GROUP 40 - Amy, Ella, Lloyd and Luci Music Video 2008/9: September 2008
Wednesday 24 September 2008
Mise - En - Scene
Rock Band - in front room
Lighting - Warm, artificial lights from lamps, natural light- curtains open
Costume(colour coded)- Main singer- all white clothing, Other band members- mix and match of all three primary colours (red, blue and yellow jeans and tops)
Props- RockBand, Xbox, - Friends own the xbox and rockband and we have permission from them to use them.
Camerawork- Panning on wheeled chairs, Panning using tripod, others shot will be still and on the tripod.
Editing- To the music and cut to the beat. Fast/ short shots when music is fast, Slow/ long shots when music is slow.
Food fight - in Grantchester meadows
Lighting- Natural lighting of the day, hopefully it will be a sunny day to bring out the colours in the foodfight.
Costume- Band members wear the same as in the rockband section (maybe mix the clothes around a bit, eg different coloured top to trousers).
Props- A stool for the singer to stand on, sling shots - for food to be catapulted out of, food dyed mashed patatoe - to match the colours of the band members clothing and other foods to catch on camera, (eg pretty and nicely decorated cup cakes).
Camerawork- Hand held panning from the middle - to show the caos, still shots on tripod and panning on tripod.
Editing- Fast and quick to make it look even more caotic than it actually is.
This is the sort of chaotic atmosphere we want for our video's food-fight. We want the action around the singer to be in a 'world of its own' and during the song the singer is the only person who doesn't get hit by any food. She says clean until the end of the video, when she is pelted with food. This is our final shot.
The Rock Band idea is our 'as-live' footage. We chose to use Rock Band instruments rather than real instruments because it gives a furter comical element to our video.
We have taken location shots of our proposed location for our food fight:
Granchester Medows
The reason for choosing a wide open meadow is because it is an open space, which will therefore portray the confusion of the character's (singers') mood. The mood of which, is that she is confused and stressed about her boyfriend, with all these different feelings about him, as the lyrics interpret. And an advantage to having the food fight in the meadows is that it will be easy to clean up and accessible for the large number of people we need to participate in the food fight.
We have taken location shots for our proposed rock band footage:
The song we have chosen to do for our music video is '19-20-20' by The Grates.
The Grates are a three-piece band from Brisbane, Australia. They have been active as a band since 2002 until present and their genre has been defined as 'indie rock/alternative rock'.
The band includes: - Patience Hodgson (lead vocals) - John Patterson (Guitar) - Alana Skyring (Drums)
Their music has often been described as "fun" and has been compared to the likes of the 'Yeah Yeah Yeahs' & 'Be Your Own PET'. The band design their own merchandise, which includes their album artwork, posters, T-shirts and socks and they have supported such bands as The Zutons, The Young Knives, The Go! Team, Artic Monkeys.
Their debut EP (extended play) was releasd in Australia on February 14th 2005. It was called 'The Ouch. The Touch.' (released in UK in April 2005) Their debut album was called 'Gravity Wont Get You High'. Released on April 8th 2006 and reached #9 in the charts. This 1st single released by them was our song '19-20-20', which reached #10 in the 'Hottest 100' of 2006.
Their most recent album was released on August 2nd 2008 and is called 'Teeth Lost. Hearts Won'.
ALBUMS - Gravity Wont Get You High (2006) - Teeth Lost. Hearts Won (2008)
The Grates have been nominated for six awards: 2006 Australian Music Prize - Best contemporary music album (Gravity Won't Get You High) 2006 Jack Awards - Best Live Newcomer 2006 Triple J J Award 2006 ARIA Award - Breakthrough Artist - Album 2006 ARIA Award - Best Cover Art 2007 ARIA Award - Best Music DVD ('Til Death Do Us Party')
The Grates have released videos for some of their songs. Including:
Opening - (plugging in of RockBand) consists mainly of closeup shots.
This section of the music video will be based in our friends front living room, with t.v sofas etc in the background.
(Extreme close up)- A finger pressing the 'on' button being turned on. (Close up)- Plugging in of leeds and controllers for rock band into the Xbox. (Close up)- Plugs into main/tv. (Extreme close up)- Guitars being held by band members. (Close up)- Cut to drums (various parts of the drum kit, such as the peddle, drumsticks and drums skins etc) (Mid shots)- Band members faces, hands controlling instruments. various angles
As Live - (rock band being plugged in) This section of the video will also be based in our friends front living room.
