Equipment List

Ipod Speakers:





Step ladder.




River







Guitar








Drm Kit

Test Footage 1

Test Footage Summary

This test footage is just a short example of the performance part to our video, we wanted to gather a rough impression of how the silhouettes would work and see how a couple of camera angles may look. We thought the overhead shot looked good and will look even better once we have proper lighting, rather than the light from a phone, and we can spend more time perfecting the angle and panning.

2nd part/ Narrative Shot List

Starts when car pulls forwards to singer, in the band performance.
Shot 1. Car pulls up towards performing band
Shot 2. Shot of performing band
Shot 3 . Shot of car stopping in front of still performing band
Shot 4. shot of car turning on lights, which illuminates band
Shot 5. Front on shot of illuminated band
Shot 6. Close of car door opening, then foot comes out and hits the ground
Shot 7. Band performing shot
Shot 8. Out of focus image of silhouette rising from car
Shot 9. More band performances shots
Shot 10. Low shot of silhouette viewing banding from a distance
Shot 11. Pan shot, almost POV shot of band from silhouette point of view
Shot 12. Overhead view of band
Shot 13. Shot of silhouette looking at the band (silhouette not in focus, but band is )
Shot 14. More band performance

It's really nothing more than an idea but i might as well post it, i was perhaps thinking that the narrative could be a bit of an insight in to the man who is silhouetted and is a Priest or just like a strict church follower (i just thought of this because of the 'religion' line) who becomes disillusioned and he comes out and just turns to drinking, starting fights randomly with people in the street and then starts driving and ends up in the car park, which reverts back to him being there watching the band etc. I don't know really... it was just an idea.

Performance Shot List

Pre-music start
1. Close-up shot of microphone blurred and coming in to focus when the singer steps up to the mic.
2. Side shot of the bass drum being practiced by drummer.
3. Front, close-up shot of guitar strings.
4. Close shot of bass head.
5. Picture of plugging in to amp
6. Singer taking mic out.
7. Turning volume up on the amp.
Music starts
8. Overhead mid-shot of drummer.
9. Full band mid-length shot panning from right to left.
10. Close-up on singer.
11.

Camera Angles

We are intending to use quite dramatic lighting to create silhouettes in the video. To create the right effective we need to choose particular camera angles to complement the light. Low angle shots accentuate the height of the figures in the videos. Angles square on create a very strong looking figure. Using a low depth of field we will blur the background, drawing attention to the main figure in the shots.

Potential Props

We may shoot some of the footage at night time and then use car headlights to light up the band (silhouetted look).
There will be a live band performance and therefore the video will contain many instruments: microphone, guitars, bass guitar and drum kit.

lighting and tone

example of what the lighting is going to be like for the band playing part of the video. also a possible location. (Newmarket car park)

Location, location,location

For the band performance we are intending to film in a barn. This spooky and dark setting will will aid the eerie atmosphere our video will contain.
At one point in the video we may have someone running down a road/lane being chased from the barn in the video.

Animatic Feedback

• Introduction, with the plugging instruments in, fits in with music genre.
• Drawing the arrows on was good because it gave a clear sense of direction and the camera movement during the shots.
• Could've done with adding in a few more of the narrative shots to make it clear on what's going to happen in the narrative part of the video and we perhaps left it a bit short.
• If we could do the animatic again, we would put some more narrative shots in, to give a clearer direction of where we want the video to go.
• We could have made it more clear that the figures where silhouettes.

Animatic

Cage The Elephant

Cage The Elephant are a indie/rock band from America who're just breaking through in the UK at the moment and bagged a main support slot with The Pigeon detectives early on in 2008. They are a 5-piece band, with an increasingly popular set up of a singer, 2 guitarists, a bassist and a drummer.

We've tried contacting them a few times, via Myspace, but with little success. After asking for lyrics, i got a response from a member saying "will get Matt (the singer) to send it over"...which hasn't happened as of yet, despite a few reminders.

part 2

Part 1

Narrative Ideas

We felt that the narrative could be of a person getting into a fight as some of the lyrics would relate to this idea.

'....got be thinking bout the way that we live,
I've got this feeling it's gonna stop'.
These lyrics could be relating to the low/bad (thug-like) life that the character in the story leads. However, the lyrics indicate that he wants to change the way he lives his life.

