Final Project: Documentation

Preproduction:

Stage 1: Reverse Engineering (Analysis of Linkin Park MTV)
Members in charge: Su Pei and Xue Li

The reverse engineering exercise is a tedious but proven to be a useful and necessary process for the development of script for MTV. In order to effectively and efficiently analyse the MTV that has more than 100 transitions, Su Pei and Xue Li decided to split the MTV into 2 parts, with Xue Li in charge of analysing the first 1:40 minutes of the MTV and Su Pei analysing the rest of it.

After which, to document the script in the standardized Hollywood script format, the members consulted existing examples such as "Batman Begins" and "Lost in Translation", and the lecture notes given. Upon familiarizing the main components, that is, the font, font size, margins measurements, indent measurements and when to indent, both members started watching the MTV and jotting down what was seen.

As a script is supposedly to be a descriptive version of what has to be filmed, it has to be detailed. Thus, the members have to repetitively watch the MTV, and pay attention to the details, making sure that all scenes are noted down. Besides that, there is a need to describe each scene as if there is no visual aids.

However, given the theme of the MTV, it involves a lot of historical and general knowledge to fully describe the short clips being inserted into the MTV. As there are several parts that the members are unable to identify and come to a conclusion together, a third opinion is needed. Thus, Su Pei and Xue Li approached Chris for help, to look at scenes at specific timings to discuss and identity what was actually being captured.

After days on working on dissecting the scenes, the next step was to fit the lyrics into the scenes. This step require members to be very sharp and has good sense of timing. Given the nature of MTVs, that certain words from the lyrics stretched over a couple of scenes, the timing as to when the words changed/ended/started at certain scenes have to be taken note of.

After these, Su Pei was in charge of compiling the script by standardizing the language used, the way the scenes are being described and presented, and making sure the format is correct. In the process of compiling, there are several opinion differences to certain scenes. For instance, the stage in which Linkin Park was filmed was being seen as part of the dessert, but also being seen as somewhere with a bridge by another member. However, in order to have consistency, the elements were changed to follow suit a standard description.

Upon all the hard work, the main content was passed on to Chris and Mark to add in some elements like page numbers, scene numbers, and header and footers.

Stage 2: Brainstorming of ideas
Members in charge: Su Pei and Xue Li
With support from: Mark and Chris

In view of coming up with a narrative MTV, which the music and lyrics have suit the visuals, Su Pei thought of settling the music and lyrics first. As such, she started contacting friends to get songs they composed. Having managed to contact a band call Rika, she approached them and asked them for the songs they had done up. They are a unique band that does a mix of heavy metal and soft rock music. However, upon several discussions withing the group, it was decided that the team would not be collaborating with Rika due to the nature of their songs and lyrics being too hard to fit into developing a narrative MTV. Consequently, Mark contacted his friends to get songs they composed.

However, in order not to further delay the project, it was being decided that the storyline of the MTV be settled first. As such, the first round of brainstorming was done by Xue Li and Su Pei to come up with possible themes for the MTV. Discussions circulated around the theme of love, murder, mystery, revenge, hatred etc. An initial research was also done to look at past years' MTV productions.

After discussions on some random ideas, Su Pei and Xue Li settled on the idea of murder and vengeance, something not as common in MTVs. A group meeting was held to settle on the main ideas of the MTV. Minutes of the meeting are as follows:

Ideas:
- Murder
- CAP5 (humor video on how to get A+ for all modules)
- Just a simple sad love song where the man dies

MURDER
She is a vengeful murderer and she will eventually kill the boyfriend

Why does she kill?
- for fun
- love
- jealous
- secret agent
- money
- psycho
- bored
- boyfriend complains
- possessive

Fatal Attraction:
Shes conditioned to kill because of a past betrayal from her first love. When she first kills, shes scared. Subsequently more and more, she keeps meeting lousy guys. She kills them all. And her love slowly drains out. And she a cold hearted killer that the audience pities. All in all 4 murders including first love.

