Your Insect's Worst Nightmare

That's that then. Just handed in the 6 week client project. I think it's my favourite piece of work i've done so far. I'll start at the very beginning.....

I had agreed with the costume shop at the top of alferton road to hold the spider costume as i would be coming in to collect it on Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning arrived but upon collecting the costume i was told that my card had been declined. After a short venture into town i found out that my landlord had cashed a cheque for the whole term's rent she said she wouldn't until my loan came in. Making my bank balance look.... well rather undesirable to say the least. Any penny of money i had was out of the window and £50 is a lot of cash to ask to borrow. (£25 deposit. £25 Hire) So it was time to get my thinking cap on. Many phone calls later i had the equipment to make a fly costume, albeit a crude one.

1 x Tennis Ball
1 x Black spray paint
1 x pair of tights
1 x black hat
2 x straws
1 x band of black tape
1 x black gloves
1 x set of bat wings !!

Crude as it is, we done it in two hours. I think it looks alright, but i can't even imagine what it would have looked like if my cash situation had have been better.





Jack was only too happy to don the tights and buzz around the set and for that i thank you Jack Brown.....



The filming went quite well. I had to slow things down a little bit as Tom and Jack were getting pretty aggressive. "Slower, Slower". Once again, i kept thinking about Matt Damon describing his Bourne fights as like "a dance". As i said in previous posts, my knowledge of lighting is not the best so i made sure i read though a few of the old hand outs of lighting a scene before we started shooting and i am quite pleased with the way the scene is lit.

I made a rough edit of the film and this is where the panic hit me ! it looked awful ! because the film is one continuous fight/dance, it was impossible to cut parts of it without compromising the film's continuity. There is a technique used to hurry scenes along where the editor chops out large portions of the take leaving in small, important frames and the audience's brain fills in the rest. One example of this is in 28 days later where a character gets into a car and it jumps from his arm on the door, to the slam of the door, to him with his arms above his head looking for the keys then to him hitting the wheel in flustration the audience does not need to see him reach, only see his arms in the air searching. Inspired by this i began chopping up the edit, concentrating much more on the pace of the advert instead of the continuity.

Here is the rough/bad edit......



At one point, i toyed with the idea of having the fly's point of view as an actual insect eye when finding the effect on Motion. I decided against it in the end for the following reasons :

the shot is too short and would throw the audience
it looked a bit tacky
didn't fit in with the feel of the advert

have a look.....



I am not happy with the audio at all. Audio is NOT my strong point nor my friend. I need to improve on it drastically. Although all of the sound you hear on this was done afterwards. I've tried to make it quite light hearted (think TV Series 'bottom' when the fly gets hit) but i'm not happy with it. Using 'Apple Colour' i tweeked a few off the scenes from really golden colour to match the same as the other scenes. Given more time i would have done them all but am only getting used to apple colour at the moment.... Maybe something to learn over christmas.

Aims over christmas :

Get to grips with Apple Colour
Master Motion
Improve my audio knowledge
Get some good footage for my live client project in New York !!


With the advert beinng semi-graphic in places ofcom could rule a possible water-shed or ban. Throughout my research i discovered that due to today's readily accessable internet and the way the public use video sharing sites, it is near impossible to keep 'banned' material away from the public eye. Take these 'banned adverts' for example. The first being for x-box :



I like this advert a lot, although it is quite graphic in places and could see how some people could be offended before the watershed.

This banned mastercard advert however, was soley made to be banned and gain notoriety and publicity.



If successful, the advert could grow into different fight scenes with different insects. Each getting more and more elaborate as the audience's familiarity grows.

Overall though, i am happy with my video. I've been very keen to get my housemates in to view it and give me feedback with i have been somewhat reluctant to do in previous years. Maybe my confidence is growing. Maybe i'm getting better. Or maybe i've done it completely wrong and am barking up the wrong tree..... All i know is this, if you look back on my older posts you will find one written on Monday 18th Decemeber 2006 and it reads,

"Once again, within a few views of my own coursework i don't like it anymore. I don't know if it was seeing everyone else's in the presentations or if i just over-analyse my work too much, But everyone's their own worst crictic aren't they..... Maybe 2007's new years resoultion will be to make a piece of work i actually like one month later...... we'll see what i can do."

I think i have accomplished that.....

I HOPE i have accomplished that......



You can see the difference in the 'golden scenes' from the rough edit to the final edit. I know what you're thinking, the WHOLE thing is golden David !! well, I mean the colouring in the shots not the quality of it.....