Delegation/organisation and idea development

Today and yesterday my group has been working on the following aspects of our music video: Casting, location, treatment, and most importantly the timeline. I have been working on the treatment and timeline, Simy has been asking various actors to take part in our video, Victor has been researching locations and Phoebe has been working on the costumes of our potential actors. 

Firstly we met together after the Passion Pictures talk, to 

make sure we're all on the same page on the idea - then we  

split different tasks between us so that we can work on the video faster, and more efficiently. It is important for everyone to have an important role in the making of the video, and that everybody knows what they're doing. Communication is vital when delegating responsibilities amongst the group so that we don't make decisions that conflict.

Simy and I thinking hard about actors

Simy and I discussing potential actors

 As I am working on the timeline my job is to make sure everything that happens in the music video is planned, and ready to be shot meticulously and methodically on the day of the shoot, so that we don't miss any crucial details. At present we are struggling to think of the middle of the narrative, we have a strong beginning and end - but nothing particularly interesting in the middle narrative-wise. This problem can be solved I think by speaking together as a group and brainstorming ideas, we all need to watch more music videos of the genre of our chosen track also to get an idea of what needs to go in our music video.

Passion Pictures

Today Ollie Algrove from Passion Pictures came in to talk to my media class about the process of making a music videos, and how the individual roles within a production team work together to create a final product. 
Passion Pictures is a film company that specialises in narrative driven films that feature animation elements. They have been noteably responsible for making "This is England", a music video campaign for Goldfrapp, and a documentary called "searching for sugarman". The films they create are of a professional standard and though they have made documentaries and feature films they currently specialise in the production of music videos and TV commercials. 

Ollie started his talk off by introducing the production company, then introducing us to the meaning of talent management within the making of a music video.

Talent management  is the representation of directors, keeping producers happy, also managing the VFX artists. Effective talent management leads to a happy production team, and ultimately a coherent, compatible team of people driven to make a good music video.
Representing directors essentially means to promote the director - to make sure that the result of their creation leads to a broader recognition,  and they are comfortable with how they are represented. 
The actual role of the director in the making of a music video is everything on the creative side of things - the director is a role of leadership, they must guide the rest of the crew effectively for everyone to work well, and creatively together.

A producer manages the financial side of things, e.g. the budget, time management, and relations between relevant clients/landowners/equipment companies etc. This is a role that I need not worry about in the creation of my music video as budget and equipment loaning companies is not something to be considered, and will not affect my A-level advanced portfolio.

Ollie re-iterated that the purpose of a music video is to promote the talent, and perhaps also the director in a way. Depending on the success and fame of an artist the director will have more/less say in what happens on screen. Often an artist will have a strict idea of how they want to be represented, and an idea of the concept for the music video to their track. An unknown artist may not have such a rigid idea and will be more open to creative input from the director. The director's primary goal is to create a video that is going to be noticed, and to be notorious so that the artist will stand out and gain more recognition and more importantly more MONEY!

Ollie then explained the process and importance of a brief (pitching an idea to a production team)

Brief:

- To explain the ideas

- Explain background of artist

- The mood of film, nature of story

- Who’s the intended audience

- Where’s the video going to go

Then comes a treatment, which is a response to feedback. He informed us that a treatment should be a little bit of text, and a lot of images to show what's going on in your head, so that everyone else can share you vision and work effectively together, knowing exactly what's going on and knowing exactly what the have to do on the day of the shoot.

The Shoot:

The most important information I gathered from his comments on the shoot were that my production team needs to be 100% certain on what we're going to shoot on the day, carrying out at least one test shoot beforehand, if not more, creating a storyboard for every shot, writing up a shot list that should be given to everyone involved on the day of the shoot, and lastly, and most importantly - to make sure everyone is being efficient on the day, always doing something productive as time is extremely valuable, especially when we won't have much time to shoot the whole video (which could be up to 150-180 shots).

The Edit:

the most crucial part of storytelling

- where you make the creative decisions

- give self options on shoot day to allow more freedom in the edit

- Don’t fix problems in editing! be strict.

overall for editing, I essentially have to make sure we're efficient on the shoot day, then pay extremely close attention to detail in the edit - creating first, second, third drafts etc then showing the unfinished video to people of the ages of my target audience and getting feedback - responding to that feedback, then improving the video.

The talk was extremely helpful to me, getting to talk to someone that works in the professional music video industry has taught me many things that will undoubtedly come in handy when making my own music video.

Further Idea development

After discussing further with my group the idea I had about the gas masks we have decided that the narrative was too similar to that of a short film, and that it was far to complex and steered attention away from the track - which is the antithesis of our aims: to promote an artist and their album/song. 