Murder Style:
- Heart Carving
- Mouth Stabbing
- Simple Stab
- Back Stab
- Neck Stabbing

Possible filming locations:
Park
Town, Orchard

Rough script
Total Running
First minute
1. First shot, girl admiring ROSE camera panning. In white room
2. First love (lyrics will queue this) girl happy with guy
3. First love guy betrays/harms girl
4. Girl kills guy
5. Girl Scared but smiles a little at the end.
6. Rose Scene together with knife and blood, rose withering
Next 45 sec
7. Second Guy, falls in love with her
8. Second Guy, betrays/harm girl
9. Girl kills guy in similar fashion to the first but different camera angle
10. Girl this time show a happier smile no trace of fear or regret
11. Rose scene, rose is slowly decolourising
Next 45 sec
12. Third Guy, falls in love with her again
13. Third Guy, betrays/harms girl in a different fashion from the 2nd
14. Girl kills guy in similar fashion to the first but different camera angle
15. Rose scene, rose is turning cold and blue
Next 1 min
16. Fast fowarded quick cuts killings superimposed interlaced with girls mood improving as video time moves forward
17. Hands dropping into frame to represent more killings
18. Extended rose scene with rose deteriorating even more, perhaps a strong wind blowing
Final min
19. Finally she meets the last guy.
20. Extended lovey dovey scene
21. He screws up
22. She lures him to her house
23. Camera showing closeup of her knife as she walks into the room
24. Fade to Black

Stage 3: Documentation of preproduction plans
Members in charge: Su Pei and Xue Li
With support from: Mark and Chris

Upon settling on the main content/storyline, the members in charge went into the producing the actual preproduction documents with the help of the rest of the members. Knowing the strengths of each team member, that is, Mark being best at drawing, Chris best at budget and resources calculations, Xue Li being best at persuasive writing, and Su Pei at script writing, the storyboarding and resources components were completed with the help of Mark and Chris. The rest of the documentation were divided among Xue Li and Su Pei.

In the process of writing the script, it was being brought up by Chris that the team might need to change the storyline. From his research on MTVs on youtube, the MTVs were built on simple plot, or rather a linear storyline that is straight forward and easy to understand despite having storyline twists etc. As seen earlier, the team storyline is build on complicated subplots. The initial idea for all the plots of killing and explanation of why the killings started, was for character build up and for the audience to empathize with the character. However, as argued by Chris, the restricted timing given by the nature of MTV would imped the character build up and audience empathy that the team tried to build up. As such, the plot was changed to concentrate on just one killing, with good enough reason (betrayal and psychotic illness). Upon settling the main storyline, the script was written and passed on to all members so that the rest of the preproduction documents (i.e. storyboarding, resources and budget estimates, rationale/aim/objective of MTV etc.) could be done up subsequently.

Additionally, as the main aim of the preproduction document is to set the anchor for the project, and mostly for quick internal reference, it was being presented and written in a concise, precise and succinct manner.

Production:

Stage 1: Preparation for filming
Member in charge: Su Pei

Preparation for the actual filming mainly involves the recruitment of casts and setting of dates for filming. As props used could be found easily, they were not much of a hassle. Su Pei managed to get her friend and friend's boyfriend to help out in the filming of the MTV. Dates were scheduled on the 19th and 26th of March. However, upon nearing the dates of filming, the casts had last minute meetings and changes had to be made. As such, the filming dates were changed to the 25th of March and the 26th of March.

As of all projects, nothing goes smoothly. Just before the date of filming, when Su Pei contacted the casts to triple confirm the timing for filming, the casts could not make it for evening shots due to other commitments. In view of completing the project on time, it was decided that the team members take up the acting roles instead.

Stage 2: Filming
Equipments used: Panasonic NV ex 21; Canon MVx 330i; 2 tripods

First day of filming (25th March):
INT. Chris's house.
The team had planned to use Chris's sister's room for the filming. However, upon visiting Chris's room, it was decided that his room be used instead. It was due to a couple of reasons such as, lighting, spaciousness and layout/structure of the room. However, as the room belongs to Chris, it lacked the feminine elements. As such, props such as pink pillows, soft toys, pink blanket/bedsheet were borrowed from his sister's room to set up the setting for filming. Little details were taken into consideration. For instance, for the split second of Girl on the ledge by the window scene, the drawings/paintings and pillows at the background were placed in consideration of how the overall composition looks like.

