Today, we decided to have a class discussion as one entire group to help give feedback and extra ideas to each group in our class. Here is a picture of our group discussion. Our group discussion revolved around, once again, what particular events and activities that the people would be doing in our video. These include Cosplay, a hoarder and a serial killer.
This group discussion was extremely helpful, as it allowed the group to brainstorm even more ideas, and select ideas which we liked and disliked. Similarly to our issue however, is that the class struggled to come up with viable ideas which we could use, and also agreed with us in that it would be quite difficult to keep an audiences attention for a long time if we don't do it correctly.
Today, we continued developing our idea. We started to think about a timeline that we would soon need to write, and specifically what the audience would actually see on camera. We also discussed possible things that people would be doing at night, as this was one of the main themes in our video. An issue we are having is that we are worried that people won't really care about what the people will be doing and that they may lose interest, so we are considering all other possible concepts which we could include instead.
I will be analyzing the music video for Homesick by Catfish and the Bottlemen, to look for similarities in music video conventions and elements used in the alternative rock genre. This is a picture of the band. Their star image is quite similar to our band. They have long hair, dark in-style clothing and have a very anti mainstream image about them. This look is very atypical of rock bands.
This is the music video for Homesick.
3 elements The main theme in this music video is the band playing at a concert. However, there are 3 strands in this video which are apparent. At the beginning, there are shots of the band chilling out before a show, being calm and also at times riding a bike around the building. This element is one of 'behind the scenes' which is a cool idea, as the entire video is the journey through the night of one of the bands concerts.
Secondly, the next element used is the performance itself. The band is shown performing to a huge crowd.
Finally, the last element of the video is that the entire video is shot as if it is in the form of an old movie reel, as it is made with hundreds of individual pictures put together and there is a a shot of the reel burning away at the end, as if its an old style movie.
Example of many pictures used to create video:
Visuals in the video
As mentioned before, the entire videos camerawork is done with a timeline of pictures, showing the progress of one of the band's concerts. This is a unique style to a music video and is very cool. There are lots of close-ups of the bands faces too, which is used to make the audience feel closer to the band, and allows them to feel at one with them and also at times as if they are there themselves watching the concert alongside them.There are multiple shots of the bands performance too, from high above the stage and from backstage too. These are in tangent with the editing of the video, which is very fast paced and that each picture on lasts a split second.
Additionally, the whole video is tainted with an overlooking black, white and grey color scheme. This is to fit with the tone of the track, as the song is all about his girlfriend arguing and breaking up with him. The dark colors can be used to reflect upon his sadness and the gloomy life he has afterwards.
The costumes of the band are one of common sightings in typical alternative rock bands too. They are all wearing very dark clothes and have very long hair. Long hair is a classic symbol of rock bands and the rock genre, as it is very against the idea of having mainstream short hair as people cannot imagine the ruling people in society to have long hair.
Today, we pitched our idea to our class. The feedback was mainly positive, but we have a lots of things in which we can improve. Here is a Prezi presentation created by our group member called Alex. We all input ideas as a group and then he went to create this presentation.
Feedback
One main concern from our feedback is that we need to keep a difference between surreal and unexpectedness of the video. The main theme of the video is the idea of people having 'hidden lives'. But we need to make sure that the video is very unexpected and unusual but also it must keep a sense of keeping it realistic too. We will have 3 components which will be linked together which will make the video are more complete video, as it will have 3 crucial elements - the band performance, the lip sync and the weird activities. This is in correlation with the activities that we would like the people to be doing when they're being watched. The overall theme of the video is the 'hidden lives' theme. So this is in regard to what are the people doing? This is the crucial part of the video and will either make it a great video or a poor video. We will need to spend a lot of time thinking it through. We will need to also explore it in a number of different ways with different people. This will mean we may need to have between 5 or 6 different sets. We were told that we need to focus on and create more of the ideas of what the people would be doing, as it needs to fit in with the 'secret lives' that we are going for in our video.
Additionally, we were told to think of another possible way we could see the events going on. One inspiration idea was from 'Neighbours' by The Rolling Stones. In the video, the band plays in their own room, and the camera zooms out to see all of their 'neighbours'. Then the camera zooms in closer to the neighbours, revealing a weird activity that they're doing. We very much liked this concept, but we would still want to have the band playing in their own performance, as I think the band being stuff edit in a set room like in this video, doesn't really look the best. We want a proper performance which looks cooler, as it will suit with the song better.
In this group meeting, we had decided upon a huge change in the video idea. Instead of a SWAT team storming a warehouse, we decided we were going to focus on 'the dark side' of people, and what they could possibly get up to at night time and behind closed doors. After this change, we then discussed possible ways in which we could see these weird activities which people do. The reason we changed our idea is because of the difficulty of finding a warehouse, and also whether the whole action sequence with the SWAT team will look any good or whether it will look pretty bad. The 'dark side' of people idea came from a group discussion in class, and the reason why we like it so much is because we can develop it and include lots of cool ideas.
We took inspiration from Sam Smith's Stay With Me, as we like the idea of our character walking down the street, having houses on both sides, and then possibly seeing the people doing weird things in the street. The weird things he sees will be the main part of the video which will be the main attraction for the audience.
Another piece of inspiration came from Beyonce's Haunted. In her video, she walks through a house looking into different rooms. In each room, she sees a weird unusual thing going on, and we thought this was very cool and that we cold replicate it.
Finally, we discussed possible activities that the audience would be seeing people do in the music video. This is crucial as this is one of the main components that will keep the audience interested and hooked onto the video. In this part, we took inspiration from the montage scene in the film Magnolia. This is because it cuts to many different people and what is happening in their lives all at the same time and some stuff is very weird, such as the scuba diver in the tree. Some ideas we were thinking of was a transsexual crossdresser, and psychopathic murderer, a suicidal businessman and an arms dealer mother.
Today we had our first group meeting. In this meeting, we discussed our favourite ideas and which idea and track we like the most. We then expanded on these ideas and create mind maps full of possible ideas and things we could possibly do.
By the end of the meeting, we had an A3 sheet which was full of posted notes which had multiple ideas for the warehouse idea. This is the idea that we discussed in which a SWAT team storms a warehouse where a band is playing. Each posted note contained possible endings, narratives, costumes etc. which were all written down to try and make the video as unique as possible.
Today, I pitched my music video ideas to my class mates, and they all provided feedback for each idea, explaining any parts they liked, and any parts which they felt needed changing or altering in any way.
Here is a picture of me presenting my ideas:
Here is a video of the class discussion, which contains crucial information which I can study to help to improve my ideas and expand further.
A re-occuring theme in the feedback video is the fact that people like my 'child gang' idea, but there is a big logistical problem about finding enough available kids to use, and for having them for a long period of time.
Additionally, classmates also provided some key information regarding music videos I should watch as they contain elements in them which I want to have in my video. One example was Cheating by John Newman. I spoke about having a band playing on a rooftop, and in this video there is that exact thing. I checked it out and it was very useful, as it provided me with inspiration towards a possible idea which I would love to see be created.
Another suggestion was to use paintball guns instead of my original Nerf gun idea. I think this is a fantastic suggestion as paintball guns would create a much more visually appealing video, as we could use many different coloured paints. I will definitely consider this idea and I think it would be amazing to bring this to life. Additionally, access to this equipment would be a lot easier than getting multiple Nerf guns.
