This music video has a very similar theme to ours in terms of lyrics, but is only performance based. We'd like to have a lot of performance in ours, but we also want the other element to stop it from getting boring. It's also more of a live performance whereas we want a studio performance.
The lighting kind of fits what we aim to achieve, except for the red sirens/lights flashing occasionally.
The band are a lot older than ours, but still have the more serious approach to their music.
We proposed our water ideas to Matt, and he said that it could work, but would only take up a few seconds every now and then in our video. Our other plan was to include a beautiful 'siren' who 'lures' in the singer. Matt suggested using this kind of idea with TV monitors facing each other at a slight angle. They'd be interacting with each other, or trying to, but there'd always be the barrier between them. In the final shot, the 'siren' would come out of her shot and go into the singer's, or he'd go into hers. We'd connect the cameras to the monitors and film them at the same time. We all like this idea so are hoping to go along with it.
This is the kind of TV we want:
A prototype is a scale version of the project being worked on, from which the final product is developed. Phil showed us a video of how the Williams racing team create their prototype:
Prototypes are very useful because you can see if the final product would work without spending the full amount of money or time on it. It means things can be easily tweaked before the final product goes into development.
Our test shoot is a prototype because it's a smaller scale version of what we wanted for our final video, to see if it looked good. It also allows us to make adjustments to the video idea and structure before we shoot the real thing.
We showed out test shoot to the class again and got some more feedback. I've made a table on the key points that were said and what we'll change to improve it:
To test some water techniques I got a glass, flat bottomed lasagna dish and filled it with some water. I attempted to light it but I don't have my own professional equipment. using the slo-mo setting on my phone, I moved the dish to get waves in the water. I then made some bubbles in the water and used a macro lens to get much closer to them.
At first I did it over a magazine (nearer the end of the video), then I used footage of the singer from the test shoot. It wouldn't be over the actual performance in the real thing, but those clips were the closest I could get to what we'd actually use which would be shots of the singer not lip-syncing, and being quite moody.
Our shoot day at the moment is 7th November, so we need to get all of our planning done by then.
Phil Tidy is from Squire Production Company. He's a music video producer / director and has worked on videos for: Spice Girls, Mcfly, Bastille, Sugababes, Jamiroquai, Oasis, Muse, Shakira, and many, many more. He is also also a co-curator and producer of the BUG at the BFI on Southbank. It's reaching its 10 year anniversary, and is an event 'celebrating creativity in music video' to showcase new and inspiring works.
He spoke to our class today to about the music industry and what music videos are actually for. Here are some notes from what he said:
He spoke to our class today to about the music industry and what music videos are actually for. Here are some notes from what he said:
- A music video is essentially a commercial for the song, and the artist is the product they're trying to sell
- The music industry is worth £4 billion in the UK each year
- 31% of all music is consumed on YouTube
- Michael Anderson (a director) said that music videos "came along in the early 80s and unblocked a constipated film industry and were a creative playground of experimentation and fun, and a proving ground for talent"
- Music videos are a portal to other creativity and getting experience in the film industry
- Directors and crew start on music videos and go on to do adverts, TV shows and feature films etc.
- As a first time producer / director, you need to think about some things such as:
- what will be on your showreel?
- who will take you seriously?
- what skills do you need?
- To get the job you need a treatment, to be able to follow the brief, have a contract to keep to, and stick to the budget
- Budget is important because you need to think about the little things, such as: food, toilets, toilet paper, parking etc. and using what resources you have
- Woody Allen spoke about how on the 1st day on set, the truck of compromise drives in
Phil Tidy then gave us some examples of things that he's worked on. One of them was 'Photoshop Handsome' by Everything Everything.
They had a 1 line pitch from the singer: 'I want the band to be photoshopped and mucked around with as much as possible'
Tidy filmed the band in front of a green screen and sent short clips to loads of different animators to get different effects:
I really liked this video because of how weird it is, and how most of it is done in after effects / post production. We might do a similar thing if we cannot find another cutaway.
The other video he showed us was Jamiroquai's 'Runaway' that he produced and co-directed. JK the singer wanted to be in a space buggy, going around London in a space suit.
I like the different elements of this video and how it's very dynamic, but I don't think anything similar would fit with our video.
This is a video previously done by the school. They use one technique from 1:12 to 1:20, but we don't want to use anything like it because the colours don't work for ours, and the effect in general is not what we're after. The same goes for the bath scene - it's a bit too sad for our theme.
For our test shoot we asked the band to come in costume (mostly black, well styled). Gareth (the drummer) will be wearing a different shirt on the actual shoot, but the rest of the band will be wearing the same or similar.
Today we presented to 2 industry professionals who are art directors and set designers.
We hadn't progressed much since scrapping the police processing idea on Friday, but we showed them the research from over the weekend (my previous blog post), and the test shoot we did last week. They thought that the song fit with what we had so far, and could work as a performance on its own, but adding other elements would step it up a notch and make it more interesting.
Matt said that we can do similar effects post-production, or that we could just do the performance element, however it the water / smoke themed images would work and could be done quite easily. We could get some cool shots of bubbles / smoke using a macro lens (which Philipp has) which we could use as cutaways / our other element.
This is the kind of studio set design / lighting we want:
We hadn't progressed much since scrapping the police processing idea on Friday, but we showed them the research from over the weekend (my previous blog post), and the test shoot we did last week. They thought that the song fit with what we had so far, and could work as a performance on its own, but adding other elements would step it up a notch and make it more interesting.