As both Mark and Chris have cameras, 2 cameras were used concurrently to film the scenes from different angles/perspectives. Additionally, this also helps to create extra footages that could be used for back ups. If otherwise, re-filming will only mean waste of resources and time.

The other noteworthy scene is the emotional scene where the Girl was kneeling in front of her desk, and she stood up after banging the table and swiped everything onto the floor. The actual footage was about 8min long. Chris was lying on the floor with his camera, trying to capture the action of kneeling down, standing up, and things dropping on the floor. On the other hand, Mark was standing on a mini ladder, supporting the camera and the tripod using his arms and body. The angle which he was trying to capture was the action of the hands swiping the things on the table. As such, the camera was positioned from a top view.

However, as originally planned, the things dropping on the floor, with the pen knife amongst them was to foreshadow the ending of the plot. As such, a close up separate footage of the things dropping on the floor was taken. To effective focus on the penknife in a clear yet subtle way, the penknife was deliberately dropped last.

The other interesting scenes would be the emotional scenes where the actress was required to cry. As she is not a professional actress, eye drops were used instead. For the extreme anger scene in which the Girl tear the soft toy apart, cotton wool was used in replacement of actual tearing up of bear. The idea was given by Xue Li who initially insisted that the bear be tore apart, but with Chris unwilling to spoil the bear as it belongs to him. Cotton wool was placed under the bed, hidden away from the camera. After the actress did her act on collapsing onto the floor and pulling hair, she got up to reach for the cotton wool and held them in one hand and reach for the bear in the other.

The last interior scene was the supposed ending scene, with the Girl cuddling up, shivering away in fear and eventually break into a smile. It was supposed to be a night scene but when the team was filming it, it was only evening. To create the night scene in the room, curtains were drawn up. However, it was too dark and the camera could not capture the scene well. Touch light was used but it created too ghastly a feeling. Eventually, some light was allowed to pass through the curtains and the exposure component of the camera was adjusted in order to capture the scene.

2nd Day of Filming (26th March)
EXT. Orchard Road (morning)

The filming started along Orchard Road around 11 plus in the morning. As suggested by Xue Li and Mark, in order to avoid the afternoon crowd from hindering with the filming of the emotional scene (i.e. slapping), the scene was done first.

The first step was to find the right composition. It was decided that the street along Wisma area was used instead as there was lesser crowd. In deciding which angle/side to shoot the scenes. Su Pei suggested that the background be made up of the shops instead of the road. The reasoning behind this was that the street already had people walking, with the cars and buses moving in the background composition, the scenes would seem very noisy, messy and distracted.

Unlike the interior scenes where movable containers could be used was dolly for panning shots, the outdoor filming was met with challenges of taking steady panning shots. Chris suggested going to supermarkets and insert the dollar coin for the trolley to be used as dolly. However, the idea was scraped because the team might get caught for stealing. Eventually, the team decided to use the 'blair witch project' (a movie) technique, that is, camera man moving along with the actresses/actor down the street without the help of any supporting equipments, to produce a raw, 'on the move' feeling. Additionally, this also helped to foreshadow the plot where the supposed couple was on the move towards the realization of the 'unstable' relationship.

The hardest part of all the scenes was the slapping one where there were tons of NG footages. It started off with a fake slap (but was too obvious that it was fake), and turned into a real (light) slap in hope of achieving what was intended. After tons of tries, there was finally an acceptable slapping footage. But further tweaking (using preimere/after effects) was needed to make the scene more realistic.

Lucky enough, the filming of the rest of the scenes along Orchard went on smoothly.

EXT. Punggol Park (night)
The team met up again around evening time to film the remaining of the scenes. The biggest worry then was lighting. However, thanks to the street/park lights, the problem wasn't too big. Adjustments could be done using programs during post production stage. With the experience of filming of previous scenes, the night scenes went on smoothly once the composition/ background of the scenes were decided. As like before, extra footages were taken and taken frm several angles/perspective. Additionally, during the filming of the night scenes, Chris suddenly had an idea of ending the MTV with a splash to make the MTV more unique and not so straightfoward (idea inspired by the park with a beautiful pond).

