Extending the idea

My group and I discussed possible locations to film our music video, and due to the song content commenting on the mental state of patients in a mental asylum, we decided to look into some abandoned mental hospitals in the area. We came across a few which all looked like ideal places to shoot our music video. Here is a collection of images to portray our ideas for the mise en scene of our video.

Feedback for Video Pitch

There was generally a positive response about my choice in song, although not many people knew it, which in my eyes I see as a good thing, in that my aim is to produce a video for an organic band, who hadn’t become too over commercialized.

The ‘Skins’ influence went down well with my target audience which is the 16-25 age group, and many males are essentially attracted to Effie, and so the idea of using a girl definitely works well.

Here, I embedded the video I put together on Windows Movie Maker to visually illustrate my idea to the rest of the class. This was also a chance for them to hear the song and to see whether it fitted with the style of video I had intended. The feedback was really positive on the editing, as there is so much scope for what we could do with it. We could make it visually interesting, and explore using different editing techniques and experimenting with new ones.

Someone commented saying that the editing of the video was fragmented and that perhaps it suggests a fragmented state of mind. Confused perhaps, and generally quite messed up. So I needed to find an idea which conveyed this confused state of mind. The song itself is about people in a mental institute, and how paranoia and mental illness drives them to insanity. I now have to think of a strong idea which will go well with the style of editing.

I thought that this video and this type of band would appeal to a more sophisticated teenage audience because of their slightly obscure, alternative music. I can’t imagine this type of band would appeal to those who like commercial pop music by artists such as Justin Bieber, which often falls in the younger teenage category. I think the audience could range up to adults of middle age, depending on their taste in music, but ultimately, my target audience would be the 16-25 age group. The majority of my class fall into this category, and so the positive feedback suggests that this kind of video will be popular amongst this age group. I think this type of band appeals to both male and females, as the song content is about things that both can relate to.

This band has a very organic image, as it is all about their music and their talent to create powerful, meaningful music. I imagine that their money would be made from album sales as opposed to single releases, which means that gradually, over time, they will become more established, and be merited for the quality of their music. I think that because of the content of their music, and the important issues that are brought up through the lyrics, this suggests that they are a really serious band, and that they are really serious about their music. This reinforces their organic band image.

In terms of their clothing, they would adopt Dyer’s principle of being simultaneously ordinary, whilst being extraordinary. They would wear casual, everyday clothing, nothing fancy or spectacular, as I believe that this would be attempting to detract away from their talent and music.

Climbing up the walls music video idea

I decided to express my idea in a more visual way to allow others to understanding what kind of video I’m intending. As I’ve said, ‘Climbing up the walls’ reminds me of something that would be played on skins, so I looked on youtube for the Skins soundtrack and came across a video which was made up of a montage of clips from the series, predominately focussing on Effie.

I love the style of editing throughout this video, especially the way that different clips are over-layed over each other. In order to see whether the music fitted to this style of editing, I converted the video from youtube into an AVI file. I then imported this into Windows Movie Maker and then muted the sound. I then imported ‘Climbing up the walls’ and added this to the timeline along with the video. I then played the two together, and I think it fit really well. The music itself is quite haunting, and along with the image of Effie drinking, and smudged mascara down her face, I think they combined really well together.

Obviously I wouldn’t use this footage, but I will use the concept of how it’s been produced. For example, there could be a girl who’s struggling with an eating disorder, and the montage of images could portray how she never feels good enough.

Ideas for Music Video

Title: Love Lust

Artist: King Charles

Genre: Alternative

The concept of this video is to have a Madhatters tea party, like in Alice in Wonderland, where everything is slightly bizarre and eccentric. This high concept steers away from the traditional music video, allowing originality to be discovered and portrayed. There won’t be any clear storyline or narrative, but we wanted it to be obvious that there was chemistry between the lead singer and a girl. We wanted there to be a long table, like in Alice in Wonderland, where everyone is dressed in peculiar clothing. The lead singer would be at one end of the table, however, he wouldn’t be completely involved in the conversation of the dinner party. He would be observing and absorbing his surroundings, whilst singing the lyrics to the song.

Title: Climbing Up the Walls

Artist: Radiohead

Genre: Alternative

When I heard this song, I could imagine it being played on a Skins episode. Its not the kind of music I would usually listen to, but for some reason, it grabbed my attention. I originally heard this song whilst on a long journey in the car whilst looking out the window. I thought that this would look good in a video, filming a person looking out of the window and watching everything pass by. The song is generally quite haunting, and I think that the video could end up being quite disturbed, especially towards the end where the lead singer screams. I researched on the internet what the lyrics of the song actually meant, however, like any song, there are several interpretations of it. This was my favourite:

“This song is like a dive into depression induced insanity, flooded by nonsense thoughts and illogical compulsions, and of course all encompassing paranoia. This time, it’s like paranoia from the perspective of the person perpetrating the fear, so anyway, either way you turn, I’ll be there. I lurk in your very own pathetic skull, and there’s no time for damage control.”