(Close up)- Artists faces. (Extreme/ Close up)- Artists playing instruments (hands on holding drum sticks/ feet on peddles/ hands holding guitars and micros phones). (Establishing shot)- Shot of every band member head on showing the room also. (Mid shots/ full length)- Each performer separately. again using various angles
Narrative/ Abstract - (food fight in meadow)
This section of the music video will be shot at Grantchester Meadows, on the fields. (Close up)- Hands throwing food. (Close up)- The food hitting people/ objects. (Close up)- Faces - expressions (Establishing shot)- Areal shots (birds eye view). (Establishing shot)- Long shots - ground level (of feet). (P.O.V shots)- Having food being thrown from behind the camera and towards camera. (Panning)- hand held (slow motion)- from in the middle of the food fight/ singers point of view showing extent of action.
The video is very colourful. Each person is dressed in only one colour, which makes them all stand out & gives the video a bold feel. This is contrasted nicely with the big, blank, open space in which it is set. This makes it easy for people to focus on the dance routine. This provides good inspiration for our own video especially the abstract narrative of the food fight. It will be held in a blank open space and have the focus in the middle, with bold colours. This will help emphasize and create focus on the action.
Bjork - It's Oh So Quiet
The main point that we liked about this video was the slow motion. We thought it would be something good to have in our own video. We found out that to do it the person miming has to mime twice as fast so it can be slowed down. We also liked the bold colours, especially as they were brightest in the fast scenes and duller in the slow ones. If we used this idea we would probably use it in reverse, with our food fight slow but bright.
We noticed some similarities between this video & Feist's video. The blocks of colours used as well as some techniques. The aerial shot of Bjork spinning round and the umbrellas opening matches that in Feist's video of the aerial shot where she spins round & people fall down. At the end of both videos the main character is seen being brought forward into centre shot away from the dance routine in the background.
At the start of the lesson we were given a track list and had to decide in our groups which to choose.
i liked track 2 'whatever it is (i cant shake this)' by The Shivers. i liked it because it was an upbeat song with probably an acoustic/rock genre. me and amy thought that because of the quick pase it would be easy to create a video for.
Another good one would have been track 9 'tomorrow will be like today' by Money Mark which amy suggested was indie/pop genre. i enjoyed the song but also there was an interesting bit in it; there was a good music/lyric relationship where the lyrics are "everything stops" and at this point the music also stops. i thought this would be really good to create visuals for and you could be really creative deciding how to fit a storyline around it.
one track which we all agreed was not very good to use was track 1 'bass it up' by Kano. it was an 'RnB' rap like song. the song was very quick in places and the lyrics were hard to understand. we agreed straight away that it would be a very hard song to work with and create visuals for which would fit with it. not just that, we also had to take into consideration the fact that it would be really hard to lipsync with!
lloyd said we should vote for our favourite song. we all wrote down our top three and the one that we all had was '19-20-20' by The Grates. it is quite an indie song. fast and up beat which is better than a slow one, as amy pointed out, because it means we dont have to create visuals for absolutely all of the song. a slower pased song may require a more narrative driven video which we wanted to keep away from as it could become boring. even though it is fast the lyrics are still nice and distinguishable. the genre suggests alot of colours and we have some ideas already that were inspired by the sound of it, such as the food fight. we think it will be a good one to work with.
the song we are creating a video to is quite upbeat, after looking at the lyrics we think it is about a girl who is complaining about her boyfriend. we have had some initial ideas which were the live rockband section, and the food fight section. we really wanted some live band action as we thought it would go nicely with the up beat song and we didnt want the whole thing to be narrative. we wanted it to be different and querky and thats when ella came up with the idea to use rock band and lloyd suggested it could then transform into a video game. we didnt want it to get too boring or repetative so decided to intersperse the performance with a bit of a more abstract narrative. amy had a good idea of a food fight, thinking the bright colours and lots of people would suit the genre of song nicely. i said that the food fight should take place in a field because that way the large emptiness of the field with the confusion and business in the middle would reflect the character's (who is singing) mood. we think she should be in the middle of the cofusion again reflecting how she feels and just watching all the action. she will remain clean untill the end when it all hits her. all the characters will be wearing white clothes so that the bright food (colourd mash) will show up!
- Our initial and potential idea for out music video is to have two set pieces of footage. One is a 'live' based footage of the band playing instruments, in beat to the music, the only thing that will make this different from other music videos is that the drums, base guitar, electric guitar and microphone will be the controllers of the video game 'rock band'. This takes place in a living room of an average persons home. The second is the 'narrative', of which we have not decided on a specific idea. Yet the ideas we have come up with include the band members, or others, having fun, possibly having a food fight and or acting out of a story either related to the lyrics or not, we still need to have a closer look at the lyrics and if they tell a story. We had the idea of including an 'action' sequence at the beginning of the video, this will be the band/ players of the game plugging in their individual controllers leading into the performance based footage. Another way to gradually move into the song could be an idea we had, to gather a large group of people to 'march' down a street with brass instruments, as the intro to the song, the bit with no lyrics is quite jazzy. We could then include this in the cut over footage from the 'live' footage to make it relevent, aswell as it being very fun to watch.
