Kryptic Minds - Can't Sleep Music Video (Final)

Kryptic Minds - Can't Sleep (Unofficial Music Video)

The video opens with a panning still image shot of the Kryptic Minds album artwork.

The first scene is of my friend, Kitt, waking up, looking out his window, and then going back to bed.  This shot then fades out.

A shot of Kitt fades in of him  slowly walking to and getting in his car.

The immediate next shot is of Kitt putting on his sunglasses in his car, which then fades out into the next shot.

A brief shot of Kitt's mirror vibrating from the bass in his car fades in.

The following shot is of Kitt driving his car adjusting his radio.

This is a long panning shot of the Sandy Hook bunkers which was filmed inside of Kitt's moving car.  This shot then fades out to the next one.

A shot of Kitt tossing and turning in his bed fades in.

A shot of Kitt walking down the stairs of the bunker cuts in with the music.

A shot of Kitt walking next to a large gun placement, looking out into the Atlantic ocean also cuts in with the music.

The following shot is of Kitt sitting up in his bed and cupping his head as if he is very tired from insomnia.  The shot then fades out in the next.

This shot follows Kitt as he walks among the ruins.

The final shot is of Kitt looking out towards New York City.  A sea gull flies by as the camera zooms into the skyline of the city before fading out along with the music.

     This music video has a strong meaning behind it.  The song "Can't Sleep" is about insomnia caused by failing to let go of the past.  In this video my friend Kitt is unable to sleep, his sleepless behavior causes him to flashback to locations which are dominated by past conflicts and old blood. This includes the bunkers found in the Gateway National Recreation Area in Sandy Hook New Jersey. This military installation, Fort Hancock, was constructed in 1895 and was used until 1974 as defense of New York against the Germans and our Cold War enemies of the past.  Finally, the video ends with a shot of the new World Trade Center being built in New York City, signifying hope, a new beginning, and shedding of the past.
     I feel that the black and white look of the video successfully captures the depressing, dark feel of this song.  I believe that the occasional shots of Kitt tossing and turning in his bed help portray the notion of insomnia.  I also believe that by coupling the shots of Kitt in his bed along side shots of him driving, walking around the ruins, and looking out towards New York City give the video a very artistic feel.   
     The final product does not match up exactly with the storyboard due to the fact that when I arrived to the site on the day of filming I discovered many more locations to capture effective shots.  These include the shots of Kitt walking along the ruins and the gun placement.  The final product also varied from the story board due to lighting issues.  I originally wanted to film Kitt putting on his sunglasses through the windshield of the car, but the glare made that shot impossible.
     Once I began the editing process I had to decide on which part of the song to use for the video.  I decided on the first half of the song so I could begin the video at the end of the song's intro.  The length of footage I had captured matched up perfectly with the lull half way through the song, making the ending very effective and well timed.  There were three scenes in which I altered the black levels and the contrast.  These scenes included the one in which Kitt gets into his car, when Kitt is standing among the ruins, and when Kitt is walking along the footpath towards the end of the video.  These scenes were too bright due to the sun, therefore I had to darken them a little in order to make the look of the video more consistent from shot to shot.  Overall I am exceedingly pleased with the way this video came out.  I feel that the transitions work well to compliment the movements of the song and that the video does a great job of replicating the look of the album artwork.  I hope to make more videos like this in the future.

Storyboard for Final

 

This is the storyboard for my final film project.  My final video will be a music video for the song Can't Sleep by Kryptic Minds.  This video will be shot in black and white to give it a dark, depressing feel like the song.

John Coltrane Naima Music Video

The video starts out with a shot of two geese swimming in a pond from left to right.

The next shot is of John Coltrane playing the saxophone with his band.

The following shot is of flowers blowing in the wind which fades out to the next shot.

This shot is from behind of John Coltrane playing the saxophone.

The final shot is of a weepy willow in the wind which fades out along with the music.

I tried to keep the feel of this music video very smooth and relaxing to match the mood of the soothing jazz song.  I desaturated all of my footage in order to make the look more cohesive with the stock footage of Coltrane.  I'm happy with the way this music video came out and I hope to make more similar to this in the near future.

Mid Term

       For this image I performed a color correction.  I felt that the original photo of my cat Levi was a great picture, except that it looked a bit too dark and blurry.  In order to correct this issue I adjusted the lighting levels using the curve tool in a new layer.  I also slightly increased the hue level in order to make the image less dull and grey.  Then I applied the sharpen, sharpen more, and smart sharpen filter tools.  I did this to address the slight blur that was present in the original photograph.  I feel that this correction greatly increases the quality of this image and gives it a more artistic and professional feel.