Title: To Build A Home

Artist: Cinematic Orchestra

Genre: Acoustic

This type of song is acoustic, so the style of the music video would generally be quite slow moving. The lyrics of the song are about growing up, so I though that we could show this through different generations. Perhaps show 2 young children together, and show how they grew up together. The difficulty with this is of course the fact that it would be difficult to find young children and people who looked similar. The artist would be an organic act, as the attention will be focussed on the music predominately. The artists himself will be similar to artists such as ‘City and Colour’ and ‘Bon Ivor’, who visually, aren’t the most attractive people.  

Title: Bad Things

Artist: Jace Everett

Genre: Alternative/Country/Rock

This is the opening credits to True Blood, were a country/rock song is played behind disturbing, weird images. We wanted to do something similar, obviously not quite as weird. But quite dark and sinister in places.

Title: 99 Problems

Artist: Hugo

Genre: Alternative/Country/Rock

Our idea for this video was to accumulate a set of random, obscure images, which would be cut in-between shots of the singer walking through an urban environment, past problematic situations. Violent situations such as domestic abuse and poverty are just some of the ideas that could be used.

Title: Human Qualities

Artist: Explosions in the Sky

Genre: Instrumental/Alternative

Account of Preliminary Task Shoot

What we did

We arrived at the studio in the morning, where we got to meet the band, and watch how they moved in the space. As we were the third group to shoot the band, we had time to see what kind of shots would work, and which ones wouldn't. We noticed that throughout the guitar riff in our section, the whole band moved a lot more, especially the lead singer, who jumped back and forth, flicking his hair. This worked to our advantage because it meant that we could focus on his hair like we wanted to. It also meant that we could get a low angle shot of their feet as they were jumping around.

Problems we encountered

We didn’t experience any real problems whilst shooting the band, as the band cooperated well and listened to what we wanted them to do. However, I was slightly unconfident when we switched roles and it was my turn to record, as I felt pressured due to the lack of time we were given. I found it difficult to make decisions as promptly as I should have. However, together as a group it worked well because I gave some ideas, and then together we came to a decision of which shots would work best.

Mise en scene

We filmed in the studio, which was set up to look very urban and industrial to reflect the emo genre of the band. This slightly distressed feel to the set effectively portrayed the bands punk, emo image, and it was also easy and convenient to shoot in because of the access to speakers to playback the track loud enough so that the band could give a lot of energy.

Lighting

We used low level lighting to fit with the urban, industrial mise-en-scene of the set. This again reinforced their emo band image, that is more natural as opposed to artificial.

Editing

Being the third group, there wasn’t much time for us to edit our section together, so we had difficulties in getting through the whole sequence. If we’d had more time like the previous groups, we would have been able to fit the sequence together in a much more effective way. Despite this, We tried to edit our sequence to show a balance of the whole band, predominately focussing on the lead vocalist throughout the vocal section.

How we think it went
Overall, the only real main issue was the lack of time, but I know that on the day of our real music video shoot, we will have more time allocated to just our group, and so more time can be spent on making sure that we get the shots we want. Despite this, I am fairly pleased with the turnout, and I think we worked well as a group. 

Preliminary Task Video

This is the whole video, where the 4 differen't groups sections have been put together. Our sections begins at 1:25 and ends at 1:57.

Research and Planning for Preliminary Task

After being given the name of the band, 'Acres of Life', we were able to look them up on Myspace to establish their genre. After listening to the track, we confirmed that the genre was emo/indie.

Having confirmed this genre, we were able to look at other bands which came under this category and the ways in which their music videos were shot and how they were edited to enforce this emo, band-orientated image. We looked at these bands:

Greenday

Twenty Twenty

My Chemical Romance

We Are Scientists

We took some ideas from the videos of these bands to determine which type of shots we wanted to include in our video. We established that we wanted to use a low angle shot from the floor, focussing on the bands feet as they jumped up and down. After looking at the band's Myspace, we noticed that the lead singer had long, black hair, so we decided that we wanted to focus on this aspect throughout our section of the song.

We then decided to put our ideas into a timeline, where we included screen grabs from videos of similar bands which we thought would work well in the 37 second sequence which my group had been allocated. Throughout the vocal section, we wanted to draw the main focus towards the lead singer, however, our 37 second clip had an instrumental section, where we would obviously draw attention towards the other band members and their instruments.