Evaluation: Music Video Portfolio

Research & Planning

Calum Goddard

How we developed the concept.

When developing our music video concept we had multiple ideas that took our interest. For example we looked into using the song ‘Fitzpleasure’ by Alt-J and creating a trippy/dream like video that accompanied a narrative.

We decided that this song was slightly too well known, for example there was already a popular music video made for it.

We decided to develop the idea of using an unknown band’s song and develop their image and selling point. The band we went with was ‘Lion The Weak’ and their song ‘Wasted Words’.

We explored the work of the well known film practitioner ‘Wes Anderson’. We used his ideas of sticking to a certain colour pallet as well as using elements of his framing rules (Having everything in the centre of the frame).

Research included.

As a group:

The basic colour pallets of Wes’ movies.

How we could replicate the feel of one of his movies.

Deciding upon an appropriate time period theme to go with.

What I did individually:

Investigated wallpaper designs that could be used for the set.

Helped decide which colour pallet we went with.

Decided the cast we were going to go with.

Audience & GenreAlthough genres may appear to shift and develop randomly over time, you can think of it a bit like biological evolution where mutations that prove successful are inherited and lead to adaptation. In the music industry the process involves successful acts being cloned in some quite blatant ways such as performance and portrayal of the star image.

The band we are working with 'Lion the Week' are established as an 'indie-pop' band but they haven't made a 'star image' for themselves as they are unsigned and music is just a hobby for them.

But as a band they are going for a fashionable look to which their target audience of young adults can relate and aspire to. Alot of young adults look up to musicians as fashion icons and 'Lion the Weak' can become fashion icons for 17-25 year old guys.

We needed research into Conventions and real media textsConventions (what we expect

to see)Real Media Text’s I

researched

- For a band of Lion The Weak’s genre we expect to see a digi-pak that uses unique artistic ideas.

- Wes Anderson’s artistic framework to his movies acted as a fantastic stimulus to getting us thinking about correlating colour pallets and visual design to our music video.

Alt-J’s an awesome wave acted as great inspiration.

Wes Anderson’s colour pallet

What did I learn about the research of music video.

One major thing I learnt in the planning process of our music video was to keep it simple. I found the worst thing to do was think on a small scale, if I looked at the bigger I found that it was easier to work. For example when we were looking into an idea with ‘Fitzpleasure’ we were thinking about the video ‘shot by shot’ instead of trying to design a concept as a whole.

The most useful thing I found was stripping everything back and re-storyboarding, breaking the video down into three main elements. Performance, Narrative and an Artistic element. We chose:

- 1920’s performance element

- Two person dance/non-verbal narrative

- Drawing the band’s logo in time-lapse’

What Research into Location, Props, Costume & set design

From the start our team knew that we were going to take full advantage of the schools equipment/facilities, so we used the TV studio for our whole production process. This allowed us to be in control of all lighting elements, as well as not having to worry about weather etc

As far as costume was concerned we wanted the dancer’s costumes to contrast with the band’s ‘casual’ image. We had the two dancers/actors in 1920’s/vintage outfits and the band were in standard smart/casual street ware.

The set was designed to replicate a 1920’s living room with ‘stylised’ elements. For example the cream vintage wallpaper we used was designed as a running common factor.

The props were very basic, we hired a blue/white vinyl record player as well as a green Chesterfield sofa that became the centre piece of the narrative. Small props such as lamps and a coffee table were also used. We used hanging light bulbs as another stylistic element for our video, which we feel worked very well.

Research into my set design/ location

Research into my set design/ location

Research into my set design/ location

Storyboarding/ Animatic

Our storyboarding process gave us an initial idea as to what we wanted each individual shot to look like on the screen. It gave us creative assistance as well as a technical assistance. For example when it came to creating our shot list for the shoot day, we had a clear idea of what to include.

For the actual production of the video we didn’t refer to the story board that much. This was because we found it was easier to work creatively instead of following a strict ‘frame-by-frame’ document.

Once we made the story board we filmed it on a Sony NX5 and uploaded the footage to ‘Premier Pro’ where we cut the story board into an ‘animatic’. This enables us to get used to cutting our footage to the beat of the song. This gave us more experience for when we came to editing the final thing.

Written Story board

Story board animatic on YouTube

Why make a record of your planning?

Creating a prototype so that you can envisage final product before production begins enables us to make more informed decisions during production.

We used pencil drawn story board slides to visualize the video we were wanting to create.

Planning our CD digipak helped us create a clear idea of what we wanted to create using adobe Photoshop.

Evaluation

I found the research and planning period to be highly beneficial for the successful creation of a media package for Lion the Weak.

The most difficult stage I have found is creating a CD Digi-pak that is unique and reflects the band’s style, but at the same time doesn’t mimic the music video.

Some problems I found in the early stages include difficulties around ideas. For example our group came up with some incredibly strong ideas for different songs but these ideas were shut down often, meaning we would have to start from scratch.

The shoot day could have easily been improved if we had a ‘set in stone’ idea of what we wanted to do. At times we were slightly loose with our planning.

In conclusion our research and planning stage threw us some curve balls, for example finding days were our band were free to shoot, but we managed to deal with them very mature way, leading to the successful development of our promotion package for ‘Lion The Weak’.