Viral Video Project – Finished

Woo! It’s finished!

Viral Video Project – Editing

We began editing by numbering the images and placing them together in a sequence on After Effects. We also resized the images before doing this as they were huge (3000ish pixels by 2000ish pixels), which would have made the hard to edit/render in After Effects. Below are some videos showing how images look when placed together in a sequence:

Viral Video Project – Sushi and Final Tunnel Shots

We started our evening by fueling our bodies with sushi. This was great because I had always wanted to learn to make sushi at home. I was also quite proud that I managed to make some quite good ones on my first go…they were much thicker than everyone else’s because I like the big ones.

Once we finished eating, we drove to the tunnel and began our levitation. This is similar to the shots we had before, though we took more pictures this time and tried to make it better.

We then proceeded to be sick while Kavi filmed us. This scene based around the pun created through name ‘Absolut Sick’.

Here is our director, Kavi, trying on a head and some moves.

Here is a photo of all three of us at the end of the shoot.

Viral Video Project – Filming in Town

We shot our town scene in bournemouth square. The idea was for Kavi to circle us once with the camera whilst we levitated. The reactions we got from random people walking around town were quite amusing, most people stared and some squealed and exclaimed that they wanted to take photos with us. It was also an interesting experience, because people kept grabbing us during the pictures and we couldn’t see anything so we were like “what the hell is going on”. It was quite hard to do this scene because my head kept wobbling too much, so I couldn’t jump high enough in some of the shots. Also, my feet were freezing and I had to keep my legs straight so every time I landed a jump I felt a wave of pain through my feet to my legs.

These are two random girls who wanted to take pictures with us.

This is a close up of mine and Jemma’s heads.

Here is a film crew who spotted us and also wanted to take pictures with us.

This is one of shot from the film sequence of us levitating.

We then put these photos together on After Effects and tried adding different effects to it. I think we will need to do a fair bit of editing to make it look right.

This one with mainly just the brightness and contrast adjusted.

This is one with a ‘light burst’ effect added.

Viral Video Project – Costume and Tunnel and Levitation

After sorting out the heads (which took quite a while because we had to put sponges in them to stop them from smashing when we jumped), we went to the tunnel to take some levitating photos because the outfits were complete. Our original clothes were gonna be just a black jumper and black trousers/shorts, but it’s very cold at the moment, so we decided to shoot this sequence with our coats on and after looking the photos, we decided that it actually looked quite good with the coats, so we will be keeping our coats on in the actual video.

Here we are, levitating. It was quite hard to do this, as we had to continuously follow the sequence of jumping, then taking a step forward. However, we were pretty much blind as the heads have no eye holes so it was quite amusing as we kept walking diagonally and sometimes jumped at different times.

Here is one where we failed to jump, though I still think it’s a really nice photo and it highlights our costumes well.

And here is the film crew!

Below are a few different videos that Kavi made using these photos:

She tried out different effects to help us determine which ones we’ll use in the final thing. I quite like the fourth one, though I think it would be better if the bottle looked more like it was part of the scene rather than just floating on top like a different layer.

Viral Video Project – Heads/Costume

We then got together and made the heads using modroc. However, the balloons we planned to use to model the heads on kept exploding, so we decided that we needed to hunt for some tougher ones. After numerous phone calls to different party shops, we found that no where actually seems to sell heavy duty balloons. So then we just decided to drive into town and look around. Surprisingly, it was at Wilkinsons that we found the balloons we were looking for. So we took them home and slapped modroc onto then to create our creature/alien heads. Below are some photos of our progress.

We has very bad lighting when the photos were taken, so the best I could do to improve them was to make them look like this:

Here the head is drying.

Now it is dry enough for me to hold it.

This is one I made with the first batch of balloons that kept exploding. The heavy duty ones we got earlier were spherical so we decided to change the heads from egg-shaped to round.

Here is Jemma with her head on.