Related Videos
- Rockband
- Madcon - Beggin'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ahe_hTXgBY
The way in which this video relates to our initial idea is that the artists are playing the video game and it cuts between them playing the game in reality to them physically in the game, in their sleep. This could video could be watched as if separated into 3 different pieces of footage. 1st is the artists sitting in the two chairs with controllers in their hands and the 2nd is them physically in the game, giving a sort of serial effect. The 3rd also has this serial effect, with a colourful background and the artists and dancers all in unison dancing along to the music. Another element that is similar to our initial idea is the opening, as it shows the game being played on the television from a players point of view.
This video uses Goodwin's six points well, as we can clearly indicate how each is used.
1.The Genre for this video is pop and the characteristics used to show this are colourful based backdrops and costumes, obvious characters and an upbeat/ catchy tune.
2.Visual/ Lyrics are presented amplified and illustrated using the video game footage to help portray extreme curcumstances that wouldn't happen in reality.
3.The relationship between the music and the visuals are made through dance performance cut into the video and the music has not been edited to the beat of the music as clearly as the dance fits the music, but it still is cut to the music at some times noticeable.
4.The need to sell the artists is used strongly in this video as the artists appear in all three types of footage. The artists sing to the camera and have close up shots of their faces for the audience to recognise their faces.
5.The intertextual references in this video is to video games, they made up a game based completely around their song. The lyrics in the chorus are a mixture of two languages.
6.Voyeurism is used subtly as the woman are wearing modest clothing. The two police women are dressed less appropriate then a police woman in reality, as they are wearing tight flattering shirts, sun glasses, inside, why?, and glamourized makeup.
Location ideas
This is Sussex Street in Cambridge and this is the kind of place where we were intending on shooting the 'marching'/ possible cut over footage. (the food fight would need to take place outside, not sure where yet though).
This image is an example of the type of place we are planning to shoot the rock band footage.
This image portrays an idea of where we want to have the food fight footage to take place.
Presentataion feedback
After presenting our ideas to the class we got a great response back from the class. Primarily the debate of copy right, in showing the game 'rock band' and the 'xbox 360', occurred but as long as we do not show footage from the game it will only be considered product placement.
After this the issue of the food fight came up, this was because it was unclear to the class how we are planning on shooting this footage. We would basically have a stump for the singer to be standing on singing her heart out, whilst everyone around her in a circle will be dancing around and throwing food around.
An alternative idea of having the food fight in a room with white paper on the walls was mentioned as the issue of weather would be a problem. The way that this would be an advantage is that we could show the splat of the colourful food more effectively, although we cannot find a place where there is a room available or big enough for us to cover in paper and throw food around.
for our music video we got given a list of tracks to chose from. we had to decide on the track we all agreed was the best to create a video for. we chose track 5: '19-20-20' by The Grates. we then had to find the lyrics for it from lyricsmode.com and copy and paste them here.
My baby is off yeah shooting tigers, My baby is such a fucken liar, My baby booh yeah im looking for a
19, 20, 20 19, 20, 20
My baby oh yeah he could sleep in town, My baby doesn't want me around, My baby Huh Huh,
19, 20, 20 (8 times)
My baby is up yeah he's stealling stars, My baby put all his faith in mars, My baby Huh Huh,
19, 20, 20 19, 20, 20
My baby's rounch check is round the clock, My baby don't know what he got, My baby Grr, Grr
19, 20, 20 (7 times) 19, Oh yeah,
Bom, Bom, Bom, Bom,
Prrrrrrrrrrr
I think I found you In a unknown location, I think I left you In a starge position,
When choosing the song we want to use for our music video we looked at 4 different aspects to help us chose, such as:
-Genre -Narrative -Lyrics -and Pace
Genre - the genre would help us to imagine what kind of video to make, for example R&B tends to be story based.
Narrative - by listening to the lyrics we could hear a clear story/ narrative.
Lyrics - It is important to be able to hear the lyrics clearly, as this would make lip-sinking a lot easier. Also the lyrics tell a story of what the composer is trying to get through to his/hers audience.
Pace - by listening to the pace we are able to ditermine what kind of video to make for example, rave or story telling.
(name the other songs we got to chose from) Then we listened to all 13 songs and noted them on all the above points.
