Over the course of the post-production process for our music video, I have picked up and incorporated numerous editing and animation techniques in the Adobe After Effects software. They have had impacts that are easily visible, or in other cases extremely subtle. They have really allowed for a spontaneous, exciting music video; elements of which that will really add to the ska flavour. It is hoped that the audience will recognise the satirical elements, and jeers that have been made to oppose the socio-political climate of modern times in an accessible way that will entice people of all ages, and manifest a band that is outlandish, wacky and bold.

Change Colour:

One of the images we made for the cartoon sections of the video was the completely wrong colour and ruined the colour palette we were aiming for on screen. Unfortunately, at the time in which we were doing this section, our schedule was tight so we had to find a quick method that was easy to replicate in case of future instances of a similar nature. The solution to this was change colour. Change colour is not dissimilar to the three way colour corrector found in Premiere Pro. Quite simply, it allows the user to pick a colour found on the screen, or on a layer, and change it to the desired colour. We changed blue to yellow in one of the cartoon ‘cut-out’ boxes, and it really pushed the bold nature seen in the rest of the palette. To make the shape vivid, we heightened the ‘hue transform’ as seen near the top of the image. It made the colour stand out against the rest of the scene, and put emphasis on the youthful, cartoony elements in the shot.

Feathering:

Feathering is a tool that will soften edges, and drop their opacity automatically so they fade into the background at a gradient that is acceptable to the situation. For example, feathering was used during the Trump/Clinton scene to highlight them as a manifestation of the bassist’s mind, and in turn, testament to his confusion, disdain and skepticism. Another usage included that of the vignette. It produced a uniform border around the oval mask that we had created, and allowed for a neat, clean fade into the shot. It worked, and served as an organised border.

Key Frames:

Key frames are essential to the majority of effects that we have used in our video. They act as timings, or points at which an animation will change, or finish entirely. Examples of when they were used include during the hairdryer scenes when the ‘radial blurs’ would distort and ‘blow away’ the band members, or on things that needed motion across the screen such as kisses, and musical notes.

Lens Flare:

The lens flare is a very simple lighting technique that is most prominently found in video games of the ‘3D era’. However, we found a slap-stick usage for it during one of our comic book segments in the video. It really added to the humourous, easy going nature that allows the band to ridicule themselves. It was used when the bassist winks at the camera to add an air of light-heartedness, and the band member broke the fourth wall; almost as if the bassist was flirting with audience and using the lyrics of “just you and me” as a crass chat up line, or innuendo to communicate with the audience.

Mask:

The mask is essential a tool that will cut out sections of a video clip or image which can then be placed over the top of more video clips. We cut an oval shape out of a pink square that filled the screen, and by using the feathering tool that is mentioned above, we made a ‘romantic’ vignette that to sit on top of the bassist’s kiss to the camera; we hoped this would serve as homage to cheesy pre-war love films. By clicking invert on a mask, it will remove areas around a selected portion of a clip/image. We used an inverted mask to cut out the faces of Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton when the bassist is on the toilet confused about American politics. Again, the aforementioned feathering was used but this time to create a thought bubble-esque effect to convey him thinking upon his confusion and skepticism of them both. These inclusions of the mask tool allowed us to both show the activism seen in the ska genre, and enfuse inter-textual referencing to a bygone era in the film industry.

Opacity:

Opacity is a tool that will allow you to choose how transparent or opaque something on screen is. We used it numerous times, such on the vignette border during a kiss scene, and on the politicians representing Democrats and Republicans in the 2016 US Elections. It not only created an environment on screen that was clear and easy to read and decode, but one that conveyed the meta-narratives within the big picture of the video’s main message (such as being skeptical of politics, and being yourself). Furthermore, it allowed us to replicate the famous BBC News on screen imagery because we could successfully drop the opacity on a logo in the top corner of the screen that would make for an almost identical and true to life version of a mainstream media outlet.

Pathing:

Pathing was an essential method to use in our video. Pathing is a tool that allows objects to move around on screen in any which way and direction one wishes them to. There was numerous instances of this pathing, such as the kisses flying off screen (pictured) when the bassist blew a kiss at the camera, or when musical notes were seen floating out of the saxophonists instrument. It added texture to these shots because it meant we could replicate things ‘flying’ out of the screen. It was a dynamic attempt to break the fourth wall, and as mentioned in our feedback for draft 1, dynamism was something we desperately had to improve on.

Radial Blur:

There is a moment in the video when the band are singing into a hairdryer and due to this, they are being ‘blown away’. To visually aid this part of the narrative, it was imperative we used an effect to clarify what was happening. This involved us centering the Radial Blurs and the Radial Fast Blur on the hairdryer, and in conjuction with key frames, we had an effect that stretch the screen and blow it out of proportion at random times and in a chaotic manner. The outcome was very much what we had desired, and clearly illustrated 4 band members so attached to the hairdryer, that it was actually doing them harm to cater to their look so often.

Venetian Blinds/Sharpen:

Part of the humour behind the BBC News scene was that the footage sent in had been amateur, and as such we wanted to make something that looked like it had been filmed on a poor quality phone. Capturing the awful resolution of the scene was really important to us aesthetically because the visuals of this scene had to convey an essence of panic of the public in the middle of this celebrity riot, a riot of which had found its causation in ‘a lack of screen time’ for these vain and ostentatious celebs. To do this, we used the Venetian blind tool to create low quality, nasty looking bars that would flicker across the screen, and we used a sharpen tool to make the shot grainy, and distort colouring.