Wednesday, 22 September 2010

POSSIBLE LOCATIONS AND PROPS.

LOCATIONS

- Marshfield
- A house (Bedroom and front door specifically)
- A road with a stop sign

PROPS

- Matchstick house & 'Throne'
- Stop sign
- Posters
- Photograph
- Smile on paper
- Bed
- Group of people

INITIAL VIDEO IDEAS.

I'm sick and tired,
Of hanging out my window.
(Singing out her window)
I've learnt from past experience,
Rain can't make flowers grow.
(Transition into next scene)
And friends don't stick around,
They go which way the wind goes.
(Group of people, one by one, disappear)
You're never safe and sound,
Until all your doors are closed.
(Stood in doorway, singing, slam door)
Doors are closed,
Doors are closed.
(Long shot of girl in field)

When you're awake on your own,
Shadows turn into ghosts. (x2)
(In field, doesn't want to be outside. Going crazy. Camera circles.)

Soon it will all fall apart,
And the roads will have no way.
(Walk towards a stop sign)
And you'll be the one laughing,
As their fences fade away.
(Singing out of window)
And instead of being left there,
Feeling all alone.
(Stood on edge of road, bag on back. Singing)
Breakdown the house you made of matchsticks,
And set fire to the throne.
(Matchstick 'throne' sets fire. House burns too)
To the throne,
To the throne.
(Watch burn until nothing left.)

When you're awake on your own,
Shadows turn into ghosts. (x2)
(Same as before. Different footage)

Home becomes what you're scared of the most. (x2)
(Front door. Walk towards camera. Singing)

When shadows turn into ghosts,
Its what you're scared of the most.
(Face in camera. Singing)

I'm pulling pictures off the wall,
(Posters/Photo of 2nd phrase on wall. Rip down)
Watching smiles as they fall. (x4)
(Smiles on paper. Drop. Frown/Split screen smiles frowns etc.)

When you're awake on your own,
Shadows turn into ghosts. (x2)
(Look around room)

Home becomes what you're scared of the most. (x2)
(Singing)

When shadows turn into ghosts,
Its what you're scared of the most.
(Fall on bed)



This isn't the final idea, this is just what we want to be able to incorporate into our video. We understand that we might not be able to fit it all in, and if we can't, we will compromise. I think our ideas for this video are complex, but not unachievable.

Thursday, 9 September 2010

TIME PLAN.

Myself and Abbie have created a time plan in a website we got told about called Tom's Planner. It is only a vague schedule as we don't know what may or may come up during this time. Hopefully we will be able to stick to it as best we can so that we don't fall behind.

Having a schedule like this allows us to keep checking where we should be at in our project. It means we will have this as motivation not to fall off track and have to catch up on loads of work. We carefully thought out what time we would give ourselves for specific parts of the project and we gave ourselves enough time to make sure it was actually complete. We sectioned the schedule into different parts; Pre-production, Production of Ancillary tasks, Production of Music video and Evaluation.

OUR IDEAS SO FAR.

As we have had a few lessons already, and began thinking about this project at the end of last year, we have already got a few ideas in mind. We really want this music video to look as professional as we can get it so we are looking into using a tripod in parts to make sure everything is completely still. We are more than likely going to be using Adobe Premier Pro to edit the video which is good as we are used to this editing software. With the ideas we are coming up with, it requires a range of editing skills, so we will be experimenting before we use the actual clips for the video.

We've decided on the song, and now we just need to find some actors. We were hoping that Gabby would be our main actress but she didn't want to do it. Hopefully we will find someone who is 'free spirited', so to speak, as for the music video we want, we have a specific look in mind. We need to ensure that we can rely on this person/these people, as we don't want to fall behind schedule. Songs like this usually have a specific type of person being in the video, for example, we have a naturally pretty girl, who is slightly hippyish in mind. We just think that this type of person would make the video the best it could be as it would be similar to the song and who sings it. We also need other actors in the video for some specific parts so hopefully we can find people relatively similar to the actor we find for the main.

We have vaguely looked into locations, and they aren't exactly close but Abbie will be driving soon and these places will become much more accessible to us. Obviously we don't want to spend lots of money on travelling so if we were to go out to said locations, we'd shoot as much footage as we could in that day and see what we could use.