We then looked at four music videos in the same genre which shared similar overarching conventions, (see prezi post) from these videos we confirmed one key fact: that our chosen genre of music works best visually with a nightmarish and disturbing theme. This is where the gas masks link in well, they have a very distinctive nightmarish quality.

Due to the fact that each of the videos we looked at all had a narrative, we decided that though we didn't want a complex narrative, it is still crucial that we have one to make the video more dynamic for the viewer. We started developing ideas of location, setting, costume and most importantly narrative. We decided that a great place to film our video would be in an abandoned warehouse, a location that we wouldn't have chosen had we not been informed that we could potentially gain access to one, which we have. Basing the narrative around the setting seemed like the most logical step in developing the idea, so we started thinking about nightmares that could link in with the setting, we came up with the concept that a teenage boy would be lost, walking aimlessly around the area of teh warehouse, before seeing it and entering - or perhaps that his intentions were to go to the warehouse, therefore bypassing the aimless wondering. Once he enters he sees the figures of 3 - 4 gas masked men, clumped together on the otherside of the warehouse, the viewer can see that they are doing something, but they can't see what it is, or who the people are. The boy then turns to leave to see there is no door behind him, that he is trapped in the warehouse. The gas-masked men spot the boy and come towards him, as he turns to run away another appears behind him. The middle of the narrative is vague as of now - but we intend to have some kind of intense disjunctive movement sequence to cut up the narrative- this idea may change. At the end of the sequence the boy is dragged toward what the gas-masked men were messing around with at the beginning to find it's another gas masked person - who takes of his mask to reveal its the boy - the boy is shocked, the boy's other self puts the gas mask back on the boy struggles around whilst the gas masked men attempt to brand him with their emblem - we see the door of the warehouse open again and we see the boy entering - the narrative returns to he beginning.

The key selling point in the narrative so far is the big plot twist at the end, the video would be designed to mess with the viewers mind. 


A media text with a similar concept and style is "12 Monkeys" by Terry Gilliam, it is similar in the way that the film is set in a dystopian time period, with characters wearing costumes that mildly resemble gas masks, in fact there's actually a scene in the film - set in world war 2, where gas masks can be seen.

It is also a circular narrative, meaning that the film ends where it begins. The film was inspired by Chris Marker's "La Jettee" which was a film made in the sixties totally comprised of stills, with music and narration laid over the top - the key feature of La Jettee was again that it had a circular narrative.

Developing our primary idea.

Watching back the pitch allowed me to understand how others may perceive my idea, and it really opened my eyes to all the impracticalities of the concept, how cliche it was, and also how amateurish it was. This isn't to say that I want to scrap the idea, 95% of the feedback was negative, yet Luke praised the performance aspect. This positive feature in the concept amongst a whole hoard of negatives made me focus in on that element, and what it is that interests me about it and makes it successful.

Responding to feedback:

Originality - The originality of my music video concept was heavily challenged in our pitch, prior to the pitch I was under the impression that it was quite a different and interesting concept, but after hearing feedback from Luke, a man with a lot of experience in the industry of music videos, I am able to see that my concept was very generic and wouldn't be intriguing for an audience member. So I took some time to think about the feedback given and have come up with a new narrative for the concept, and a revised, improved style for the performance element. 

Whilst at home I was looking for inspiration for some kind of trademark in the concept, one that would make the music video stand out, and give the artist quite an edgy, out there vibe. I stumbled across three gas masks that my dad had impulse bought on an online auction about a decade ago that had just been lying around gathering dust. I thought these were quite interesting to look at, each mask with their own style and look. 

As to demonstrate my visions of the gas mask in regards to the music video concept I shot some pictures with my sister in our garage.

I think these pictures are creepy and evoke quite a dark feeling, this is the kind of vibe I would be looking to achieve in my music video.

To respond to all three areas of feedback for our idea I came up with a rough revised concept for the video:

• A man is seen with blood pouring down his face in a dirty public toilet (either toilet of hurtwood inn, or downstairs boys toilet at hurtwood)

• Cuts away to a shot of a newspaper article with the man's face on it - the headline reads "Successful businessman shows no remorse after killing family of 4 in intoxicated traffic collision" - or something similar

• News paper scrunched up and thrown away 

• Shots of men (faces not shown) donning gas masks and gearing up for something

• Cuts to business bathroom guy drinking in a pub (Hurtwood inn - owned by Richard Jackson) with his friends, having a good time, getting seriously drunk 

• leaves pub (very drunk) gets in car, turns key - head gets slammed into the steering wheel by one of the gas mask guys

• the other two emerge and put un conscious man in boot of the car

•  drive him to warehouse (the studio or maybe the boiler room underneath Hurtwood main house)

• Throw him into similar looking set to "Let you go" music video 

• Man regains consciousness, sees photographs of the family he killed around him, "murderer" spray painted on walls etc.

