Creating a video for "Toys" by Frost* (Part 13)

Well, well...I'm published! :o)

The good people at Future Publishing's "Official Playstation Magazine" have put together an article on my video and it is in the May edition...hitting the newstands on Tuesday next week.

Subscribers have been getting their copies early and a few new comments have popped up on YouTube referring to the article.

The article is on page 32 and is tagged as being a "culture" item (hopefully as in "Arts" rather than as in "petri-dish"!). I am, naturally, chuffed to smithereens by this, not least because of the small amount of additional exposure the band will get from it.

There have been a few very positive reactions that I think have actually resulted in people looking into the band and liking what they see. Of course, whether or not this results in any revenue for the guys is in the lap of the torrents but one can only try.

I think this probably means I have just about milked the video as far as it can be milked. The only other thing I might do is drop a line to the Classic Rock Magazine guys (who are also in Future Publishing). They might see a "nut-job-fan" angle in it, especially if the slightly whacky nature of Frost*ie goings-on appeals to their "aren't prog fans weird" agenda (if they have such a thing).

Apart from that, I guess I'll have to think about making something else....bigger, better, whackier....

Creating a video for "Toys" by Frost* (Part 12)

Well, that's that!

I managed to put the widescreen/higher-res version into Jem Godfrey's hand at the CRS Awards last night. I think that's all I'm going to do with it now - not sure I could stand to do much more with it to be honest.... :o)