This photo shows both of us with our heads on.

This is when we first drew on the eyes.

We then thought that they weren’t visible enough so we needed to make them thicker.

And here is Jemma with the thicker eyes and golden gloves. I will be wearing silver ones.

Viral Video Project – Location Photos

We went out to try and find the tunnel that we intend to shoot in and when we found it, we took some photos to check that it was suitable and that the levitating effect would work there.

I then made a video using these photos and felt that the levitating effect worked quite well here.

Viral Video Project – Storyboard

So Kavi explained her idea to me and here is my storyboard for what I think her idea consists of:

Jemma and I will be the actors and each photo will show us in mid jump so that it looks like we’re levitating when we put them together. All of our shots will be done using stop motion and photographs, though the parts where just the bottle is filmed may be created using straight film. The camera will remain static in all of the shots. The sound through the video will mainly be atmospheric noises that sound almost a bit eerie.

It begins with a shot of the two alienish people levitating through a street at night. The people around them will be a blur of movement to place a heavy emphasis on the two aliens and how different they are. They may be holding hands because they’re little alien brothers/sisters.

This next shot is a close up of the bottle on the pavement. It will have a similar effect to the previous shot, with the people passing by in a blur in the background.

In this next shot, the Jemma and I will be levitating through a brightly lit tunnel whilst dragging a huge bottle of ‘Absolute Sick’ behind us. We will probably have to draw the bottle in after the photos are taken.

The next few shots will probably show us getting drunk on the Absolute Sick and there will be long shots and close ups of us throwing up. Luckily the sick will be drawn in after the photos are taken.

The last shot will show a close up of the Absolut Sick bottle with attractive swirls and other effects created on After Effects around it. The sound during this shot will be a man with a low voice saying “Absolut Sick…is absolutely sick” or something along those lines.

Viral Video Project – Change of Idea

So it turns out that the viral video project is supposed to be done in groups, so I guess I will have to scrap the rabbit idea. I didn’t really have any new ideas but luckily, Kavi had an idea that I really liked the sound of. The idea was basically to use stop motion in a way that made it seem like people were levitating instead of walking. We then added to the idea by deciding to use alien-like masks to create a greater visual impact and I felt this was appropriate because it was going to a mockery/advert of Absolut Vodka and most of their adverts seem to have strange but strong imagery.

The image above shows the Absolut Vodka family. In the same way that the ‘vodka’ on some of the bottles is replaced by ‘pears’ or ‘raspberry’ etc, we plan to replace it with the word ‘sick’ because there are two connotations of this word, one meaning awesome/cool/ace, which is positive and another meaning disgusting/vile/to throw up, which is negative, so this allows us to present both a mockery and advert of the product.

Below are some adverts for Absolut Vodka:

The adverts themselves look very attractive with strong and memorable imagery, which I think is the kind of look we are going for. The Absolut Vodka family has been advertised in so many different ways which means that there isn’t really any restrictions on what we can and can’t do for it. I really like the actual design of the vodka bottles; their smooth and slick appearance actually makes me want to create an advert for them, despite the fact that I actually hate vodka. I think this might be why Kavi chose this product for us to advertise. Also, even though there are a lot of adverts for this products, from what I’ve seen, there hasn’t been an interpretation quite like ours, which I think will be very interesting because if we manage to do it well, people may start to think that this is a real advert for Absolut Vodka, or Absolut Vodka may even decide to make a real drink called Absolut Sick.

Viral Video Project – Development

I made some rabbit costumes to go with the rabbit viral video idea, as I planned to film many different shots of the rabbit in different outfits:

Rich Rabbit

Snow Tiger Rabbit

Winged Rabbit

Christmas Rabbit

It was ridiculously hard to take pictures of him…he was running about everywhere so about 90 percent of the photos were blurry, and the lighting wasn’t very good so I had to shine a torch onto him, which wasn’t easy as he kept moving away from the light of the torch.