• business man cuts through duck taped-bound wrists on nail and breaks out

• short running sequence either through woods or more likely and preferably through the backstreets of Cranleigh

• empowering shots of the three masked guys walking after him menacingly

• man runs into public toilet  

• final shot gas mask guy kicking open door and coming towards man

This is not a final concept - if we were to commit to this idea I would expect the narrative to develop significantly through brainstorming and discussion over the coming week. I have already considered casting for each role in the possibility that we go with this development to the concept.

As for the performance aspect, I do agree with Phil that a dance/rave sequence would be difficult to film, difficult to cast, and wouldn't look very convincing. I do like the idea of having a just a drummer and a female artist, the drummer only having one drum that he aggressively hits - as in the sound of the track, there only seems to be one marching band like drum without any symbols, snares or bass hits. Once i find out what instrument it is that is making the groaning electronic noise I think we should add that to the performance element. Alongside a female singer.

There will be two locations where the drumming and singing would take places, one is in the warehouse, the other outside in the dark, surrounded by smoke that is illuminated by the beams of two car's headlights from either side - I feel this could be very cinematic. As for the electronic groaning instrument, that would only be performed in the warehouse scene (the studio).

Pitching our primary idea

The Pitch:

As the idea that we were pitching had been one of my initial ideas we decided that I should pitch it asI had a better understanding of the idea at this early stage. We intended to pitch both of our shortlisted ideas to Luke but unfortunately ran out of time - the other 3 members of my group were to pitch that idea as it had been more of a group creation and we all had an equal understanding of it. The two ideas that we shortlisted had equal strength, yet due to the fact that the pranking  concept hasn't got a song yet we decided to prioritise the Gang/rave idea.

Here is a video of me pitching the idea to Luke, Phil and my classmates, and receiving feedback after our pitch.

In the video Luke and Phil cover various points, the key feedback I can draw from their response to the pitch is as follows:

• Origionality - A lot was said about the concept being unoriginal and leaning toward being cliche - "the first thing you think of when you hear the track" - which is a very true statement. As was said in the feedback two groups of teenage boys fighting is neither original nor particularly interesting to watch, as is a group of people dancing.

• Impractical - There are many impracticalities in the concept such as: filming a rave environment, filming a fight scene, filming a menacing gang walk around public streets, filming outside at night is difficult (extremely difficult to find a plug socket out on the streets for a studio light and also difficult to carry a massive 80/90kg generator around) It is also difficult to find actors that could convince the viewer that they are menacing/aggressive or drunk - they would also not be trained in stage combat so the fight sequence would rely on expert camerawork - a standard that I'm afraid I haven't yet reached.

• Concept doesn't fully suit track - A point that was referred back to a few times in the feedback was that the concept was not brutal/aggressive/shocking/violent enough for the track - that having an underwhelming fight scene between two groups of teenage boys wouldn't effectively match the track, also there are comical aspects in our idea, in the feedback we are told that this would look out of place in the video. I agree with this, I now think that a comical aspect in the music video would bring the viewer out of the sense of danger - and would detract from the aggressive tone of the video.

At the end of our feedback Luke advised my group to watch three music videos that really dramatise and emphasise violence and a feeling of discomfort. They are as follows:

The Prodigy - "Smack my bitch up"

 

Smack my bitch up  uses a gopro camera, establishing a POV shot throughout the entirety of the music video - exhibiting the wild nightlife of a clearly unstable club-goer. This is a good example of how to make a music video brutal to support the aggressive music behind it.

Aphex Twin - "Come to daddy"

Rather than making the music video to this track particularly violent, this concept is extremely disturbing for the viewer to watch - with little children with the face of the artist running around breaking things, and a weird alien-like creature screaming into the face of an old woman...it's really quite effective.

The Bloody Beetroots - "We are from venice" (Hurtwood Music Video)

I couldn't find the official music video to this track, but I did find a Hurtwood rendition. (whether or not this is what Luke was referring to I don't know) Either way I would use this video as a bad example of how to make the visuals to an aggressive track impactful - in my opinion a group of boys smoking, breaking a fridge, tipping over chairs, and drinking gasoline isn't a good build up for setting a car on fire...in a scrapyard in the middle of the woods...did I mention that the car was already derelict and devoid of any signs of current use? However I could take something away from this music video It would be that when the boys cut their hands with shards of glass I as a viewer felt uncomfortable - blood is a visceral entity in any kind of film - I think that when shot in the right way and used in the right context blood could very effectively be used in our music video.

