Mood Board

As you can see below, my mood board comprises stuff from the 1950’s. American 50’s, particularly. It was a very optimistic time, World War II was over and done with, the baby boomers were making babies. Elvis was rocking, Marilyn and Marlon Brando were stars. The first satellite, the Russian Sputnik, was launched successfully. The women of the decade wore stiletto heels, gloves that reached their elbows, and fancy hats like berets. The men wore denim jeans — which became fashionable at that time, had their hair done a la Elvis, and drove huge cars.

Stylised Video Clip

After my mood board was done, I watched the Duck and Cover movie clip. Then I realised my mood board’s style was similar to the clip’s — which was shot in the 50’s. I didn’t want to augment the clip with visual components from my mood board because it was pointless fusing it with graphics from the same decade. It wouldn’t stand out.

So I decided to make my Week 10 pastiche clip a dark parody of U.S. military confidence. I found the Duck and Cover section of video I wanted, clipped it, and deleted the sound. Then, I scoured the Web for special effects and audio clips. I found a nice short recording of Eleanor Roosevelt (you hear her at the beginning of the video) and some Rambo and Alien movie voice samples. In addition, I found sound effects of ‘aoogah horns’, explosions, jet planes flying past, and air-to-ground missiles blasting targets. Perfect.

After mixing the elements into my Duck and Cover redux, I altered the hue and saturation of the video clip to make it greenish, added an old TV effect, as well as sped up the overall clip by some 25%. I also sped up Eleanor and Rambo’s audio to get them sounding Chipmunk-like. For good measure, I added light flashes a split second before the bombs went off in the video.

To watch ‘An Unconquerable People’, click here: http://vimeo.com/1864818