Client: N/A. Third year University project.

Need: To portray the evolution of any chosen subject through video.

Solution: To portray the Evolution of Hip Hop through a 1min video and sound presentation.

Specific Objectives: Use a mix of live video footage from a camera phone, Flash animation, text and a hip hop related soundtrack, composited together using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere, to produce a graffiti wall effect.

Additional Notes: Flash animations of the DJ, emcee, b-boy and graffiti artist were rendered with a green background which was then removed using the key color tool to give the impression they are superimposed on the wall. The text was created in Photoshop CS2 with noise effects added to give a spray-paint-like effect. Similarly, noise was also added to the video footage to give a grainy paint look. The spray can was modelled, textured and rendered using 3DS Max 8, again with a green background which was removed. The following passage from the project documentation best describes the choice of soundtrack, which was composed in Sony Sound Forge:

As this project is based around a music culture it is important to include a relevant soundtrack. The video plays with the idea of the evolution of hip hop, so it was decided to separate the background music from the video. The visual aspect of the video informs people of what hip hop comprises of and it’s origins, the music however, features older songs which blend into newer hip hop songs over the course of the sixty seconds, hence showing evolution. There is no need to show any visual evolution as the music is powerful enough to do the job.

Tools: 3DS Max 8, Macromedia Flash 8, Adobe After Effects 7, Photoshop CS2, Sony Sound Forge.