Research on Locations

One of our possible locations is in Cambourne as it is not recognisable as a iconic city like cambridge is, it will set it apart from the rest of the videos. Cambourne will look more deserted than if it is in the city which will suit our genre of music.


We want to have shots down an ally to give a mysterious effect so the audience doesnt know where the band member is going



We got some inspiration from the pide piper we like the idea of people following the band up to the hill from all different directions with different shots to make it look interesting and keep the audience intrigued


This video is also inspiring as it is what we want to achieve in the style of a music video

Evaluation of practice footage.

Although our footage is not relevant in the sense of the content of the film, we have practiced effects that may useful in our final production.
We used the effects of speeding things up to give the illusion that things were happening at a much faster pace than reality. This may be used in our piece in order to keep the audience engaged as ordinary things happening at an ordinary pace are boring and become repetitive.
A further technique which was effective was close up shots of normal things like the coke can give a surreal effect and hold suspense as the audience wants to see the full picture, the idea of keeping things withdrawn from the audiences one of our key themes ( that the individuals filmed in our video will all be part of a band but the bigger picture of them all together will not be revealed until the end)
A futher technique which we did not get chance to practice was the light contrasting effects and different csmera lenses. we plan to have some test footage of this even if not alot.

Test Footage

Pitch the 2nd feedback

People thought that the pitch showed very clearly what we are trying to achieve and many liked the idea. One individual highlighted that the locations need to be unrecognisable in order for the video to work other wise it has the risk of looking very amateur. others liked how we bought together the band playing live and our video by the iconic ribbons.
They think lighting effects should have a key role in our piece, something we did not mention in our pitch.

New Pitch

The song we are using for our music video (The Grates - Rock Boys) is in the genre of Indie/Rock. Starting off as Indie and developing in to Rock as the song progresses.
The drum beat in the background gives a majorette feeling as it is a similar beat to that of a snare drum that would be used in a marching band.
This video by Gwen Stefani also has a marching band kind of tempo/beat and they have chosen to use the idea of majorettes and cheerleaders in the music video to compliment this.



We have decided to the majorette/marching band feeling to our advantage by using ribbons that a majorette or a gymnast would use. These types of ribbons are included in already existing music video of The Grates - Rock Boys. This video is a live performance of the band, and while the lead singer is singing she is also using one of these ribbons to enhance her performance.
We had the idea to use a ribbon like this to bring a band together; The filming will take place on Cambourne hill, along streets and possibly down alleyways. The video will start with someone finding this ribbon, and using it to dance/spin/run with while they mime. This will be the singer of the "band." Where this band member stops using the ribbon, the next one will pick it up, and each band member will leave it somewhere else, along the street for example, where the next band member will find it and pick it up, starting their performance. The band members will eventually be led up the hill (Cambourne Hill) where the band will be complete at the top. The song develops by adding instruments in to it gradually, building tension and reaching a climax, becoming louder and bolder. It will be the climax of this song when the band members have all joined at the top of the hill and begin playing together to the song on their instruments. We feel this idea will work well as we have taken the idea of a pre-existing music video by The Grates and developed on it, where they have used it as a minor additive to their video, we have decided to use it as the main idea for our entire video. It will compliment the genre of the music well and also have a narrative.
The target audience of this music video will be to the fans of the Rock genre. We exaggerate this genre by building up the video as the tension in the music builds up. As the band become closer to forming together, the music gets louder with more instruments being added in. And on the complete climax of the music itself, the narrative finds it's ending with the band becoming complete. It is then that you discover it is actually a rock song.

The student music videos I am including in this are the same as those from the original pitch, as again, they have decided to use the idea of setting up a band in an outside area, which is linked to our ideas.
In one of them they have set up a band and a very large group of people on the top level of a carpark, and in the other in a forest.

The Band Playing Live

This clip of the band playing the song we will be using live is very usefull. We will be using the idea of lighting as if they were playing live as they are quite affective and could look very good in combination with the ribbons .
This has also given us an idea for costumes: to keep them simple yet colourful. This will be effective as it is suitable to the genre.

Band Research

The Grates are a three-piece band from Brisbane,Australia, comprising Patience Hodgson (vocals), John Patterson (guitar) and Alana Skyring (drums). They are renound for their catchy songs and lively energetic shows. their music is often described as "fun".

Patience Hodgson had known Alana Skyring since they were children, and met John Patterson in a drama class all three were attending to avoid physical education classes.

A month or two later after performing at a kareoke bar patience suggested they form a band, they began to play in johns garden shed .

The Grates name stuck once people started hearing them, as they were previously playing under different names. In 2004 a rough demo of the song "Trampoline", recorded on an 8 track recodring with two cheap microphones in John's shed was sent to national youth network Triple J accompanied by a hand-written bio and press release. The song was well-received, and appeared on the nominations list for Triple J's 2004 Hottest 100 along with two other Grates songs, "Rock Boys" ( the song we are using )and "Sukkafish".

The band has a distinctive style all three have a background in art and design their costumes and album covers.