3rd Day of filming (27th March)
EXT. NUS University Cultural Hall
After 2 tiring days of filming, the final shots were taken at NUS which were used to fill in spaces between transitions/subplots i.e. couple lovy dovy scenes vs. house scenes vs. park scenes.

Extra footages:
Rose scenes.
For the mere few seconds of rose decolorizing scene, a 10min footage was taken to perfect the shot of rose turning (with the help of Su Pei's mother turning the rose).

Stage 3: Music production
Member in charge: Mark
Equipment used: Acoustic Mixcraft, with midi controller

Being not able to find existing songs that could effectively portray the storyline of the MTV, Mark engaged his sister (and himself) to compose the music and come up with the lyrics that was composed specially for the plot of the MTV. The initial idea was to use a simple guitar tune (acoustic music) to juxtapose with the plot of the story. However, after much consideration, the idea was dropped because the music and the plot had too big a mismatch. With all the emotional and dramatic scenes, the soft and slow acoustic music would not be able to match up and portray the feelings well.

As the music was composed from scratch, refinement after refinements were done to perfect the tune for the MTV. From key by key composing, to drum base/brass adjustments, to tempo, and to choice of mix of instruments. had to be taken into consideration. The hardest part of the music production was instrument balancing. That is, to make sure that the different instrumental sounds blend into each other well, with no 'spot' having an instrument intruding and break the melody.

In the process of voice recording (song was sang by Mark!), as cited from Mark, the most important take home message was "distance between singer and mic is the upmost important element".

Post Production:

Members in charge: Mark and Chris
Supportive roles: Su Pei and Xue Li
Programs used: Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Acoustic Mixcraft

Chris was in charge of sequencing the footages, that is to piece up all the selected shots into a single footage before it was passed onto to Mark to add in effects. Basically, the tapes were rendered using the firewire at the media lab and Premiere was used to cut up and join up scenes. The file was then rendered out as avi.

Upon receiving the sequence, Mark used Premiere to further better time the sequence, rearrange the order of certain scenes, and add in effects.Details of how certain scenes effects are done are as follows:

1) Rose decolorizing: Use of After Effects to create the effect. Steps employed: Effect>Colouration>Replace Color. Basically a one footage transformation, that was split into 2 to fit into 2 parts of the plot.
2) Split screen: Load 2 videos on separate tracks, resize both by clicking and on the monitor and draggging it, followed by rearranging and alignment of the screens via similar steps (i.e. clicking and draggin).
3)Transitions used were mainly dissolve and cut to, given by the nature of the plot not needing special effect transitions.
4) Slap scene: To make the scene more real, the timing was adjusted (sped up the pace) and the point of slap i.e. actor's hand slapping onto the actress's face was cut off.
5) Importing of music: The first preview with had the music too loud and the Mark's voice too soft. Thus, the music was adjusted manually for all channels (voice and music pieces) before importing into the video sequence.
6) Importing of splash sound effect: Sound effect was taken from a package that Mark previously paid for. In order to create the appropriate volume and tempo, Mark slowed down the sound effect tremendously and eventually causing it to sound lower and thus the illusion of depth and something heavy dropping into water.
7) Newspaper: Done up separately by Su Pei using Photoshop and added on by Mark via Premiere - video effect>lighting.
7) Rendering: The MTV was rendered in mpeg2 format by the following steps - file>export>Adobe Media Encoder; settings were set at - format: MPEG2-SVCD, Bitrate Encoding: VBR, 2 Pass.

*Roughly 5 revisions were done before the actual MTV was finalised based on opinions by team members and friends. Adjustments were mainly made on the sizes of the split scenes, the lighting of night scenes, the visibility of tears and penknife, the loudness of music and singing, the cutting of certain scenes etc. Additionally, the footages on actor lip syncing was removed as it was hard to pace precisely to the music and the actor was not exaggerated enough in mouthing the lyrics to make it seem like he was singing.

Here is the completed MTV on youtube. Sorry for the decreased quality though~