To round the process off, here is a list of what I thought I was doing....
Scene1 Bedroom
Frost* wordsearch posted on the forum by fellow Frost*ie gr8gonzo
Copies of Milliontown CD
Boxes of Jammie Dodgers
EIMA BOTY '08 poster (should have been anyway)
Frost* wallpaper and forum message ("Gig tonight, bring biscuits! Jem x")
Darwins radio
Apple computer
Frost* window cling
"Cleanliness is next to Godfreyness" needlepoint
Red Frost*ersisk poster
2 band group pictures and 5 individual framed photos the last of which, Andy's, falls down and out of the door (symbolising Andy's stopping live appearances with the band)
Scene2 Waterfall
Telephone box (Milliontown cover reference)
Gig poster
Box of Bourbon biscuits
Raft loaded with more Bourbons, Hobnobs and Tunnocks Teacakes
OurHero is dressed in swimsuit and rubber ring
Here Is The News - newspaper poster declaring river re-routed by a rock-fall - explaining why there is a waterfall and OurHero didn't know.
Sign warning of "Danger of Falling Down" - first EIMA track name reference
Classic Rawk magazine billboard - the two stars either side of the word "Classic" are Frost*ersisks. The picture is of Frost* "Outstanding" (in their field).
Posters contain three more track references "Pocket Sun", "Saline" (anagram of Aliens) and EIMA itself. The wedding photo on the Hellay! cover (BTW I first saw the word "Hellay" used by Jem on the forum) contains a simplified version of the Frost*erisk stained glass window that features in the EIMA booklet.
The What Hobbit magazine poster refers to the Forums love of "old prog heads" (i.e. Hobbits) and how they just don't "get" Frost*.
A sign to reinforce the fact that OurHero is trying to get to the gig.
Scene3 Ego thru Chorus #1
One of two "mega sets" shot in single takes.
The eGo catapult offers free travel to the gig.
The HITN poster suggests that eGo is a good way to view Mount Frost*more.
OurHero sails straight into the huge nose of the carved Mount Frost*more likeness of Jem.
As he hits the eyes say "Aye" (direct lyric reference)
and the mouth says "No" (not so clear on the lyrics here - the printed word says "the head say no" but after several listens I'm fairly sure that is not what is sung. I think Dec sings "the mind say "no" but it matters little really. I think the meaning is that the eys are attracted to the person that the song is referring to (so they say "yes") but the more cautionary "mind" (common sense) advises against.
The next line "Reason ebb and reason flow away" suggests an out of control following of the impulse and OurHero is surfing the wave bearing the word "Reason".
The waterwheel is just a way to get him up off the sinewave.
The location is the place "Easy" and out hero is heading east.
The HITN poster shows that the bridge as collapsed in 7 or 8 pieces ("bridge", "7/8" and "pieces" are also musical terms).
The skateboard ride goes down and around, jumping over the collapsed bridge.
On the other side, 4 pictures play on the lyric "sell your stock in jealouscide" by showing "a cell" (battery), an aircraft's yawing motion, a stocking, and the side of a cello....cell yaw stocking cello side....I know, it's awful!
Our Hero leaps from the skateboard and catches hold of a crane hook over the loading bay of Milliontoys & Co. Est 1976 (1976 is a track that got cut from EIMA - the 1976 here is not really readable though, still)
A large Pocket Sun newspaper poster "predicts" tomorrow's headline that a Frost* fan accused of some fraud will escape in a Tardis....a shocking future crime, no less.
OurHero gets wrapped up in one of the toys boxes and is thus good to go.
The lorry crashes into a lamp post outside the Wonderland (track name) Experience and OurHero is released and runs into the attraction.
He passes a bottle, the label of which says "Drink Me" with the letters getting smaller - I did have a shrinking effect lined up to use here but there wasn't time in the flow of the song to use it so the label is still pretty unreadable.
Scene 4 Looking Glass
This scene is probably the one of which I'm most proud.
After the Cheshire Cat eyes follow OurHero he passes his reflection in the looking glass.
He stops and runs back again and again we see his reflection.
On the third pass his refection has become a scary pumpkin-headed monster whch freaks out OurHero who flees the scene.
The thing about this scene is that LittleBigPlanet doesn't do mirrors - so the reflection is purely an illusion created by having two sack-boy characters, dressed identically as OurHero and each controled by a separate PS3 controller, run past the round hole at the same time. after the run-back, changed the second sack-boy into the monster and then edited the shots toghether.
OurHero runs into the premises of "Know-where"
Scene 5 Know-ware thru Underground
The sign "Welcome to Know-ware" is a play on another EIMA track title. The main thrust of this is that Jem reported that the back-up DVDs for the first album "Milliontown" turned out to be corrupted so the back-up was lost. The first part of this scene (and the HITN poster) suggest how that might have happened.
There are several great albums back-ups stored on the shelves here;
T3E, Kino, Eyes of the World, Metamorphosis, Dark Matter, Discordant Dreams, Pure, Tall Ships and Milliontown.
When OurHero activates the man-lift, the ladder starts these back-ups domino-ing which leads to Milliontown falling into the open furnace.
OurHero flees again falling through an open man-hole (like you do).
He falls into the museum and lands on the large Frost*erised UnionFlag that is part of ProgDog's election poster. ProgDog is an active member of the Frost* Forum BTW.
To the right of this is the EIMA stained glass window, again.
the ProgDog poster is knocked over and falls against a steel sculpture of "EC" twice. When hit, parts of this are dislodged, causing the Steel ECs to turn to "rust" (as per the lyrics).
OurHero has fallen onto and his whirling around on a floor polisher which sends him sliding past the Venus di Millio, a Frost*erisk with its arms missing, and five pictures and some scales representing the lyric "carpet hides the guilty dust away".
Car (John Mitchell's Connaught)
Pet (fellow Frost*ie Beano's little beagle puppy)
Hides (some leather-symbol style animal skins)
The gilt "E" (The Golden "E" is apparently an award that blogs can win)
Duster (a pink feather duster)
A weigh (The Million Ton scales which catapult OurHero up and out of the building).
OurHero falls down the steps of the Milliontown underground station
Scene 6 Underground thru Chorus#2
Our hero passes a couple of signs that indicate this is like a London Underground station. The line has three stops; Easy (where the water wheel was), Milliontown (this station) and The Gig....so we are still going "east of Easy".
Another HITN poster reports that Meteors (from the shower mentioned in the HITN lyrics) have damaged the underground and, sure enough, the train falls into a pit, ejecting OurHero into a pipe of some sort.
He goes down and around again this time landing on the stock graph for Jealouscide Inc. (with 2 green letter "I"s....geddit? Jealous, green-eyes?....never mind....).
The best advice (another lyric reference from Wonderland) switches from "buy" to "sell" as his weight forces the stock to plummet and thus represents a fraudulent act triggering the alarms.
Escaping in the Tardis was predicted by The Pocket Sun poster so OurHero takes the shock and jumps into it.
Scene 7 Solo#1
The Tardis takes OurHero to a stage setting next to a huge version of John Mitchell playing a Cort-shaped guitar. The "CORT" in the headstock actually reads "UORI" which is a reference to the EIMA track "You/I".
John Mitchell's T-shirt reads "I dug the hole" followed by the morse for a full-stop. This is a reference to the morse code hidden in the track "Welcome to Nowhere" where the morse says, "I buried Andy".
Scene 8 Solo #2
OurHero runs across a large player piano which is being controlled by a huge punch-card.
the keyboard is white - like Jem's stage rig - and bears the name "FROST*" in the same Godfrey style spray paint like the flightcase he uses for the Roland FantomG6.
The notes played by the player piano are the actual notes of the solo that Jem is playing.
OurHero runs back into the Tardis.
Scene 9 Chorus#3
The Tardis has taken OurHero to the launch site of the free Forum Air hot air balloon.
Our Hero jumps in for a nice calm ride to the gig.
Of course, the strings holding the basket are not properly attached and shortly after take-off he plummets down and around, again.
Fortunately he lands right outside the Arena (John Mitchell band reference) and runs in.
The crowd are all wearing the new Frost* hoodies and bouncing more or less in time with the music.
OurHero runs up and crowd surfs his way on to the stage where we see him next to Jem on the keyboard.
Interestingly, my stage setup predicted the large red Frost*erisk back-drop they now use and the red Frost*erisk label that Andy had on his kick drum (although Andy's version is smaller than mine!).