As there are only two of us in the group, it means there is a lot of responsibility on our shoulders so that we don't fall behind. It would be a good idea to start allocating duties for each other so that the work load is shared. We will probably take it in turns filming and editing as we both have different styles of doing so, and it would look good at the end if there is a range of different filming and editing styles in the video.

In the next few weeks we want to get a lot of the research done. This includes Questionnaires which will ask what types of music video people prefer, what they would like to see in a video of this genre, etc. We will look to get answers from people via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Myspace as these are the main social networking sites at the moment. Teenagers these days spend a lot of time on the internet so hopefully we should get a decent amount of answers. We have already used social networking sites to communicate with Gabby about what kind of style she would prefer us to use for her video. She sent me the videos below saying she really likes that kind of video, so we will take all of that into consideration. Facebook is good to use for this project as it means we can all get in contact with each other easily and keep an eye on what we're doing and if we're up to date.

Hopefully me and Abbie will start looking at other music videos and what is put into them. We will look at the camera angles, the movement they use, what kind of shots they use and what lyrics they use them on. We will look at the colours used and what effect the colours used gives the video or the song. Sometimes videos are completely random and others they have a narrative, it is up to us to decide whether we want to work with a narrative or not. Personally, the type of song this song is, I think it needs a narrative, but we will discuss it further at a later date. As we also have an ancillary task to create a Poster and CD cover for the song, we will need to brainstorm ideas for this and start working on them as soon as we can. We will pick out a range of CD covers and posters and analyse them in detail and see what we think works and what doesn't work.

GABBY APLIN.

We have chosen to use a song called Ghosts written by my friend Gabby Aplin. She is a singer/songwriter who has risen to fame over the social networking sites Myspace and Youtube. She has a fan base of around 15,000 fans on Youtube alone. She recently has had a website set up which you can find at this link. She has managed to accumulate over 2 million total views on Youtube, and over 1 million on just one song on Myspace.

We thought that we would look at an unsigned artist to use for our music video, as it meant we didn't need to go through copyright as I know her. She posts not only covers of songs on Youtube, but original songs too and one of them caught our eye. That song was Ghosts. The lyrics are enchantingly beautiful and are written from the heart. They hold such meaning not only to Gabby, but to other people who will listen to it and interpret it in their own way. I think using a song like this is good because we can interpret it how we want to and incorporate different aspects of what we feel the song is about.

Thursday, 15 July 2010

LOOKING AT OTHER MUSIC VIDEOS.

As the song we are using is by a friend of mine, we thought it was only right for her to have an input into what the video may look like. She forwarded me these links on facebook and told us that she liked some of the aspects of these 3 videos.
We then sat in our lesson and watched each video thoroughly. We selected ideas that we liked from each video and have thought about putting them into our video. There are aspects of each of these videos that we would love to incorporate into our video, we find that some of the concepts used are unusual and we really like that.







We also looked at the video for Example - Kickstarts, as it is a really random video, but cleverly made. It has so many different techniques that it uses and we find it really interesting. We're not sure yet, but there are some aspects that we could use, or at least experiment with and see what we get.
This is the video.

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

GENRE OF MUSIC VIDEO.

We are looking at doing an Acoustic/Indie type genre of music video. The song fits this category and we have begun to look at music videos that would fit that genre.

We have come across videos that Gabby has sent herself, which I'll post in the next post, but ones we've found ourselves are:

Lissie - When I'm alone


Ellie Goulding - The Writer


Hana Pestle - Need


Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars


Each one of these videos are completely different, but each of them has aspects that we could use in our video. They are all roughly the same genre of music, and fit the conventions of this genre. Usually there will be some performance aspect of the video, as there is in most of the above videos, though I dont think that we intend on putting that into our video.

Some videos in this genre could come across quite dull as they tend to focus just on the main subject and their emotion, whereas others will have more in the video. These videos use a lot of close ups which captures the emotion that the character portrayed is feeling. A lot of these videos use a narrative throughout which is why I think that we should too as it follows the conventions.