ALL - Podcast 6 - Animatic + Performance Footage Update

ALL - Storyboards

Here are our storyboards that i have scanned in today that confirm our full idea. We still have the flexibility to change around with some ideas but this is the general order of shots and narrative/performance footage. We have filmed a couple of scenes including the ones in the 'Muse Nerds' living room and bedroom and also played around with some shots at the River Wharfe and the skate park. Performance and school footage are in the pipeline for over the Chrismas period and early in January when we return to school. Our Animatic will be completed soon as we have nearly finished editing it on the MAC using iMovie so that will be up tomorrow.

WS - Deconstruction - If You Wanna - The Vaccines

"If You Wanna" is a song by the London-based Quartet The Vaccines. The song is on the bands album "What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?" which was released in 2010.  The song peaked at number 53 on the UK charts.

The reason that I have chosen to do a deconstruction of this video now is that it is completely performance based. This is unusual because music videos would normally be a hybrid of two of Goodwins three types of video (Narrative, Concept and Performance), like Professor Green's "Read All About It" for example. One of the main reasons videos tend to incorporate two aspects is to avoid the video getting boring and repetitive. With this video only using the performance aspect, there must be other ways they have tried to make the video interesting, and I hope to take inspiration for this into our group work to use on the parts of our video that are performance based.


The video was directed by Douglas Hart, a British musician and music video director who had previously worked on videos for the likes of The Stone Roses, The Libertines and The Pet Shop Boys.


As I have previously said, the whole video is made up from performance based footage. There are a number of reasons a band might do this ranging from it been different to what we expect from a video to the fact that The Vaccines are a new and rising band, meaning they will not yet have access to very big budgets. A performance video is probably the cheapest to make as you do not have to pay actor fees and can if needs be just stick to one location. A video of any sort however is good for a rising band as it increases the amount of ways in which their music can be heard and obviously now viewed. Videos by The Vaccines do seem to incorporate performance aspects, even if hey are not entirely performance based (Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra Ra), Blow It Up and Norgaard being good examples of this).


Despite the video only using one of Goodwin's three types, it stills works effectively and follows some typical conventions. Throughout the video the pace of the editing varies; at certain points the editing is quite fast and the shots are short like we expect in music videos. This isn't the case throughout however, as the pace of editing is slow at points and adds variation to the video which helps to avoid the video becoming boring.


Another way in which the Director has tried to keep the video interesting and entertaining is through the lighting. This is very notable early in the video and a really good effect is when they have the lighting flashing in time with the guitar. During the video the colour of that lighting changes, which makes the visuals different throughout rather than being really repetitive and boring.


I have already mentioned the pace of the editing in the video, but this is helped significantly by the variation in shots seen throughout. A common convention of music videos is for there to be variation in the shots and this video has plenty of it. This is something we will certainly be looking to include in the performance aspects of our own video.

ALL - Deconstruction of the Lyrics Sheet

Here is our lyrics sheet which we printed off in our media lesson today. We grouped together and went through the timings of the lyrics with our storyboards and went through an initial plan of whats going to be on screen at certain times in the song.

Lyrics Sheet With Deconstruction

RS - Feedback from Second Sample Footage

Once we had finished editing our second sample footage for our music video we gave the exported file to our Media Teacher so he could upload it to Youtube. Once it had been uploaded we gathered all the students within the class together around the middle and screened our second sample footage to them. Once the screening had finished we had time to ask them any questions or for them to ask us any questions and this is what we recieved.

• Try not to show the face of the protagonist straight away (to keep narrative enigma)
• Create a CD/DVD print to put onto a blank CD with the name of our track + band on it to show to the audience.
• Try to time to poster "montage" shots with the music
• Instead of having copyrighted material being played on the TV have our performance footage played on it instead.
• Have CU's on the phone so it's easier to read and either speed up the footage or shorten the sequence down a couple of menus to save time
• Having the "Sony" branding in the frame could be seen as a viral advert
• Have the protagnoist using the QR code app on his phone whilst looking at our Digipak we will be making to help promote it.
• Have our magazine advert on one of the pages when the protagonist is reading it
• Make the collage of magazines more subtle not just in a big group on the floor
• Use multi-layering within the video so we can fit more footage into the sequence
• Have photos of the protagonist alone in various locations so it isolates him from everyone even more
• Redo some of the shots with the low-lighting and test on the day to see if lighting is suitable if not then use external light source
• First see the persons face when he puts the magazine down
• Try out with having shots without showing his face at all perhaphs for the entire music video and then get feedback from it all to see if it works!
• Have the protag looking through his wardrobe however the clothes are very unusual and makes him seem more of an outsider to the rest
• Look at Napoleon Dynamite for influence

We also recieved feedback from a past A2 student, Chris Lawrence!

ALL - Sample Footage 2

ALL - Vodcast Number 2

ALL - Podcast 5: Inspiration from film and music video

ALL - Further Influences from Film + Other Music Videos

The Breakfast Club (1985, John Hughes). This opening sequence is very useful to us due to the location the film is set in. It gives us a better understanding of how we would set up the shots.

Unfortunatley this clip has been mirrored so that it wouldn't be removed from Youtube however it's only the titles that are an issue to read.

 

Here are a few examples of music videos using high school locations within their videos. Most of these music videos are within our genre so it shows that the genre uses this location often and that it creates a good music video.

 

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

 

Pearl Jam - Jeremy

 

 

 

Aerosmith - Livin' On The Edge

 

Pink Floyd - Another Brick in the Wall

 

Van Halen - Hot For Teacher

 

Escape the Fate - Situations (An obvious reference to Hot For Teacher but with a twist!)

 

Escape The Fate - Situations from Brad Radke on Vimeo.

ALL - Inspiration from Film + other Music Videos

Today as a group we all looked at the film opening forTrick or Treat (1986, Charles Martin Smith) and we found it very useful as it is very similar to our idea with the main character being seen as distant from the other students at school. We won't use all of the aspects within the Trick or Treat opening such as the nudity and some of the other shots however we do want a similar effect showing the protagonist distant from the others and not fitting in because of him liking a certain band similar to this. We want to use a similar panning technique they use in the bedroom scene where it is moving across all the different bands posters/accessories as it works really well and is achieveable by us. It's like a short montage which we could take inspiration from.

The sequence at the start with the protagonist in his bedroom is useful because of the use of mise en scene within the room. From the music posters to the calendars and even the books on the shelves have references to bands and show what his hobbies/interests are. We want to do a similar thing in our music video so using this as a reference is helpful. 

Here is the entire opening sequence to the film:

We also took inspiration from certain music videos including

• Waking the Demon by Bullet For My Valentine 

• Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus  

• Jesus of Suburbia by Green Day

We only want to use certain aspects from within these music videos so we wont go to the extreams of creating a werewolf etc however we do want to have similar shots like in these videos within our video. We are only taking inspiration from them not copying them.