Draft Music Video

Idea for Filming

On Sunday I'm filming some more footage for the video, I was stuck for ideas on what else to film so it wasn't just a video of my actor walking across Nottingham. I've decided I want an extra aspect to the music video - a twist at the end showing that the actor wasn't just needlessly paranoid, and someone is actually watching him.

I was thinking of nearer the end, just after the lyrics "You're alive" and him walking out the abandoned room doors. Then it shows an over the shoulder shot in a darkened room of someone on a computer clicking and watching footage of him. I was thinking of filming in the media room as i could move the monitors and towers of the computer with the little lights flashing.

As well as adding something more to the video it might be quite beneficial as it covers one of the characteristics that Andrew Goodwin writes about when definining music videos in his book Dancing in the Distraction Factory.

"There is frequently reference to notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes etc. and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the body)."

I'm not sure yet but the person on the computer could either just be shown at the end as a twist, just a shadow of someone watching him; or it could be dispersed throughout the video then the twist at the end be that it's the main actor himself that's watching it back.

On Sunday I'll also be filming more in the abandoned room place to get some footage similar to the video for The Fall by Gary Numan. Filming my actor in different parts and editing so it looks flickery, and also to get more performance footage.

"The Fall" by Gary Numan

The scenery for this video is really cool, though I haven't been quite that lucky in location, I was thinking if I could some similar camera angles and techniques as this when filming more on Sunday, it would be good. :)

 

But obviously mine would be mixing that kind of scenery with scenes in crowds and in the streets like I've filmed, too.
 

Adventures on Private Property

A misunderstanding with when I was going to film, so we're going into Nottingham tomorrow to do the filming there. Though, looking for the "dark room" mentioned in other posts I was kind of out of ideas when my brother mentioned some abandoned warehouses/factories and places he used to hang out in, so we went to explore and take some pictures. 

The first place was locked up, but I took some pictures from outside.

The next place was really cool, after walking the muddiest path ever and thoroughly ruining my shoes (annoyingly we found a better way to get there after we'd left). We kind of crawled under a door and found really cool room, my brother filmed the majority of it, it's a reaaally wobbly, and our voices sound weird. 

We stopped filming in a rush as we heard someone outside and panicked, he was a bit scary and told us to leave. But still, hopefully, we'll be able to sneak in there again next Sunday to film my actor doing the vocals, it would definitely be better than my living room. :) 

Moodboard

I collected images to help me map out ideas about my work, including locations, costume, adverts, album covers, actors and logos, I also added some general imagery for how I'd like aesthetics of my work to be:

(Click to enlarge)

Lighting In Music Videos

Now I have a slightly better idea about my video I need to think in more depth about how I want each scene to look. From looking at some videos I've noticed that if the focus of the video is on the vocalist, they may be alone in a room, like what I've planned for mine, the idea of darkened rooms, shadows and silhouettes has interested me as I think it looks kind of personal and feel it kind of mirrors how the music feels in parts, dark and mysterious.

 

 

This particularly seems to be the case in the first forty seconds in the video for Massve Attack's Risingson and the first forty seconds of We're In This Together by NIN.  In fact the lighting in a lot of Massive Attack videos is pretty interesting, I'd like my video to be quite inspired by theirs as the sound really appears to be. :)

 

The effect of this is both done by outside lighting shining in, or high contrast and dark clothes. Also, keeping the room dark and only using the light to shine of certain parks might be hard to do subtly but I willl try to create this effect. Also, in looking at the first forty seconds or so of the NIN video is a good example of how I would like the intro for mine to be, with lots of close up images of parts of the face/hands etc.

 

 

Nine Inch Nails: We're In This Together (1999) from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

Location Ideas

I decided I was going to look for kind of grungy, industial streets to film in around Nottingham city centre. At the moment, I'm exploring around streets surrounding Maid Marian way, mainly, using the Street View tool on Google Maps. Though I've taken into consideration it might be a little different as some of the image dats are 2008, so they might look cleaner or a bit different now.

 

I'll use this as a kind of log to come back to and edit, a list of all the street names I've found so far that I could use. (Use the map in the corner and zoom out  to see the other points on the map that I've made.)

 

View Filming Locations in a larger map.

"Dead End" by Reptile Youth

I just came across this video on Tumblr and thought it was cool in a really disturbing way. It's pretty much a compilation of creepy moments in culture, mixed with lots of strange imagery; kind of interesting though totally unrelated to what I want to do.

I know I couldn't really do anything like it, as it's all found footage, from films mainly but I just thought I'd put on here as some possible inspiration for later on maybe.

Ideas III - Video Plan

Over half term I continued to look at ideas for videos, and a little on band logos. Feeling I had lost some direction in my ideas, so we started to just reiterate my ideas as of yet and looked at breaking up my given song into sections so it was a little less intimidating and more apporachable. :)

 

Here are my ideas so far,

 

Actors - Male performer, possibly two male performers, one to be the vocalist, one for the narrative sequence.

I think I have got people to be in my video, I have a friend who does drama at college and she may be able to ask some of the guys in her class to help me out. If I find out soon, I'll give the song to them so they could learn the lyrics to be able to lip sync more realistically.

 

Locations - Darkened room in which the vocalist (focus on shadows and silhouettes).

                 - Nottingham -> Urban/industrial settings

Maybe some back streets so I can still film parts of what the audience could imagine were office buildings or the like, so show the character is on the out side of that scene.

 

Ideas/Themes - Anti-capitalist aspect

                        - Grungy dark colours/ low temperature filming.

 

Narrative - I'm not certain of any story or focus in particular other than a man walking about on industial sort of back streets of a city, looking alone. I'd still like to include some sort of intra-intra diagetic scenes on fuzzy screens and things, but i'm not sure how I'd include this at the moment. I might look into being more influenced by Massive Attack videos, in particular Intertia Creeps where the singer is looking at the screen. I'm not sure yet.

I'm creating what will be a really detailed filming plan, at the moment it's just breaking the song into sections where it sounds similar, and working out what sort of thing will be shown at this part. This is what I have planned so far:

 

 

I've came to a kind of halt with writing this at the moment as i need to work out what -in more detail- to include in my narrative, I'll working on developing that this week.

Later I hope to link this in with the lyrics, making it more detailed so I'll know exactly what I'll need to be filming.

Ideas II - Camera and editing

Today, when pitching my ideas as of yet to the rest of  the class we talked about some of the more technical aspects of my video, as I have a (kind of) idea what it could be like aesthetically; I spoke about having a man feeling out of place in a corporate world, city type surroundings maybe; which we decided might suit an instrumental part midway through the song filmed kind of jittery and spinning around, possibly slowing down.

π (1998) trailer, with Boards of Canada too :)

I could possibly take some inspiration from the beginning part of this trailer for the film Pi.