END

So there you have it. there were several things I planned to do but missed out for various reasons....for example, the track name references are missing a few tracks but it matter little really.

The question is, what to do next?

Creating a video for "Toys" by Frost* (Part 11)

Happy New Year!! (a bit late but, hey, that's me!)

Well after a couple of weeks of great fun spent with the family it's back to the drab routine of the day-job today (yesterday, actually). It's not all doom and gloom, though.
The CRS Best Of The Year Awards are on Saturday in Wath with awards presented by Steve Hackett along with Magenta and Frost* playing live. Can't wait….should be amazing.
In the meantime, I'm re-recording the "Toys" video following a request to produce a higher-resolution version. I'm forced to re-record it because, like an idiot, I didn't keep the VOB files from my DVD-RW recordings after I had converted them to (smaller) wmv files.
The up-side is I get to address some of the legibility and camera angle issues I had the first time.
The down-side is that I had forgotten how mind-numbingly tedious it was/is stopping and starting my Philips DVD Recorder for every take - the remote is the worst I've ever used - slow and zero tactile feedback.
Still, if I can get it done before the weekend I can hand it to the band and that will be that….on to the next challenge….whatever that might be….

Creating a video for "Toys" by Frost* (Part 10)

Happy Christmas everyone!

Ok, it was yesterday I know but I've only just got around to finishing off the tale of the video!

Well, I did it! I'm not sure how but I managed to put a disk containing my finished video into Jem's hand at The Peel! The amazing thing was how it coame together in the last 3 or 4 hours of the Saturday morning.

When I got in from work on the Friday night I was looking at having to do everything from the end of the piano part of the solo to the end of the track - something like 45 seconds of action. This was extremely unlikely given the previous rate of about 12 seconds a night. I started slowly too, seemingly taking forever to get the "crowd" characters (jumping people in black Frost* hoodies) to move correctly and not break each other. Then I had to do it all again viewed from the side.

In the end, I was amazed at how well these scenes worked. The impression of a gig-lit venue full of bodies bouncing ended up working very well, despite the very shallow scene depth.

Then I had to come up with the final chorus' "ride". I had planned this to be a rocket-powered thing, like a jet-pack but there was just no time to invent and tweak anything that complex.

I was also still stuck for how to get the character from the piano solo to somewhere "above" the gig. In the end I just used the Tardis again (meaning to re-film the piano bit showing our hero jumping into the Tardis at the end of his run but that never happened either) allowing the viewer to just assume the last bit of the Tardis flight had happened.

The ride ended up being a hot air balloon (the e-Go! ride was originally going to be an airship/blimp but that was not immediate enough so this spare idea was still hanging around waiting to be used). Inventing a Hot Air Balloon company call "Forum Air" I rigged it so the gondola would become detached shortly after take-off, providing the last "go down now, around now" bit and dumping our hero at the gig. This needed to be close to night time but making it dark enough for night made it too dark to see so I added red/green navigation lights to the gondola - to help the viewer see the motion.

Rigging the flight took far longer than I wanted and it was past 4am when I got this recorded. The transition between flight and landding outside the gig is a bit off but I was past caring.

I had planned for our hero to arrive on the stage just too late, just as the lights go out and the band have left the stage (squeal of feedback followed by silence, crying etc.). However, there was no way I would have time to set this up in time so I decided that our hero had had enough bad luck and that he would be seen happily on my original test stage with the balloon character band members.

Into the last hour of filming time I sorted the stage out and realised that it looked a bit boring, with the balloon band members just sitting there so I got our here to run around and "pull" the balloon strings of all 5 of them which made them sway side-to-side gently - at least this looked a bit more interesting.

So only the Christmas message scene to go - this was done in 20 minutes and turned out just good enough.

Back on the PC, I pushed the last few clips around and put in the closing caption. I also added the opening caption. Then I exported the whole movie for the first time - which took a what seemed like forever. All that was left was to upload it to YouTube (which took even longer and failed with "unknown" errors twice!).

At long last, the video was there on YouTube and looked....well, a bit rough really. Quite a bit of the small text was unreadable and some other details were motion-blurred beyond legibility but, despite that, it actually worked!

Mrs Pedro had here first proper look at the whole thing and her reaction was exactly what I was hoping for. So I burned some DVD copies and printed inlays to go with the discs - had a shower and got in the car to drive down to The Peel.

Mission accomplished!