     This image is the combination of two separate photos.  The background is that of Hartshorne Woods in Locust NJ which I took when I went mountain biking.  What I like about the background picture is how it captures a great vista of the Atlantic Ocean along with a beautiful wooded area.  For the foreground I used an image of myself mountain biking which my friend took last summer.  I used the gradient tool to successfully blend the two images together.  Prior to combining the two images I increased the saturation on both of them in order to make them more vivid.  I like the way this composition came out, I feel that it does a good job of blending an image of my favorite hobby with an image of the location where I fulfill my hobby.

     This is an artistic image of my 1991 Vw Vanagon.  I altered the original photograph by heavily increasing the saturation and adjusting the hue in order to make the van look almost surreal.  I then made a duplicate layer of the van and added a radial blur effect to it to make the background of the image out of focus.  Once I did that I erased the portion of the layer in which the van was blurred out in order to keep the image of the van crisp and in focus.  I also accented the outline of the grill of the van with an orange paint brush, I did the same for the Vw symbol but with green instead of orange.  I also used the magnetic lasso tool to select the license plate which I then applied a crystallized pixel filter to in order to block out my license plate number.  Finally I added the word "Volkswagen" in orange above the van and the word "Vanagon" in lime green beneath the van to make it seem as if it were an advertisement of some kind.  Overall I am pleased with the way this picture came out.

      This image originated as a picture I drew by hand using the rules of three lines.  Once I completed the drawing I scanned it into Photoshop in order to work on it further.  The first thing I did was color in every bit of the picture using the paint brush tool.  I highlighted all of the black lines with the paint brush tool to accentuate the outlines of the objects in the drawing.  I then made a new layer in which I created a smoke effect flowing from the nuclear power plant and the large exhaust pipe.  To finalize the image I used a lighting effect to make the sun on the top of the drawing look as if it were emanating light on the rest of the image.  I also used a paint brush filter to smooth out and polish the drawing.  I feel that utilizing the filter and lighting effect in the way that I did makes this composition look just the way I envisioned it to.

      This image is an altered picture that I took of DJ Caspa at Webster Hall in NYC.  In order to improve upon the original photo I first cropped out much of the photo in order to focus the viewer's attention on the stage.  I then selected the word "CASPA" and the image of Caspa himself using the magnetic lasso tool.  I made these two objects their own layers in order to manipulate them further.  For the word "CASPA" I altered its hue to make it contrast the red background. I also added a plastic wrap filter effect to it in order to make it seem shinier.  For Caspa himself, I too altered his hue to make him contrast the blue background.  I used the blur tool and a motion blur filter to make him blend into the image better.  Finally I used the radial blur filter for the whole image into to better capture the sensation of seeing him live along with thousands of other wild fans.  I really like this image and feel that it does justice representing the live shows of one of my favorite electronic musicians.

    In my opinion this is the best Photoshop effort I have made thus far.  For this interesting image I began with a photo of the historic WWII submarine; the USS Torsk.  I edited the sub out of its original image by erasing it out.  I then spliced the sub into an image of a desert to give the composition a surreal setting.  In order to make the sub seem as if it were actually navigating through the desert I used the blur tool along its edges and used the paint brush tool to apply sand coloring along its edges, as if sand were splashing up along the sides of the ship.  I then added a cut out image of die-hard republican rock guitarist, Ted Nugent, on the bow of the ship.  I believe that Nugent's image worked well for this photo because of his extremely pro-military mentality which I feel complimented the presence of the war-time sub.  In order to make Ted seem as if he were really on top of the sub, I adjusted his color balances to reduce the amount of red that was reflecting off of him.  I then crafted a shadow of the submarine and of Ted Nugent by duplicating the image of the sub in black, flipping it vertically, and using the gradient tool to make it fade as it was cast further away from the sub.
     Once I did this I found an image of the suns from the Star Wars planet, Tatooine.  I edited the two suns out of the original image and spliced them into the sky above the desert.  In order to make the suns seems as if they were shining I used the lens flare render filter.  Finally I altered the saturation of the desert slightly to make the environment seem even more surreal and adjusted its curves to make it seem a little darker as if the suns were setting.  I did the same to the image of the sub to make it seem as if the suns were shining behind it.  I am very impressed as to how well this composition came out and I hope to make many more similar to this in the future.

Color Corrections

 The original image.

