Music Video Idea 1

The Day Is My Enemy

This is my most prominent idea. 

When I set out to think up music video ideas the thing I wanted to do the most was make whoever was watching this music video feel empowered. After looking at music videos of all genres I felt that the music videos that tended to work best with this kind of idea in mind were electronic, drum and bass, dubstep, house, and electronic rock. The prodigy falls into many of those genres and the music the create is both angry and pleasing to listen to - its not just some screaming chaotic mess that makes you want to rip your ears off…like screamo music. So after deciding that the prodigy was probably the band for me, imagine my joy when I discovered that they had released a brand new album just this year after a remarkably long time period since their previous album. The new release in question is “The day is my enemy” a fairly aggressive album and one which maintains the electronic rock group’s wild and hectic style which rocketed them to success in the 90’s with such hits as “Firestarter” and “Breathe”. The Prodigy stand out from the crowd, and have kept their unique underground-electro-punk image since their breakout into the public eye in 1990. The Prodigy is said to have pioneered the “Big Beat” genre alongside bands like The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, and The Crystal Method. Aside from these bands the Prodigy stands boldly alone, with their own unique style and can be likened to very few socially recognisable bands to this date.

 After listening to a variety of songs from the album I decided that the best two for the job would be “Wild Frontier” and the title song “The day is my enemy”. I figured beforehand that I wanted combat in my music video, and after listening with great concentration I decided that “Wild Frontier” was much more a running  song, and that if it was conflict I wanted then the considerably more aggressive and drum orientated “The day is my enemy” would best suit the concept. 

The Concept:

In periodical order

• A group of visually threatening and intimidating young adults walks through the dark streets (probably Cranleigh if not Dorking or Guildford)

• The group are seen to be destructive and aggressive, breaking things, drinking and smoking. They are entirely dressed in black.

• Another group of teenagers is seen walking through the streets of…Cranleigh, they, contrasting the first group, are high spirited and are dressed chaotically. It is clear from their fashion statement to wear traffic cones on their heads that they are intoxicated. The laugh and stumble around, being classic drunk teenagers.

• The two groups meet, the intimidating group size up the drunks, the drunks playfully interact with the clearly dangerous opposing group, misreading the nature of the meeting entirely.

• The intimidators start to push the drunks around, a first punch is thrown by one of the intimidators. At this moment the drunks snap out of their drunken state and prove to be an unbeatable force in hand to hand combat.

(Note: there is a lot of build up to the fight - tension must be created and the audience musty fear for the drunk's safety, if the fight happens too quickly then there is no connection between the audience and the characters and the fight will have much less impact)

• There is a (hopefully) artistically shot fight sequence which will work well with the aggressive nature of the song, the drunks are completely dominating the intimidators, this should be filmed not only like a professional fighting sequence but must also be shot comedically, it has to be clear that its funny that the drunks beat the intimidators - and not a really cheesy "good prevail all" sequence.

• After the drunks have left the opposing group in a mess on the ground they pick up the “drunken night out” props and commence as drunks yet again.

• The final shot is of a drunk with a traffic cone on his head peeing on something.

To cut the storyline up there will be a performance aspect of the music video, a woman will be seen singing the chorus in an underground rave environment, surrounded by intoxicated and highly aggressive ravers. There will also be shots of a drummer, as their is a lot of distinctive and  dramatic drumming in the song.

I have created a visual demonstration of what I picture for the shots of people dancing, I have used a clip from the Wolf of Wall street and put my song choice over the top of it. This alongside the video below is a fairly accurate representation of what I want from the dance interludes.

Stylistically I picture the underground rave scene as confined and packed with people, there should be a variety of rave lighting effects, lots of coloured flashing lights and strobe lighting at times, it is important there is chaotic lighting effects as in the edit it will be easy to seamlessly cut from one shot of the crowd dancing manically to another, this technique would be used to create a very chaotic and disorientating effect that would emulate the environment of a rave.

For the shots of the woman singing the      chorus I picture Her in the centre of the frame, still and crystal clear, and the berserk dancers around her would be extremely blurry, this effect can be created by having a low shutter speed and frame rate, due to the singer standing in the middle totally still, she will be clear, where as the dancers around her will be moving frantically and will therefore create a lot of blurring.

This music video idea will fit in with this track and the general brand image of the band as it is highly orientated around the underground rave scene, which is the overarching style of The Prodigy’s music and also the threshold in which they distribute their music to their audience.

As for the website design, I would use something similar to this. The photograph would be scruffy and chaotic, most likely not in full colour but in black and white with a slight tinge of maybe a green or red to assist the colour theme of the website. The generic photograph on the website homepage to the right would be replaced with a studio shot photograph of the imaginary band: The drummer (ideally an angry looking dude - probably Oscar Jackson), the singer (ideally a good looking girl) and a frontman - some guy with a crazy appearance and clearly a representation of the underground rave scene. The photo would be something like a mash up of each individual band member performing animatedly. By I wouldn't be able to say at this stage as the result would purely depend on the decision that would be made as a group.

The circular shape to the right of the image flashes, this gave me the idea to have something similar, but instead of a random, disfigured circle it would be the emblem of the band. As Greenday has their bleeding heart grenade my imaginary band would also have a trademark emblem. The digipak would then link well with the website as the premise for the digipak design would either be the emblem of the band or a photograph from the same photoshoot as the image to the left of the emblem on the homepage.