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Monophobe - Pepper Symphony (9.1 MB, Sorenson 3)
Monophobe - Pepper Symphony (13.7 MB, Sorenson 3)

Web Page up tomorrow. Both clips are now compressed with the Sorenson 3 codec. I think it's amazing quality compared to earlier compression attempts. There are some blocking in the high motion sequence (most notably the first full-color scene) if you do a full screen on it.

Compression was done in Cleaner 5.1 and the gamma has been turned up from 50 to 75 to compensate for the darker monitor-gamma (as opposed to a TV).

About the video:

This is a music video for a song by Monophobe, which concist of me and a my buddy Angelo Cannavo. The footage is split between dance sequences recorded at a new years eve party, and dance sequences we filmed this weekend with a tripod and some attempts at good lightning. These were captured into Final Cut Pro 1.2.5, then manually "scratched" by scrolling up and down the timeline with the cursor really fast, while outputting to the camera (Sony TRV-900). This new scratched footage was then recaptured and post-processed in After Effects 5.5, then imported into FCP for the final edit.

About the music:

Monophobe is an experimental band. The word monophobe itself is a constructed phobia which we define as "afraid to be boring". We experiment in all sorts of music, creating our own style, wheter it be rock, pop, trip-hop or other electronic weirdness. This particular song was chosen after almost everything was post-processed (a total backwards way of creating a music video, I know). I belive this is one of the first songs named after a spice, namely a mix of different peppers called "Pepper Symphony". This song was started by sampling some guitar-riffs, heavily modified vocals and a vocal sampling by Angelo where he says Pepper, then laughs of the whole absurdness of it all. This all happened a year-and-a-half ago, we started to put together the samples then abandoned the whole song. I dug it up and finished it last spring and now we have finally made a video for it.

Random notes:

Neither of us are professional musicians or video creators. This is the first time ever I have used After Effects although I have dabbled a fair bit in FCP. Neither of us can really dance, and that's why we invented this form of visual scratching, and if I may say, it adds a really organic look to the whole shebang. Oh, and check out the neat split-screen

[ 01-15-2002: Message edited by: - - e r i k - - ]

[Demonhood]

entry up.

really enjoyed it. i've done the "scratching" thing with my footage before. but i've never outputed it. nice idea. it creates an almost...pixelation effect (the use of still shots with live players instead of full on straight video).
groovy song too. dance-tastic.

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Compressing video is w-e-i-r-d. Trying to make a better quality broadband version to replace the 33 MB one I ended up with a better quality video that was actually smaller than the smallest version I made earlier, and with better sound too...
http://home.no.net/ekveland/Monophob...rSymphony5.mov
(I just replaced the previous version that was 10 MB for Demonhoods convenience...)

I'm compressing one with almost the same settings, only bigger image at home right now. Hopefully I will end up with a super-quality video with a small footprint (around 15-20 MB).

Oh, and thanks for the kind comments Demonhood. It will hard to stand up to the professional 16 mm video in this category though

[dissimilation]

Hey great job! I really liked the movie. Liked the music even more. Please tell me where I can buy/explore more of your music... [email protected]

"Monophobe" / "Dissimilation" - Hmmm, I think we have similar outlooks on life.

dis-sim-i-la-tion:
the act of making or becoming unlike

Thanks!

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Originally posted by dissimilation:
<STRONG>Hey great job! I really liked the movie. Liked the music even more. Please tell me where I can buy/explore more of your music... [email protected]

"Monophobe" / "Dissimilation" - Hmmm, I think we have similar outlooks on life.

dis-sim-i-la-tion:
the act of making or becoming unlike

Thanks!</STRONG>

Well, the music is pretty unlike what we have done otherwise. Fortunally the two tracks that are on http://www.mp3.com/monophobe/ are somewhat similar in style.

Since I'm the producer of this track, you might also want to check out my music: http://www.mp3.com/grim/

All very old music, but seeing as I already have a creative job, all my resources are pretty much drained when I get home, and I haven't really made music in the last six months or so....

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OK, the broadband-version is now down from 32.3 to 13.7 MB without losing much quality, and gaining a larger image in the process!

I don't know how much more I can separate them, so I'll think I just want to leave it at that. If anybody's interested in an even higher quality video, they can email me at erik @ erikveland.com (remove spaces).

Web page should be done by tomorrow hopefully. Too much real work today...

[breadboi]

very nice. id like to see you guys take that idea one step futher. very well cut, it held my attention till the end.

you've got a smooth track there, also. keep it up-

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Originally posted by breadboi:
<STRONG>very nice. id like to see you guys take that idea one step futher. very well cut, it held my attention till the end.

you've got a smooth track there, also. keep it up-</STRONG>

Hey thanks!

As someone who have submitted the most professional videos here (and basically ruined us amateurs' chance (16 mm music video )), I value your comments imensly.

Yes, in retrospect I'd like to take the idea further. But it was done with just some basic dance-scenes from our new years-party, and then a few tripod-shots of us in the living room for stability and variation.

We should probably have varied it even more. I'm thinking cars in the dark here or something with the same scratching-technique. That would be fun... Perhaps some time-lapsing...

[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: - - e r i k - - ]

[breadboi]

Yeah- its definately an interesting technique. Do you have any other work on the net that I can check out?

oh - and Space Cowboy was shot DV on a DSR-200. Ive only just started using 16mm on my last few projects.

[urbanmastermind]

That really got me goin, that is a great video, great music, great idea... All together: good work.

Oh and yeah...

Where can I download specifically "Pepper Symphony"?

Thanks,
Evan
President, Urban Mastermind Productions - The Best in Youth Film Production

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Originally posted by urbanmastermind:
<STRONG>That really got me goin, that is a great video, great music, great idea... All together: good work.

Oh and yeah...

Where can I download specifically "Pepper Symphony"?</STRONG>

Here, I just extracted the full quality MP3 from the video


And thanks for the cool comments

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Originally posted by breadboi:
<STRONG>Yeah- its definately an interesting technique. Do you have any other work on the net that I can check out?

oh - and Space Cowboy was shot DV on a DSR-200. Ive only just started using 16mm on my last few projects.</STRONG>

Unfortunally I don't have any other movies online at the moment. Our last music video was a lot more amateurish than this, albeit pretty fun. I'll see if I can dig it up somewhere...

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Hey Demonhood, can you update the filesize on the entries-page? It's only 13.7 MB for the high-quality version...
http://home.no.net/ekveland/Monophob...erSymphony.mov

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Allrighty then... two months since I last posted to this thread. I don't really want to put my viewers award vote just yet...

But, do check out this video again if you'd like... even with the smaller version it's excellent quality. And if you have a pair of good speakers (like the SoundSticks), blast the volume up. I just remembered this song rocks

Thanks for the kind comments in the viewer award thread guys