all. All the sites are perfectly functional however, and serve their purpose, so this leads me to wonder where and how my video is going to fit into the site.
A YouTube video would be the easiest and most straightforward way, and would get around any sort of bandwidth issues. Having it near the catalogue section (which is pretty much the bulk of the website) doesn't seem hugely relevant, so I think maybe the best place to put it would be the front page, underneath the logo. (Here's the site, as you can see there would be enough space in this area for an embedded YouTube video.)
This would also maybe make the site stand out from other record store websites, as so far I haven't found any that incorporate video of any kind.

Fridge Inspection!

Here's a rough edit for my first PRP artefact. I'm gonna do two more edits with different sound, a creepy one and a funnier one. Enjoy!



There are a couple of sound issues I need to sort out, all the shots from inside the fridge have loads of that fridge hum in the background, haha, so there's a bit of work to be done on it yet, especially before applying the soundtracks.

The Heavy Location?

After talking again to Clint at the Heavy sounds, he said that an embedded YouTube video will be fine for the site, so that clears up the problem of bandwidth.
I'm in the process of drawing up a few storyboards for various ideas, which I'll put up on here when they're finished.
Here's a few pictures of the actual shop, it's very small, but I think it would be really cool to actually see it in the final advert -

Sound FX & After Effects

I've just finished some filming for, potentially, the first of my PRP artefacts. There's a fair ammount of editing to be done, but the bare bones are there and I have a rough edit rendering at the moment. The film makes heavy use of After Effects, and I think so far it's probably the best work I've done with that programme.
I've been having a look around for various sound effects too, and have found quite a large ammount but with varying degrees of quality. I've been thinking about how different pieces of music can work here too, and thankfully this time I'm not restrained by copyright, as the film is not for commercial use, it's just to illustrate a point.

Client Project Ideas

Here's some initial ideas for my client project, which I'm doing for the Heavy Sounds in Nottingham -
- A man puts on some headphones and presses play. The camera zooms into his eye and then a short animated sequence takes place, maybe with a little devil character travelling through scenes reminiscent of classic metal album covers. At the end we cut or fade to black, and see the tagline “....because life’s all about The Heavy Sounds.”
- A customer walks into the shop and as he picks up various CDs, different metal legends (or people dressed as them haha!) appear behind him. For example, he picks up a Motorhead album and Lemmy appears, and says something like “Ooh, that’s a good’un, that one!” [I have a feeling this idea would look pretty tacky, so maybe it's back to the drawing board for this one....]
- We see a viking out in a forest, who tells us about a 'sacred' place. He then goes on an epic voyage, eventually ending up outside West End Arcade, and then ventures into the Heavy Sounds.

Here are some other things I'll have to consider as well -
- If the video is designed to play on a site, how will this be done? It could be embedded on the site, or the site could link to a higher quality version. Will there be bandwidth issues here?
- Copyright....that old chestnut! I was originally thinking of having some classic songs to soundtrack the ad, but this may not be a possibility if the ad is being used for commercial use. Maybe I could get in touch with some local bands to provide music for it?
- As well as (or maybe instead of) focusing on the musical aspect of shop, it'd be nice to be able to show the shop as a kind of meeting point for like minded people, but how to actually achieve this is something I need to think about.

PRP Artefacts Ideas

So, one of my initial ideas for the first one is to re-edit a piece of existing film with different music to change it's atmosphere. I'm still not entirely sure whether to do this with just one scene from a film or attempt to make a re-edited trailer instead. Another idea I had is a short scene that I can edit in subtly different ways to make it either appear as a comedy, a horror, a drama, etc etc. but at the moment I'm having a few troubles trying to think of a basic, easily adaptable scene. It should be something fairly mundane to allow scope for the sound effect to drastically change our perception of what's happening on screen.

Nightmare At 20,00 Feet

What a classic! It's really cool how it manages to make a pretty basic story so compelling, and allows it all to unfold in the same, again pretty basic, location. Good stuff.