In December, Glitch & Drone was asked to create an electronic Christmas card for commercial property web software developer Estates Today. The project threw up a few interesting considerations and useful learning experiences, so we thought we would write a little about how it came about.
You can see the finished product at the main Glitch & Drone site here
Initially, although we knew that music would be a major component of the card, we still needed a concept for the presentation of the music and the accompanying message. The idea to shoot commercial property decked in Christmas trimmings, although obviously suited to the client’s business and the season, actually came about a little by accident.
Simon had been at a meeting in Bankside in London and had snapped a few images of the lights that are strung around the buildings and riverside there. Reviewing these images later, the notion of property looking good, or more importantly ‘feeling’ good, sung out. A few notebook scribbles later and the basic strapline – ‘We make property feel this good all year round’ – tied the seasonal message with the corporate property offer of Estates Today.
Images + music + strapline = nice card. Super. But in our infinite wisdom we decided that video would be more effective than stills, so we elected to return to the same location to shoot some twinkly footage. This raised a few more technical bumps to overcome and made us realise just how much of the preparation had already been achieved, however unwittingly, in those initial photos that Simon had taken. The lesson we take from this is to always carry a camera, shoot as you go and then consider whether the material or location might be developed and refined later.
The sound and music
There are actually two aspects to the sound in the finished piece. Firstly, there is the musical soundtrack itself and secondly there are ambient sounds taken from the filming locations. Some of these ambient sounds were recorded using the camera’s internal microphone, and so sync with the footage, but we also used a Zoom H2 portable mic to capture different environmental recordings. We think it is worth getting into a habit of making ambient recordings as you travel around because they can often be used as evocative textures in other pieces of sound design and music later on.
The music itself was recorded using Ableton Live 8 and is built around a simple descending phrase, played on a synthetic brass sound and overlaid with a partial major-scale arpeggio played on tinkling bells. Movement is created by an organ sound which cycles through an ascending four-chord sequence, repeating until the final strapline scene, when the music resolves into a ‘happier’ closing major chord. The bells then fade on a small portion of The First Noel over the end-card.
Overall, the effect is of a cool and electronic evocation of Christmas carols, sitting with the nightscape footage and the corporate nature of the card. The trick, we felt, was to be warm and festive without being mawkish and to be corporate without being cold and faceless.
The shoot
Aside from the fact that shooting film in winter, at night, is very cold (and in this case also wet), there are a few other technical pointers which came out of the shoot. Firstly, unless you’re absolutely familiar with your gear and how it is going to operate, take some means of assessing your footage as you go. In other words, take a laptop.
We used a Nikon D7000 to shoot the film and after an initial burst of footage we retired to the pub to see what we’d got. This pub stop was invaluable, not only for beer and warmth, but also because it immediately showed us that shooting at high ISO settings creates a fair amount of digital noise in the video. Exactly how much noise you’re prepared to tolerate probably depends on the final application of the film (and perhaps on personal preference), but we quickly worked out that any sensitivity greater than ISO 800 was just too noisy.
In low light this is an issue: underexposed film would be a real problem in the edit. So we had to ensure that ISO 800 would produce acceptable exposure at night, even if the scenes did become a little more ‘low key’. In practice, this meant we had to manually override the camera’s exposure settings (in video mode the D7000 automatically adjusts everything to expose the scene ‘correctly’) and get outside into the drizzle to shoot (or reshoot) additional footage.
The second extremely important thing that the laptop review revealed was the camera wobble being generated as we turned the focus rings. Even though the camera was mounted on a tripod, it was still not stable enough to remain stationary during refocusing. We tried extremely hard to be as delicate as possible when turning the focusing rings, but in some cases, especially when using longer focal length lenses, it was impossible to eliminate all jitter in the video. Because your final film is only as good as your best footage, every tiny wobble is a problem.
So if you are shooting footage where focus transitions will be involved – which covers pretty much everything bar static talking heads – we would recommended using a stabilizing accessory for focusing. Similarly, using the camera’s LCD screen, it is very difficult to see exactly where in the scene your point of focus is – even the larger screens are too small to be sure, especially if you are squinting at them from an awkward angle, lying on the ground to capture a low shot, for example. Accessories also cater for this, with magnifying pieces that fit over the screen to enlarge the image.
The upshot is that filmmaking is more delicate and requires more specialist equipment than most photography. No great surprise, but worth bearing in mind if you are planning to shoot a high-quality piece of video.
Glitch.
We had intended to reveal how musical harmony is all part and parcel of mathematical relationships and whole fractions. With the tale of Pythagoras’ observation that a blacksmith’s irons made different tones when struck, some harmonious and others not, we were going to show how things with masses or lengths that are exact fractions of one another will produce tones that are in harmony when they are struck or plucked.
There’s a book in my little library of potentially useful books called The Physics of Music. Sadly, it’s largely impenetrable, but it has just become rather relevant because I am currently attempting to devise a public stall that will delight, engage and educate visitors on the subject of science and music.
