Change of plans. Yet another new idea

I think I've finally settled on an idea for Brief 4. My text sequence will be quite different to what I was thinking about doing before. I've had the idea of manipulating newspaper advertisements and classifieds columns into saying the lyrics of a song by Radiohead called Fitter Happier.

The song isn't a very exciting or particularly melodic song (read: not at all), in fact it isn't so much sung as the voice is generated. But the lyrical poignancy of the song makes me feel the need to portray it in video form.

Fitter Happier is a slightly depressing ballad about consumerism, capitalism and the blue-collar working life. The mechanical voice that "sings" it is fitting with the lyrics themselves because they describe somewhat mechanical human beings - people that exist simply to better themselves or need to better themselves, for more money or power.

I believe newspaper advertisements and classifieds tie into these themes quite well as they're all byproducts of consumerist living. I hope to juxtapose certain imagery with the text to better align with the song's meaning.

For example, for the line, "No more saturated fats or microwave dinners", I am thinking of making it manifest inside a Food Recall section of a newspaper.

So currently I've been scanning in newspaper pages and then editing their text on Photoshop. I will be using masks in After Effects to animate the text spelling itself out on the papers, and probably pan the camera around, showing different areas of a newspaper per line.

In other news:



This video doesn't directly relate to my idea, but I love the use of sand and slides to create a unique visual aesthetic for a title sequence - especially for a movie as fuzzy and baffling as Memento. Very nice stuff.