Layering

Posted below is a still image taken from some test shots we carried out a week or so ago. The image demonstrates the technique of layering, with apparently two of the same figure in a single shot. In actuality, we managed to achieve this using 'Final cut', splitting two different shots and layering them to display this illusion that there is more than one of the same figure in the shot. We're looking to use this techinque in the video, shooting our main character running on a bridge and then the passing traffic below. We'l then split the individual shots to create one shot with the character running in real time whilst the passsing traffic is sped up, creating an interesting illusion as well as refelcting the character's state of mind.

Additionally, we may seek to use this technique towards the latter stages of our piece, when the narratives of the piece collide. Cross-cutting between a mysterious roadside commotion and the unexplained anxiety of our main characters, we may look to eventually merge these two narratives, with the realisation at the end of the piece, that the injured civilian at the centre of the commotion is actually the same person as our main character. In order to illustrate this to our audience we intend on layering two individual shots, to create the illusion that, as our test shots demonstrate, there is two of the same individual.

Locations

Having recovered from my bout of illness, myself and Will have been working hard to find a suitable and viable location for our narrative/conceptual based video.
Initially, i was struck by an area local to me, with a large bridge overlooking a busy main road below. The area was perfect for what myself and Will had in mind, with areas to safely keep equipment when not in use, with the bridge a potential resource for some fantastic panoramic footage. However due to lack of use, the bridge has recently been uprooted, with a traffic light crossing in its place hindering its potential as our location.
Luckily however, Will seems to have stumbled upon a perfect substitute in Bury. With a bridge on-looking a busy road once more, the location seems reminiscent of the intended area for filming. Despite having not seen this location as of yet, i have full faith in Will's judgement and look forward to the shooting process.

Ideas so far

Now we've got ourselves a pool of ideas, a collection of specific visual elements, such as rain and birds and other as-yet obscure elements, all of which are connected by some vague idea in common. The elements are, generally, a bit depressing, such as the considerations we made for blood, broken bottles, wet, rainy streets at night and suchlike, but we figure that the nature of the song - while not so musically soul-crippling as, say, Nine Inch Nails or Bauhaus, is nonetheless appears to be lyrically concerned with anxiety, and in many respects anxiety for much of modern, western life itself. Therefore, we have decided upon visual themes to correspond with this, attempting to make the video, aptly named 'The Science of Fear', as subtly on-edge as possible, without being gratuitous.

We haven't, as of yet, started filming - me and George haven't seen each other in a bit due to George's absence, but as soon as we get together again we can go over everything we've planned and consider the most important question to start the filming process off - where exactly are we going to film? Bury St Edmunds is easy and well-known in terms of where to go, but may come across as too familiar. However, since neither of us can drive, it's going to be difficult to find anywhere else to scout out for locations. In all honesty, the location doesn't matter so much as what we intend to put there, or film there, so really it's not such a big problem. It just would make things a lot simpler if we knew exactly where to start the filming. We need to get some hard storyboarding done.

Music Videos from our Target Audience

We decided to focus our efforts, at least in part, on the target audience of the song in question - which we guessed, from the style of music, to be around the mostly 15-25 indie crowd. So, taking this into account, we decided to take a look at other music videos from artists we believe to also hold this target audience, and see if we could take anything from these videos for ourselves, or at least get a good idea of the videos that deserve to be aimed at this demographic.

We started off by looking at the 'artier' side of the still-diverse 'indie' subculture, so we first turned our attentions to Florence and the Machine, considering their were vague similarities in sound between the artist. However, after watching a couple of videos, we were in many ways unconvinced that we could take anything from their general style, considering it too light and arty for the kind of visual style that we felt was more suitable for our particular song. Therefore, after deliberating what other bands fell into the category we were aiming for, we decided to look up for a few Pigeon Detectives songs. What we found was exactly what we were looking for - a music video that was intended for the crowd we also had to consider, and also contained many elements of the general 'style' that we intend to set out to achieve, including many visual motifs of cars, urban degradation, wet weather and the destruction of appliances.

The Romanek influence

Myself and Will were unaniomous in thinking that a combination of darkness and artificial lighting, would create an intriguing atmosphere reflecting both the pace and lyrics of the track. Consequently, we decided to explore the works of Mark Romanek and assess the ways in which we could instigate some of his impressive lighting techniques to our piece despite a vastly inferior budget of nil. The idea was put forward to use general every-day sources of artificial light such as lamps, porch lighting and street lights in order to recreate the extreme contrasting light effects that Romanek adopts.