PS Reaction to the video has been fantastic, so many people saying really nice things about it - better than I could have hoped for really.

Creating a video for "Toys" by Frost* (Part 9)

"Shonky"
I have no idea if that is (or will ever be) a real word but I found myself using it a lot yesterday.
I guess it's intended as an amalgamation of "Shocking" and "Wonky" and thus it perfectly describes the crazy set-up I've been using to get my video from the Playstation3 to the PC.
It sounded so simple really; record the PS3 output using the DVD recorder. Put the DVD-RW into the PC and import the VOB files into MoviePlus. Edit, arrange and serve on a bed of roughly chopped storyline with a well seasoned reference or two. What could be easier?
Well, all of it really….
Problem 1 - Pilot error
I'm having to "perform" every scene "live", as it were, in a game where things can (and therefore do) go wrong - frequently.
Stand in the wrong place, forget to look scared/happy/angry at the right moment, go the wrong way, miss the jump, get squashed by falling objects….
Problem 2 - Slow technology….and more pilot error
Each of these mis-fires triggers a cycle of :-
- stopping the DVD recorder (waiting for that to be ready to record again). My Philips DVD Recorder isn't very fast at updating the disk and the remote control is, well, "shonky".
- re-cueing the mp3 player (cos I'm timing my actions to the music). My old iPod is a little slow to respond sometimes, so getting to the screen to "jog" fwd or bkwd is quite frustrating
- re-starting the "level" in LBP - having corrected anything that was was working
- hitting record on the DVD and play on the iPod and re-performing
Rinse and Repeat….until the DVD is stuffed with very similar, un-named clips - mostly worthless.
Problem 3 - The world is a dangerous place - particularly when designed by "erroneous pilots" like me!
Each "play" through of my "scenes" reveals a different and usually unexpected way for things to go wrong, not to fit, be too slow or too fast, be written too small to survive the resolution crush on the way to YouTube….and so on….
Problem 4 - My Windows PC….need I say more?
Well, I will. I've been using a single DVD-RW to transfer the files to the PC. So I put the disk in the first time and it correctly read the files.
I took the disk out, erased it in the DVD recorder, and put some new files on it.
I put it back in the PC….and it showed me the first set of files again….not the new ones!
It took me a while to work out what was wrong but if I put a different DVD in the PC first, read that, then put my DVD-RW with the new files in,it read the new files ok! Coupled with this, reading any disk on a PC takes longer when you are waiting for it.
…and so on.
So what progress?
Well, I've now only got the solo section and the last chorus to do….so I'm into the last 3rd.
I have most of it "built" in LittleBigPlanet too. Just need to get it set up and then "film" it.
I do have to go back and refilm the Intro and Waterfall sections (because I got the resolution wrong when importing them) but that *should* be fairly quick.
There are other bits that I think could be better but, hey, I'm not going to Cannes with it!
Then I just need to glue the bits together, export the finished movie, check it over and shove it up the YouTube!
Jem has said he's just too madly busy to give it the once over so I'll just have to loose it on the world and hope he gets to see it at some point.
Then I shall sleep…on purpose this time!

Creating a video for "Toys" by Frost* (Part 8)

Well, three days later and there has been some good progress....at last!

I managed to avoid the lure of the all-nighter and got in three reasonable days of forward motion. I've broken the song down into about 12 - 15 sections and I managed to complete about 3 sections this (long) weekend. The second bit of the solo (man that took some setting up!) and the "I'm an accident, a secret, I'll bother you for years" section are done and decorated. I also got the first and some of the second part of the final chorus done too. The final chorus is different from the previous two because the "story" has to get to the end - rather than tracking the lyrics so much. The first chorus is probably the biggest bit yet to be started - I've left it because it is just a (p)re-hash of what I've already done for the second chorus - should be simple, right?

So I've got about 10 sections just about "done" now, with only some tarting up required. Hopefully I can complete the missing sections in the week, ready for dress rehearsals and the beginning of princple photography (posh name for me hit record, stop delete, record, stop, etc. on the DVD recorder) next weekend. I've taken that Monday off too so hopefully on Tuesday or Wednesday I can get it under Jem's nose for "sign-off" as it were. Then hopefully the Frost*iverse will get to see it....and collectively say; "what the -?" :o)

Creating a video for "Toys" by Frost* (Part 7)

Hell's teeth! I fell asleep AGAIN!!

Woke up at 5am again and fiddled around for a bit but that's another evening gone. It's December 5th today and The Peel gig is two weeks tomorrow.....Waaaah!

Right, I've booked Monday off work so I can hopefully get a whole shed-load done this weekend. I really need to get 9 or 10 of the 11 sections done by Tuesday if I'm going to stand a chance of getting it polished up ready to get Jem's approval prior to the gig weekend.

Hmm...that's a big ask...actually, no....ASK....that is....