Day N' Nite - ID# 386

Neuqua Valley

Music Video

Entry Description

A music video to the song "Day N' Nite" by Kid Cudi. For this video we used Adobe After Effects to the create dream-like animation.

Recent Teacher Comments

• 3/7 3:41 pm - The tracing effect was very cool, but ultimately over used. So I would recommend once you're finished with the effect, try to take step back from the work you’ve done and decide whether it’s aesthetically pleasing or goes with the mood or story you are trying to tell, if not, don't use it. This can be difficult when you spend so much time creating the effect to turn around and throw it away. But in the end, this video would have benefited from more story development and less effects.

Judge 1

Positives: Animation. Far and away the highlight of this video. Very creative, truly made this piece. Clever, inventive, yet still simple enough to fit the style. Well done! Variety of locations and shots. Grocery store, park, abandoned lot, lake, gas station, misc. night cityscapes. All of these added value and visual intrigue to the piece. Moving camera, static shots, shallow depth of field, deep focus/long take, rack focuses, great use of different camera techniques. A music video is the perfect opportunity to pull out all of your tricks and practice. Kept it interesting to watch.

Improvements: Focus/exposure. There are a number of instances throughout the piece where shots are underexposed. Most of the night shots are a stop or two under. Some supplemental lighting was likely necessary. There were some day exposures that fell underexposed as well. To prevent this, make sure you do some test shots and watch the playback on a monitor other than the one onboard the camera. In instances where there is a wide difference between sun and shadow, expose for your subject. If you have access, use a light meter to double check your aperture and ISO settings match the exposure you're after. Beyond that, know the latitudes of your equipment. If your camera does not have a dynamic range that allows for effective night capture, consider an alternate location or time rather than sacrifice quality. You do a disservice to the otherwise very good work demonstrated in this piece. Also there were a number of times when the focus never quite hit during a rack or when the subject was soft and the background was sharp and it didn't seem purposeful. Narrative. There wasn't a discernible story. Aside from some of the scenes taking place during the day and some taking place at night, there wasn't much of a connection to the music or lyrics either. It's OK for a music video to be abstract and non-linear, but aside from the animation there weren't enough abstract elements to make it clear this wasn't aiming for some sort of narrative through line.

Judge 2

Positives: Most of your AE work that had a demonstrated purpose was well done.

Improvements: While some of your AE work added to the story, much of it did not and came across as cheesy. It was mentioned in the description that it was to create a dream state. I'm not sure this was accomplished.

Judge 3

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Judge 4

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