Research

Before we can start to generate ideas for this music video, we first have to be able to understand the ideas behind music videos, what they try and achieve and why some are more successful than others. The definition of a music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music, most commonly a song with lyrics. This is obvious and doesn’t really help us understand why there is such a range of music videos, which try to all get across there own point of opinion. I feel most music videos just try to keep the audience interested and boost sales of the songs rather than make the viewer see there own opinion a specific matters. Music videos use a range of styles of filmmaking, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film. Some music videos blend different styles, such as animation and live action. I am going to look at four different types of music videos and try and breakdown the ideas behind each one, hoping this will help us with our planning, filming and generation of ideas. Also I will look at the history of music videos and how they change over the years, which hopefully also will help me understand music videos better. The four music videos I will be looking at are The Gossip ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’, Michael Jackson ‘Earth Song’, The White stripes ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’ and Editors ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors’. I chose each of these music videos for different reasons, which I will talk about when comparing them together and talking about the strengths and weaknesses.

Music videos generally use band footage to interlink different plots together to make them make sense, making the audience keep interest in the video. The pace of music videos has to be fast with quick changing shots or the audience will soon get bored of the video. The image of the band is crucial to their popularity and overall sales of their songs, which is the most important factor. Music videos have to appeal to all types of audience, broadening their popularity and sales of their song. Music videos represent a crucial part of the music industry. Many artists owe their careers to music videos as they are being given the chance of impressing the public not just with their voices, but also with their looks or moves.

Evaluating each video shall be difficult but I feel I need to gain a better understanding of what makes a good music video before we can start to plans ours. These music videos are all types of styles and think this is good, as I will have a wider verity of knowledge before starting. I felt I chose four different types of music video from animation to the more political video.

Screen grabs of existing music videos:

Editors ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors’.





Above is a series of shots taken from The Editors new video ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors’.The music video for "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors" was filmed in and around Prague on the Vltava,and depicts, in a nonlinear manner, a young girl with the ability to walk on water escaping from a hospital, escaping via railway lines, a red light district and a Romani encampment to the river Vltava where she attempts to row away, only to run back across the water surface to avoid a police boat, all intercut with clips of the Editors playing the song in an abandoned ship. The woman that helps hide the runaway, presumably a prostitute (the woman), changes in appearance. The runaway's hood is alternately flipped up and down and the dog that runs with her might also be different in different scenes. This is all to signify that the runaway has escaped many times before.

I chose to look at this video because I feel it shares the same imagery and characteristics that we want emulate. Although it combines band footage with the story, there are certain themes that we feel we could use in our video. We intend to use the same colour scheme that they have used such as the light and dark greys but maybe put hints of oranges in to contrast the overall colour. Also we intend to use the same figure in our video, trying to show what she is going through and how she feels.

The Gossip ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’





I decided to choose this music video as I felt it was completely different to any other video I have seen. In The Gossip’s music video, the main focus is on the band but uses animation to interact with the band footage, making the music video interesting and colourful. I believe that this music video would have a different aged target audience to ours, as their video would suit younger people such as teenagers. The song "Standing in the Way of Control" is the 'unofficial' theme song to the British teen drama Skins, being used during the ad campaign and has become generally associated with the series by viewers and this backs up their suited target audience.

To get the final product for this music video, they would have to film the band in front of a green screen, then edit and add the animation, which they would of created and layer it over the band footage giving them their finished product. This idea behind the music video is entirely different to what we want to achieve in ours but I feel I should research a range of music videos, not just ones that link in with our idea.

The White stripes ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’





The music video is a Lego animation directed by Michel Gondry. It was shot frame by frame with each frame having the Lego bricks rebuilt, sometimes in a complex manner to seem as if it were an actual shot, and then formed together to give the illusion of motion. The video mostly consists of red, white, and black colour. The video won three MTV Video Music Awards in 2002: Breakthrough Video, Best Special Effects, and Best Editing. It also received a nomination for Video of the Year.

I decided to choose this video as I felt the animation used was completely different form The Gossip’s video, so it gave me a chance to research another type of animation video. The colours used in this music video are mostly consists of red, white, and black, which completely contrasts the colours which we are planning to use.

Michael Jackson ‘Earth Song’






The song's music video depicts the Earth being destroyed by humans, and alludes to environmental and poverty issues in the world. The visuals present the destruction of rainforests by loggers, animals killed by poachers, and a North American forest burnt to stumps. The video also shows the devastation of 1990s aggressions in Yugoslav wars and people returning to their shattered homes.

I decided to research this music video as I feel it has more of a serious and political side to it compared to the other music videos I have researched. It tries to express their own opinions and point of views across the audience, making them take action to everything that is happening. I think their target audience is aimed it everybody, as this will increase their chances of someone making a stand against the problems.

