Influenced by...

When developing the concept of our idea we researched a lot of music videos to help inspire us and influence our work. One of the most significant music videos that helped us decide that we wanted a conceptual idea was "Can't Stop" from 'Red Hot Chilli Peppers' which unfortunately has disabled the embedding link, but here is the link to the YouTube video:

http://youtu.be/BfOdWSiyWoc

One of the main reasons as to why we were influenced by this particular video was because it was very conceptual and used a lot of slightly random effects edited in time to the beat of their music. Additionally, they also use a lot of bright colours and suprise elements which we would like to include in our own music video.

Asking permission to use track

To DreamWorks record company, 

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

'Baby Loves Me' by The Eels

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely


Emma Styles, Anoushka Babur and George Spooner
Hurtwood House School

Target audience for music video

Typical audience member for music video on Prezi

Costume

They will be dressed in a similar thing to what we are using as the brand image:

Checked shirts
Bold and wacky T-shirts
knitted and coloured jumpers
Skinny jeans
Coloured chinos
Vans
Converse-coloured and high tops

Artist's Brand Image

The artists brand image is quite specific but also fairly modern in the way we want to portray them as a band.

The style that we are focusing on is "geek chic" as it reflects our target audience and links with the alternative style of music that would be played by our band. Weird and wacky T-shirts with coloured logos or references to comic books on them indicate a stereotypical "nerdy" style that has become increasingly popular with the youth of the modern day. Additionally, they will also wear coloured chinos and skateboarding shoes such as Vans or Converse. When thinking about what we want our band to look like, I thought of Seth Cohen from 'The O.C':

As you can see, it focuses on those who are not mathematical/science geeks but those who are interested by comic books, music, guitars, skateboards, space.

The brand image contrasts to the brand image given to other bands such as 'One Direction' or 'Metallica' both of whom have been constructed by the media in order to grasp the likes of their target audience.

'One Direction' are a typical teenage boy band that include a different looking boy for each type of girl to fancy. Additionally, their music reflects on their image, as is evident with their latest single: "What Makes You Beautiful"

Whereas with 'Metallica', also an all-male band their brand image is this:

We wanted to portray our band as a much more generic band that focus on their music but are slightly quirky and alternative, allowing their target audience to identify with them

Storyboard

This is the storyboard for our music video, it includes the time frame as well:

We want to regularly return to the shots of the band playing their instruments. However, because of our idea and the fact that we are only ever going to see a limited amount of the specific thing revealed the shots of the instruments will be close-ups and from obscure angles.

props

props on Prezi

To be provided by school:

• Red electric guitar
• Black keyboard
• Drum kit
• Electric bass guitar
• Wooden small square kitchen table
• Wooden dining chair
• Handcuffs
• Gun – modern pistol
• Old material sofa – brown
• Microphone on stand
• Noose – thick white rope
• 3 x black side tables or stools (drama studio)
• Silver tipping trey
• Medium sized silver mirror

To be provided by:

Anoushka:

• Long white candle x2
• Pink bubble gum
• Skittles
• Newspaper articles on unemployment

George:

• Plastic rubbish bin
• Colourful balloons
• Bill/receipt
• Basic wall clock with second hand

Emma:

• Religious cross on necklace
• Candle stick
• Skittles

Developing the conceptual idea

Keeping with the conceptual idea, we felt that in order to develop the music video further we needed a slight narative within the revealed images. Additionally, we felt that the concept parts of the video needed to hold a deeper meaning, therefore, create narratives to reflect what the audience are seeing and so felt that a more interesting idea would be to have a story following a man who wants to commit suicide, thus, have shots using the lamps of a man turning rope, a knife, a chair and potentially the man could be in the corner looking up in a sinister way.

We also decided to have a man think of himself as a magician and these different shots would indicate the bizarre world that we wished to created through the conceptual idea. The different shots will show different stages of a magic trick and have chosen to use a YouTube video of a man doing a card trick as our inspiration:



I particularly liked the idea of the cracked Ace of hearts card because it gave it an unexplained and eerie atmosphere. Additionally, as a continuation from the conceptual idea, we wanted both excerpts to be slightly obscure and random but to make the audience think of it afterwards.

Change of idea

After pitching the idea and discussing it as a group, we realised that our idea needed developing and in order for it not to look too cheesy we would have to make a complete background story for the couple but make the story-line within the video simpler with more cinematic shots. Therefore, rather than swaying from our original idea that we had with the narrtive of the couple's relationship we decided to change our idea to a more conceptual idea.

As a group, we decided it would be interesting to use different forms of lights as our main theme in the video and so chose a song that would work best with the general idea of something slightly obscure and that can look interesting with lights and so we chose Baby It's You by The Eels:

We felt that in keeping with the theme of wierd conceptual lighting, we thought it would be interesting if we used 100 Watts desk lamps as our main form of lighting, they would be turned on at different times to reveal something within the dark.