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