Matt said that we can do similar effects post-production, or that we could just do the performance element, however it the water / smoke themed images would work and could be done quite easily. We could get some cool shots of bubbles / smoke using a macro lens (which Philipp has) which we could use as cutaways / our other element.
This is the kind of studio set design / lighting we want:
This is an example of a macro shot we could do:
After realising that the cutaways / narrative wasn't going to work having looked at the test shoot, we've decided to change our idea to something more conceptual. In mythology, sirens are creatures with who use their beautiful voices to lure men in and then kill them. They're beautiful on the outside but ugly on they inside, so we want to play with this idea.
1. Snakes - Adam and Eve, temptation, some people are scared of them. Get extreme close ups of one sliding around, or being held by a band member.
2. Fire - get innocent objects and melt them, almost like corruption, or things that are pretty on the outside but get more and more ugly as time goes on. Maybe start with the puddle of what it once was, and reverse the video so it reforms into the original object eg. flowers, lollipops, birthday candles etc.
1. Snakes - Adam and Eve, temptation, some people are scared of them. Get extreme close ups of one sliding around, or being held by a band member.
2. Fire - get innocent objects and melt them, almost like corruption, or things that are pretty on the outside but get more and more ugly as time goes on. Maybe start with the puddle of what it once was, and reverse the video so it reforms into the original object eg. flowers, lollipops, birthday candles etc.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/102456960249702204/?lp=true
3. Distortion - using water and smoke to hide or distort the faces of the band in the cutaways. Inspiration from the photographer / artist Laurence Demaison
We showed our class the test shoot, and they made the following points:
- The police processing cutaways don't fit with the genre and feel of the song
- to fix this, we are taking out the police processing elements in favour of something more conceptual that may relate to sirens (eg. water)
- The band looks good together
- we'll keep the cast and costumes as they are because they fit well
- There aren't enough cutaways
- we'll add more of the conceptual clips into it and make them longer 'sprinkle them throughout'
- There wasn't enough variation in shots of the band
- mainly due to time constraints for the test shoot, we couldn't get as many shots as we wanted, so in the real thing we'll get lots of shots of each band member eg. close ups of the hands, drum cymbals etc.
We shot our test shoot today in the studio, starting with the cutaway elements: fingerprints, mugshots, line up, and pocket emptying. Philipp edited it all afterwards with Premiere Pro. Harriet, Philipp and I were the 'actors' in these because we did them during the lesson to save time and to see if it works. We used Philipp's Black Magic camera to make it look as good as we could get it. Here are some shots of production:
Here are some screenshots of the footage (including one of me doing playback):
So far, we're liking the style, and we've found that the the band work well together and are all good at performing in front of the camera. However, we do have an issue with the cutaways. The jokey feel of them doesn't fit with the more serious song, so we feel like we need to come up with another idea to fit it.
Luke thought that we didn't need a reason as to why they're arrested, but make it 'authority is against them' in a way. He and Phil suggested having them play in the back of a van again, however we don't think this will be easy to film or look good, so we want to stick to a studio performance.
We do want to take Luke's advice of having them pulled over in a van, and pulled out by a police officer (maybe carrying their instruments) then 'arrested' - which we won't actually show.
We'll scrap the polygraph as it wouldn't look very good, and will scrap the reasons for arrest on the mug shot boards (still keeping the mugshots in general). We'll make it less serious by having the band muck around with the fingerprint ink and put black handprints on the walls and each other. In the line up, they'll be disruptive, pushing each other, smoking a cigarette etc. There's also the idea to have them empty their pockets / take off their belts etc. because we think we can make it slightly comical, with heaps of cigarettes, lighters, pocket change etc.
This is our final cast list which will be sent to teachers so they know who will be out of class on our shoot day.
Phil sent a copyright request to the record label who's song we want to use for our video:
This was their reply:
I made a fake Instagram page of someone who would be in our target audience:
He is:
- outgoing
- in the age bracket of 15-25
- into music (plays guitar and goes to concerts)
- cool / rebellious
We told Phil our idea again and he gave us some feedback:
- He thinks that if we do it the way we were planing to, the band might look like they're taking themselves too seriously, so to change this slightly, we're adding the reason that they're being arrested to the mug shot boards (as shown in the picture) with things like 'instrument theft' 'stealing guitars' 'stealing amps' 'drumming in public' 'illegal postering'.
- These may answer the question 'why were they arrested?' or 'why are they in the station?'
- They'll also make the band look more fun and rebellious rather than serious, so it's better for their image.
- To fit this, we could also have cutaways to the band doing the crimes eg. running down the road with an amp, or having the tags still on the guitar in the studio.
My group and I researched 3 similar bands to ours: Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys, and Rival Sons. I did Royal Blood, Phil did Rival Sons, and H did Arctic Monkeys. I chose 3 of their videos, and looked at each one to see what conventions each of them had with a number of categories (eg camera, editing etc.). We then looked at all bands together to find similarities between them all.
Phil sent an email to our cast to try and get them together to see if they have chemistry and will look good as a band together.
Vocals - Sam
Drums - Gareth
Bass - Eddie
Guitar - Jojo
Vocals - Sam
Drums - Gareth
Bass - Eddie
Guitar - Jojo