History of Music Videos

• The first musical short films were made in 1923-24, then many followed in six years later, featuring bands, vocalists and dancers.

• Early 1930s cartoons featured popular musicians performing their hit songs on-camera in live action segments during the cartoons.

• Another early form of music video were one-song films called "Promotional Clips" made in the 1940s for the Panoram visual jukebox. These were short films of musical selections, usually just a band on a movie-set bandstand, made for playing.

• According to the Internet Accuracy Project, disk jockey-singer J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson was the first to coin the phrase "music video", in 1959.

• MTV (Music Television) was a phenomenon that gave so much power and importance to the music video. MTV started broadcasting in 1981 in the USA and it marked the beginning of the music video’s ruling over the music industry. The first video ever played on MTV was ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ by The Buggles.

Ryan Adams – Sylvia Plath lyrics

I wish I had a sylvia plath
Busted tooth and a smile
And cigarette ashes in her drink
The kind that goes out and then sleeps for a week
The kind that goes out on her
To give me a reason, for well, I dunno

And maybe shed take me to france
Or maybe to spain and shed ask me to dance
In a mansion on the top of a hill
Shed ash on the carpets
And slip me a pill
Then shed get pretty loaded on gin
And maybe shed give me a bath
How I wish I had a sylvia plath

And she and I would sleep on a boat
And swim in the sea without clothes
With rain falling fast on the sea
While she was swimming away, shed be winking at me
Telling me it would all be okay
Out on the horizon and fading away
And Id swim to the boat and Id laugh
I gotta get me a sylvia plath

And maybe shed take me to france
Or maybe to spain and shed ask me to dance
In a mansion on the top of a hill
Shed ash on the carpets
And slip me a pill
Then shed get pretty loaded on gin
And maybe shed give me a bath
How I wish I had a sylvia plath
I wish I had a sylvia plath

Target Audience

We do not have a specific target audience, instead we want our video to stand out to the general demographic as something that is different to the norm, but not so much so that it becomes obscure. This music video will be more unconventional compared to the average music video as the style and pace of it will be slow. We decided, that in our music video we want to try and tell a story rather than have lots of band footage and its imagery stay close to the lyrics. This idea has more in common with arthouse films and what they try and achieve. The mise-en-scene within a music video has to be right in order to create a certain atmosphere or ‘effect’ therefore we need to consider; camera angle, shot and positioning, costume, lighting, sound and special effects.

Planning

Having completed the research, I now feel I understand what makes a successful music video. The planning section is one of the most important sections, as this is the point where we have to decide on an idea, location, actors, times and then storyboard it all. If any of this is incorrect or just slightly wrong, then the next stages will also be wrong. The planning stage is where we pool all our ideas together, thinking about different concepts and ideas that we could use, trying to relate them to our chosen song, which is written by Ryan Adams and is called sylvia plath.

Idea

From the start of this coursework we have always had an idea of what we wanted to do, so it was just a matter of fine-tuning the idea, so it would work and flow together. The whole idea only involves two characters, one being female and the other male. The general idea starts with a man reading a book, then cuts to her as if, he is picturing what is happening from this book. We have to make the audience realize, what is happening as soon as possible and try and get them recognize the main themes behind our idea and what we trying get across to them. The themes of the song that we are using, are indulgence, excess and self destruction and theses will be some of the themes that we will use throughout our music video.

Location

For our music video, we would like to use one of our friends house to film a stage of the video but there a few problems with this idea. We want to use our friends basement to film the a scene with a bath tub and the female character but we will have trouble finding a bath tub then carrying it down the stairs, fitting through the door then filling it with warm water. We need to try and figure away around this problem that matches our ideas but hopefully we will be able to complete our original plan. Also we need a large house, as this will give the impression that the actress is of a higher class but the house must have a large staircase and our friend’s house fits both these needs. Because we want to use our friend’s house, this means we won’t have think about available time that we can film or how long can film for as we can use his house any time.

Props and Equipment

For our music video we need to identify what props and equipment we need when filming our music video. This is a very important part of our music video because if we do not portray the right image across to the audience they will not understand the video. These are the props and equipment we need:

• Bath tub
• Costume – long black dress, long gloves
• Make up
• Book
• Cannon XL2 or Cannon XM2 and tripod.

Storyboarding

The standard of the storyboarding from AS to A2 has to be improved and to do this instead of drawing them out by hand, we could have the option of drawing out the images then scanning them onto the computer and colouring and editing them through Photoshop. This process of editing the images through the computer is time consuming and I think the standard will be to a lower level compared to hand drawn storyboards. The storyboards need to help us get an idea of the shots needed with a variety of different camera angles and will help anyone viewing them to understand what we are trying to achieve. These storyboards have to depict exactly what we want to be in our music video, which will help us when trying to film. The storyboards need to show our thoughts and how they change and adapt depending on different situations.