On advertising

There is a notable problem in this module of our media studies course, in that we are required, in our music video, to create a product that is intended to advertise the song, album and artist involved. Therefore, we'll have to be considering this fact all through our task - that our music video is not just an artistic work, but should also be intended as the tool of a (hypothetical) corporate entity of the music industry. This is particularly true in the case of our other ancilliary task, other than the album art - an advert in a magazine, considering this is entirely a marketing product. I'm unsure exactly how we'll go about this, since we've only just started considering it, but I do think it's a better idea than to make a website, since neither of us have any idea how to go about designing that. At least with an in-magazine advert, you can be a little more creative in targeting the artsy, indie audience that would probably more appreciate the song in question.

ancilliary tasks

In today's lesson, myself and Will have sidetracked from the main task and have decided to take this opportunity to thoroughly plan the ancilliary tasks that complete the digipak.

We've concluded that an album cover and magazine article would be the best course of action for our piece. At this stage, we've been scouring through various album covers for appropriate design ideas to suit the song we've selected "science of fear." We were particular struck by the album cover of "Only by the night" by Kings of leon



The unique design of the album cover, with the lead singer split into several sections reflects the mood and atmosphere of the music, with some hihgly self-reflexive lyrics in many tracks. Perhpas the band are attempting to comment on a 'split' or 'confused' personallity.

Getting some concrete ideas down

Alright, so this lesson's we've stopped procrastinating and decided to press on and actually get some concrete ideas down. It's gone pretty well so far - we've even got a slight narrative aspect down. For the most part we've been working out ideas for specific shots, and drawing basic ideas for what we intend to shoot. I'm glad we've actually managed to get some ideas going, as now we've established a few themes and motifs, the rest is sure to follow through. There's been a few deliberations over ideas by both me and George, but generally we've managed to work it out and the majority of our ideas seem to be on the same wavelength, thank christ.

Song selection

After long deliberation with artists such as "Coldplay" and "Burial", it was eventually a temper trap number that seized our attention upon the first play. Myself and Will both saw plenty of opportunity in the song "Science of Fear" with some compelling lyrics and a unique pace to the track, the ideas immediately came flowing.
We knew this was the song to take as forward, sparking vivid imagery that unified the group in terms of ideas. And with the constant dead-end song discussion we experienced 'pre-split', the excitement was difficult to contain as our ideas began to take shape on paper.
The next step for Will and I is to carry out some audience research. We intend to host a focus group, playing the song to a small selection of people and sharing ideas and views that we'll seek to incorporate in the video.

Fun with Final Cut

Me and George have taken the first baby steps in our music video adventure, and we have taken some meagre and simplistic test shots for the purpose of having an experiment with Final Cut. At first we just started to peruse the wide selection of typical video effects, such as colour tinting and reversal, and eventually we discovered the effects that we thought would fit the best with our video, such as the classic slow motion, and temporal effects such as 'Echo' (Of which a video will be posted soon).

With this knowledge, we now have broader horizons and a better set visual idea of what our video may consist of and look like.

The Split

Okay, me and George have split up with Eddie and Adam due to artistic differences. It's been a long time coming, and no one can deny that. Anyway, we wish them all the best with their future endeavours. See you guys at the Thursties ;)

Song choices that are possible candidates:

Coldplay - Spies
Kanye West - Jesus Walks
Apes & Androids - Nights of the Week
Burial - Homeless

So... we need to decide exactly which of these we might wish to consider. I haven't heard a suggestion by Adam yet, but when I do I'll be sure to add it later.

Preproduction for our year 13 portfolio has begun and the works of Jonothan Glazer and Spike Jonze have had an immediate impact on our ideas. We were instantly intrigued with Spike Jonze's conceptual video "Drop". The Unique way in which the characters of the video were working backwards whilst conforming with the forward flowing narrative is something we may wish to encorporate in our music video.
Additionally, the way in which Jonothan Glazer plays with temporal space in the video of Radiohead's "street spirit", was also of interest to the group. The slow pace of the music is flattered by Glazers motion play, with aspects of the video in slow-mo and others in real time, the techniques compliment eachother to create some powerful imgery and a compelling conceptual piece; a technique we may wish to adapt to our piece.

Possible Music Genres

In terms of our music video, one of the most important aspects of the project and the song in question, is genre. Eddie and Will have decided that we ourselves would prefer Hip-Hop and Electronic music, due to this style being far more suited to editing on the beat. However, we expect that the other members of our group would be more inclined towards the slow guitar-indie sort of genre, if that mesh of words corresponds to such.

Eddie has considered Kanye West - Jesus Walks as a possible candidate, due to the comparatively fast pace and lyrical flow. Also the lyrics are distinguishable enough so as to allow us the ability to create a decent number of lyric-to-visual connections.

Meanwhile, Will (That is me), has two songs to consider, at least that I figure that the rest of the group may like. The first is Burial - Archangel, which has a moody, downbeat yet sweeping feel to it - and we also agreed that we would prefer to use a slow-tempo track or, at the very least, a song that wasn't brutally fast. The other is Apes & Androids - Nights of the Week, a fairly recent guitar-y, indie-y affair mixed with some anti-pop electronica. That's probably the best car crash of a sentence to explain it.

- Will and Eddie