Shorlisting

Me debating the pro's and cons of my idea

The next stage of my production group's process of selecting a final idea for a music video was shortlisting, we had to decide as a group which two of the four ideas were the strongest and had the highest possibility of becoming a music video. 

We discussed the pro's and con's of each idea and came to a group conclusion that the strongest of the ideas were Victor's Boxing idea and my Rave/gang idea. 

me listening intently to other people's "opinions"

Here are the reasons why Simy's and Phoebe's ideas weren't strong enough:

Simy's:

Though a very visual concept, one that I was highly interested in, the main problem was logistics. It is nearly impossible to find an American 60's style bar within a two hour radius from our school, let alone gain permission to shoot a music video in one for a good 4-5 hours. Also the costume was impractical and it would have been very difficult to make the bar look full of middle aged men wearing suits - we simply don't have the actors at Hurtwood. Had we more time to scout location and a greater budget for actors and costume, this could have been a very strong music video.

Phoebe's:

Phoebe's idea was very cinematic in all of our imaginations, a strong idea in the pool of concepts shared by the group, but once we realised the prime time to shoot her video would be at twilight we couldn't get find a way to guarantee that every location would look aesthetically satisfactory, as the idea relied a lot on the weather being scenic, we would also need a few days to shoot multiple twilight sequences. On top of this impracticality we decided that as the idea only had a performance aspect it would become boring to watch as the viewer. One of the most important reasons why this idea could not be carried through is the impracticality of hauling a massive grand piano around different locations.

Idea Development:

Victor's idea changed drastically through the shortlisting process. The first thing we changed was the context in which the fight fell - we thought it could be a humorous fight, that two stereotypical geeks could start a fight with each other in the cafeteria, then imagine a very intense, stylised fight - cutting backwards and forwards between imagination and reality. Then we decided that basing the music video in our school would be too basic and boring, so we changed the geeks to businessmen in an office, which got us thinking about the relationship between the two workers that would give reasonable context for a fight. This thought process lead us into the idea that there should be two work colleagues that strive to out-do each other in comical ways, starting off small then getting bigger and bigger - a good way to show this would be through petty office pranks getting more and more elaborate. Eventually we forgot all about the fight and the idea became all about the men pranking each other. However we couldn't think of a song that would accompany the video, but we knew that there shouldn't be a performance element as it would be difficult to fit in with the comical narrative - so the ideal genre of music would be house. Our only suitable song suggestion so far is from my second initial idea - "Can't Stop Playing".

Me working hard

So that means that my Rave/gang idea was our group favourite, and the one that we would be primarily pitching to Luke. The idea itself was pretty much unchanged, we brainstormed the logistics of the idea - what was and wasn't possible, until we had a clean idea ready to be pitched.

Production Group: 1st Meeting

 My Production Group

The group (Left to right) Phoebe Wright, Simone Murphy, Victor Cliff, Me.

Today I was put into my new production group, these are the other students that I will be working with to create a music video, digipak, and website. 

In this, the first group meeting we went through each of our three ideas and voted on the group's favourite out of each member's three, leaving us with four of the strongest ideas out of twelve.

Out of my three Ideas the group selected my favourite idea, "The day is my enemy" Rave/gang concept.

Out of Victor's three ideas we as a group liked his boxing idea the most, Phoebe's cinematic piano idea, and Simy's 60's bar idea. We talked for 15 minutes about each of the chosen ideas - seeing where each idea could lead to and what we did/didn't like about the ideas. To discuss our opinions on each of the ideas we used A3 pieces of paper and sticky notes to visually express our thoughts, if anyone had an idea or an opinion they would simply slap a sticky note on the piece of paper as documentation.

Key points about each idea:


PIANO:

- Could be very cinematic 

- basic concept makes for more time spent on making each shot look good

- Difficult to transport piano to different locations

- Picture settings at twilight - limited shoot time - would look bad if was shot on a cloudy day 

- could potentially be boring for viewer

60's BAR

- again could be very cinematic

- stylish and exciting to watch 

- difficult to find actors that look the right age to hang out in bars

- difficult to make bar look like a 60's american bar

- costume could potentially be very expensive

RAVE 

- Could be very empowering 
- Could be stylised 
- difficult to film fight scene
- cinematic
- difficult to film rave scene, but if done right could look very good
- easy to cast
- funny and empowering

BOXING

-Boxing ring could be constructed in the studio and the fight itself could be very stylised
- wouldn't use cheesy rock song
- would perhaps make fight comical 
- would incorporate a narrative as well as fight
- May be difficult to film fight well, but if done effectively it could look great  (like rave scene in my idea)