Their debut album, Gravity wont get you High , was released on April 8th,2006. It debuted at #9 in the ARIA charts and reached a peak of #9. It has also been released in the UK and the United States (June 2006). The first single off the album, "19 20 20", was released in March as a 7" and iTunes.

animatic feedback

Although our animatic did not clearly show what we intend to do, after describing our plans to the class we got some very useful feedback:
The class liked how we had taken the idea of the ribbons from the live footage of the band as it showed a link between the two, this also shows we would be portraying the genre of what the band intended.
Someone suggested that having each band member with a different colour ribbon could show each persons identity and when the band play together at the end it could show everyone in union and a ray of colours.
Long shots on the hill will look very effective.
Some futher advice we were given was not to film in cambridge as it will be too recognisable and it could make it look unproffesional.
This feedback has been very usefull as it can help us create an effective video which should target the appropriate audience.

animatic

The perfect beginning....

We have taken a shot from the band playing live and are going to use it to create a similar effect in our video. it will engage the audience as they do not know where the location is or who they are about to see, this creates suspense.
This can be create with a dark room and a free standing light.

Artistic footage

We have picked out that instruments play a key part of this track so have decided to highlight this in the video. We are going to focus on artistic shots of a drum kit and close up shots of the singer instead of making up a narrative which may have a negative effect and not really work.
A further idea is to use extremely contrasted footage(colour wise) this use of colour will engage the audience and fill the video but with its simplicity.

The Songs Intensions

To find out the true meaning of the lyrics, so we as a group can decide whether to make reference to them in the video we have emailed the band on MySpace asking what the lyrics mean.
We are now waiting for a response.

Reference To Other Singers

After listening to the song several times and still looking for inspiration we decided to listen to the tone of the main singers voice and see if we could make any connections by the sound and not lyrics. We thought that the voice of the female singers sounded similar to the female singer in the cranberries so we went on YouTube and watched the video zombie.
although we are not planning on using any of their ideas we have seen how quite a plain song can still make an interesting video by the use of different locations and quick cutting. Therefore this piece of research has been affective by giving us some points to focus on.

New Choice of song

the new song we have chosen to use for our music video is Rock Boys by The Grates, we had to choose a new song as we lost the vote in the pitch battle for our original chosen song.

Lyrics to Rock Boys :
Rock, rock, rock, said the boys on top,
and how'd you miss them? how'd you miss them?

rock, rock, rock, said the boys on top,
and how'd you miss them? how'd you miss them?

nothing...
nothing, yeah, oh,
nothing...
nothing, yeah, oh,

ew, ay,
wo-oh, nothing for you,
yeah, yeah,
wo-oh, nothing for you,

yeah, yeah, wo-oh, nothing for you,
yeah yeah, wo-oh, nothing for you,

rock, rock, rock, said the boys on top
and how'd you miss them?
how did you miss them?

This song has no narrative, we think it would be best to stick to this and make the video abstract instead of trying to fit it into something.

The song is quite repetitive so the video has to be visually appealing so that the audience in engaged. We want to use a variation of different shots so that we have a lot to work with wen editing and we can chop and can the shots to keep the audience wanting to watch more. We could use shorts from above the person singing on the microphone, close ups, mid shots and long shots.
To make it more visually interesting we will change the location often by the band interacting with the video moving the shots to each side or up and down to reveal a new location and possibly a new mimer. We want to make the locations different so the suprise shock the audience so they dont predict or have expections of what will happen next.
I think its important to include some miming from the band members and possibly using intruments as the band is under the indie/ rock genre.

Pitch

For our music video we have decided to use the track The Remedy (I won’t Worry) – Jason Mraz.
We have chosen this track as we had more initial ideas for this particular track than any of the others. Some ideas we came up with for the music video of this track were:
Shooting scenes in places such as Punting in Cambridge, possibly London, the River Cambs, or the seaside (possibly in Hunstanton)
We also had the idea of setting up a drum kit in other settings such as a field, or the top level of a car park when dark.
The inspiration for the music instruments set up came from the following videos;





For the editing we had the idea of Camera Cranking one of the scenes, for example a busy scene with a lot of cars or people passing behind the person in the video. We could for example film the actor moving half the speed they would normally, with everyone/everything else travelling at normal speed and then sped up to twice the speed when uploaded on to the computer.
Another way of achieving this effect would be to use split screen.


Another video with an idea we thought we could use is It’s Only Love – The Maccabees. They base the entire video on a sketchpad, drawing and writing things which has been sped up and cleverly edited together after filming. We thought rather than basing a whole video on this idea like they have, we could use little snippets of this idea. Drawing relevant pictures on a sketchpad and fitting them together in to short animations using Istop Motion.
The following video is where the inspiration of this idea came from:



This video uses iStop motion all the way through, this effect is used well and gives the illusion that the notepad is 'alive', and that it tells a story on it's own. Although occasionally you see the artists' hand drawing the pictures/writing the speech, most of the time it is made up of separate images put together of the gradual progression of the drawing/writing.

For our production we could also integrate actual footage with drawings in the sketch pad; we could draw cartoons and Istop motion them to mimic the actions we film in our chosen locations, blending them in together to create the effect of the sketchpad telling the story of what is actually happening.

Welcome to GROUP 23