Narrative: Conclusion and final piece

Overall i think my final piece ended up exactly how i imagined it, it took a lot of rummaging around the internet to find the plug-ins and techniques i needed to pull what i had imagined off, but i think it worked well in the end.

If i could do it again i would choose to finish the song, but due to the timescale we were given i chose to do only the first verse and chorus as to not make the video too long, and to give myself sufficient room to breathe when producing it.

What i feel didn't work too well is the first stage is a bit dim due to the effects applied to it, but looks too bare without them there, as i could not justify having mismatching effects and for the sake of keeping it together i kept the effects and will have to hope the dimness doesn't ruin the final feel of the video.

i feel the timescale wasn't too restrictive, but it was challenging due to having to learn the program as i went along.

""My final piece is too big to upload at the moment, but will be in this space when i can render it for 6 or so hours again""

Narrative Project: Lyrics

These are the lyrics i have used in my composition, it tells the story of the journey of an immortal being going mad after outliving everything that exists.

Narrative Project: Inspiration 2

I am using a similar effect to the one shown in this video, and was looking for ways to improve it, i thought this was a particularly good example, i do not have the time span to create effects as realistic as this one though.

Narrative Project: Inspiration

This video gave me an idea of the sort of lightning effect i wanted running behind the text on stage two, i am trying to make my lightning as realistic and effective as this ones is.

Narrative Project: Design Progress 3

This is a fully rendered version of my second stage visuals, the lightning and rain effects are now complete, and the glitchy typography and distortion mix well with it, i have separated the two stages by making this one a motion background with the foreground being the text and lightning, the sky will move between lyrics. I am happy with this stage now.

Narrative Project: Design Progress 2

Here is a screen of the second stage of my render, currently without the lightning and cloud effects as i implement the lyrics and type better. I would post video clips if it didn't take 5 hours to render them.


Here is the unrendered version of my current type and background of the initial stage, and following it is the distorted and effect rendered version of it.

Narrative Project: Effect Screens

These are screen-captures from my current render, the effects used in this were extensive and took a long to too apply correctly, The RGB split on the text, the lightning and the light burst style objects were among some of the more complicated effects used in this composition to provide the dream-like visuals i was intending for my final piece. In motion these effects are really striking and improved the originally bland looking composition which i will include in a picture in my next post.

Narrative Project: Storyboard

This is my basic idea for the progression of my video, i will be doing it in two stages (Verse/Chorus) I have progressed with basic visuals and decided to go for a mix of space and water creating a dreamlike stage moving into a sky based stage with more focused type to get the more prominent words of the chorus across. I will be doing this all with motion and using strong aspects that compliment music such as stuttering typography, distorted visuals and music spectrum (a moving representation of volume) to combine with the predominately type based project.

Narrative: Song choice

This is the song i have chosen to use in my composition, i will only be using the first verse and the chorus to cover the storyline of the song, and to keep my composition to a more desirable length of around two minutes.

Narrative: Basic Visuals

As an idea of what i will be producing, i found these images which when combined with the song i have chosen i think will provide an insight into the sort of visuals i am looking into producing, obviously reproducing this sort of visual with motion graphics: Especially with a program i am extremely inexperienced with using will be difficult, but i am looking into plug-ins and methods to help produce my desired final product.

Narrative Project And initial ideas

I am now producing my narrative project for my new brief, instead of choosing an existing story or fable, i have gone with the option to gear my production to a piece of video, i will be producing this video on mainly After effects, using lot's of kinetic type and strong mysterious visuals, the song i have chosen to use is Jetpacks was Yes! by Periphery, i feel the strong storyline elements of the song combined with the crazy breakbeat and electronic start will make for interesting compositions and would work well with the style of visuals i am aiming to produce.

I decided on this line of design by first choosing a topic from the brief out of two i had in mind, and then picking this song out of several due to implications of using them.

Initially i was choosing between: Good and Evil / Journey based narrative
My initial ideas for good and evil were as follows:

- Stopmotion incorporating yin and yang and the japanese Legend of it:
- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story done in two minutes using After effects

Both of these ideas proved laborious and were not worth spending time on, when a much simpler idea could achieve a much better outcome, so i chose to do a journey, using after effects over stopmotion to make it more interesting.

i then decided to do it to music, using a song based on a narrative, so i had to chose between a number of songs I had in mind, which took a very long time.