Tuesday 29 September 2015

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.

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