Yet Another New Music Video I Shot With An Xl1

[Waheed AlQawasmi]

Hi all,

I just completed Directing/Prodcuing the Trilogy of the music videos I have been working on for a while. The video is for A Rock Band THE CENTRAL STANDARDS the song is (SO MUCH CLEARER), which has a very powerful and an amazing tone.

Ok let get all technical here. I shot the video with an XL1 with no filters or adapters, except for one shot that I had the wide angle on. I did color correction in After Effects 7. And I also had a porta jib to use for couple of shots.

I hope you like and enjoy the video. Any feedback is welcomed, actually please give me feedback on what you think of the video and of how its all put together. I also redesigned and created my new webpage, it's pertty cool looking. Let me know what you think about it as well.

HTTP://WAFILMS.COM

Peace out,
Waheed AlQawasmi
Film Director
WAFILMS.COM

[Neil Fontaine]

I like your other videos, but I must be honest there were to many annoying things with this one.

Why is the band always blurry?

Why when she is walking especially in the beginning does she keep blurring out, and the movement is so jerky it hurts my eyes. To much fast cuts in the opening part of her walking.

The color color changes when she is walking is cool but it does not fade from one to the other which would look better in my oppenion.

some of the lighting and the way you colored it with adobe looks nice

[Waheed AlQawasmi]

Hey thanx for you feed back. The band is Blury because they requisted not to be in the video, so for me to convince them to get in it, I told them that I would blur them out, It's intentional. Also about the girl being blured in some shot and not in others, is because of what the song is about. It's called SO MUCH CLEARER but everything is hazy and blury every once in a while. Thanx I like the color correction stuff as well.

[Francois Camoin]

Actually I think the blurry band looks great—out of focus far enough to look abstract and to ensure that the viewer won't think you were trying to get it in focus and failing. An old still photo trick to enhance that effect is to have a completely irrelevant small foreground object in sharp focus.

[Jeff Cottrone]

Washeed, dynamic video. I liked all the fast cuts. How exactly do you get that jerky effect? Is it just taking a slice out and forcing jump cuts?

Will you also comment on which effects you did in post and which ones live with the camera? Like...
--it looks like you're changing the exposure, which adds nicely to the jump cut effect as she walks. if this is a camera thing, is it one take and you're dialing up and down, or several takes at different exposures?
--the blurriness: is this with the DOF thing in AE?

I really like the interplay of washed out look and rich colors. Too bad the band didn't want to be in it, maybe just a little too much blurriness with that part. I wanted to see them.

[Waheed AlQawasmi]

Thanx for your comments guys, here are some answers.

I accomplished the jerky effect by what you said. I actually went in and took out 8 frames from each 24 frames on some shots. And some shots I would just cut the frame into three-parts and deleted like the middle part. It sounds like a lot of work, but it really is not, it took me maybe like 2hrs to do for the entire video.

The exposure was actually a trick, I made like a little film fliker thing in After Effects and I just laied it out on the entire video and let it do its thing.

The Blurrines its DOF. In my openion its better to have your DOF done in Camera.

Yeah the band felt that they are too old to be in the video, and they just really into making music.

[Jesse Redman]

Waheed,

The concept of your video was great. Editing, shooting, etc. were all very good. Keep it up.

[Waheed AlQawasmi]

Redman, thanx for your comment. And please people keep the comments coming, I'd love to hear what you all have to say about the video.

[James Emory]

I agree with Neil. I think the effects are too heavy and take away from the video too much. They seem to be too intentional. Too many jumpcuts and blurriness stacked together. You should have found a band that wanted to appear on camera. I've never heard of that before. I noticed the jib overcorrected a small bit for the OTS shot in the studio. I like the video that we argued about earlier alot better.

[Tony Davies-Patrick]

I absolutely hated the "So Much Clearer" video - the story line was OK, but the shaky stuff and constant out-of-focus-in-focus was just too annoying to the eye. I much preferred your earlier Ty Brown clip.

[Waheed AlQawasmi]

Hey guys, thanx for commenting back and being honest about it. It's a good video for what it is. To me this was more experimental than anything. And yes its hard to believe but it took me a long time to convince the band to be in the video. The Ty Brown had a good content for it, this video had a good one but I didn't get to my vision in it. Also I shot the TY BROWN after I shot SO MUCH CLEARER. But I had TY BROWN go out the door first, so I had a bit more experince than SO MUCH CLEARER. Live and learn am I right? so this one taught me alot and hopefully next time I will have a better distinction of where the line stops between too many effects and CC.

Again KEEP THE COMMENTS coming. Thanx all.

[Waheed AlQawasmi]

Any extra feedback is more than welcome. I would love to hear what other ppl think about this video as well.

[Paul Carlberg]

Waheed,

I enjoyed your films and shorts very much, very creative. I'm of a different generation (read older) but the video is very captivating. What impressed me however, was your Macromedia Flash work. Your design, how shall I say? rocks! Integration of the player into the swf file, very impressive. My comments are probably trivial but I have a hard time just importing video, let alone creating engaging swf files and website design. Good work.

Paul Carlberg
High Plains DV

[Waheed AlQawasmi]

Hey thanx for the comment and the complement. I'm glad that you like the design. And yes it makes the world easier with flash video, its playing right then and there.