Final Cut - Weird Sky

Weird Sky Final from Eughan Wooding on Vimeo.

I've included the logo as an opening vanity card of sorts and then included it as a watermark to essentially give Jack some degree of branding. I think this makes the release seem more professional and brings about some cohesion to the project. This logo will likely be included across the digipak as well in order to reinforce Elsewhere Head and otherwise develop some synergy within the products.


The animated title looks great to me, very indie and authentic with the hand-made aesthetic. I think the font is very reminiscent of the Gorillaz but I would also like to note that I used the Cracked animated opening as a reference in order to create my own animation. The way it animates in and out is great as it means there is a natural transition in the animation itself.


I've edited the opening to be a little darker to contrast subtly to the later periods in which Jack's character is shown in the living room - these sections occurring whilst experiencing the 'trippy' effects of drinking the milk, which still acts as a euphemism for drugs. The sections post-milk-drink and pre-wake-up are much brighter and the contrast has been increased a bit too. I would especially like to note that I tried to really fix the action match cut at 0:12 and believe it is as clean as it is going to get, the only way to improve it might be to reshoot but unfortunately that isn't a possibility.


What  I haven't touched on is the over the shoulder shot of the television at 0:24; super imposing the colours onto the  television was difficult as I shot it at an angle, if I were to improve I should have shot straight on. I've noticed it is extremely wobbly and this is something that would be difficult to remedy given the handheld camera already required me to edit with key frames on a frame by frame basis. Additionally, I've improved this section in this cut by adding the static footage during the sections when the colour changes, as if to suggest Jack is flicking through empty channels to the beat.


I included some mild animation in the shot reverse shot section that appears after, the white lines appearing different on every frame to clearly make the viewer feel the section was jarring or strange. The inclusion of the animation here is in order to clearly establish the music video occurring within the music video is not what it seems and to build a connection with the animated sections that will spill over into reality later.


From 0:37 I included the shot of Jack playing the guitar in the overlay. This was in order to provide a focus piece within the sky clips. I think it works extremely well and perhaps the super imposition and overlaying here is reminiscent of the Kinks and Oasis, whom I analysed earlier in my project and Jack has cited as major influences.


Another note is that the use of the clones again harks back to my preliminary video in which I cloned myself using Premiere. The masks used are animal masks and I would especially like to take this time to reference the Beatles as an inspiration for this part, their I Am the Walrus helped me come up with the idea. Additionally, they are also cited as an inspiration to Jack and so I felt paying homage to them was necessary, especially given their developments into the psychedelic genre.


At 0:52, I've refined the animation segment here which originally had a static kaleidoscopic image that was a screenshot from the app I considered using. I have since changed it to a royalty free loop and edited the clip to make it more saturated. Additionally, I've edited in some clips of Jack dancing and walking into the frame in order to make it seem more interesting and add to the psychedelic aspect within the video. This section is then transitioned into the next stop motion and animated segment of the video - I used a wipe that matched the speed of the head that floats from right to left.


The blue psychedelic background is from the Snapchat filter I used on a lightbulb but recoloured to be blue. The stop motion of Jack was difficult to do to the beat but I believe I did it very well, one note I would like to make is that I would have loved to animate Jack's head coming out of his mouth for a second asset but unfortunately I've had to cut this section down due to the animation length. In fact the green and orange animation I added to my animatic. The criticism of the current animation I would give is that I believe making the image more pixelated like in the experimental video I made would improve the aesthetic, making it look like the retro Mortal Kombat games or even the Dada style as seen in Monty Python (below is a screenshot from Mortal Kombat).

Moving on, the animation when the head rotates and subsequently spills animated liquid from its mouth is rather smooth in terms of the transition that occurs. I decided to have the blue screen fill up and transition into a sky as to keep in with the title and theme of the project. This section is one that I'm quite proud of for the creativity behind it, certainly keeping with the abstract ideas typically conveyed in psychedelia. However, if I could have spent more time on the animation to make droplets jump out of the waves more then I would - the amount of detail in the animation being something that might improve it.

I decided for the next shot to contain two clips of Jack looking towards the center of the screen as to break the walls in the narrative a bit as those are shots of Jack sitting on the sofa, the fact that these shots have assimilated within the music video that Jack's character is watching adds to the invasion of reality seen in this video.

The shot at 1:07 with the rotating heads in each corner of the video is actually a small reference. This is to pay homage to the influence of Pop Art within psychedelia. Notably each head has a slightly different coloured background in each corner, this was done in order to mimic the extremely famous Marilyn Monroe portrait by famous pop artist Andy Warhol. Another thing to note is simply that I again used a royalty free kaleidoscopic clip for this section - altering its saturation and contrast slightly.

The clips at 1:19 have been altered to be brighter, as I've previously thought of doing in the Rough Cut 2 post. I removed the overlay that was on and managed to finish the animation; the hands start to flash as I was running  out of time and intentionally skipped out some frames to make a flashing effect, in order to maintain the clearly jarring situation and how it is something that is not real and Jack is hallucinating (as noted by the green disappearing). I would like to also make mention of the audio being changed at this point: the sound effect was changed to a ringing as to fit with the jarring return to Jack from the visuals within the television (the ringing idea came about because usually when soldiers are dazed in films or video games the sound is muffled and all the audience can hear is ringing). This was a royalty free sound effect so it would be fair use but also the music returns with a slightly less severe cut, as to better emphasise that the cut from the audio was intentional.

When cutting back to the three clones, I included another overlaid sky clip as to again reiterate the imagery to the audience. The fact that the lyrics directly say "sky" at this part keeps in with the music video theory I highlighted earlier in my blog.

The next few clips have been somewhat changed in terms of the colour used as I felt a range was needed. Additionally, these sections are extremely saturated and in fact all of the coloured performance clips were saturated up to this point. The reason for doing so was to increase the vibrant nature of the video and provide those LSD visuals that my research suggests are found within psychedelic videos.

The animation that comes out in the next few seconds of the video are what I am perhaps most proud of. Again, just like with the previous animations, I could have added more detail with droplets if given enough time but I spent most of my animation time on these segments which I think really shows in every frame. The shots are rather quick but I maintain the continuity of the pink and blue colours in relation to the live action shots. This section of the video is used to suggest the music video Jack is watching and the fantasy within the television are invading the 'reality' within the narrative; this is shown through it literally pouring from the TV. Even the part where Jack is peeling at his face, I paid extra attention to where his fingers touched in order to maintain the continuity of the animation in relation to the live action clips.

The two shots in 2:05 are meant to be similar as to showcase Jack 'waking up' in the video. The use of his eyes acting as the common image here helps to relate each shot to the other and consequently the 'waking up' part. The part with the pig mask appears to be a little dark and so if I was to improve this part I may have included some more like or placed more emphasis on the mask by having either a few more shots or a longer duration first person shot. I would like to note however that the cameras at school aren't exactly the best and so a better quality camera might have been beneficial; I used a more up-to-date camera in my preliminary video but that was my brother's and so using it would have been difficult as he is quite protective of it.

The last shot remains the same however I included some SMPTE coloured bars. These images are added into the static footage to make the 'breaking of the signal' at the end seem more authentic. This is just a little touch that didn't take too long but I feel makes the video feel more interesting as there is such meticulous detail placed even in the ending - some images only lasting for a few frames in fact.