The color corrected image.  To improve this image I slightly increased the saturation to add more color to it.  I also decreased the brightness and added more red coloring to bring the bricks in the building to life.  I am happy with the way this image came out.

 The original image.

This is the corrected image.  To improve this picture I increased the brightness by tinkering with the contrast of the original.  I then increased the saturation to bring more life to the image which makes it pop.  I also slightly increased the contrast to give the image more definition.  This  is my favorite color correction piece.

The original image.

This is the color corrected image.  I first adjusted the brightness and contrast to make the image less dull and dark.  I then increased the yellow color level slightly in order to make the image more vibrant.  I am happy with the way this image came out, however I was not pleased with the white levels coming in from the windows.

Photoshop Compositions

This is a piece of graffiti by the British artist Banksy.  I divided the image into threes and added diagonal lines to help focus the viewer on the center of the piece.  I feel that by adding the guide lines it is simple to see how this work is well balanced and it effectively draws attention to the center of the image.

 

I drew this picture a few months ago and felt that it would be the perfect template for a composition concept for this assignment.   Once I imported the image into Photoshop I rotated it a bit to center it, then I colored the entire picture using the paint brush tool.  To make the colors flow in an effective way I used the blend tool to combine colors and made the colors opaque enough to see the pencil shading found in the original drawing.  Once I finished coloring the picture I added guidelines with lines going diagonally to show how the image is balanced and centered.  I am really happy with the way this picture came out, it is the best work I have done with Photoshop so far.

Photoshop Composites

Godzilla attacking a lighthouse.  This is my freestyle composite picture.  For this picture I used a photo of the Elk Neck State Park lighthouse down the road from my dad's house in North East Maryland.  In the original photo my girl friend was standing next to the lighthouse, I eliminated her out of the photo using the "clone stamp" tool.  I then found an image of Godzilla off of Google Images, cut it out of the original picture, enlarged, flipped it, and added it into the photo of the lighthouse.  Once I inserted the image of Godzilla into the picture I used the "burn" tool to cast a shadow beneath the beast.  I am pleased with the way this picture came out, for a first attempt at making a composite picture on Photoshop I think it came out pretty realistic looking.

Aquatic Rodeo Hamster.  This is my realistic composite picture.  For this picture I took a photo of my pet hamster and a picture of the pond across the road from the dorms in the TCNJ campus.  I cut out the image of my hamster from the picture of him in his cage and added it to the picture of the pond.  Once I did this I decided the picture needed more to it, so I found an image of a rodeo cowboy on Google Images.  I cut the image of the cowboy out of the picture of him riding a bull and placed it on top of the hamster in the pond, thus creating a giant aquatic rodeo hamster! This picture didn't entirely come out the way I wanted it to.  The green of my hamster's wheel bled through his fur a little and I wasn't able to make the cowboy as big as I wanted since the original picture was so small.  Overall though, I feel that this image is pretty good.

Abstract composite picture.  For this picture I combined two of the abstract photos I had taken the week prior.  I then altered the colors of the branches by taking samples of the colors of the background image and used the "gradient" tool to create a unique blending of the two major colors found in the background.  I'm happy with the artistic and abstract look of this picture.

Abstract Photos

My first three efforts using Photoshop

 15 minute landscape drawing.  This was my very first attempt at drawing with Photoshop and because of that it didn't come out that well in my opinion. It looks too childish and unimaginative, but good for my first try non the less.  Hopefully in the future my landscape pictures will appear more in depth and interesting.

 30 minute self-portrait.  Believe it or not but this painting of myself actually sort of creeps me out because of it's facial details.  The style of this picture actually reminds me of the "Salad Fingers" Youtube videos.  I ran out of time before I could finish drawing my shirt and adding finishing touches.  Overall though I think it's a pretty good first attempt of drawing a person in Photoshop.

60 minute freestyle picture.  I am really pleased with the way this painting came out.  The inspiration for this picture came from an album cover of one of my favorite electronic music artists, Distance.  My goal with this painting was to make it look dark and gloomy in an attempt to capture the grit of big cities, thus I stuck with mostly grey, black, and dark blue for the color scheme.  I decided to use a greenish-yellow color for the lights and moon to appropriately contrast the rest of the dark colors used. I plan on drawing more pictures like this in the future.

About Me

I junior at The College of New Jersey with a major in Communications and a minor in Interactive Multimedia Arts as well as Marketing.  I have enjoyed my time at TCNJ so far and look forward to another semester of learning.  I am interesting in getting into the advertising field when I graduate and living where ever my job takes me.