'A billion faces running round my head,
All got opinions but they don’t mean shit
This could be displayed my a group of people (a billion faces) trying to intimidate a person, shouting their 'opinions' all at once.

Very Cool Idea Please read.....
I think that we should have a silhouette figure watching the bands performance, sort of as if the band are playing to this silhouette. It adds the feel that they are being watched/ judged, which fits in with our being watched narrative. Also it puts depth to the bands performance.


'A battleground indeed'
Signifying the place where the fight takes place.

'The hate that drives us needs to be stopped.'
This could be almost voicing the thoughts of the character in the story that is getting bullied.


We had originally thought of having a person look as if they are coming out of a river. If we had this clip at the beginning of the video it could be as if the person was re-living the moments that led up to them being in a river. We could incorporate the idea above by having the person coming out of the river being the one that gets into the fight. The video could end with the person getting pushed/thrown into the river from the fight (gives an explanation of how the person ended up in the river).

Our band.

Our guys.

Dark Gradient

In this video, (Artic Monkeys- A view for the Afternoon), we really like dark gradient. It gives the music video more depth, and fits well with the depressing scene. We plan to use the same sort of effect when we come to editing our video. Maybe not as far as black and white, but certainly a dark effect. Hopefully this effect will separate our video from the rest by giving it a more sort of professional feel, as well as adding context and depth. Also it will fit in with our dark narrative.

Shot list

band shots:
for the intro, we'll start with an extreme close up focusing on the individual band members (preparing/setting up instruments etc) then it will go into a zooming out panned like shot to introduce the band. they will then start playing. a low shot of the band can be used to show dominance and more when the shot is zooming out, we will cut parts out to create a sharp cropped out effect continuously zooming out.
the shot will be in a fairly dark location lit up by car lights to accentuate the band members.

Narrative shots:
based on a movie called 'Donni Darko' it will have the same sort of introduction. we are still not sure what will be our opening for the video but either one will be used. we'll have someone wake up in the middle of know-where and just walking away and he will be filmed going through the town and various incidents will occure.

- window shots from cars, showing someone singing on the street.
- transparency effects for various shots.
- fast abstract shots from various view points e.g. of instruments.
- steady panning shots from car showing actions of the people walking in the street.
- action shots; someone falling into a river (reverse shots can be used)

Location Possibilities

Cambridge Science parks
Riverside (Somewhere in Cambirdge e.g. Mill Pond, Newnham, Grantchester).
Performances done in an area in evening with lots of light (possibly Grantchester).
Various locations out and and about in Cambridge on the roads from car.

Many of the location possibilities are specifically chosen for dramatic effect. Overgrown areas tend to have a perhaps more intense atmosphere. In conjunction, these areas will not be as populated and therefore we will be able to concentrate fully on the band when filming rather than trying to constantly avoid the public. When watching the video it will also somewhat force an audience to pay attention to the desired bits of the video, rather than having to many things going on, on screen, at any one time.
In contrast the narrative part of the video may be filmed in town and on roads (in the company of the public) completely distinguishing it from the band's performance. This will diminish any confusion between the two parallel bits of action/ storylines that are taking place in the music video.

Related Ideas

Radiohead - Karma Police



This video is similar to the idea we had about filming some of the footage through a car window. We liked this video because it sets up a more interesting frame for the shot and with the headlights, it provides good lighting.

Related Ideas

Vampire Weekend - A-Punk



We like the technique they used for filming this video, in which they filmed the footage at a reduced speed and then put it back up to the normal pace in editing to create a jumpier, snappier effect for the video.

Further Ideas

I was trying to think of another shot idea that we could make the performance part of the video as interesting as the window-shots idea that Tally had, and we could combine together. I think we could have a couple of straight on shots (maybe for the opening lines) with quite dramatic lighting and film it with the song playing at a lot slower speed with whoever performs singing to the slow version and then we speed it back up in editing to make it look snappier and more interesting. There is a similar kind of a example of this idea, but with individual frames, in the Sledgehammer video by Peter Gabriel:

Pitch

We’re doing the song Lotus by an indie band called Cage The Elephant. We chose the song because we felt it would be easy to work to and is quite upbeat so we can work with the fast tempo to create a flowing, capturing video. We all agreed on having quick cut editing to match the rhythm of song and then we will slow down for the chorus.

We decided to stick to indie video conventions by going for a performance driven video, which has been increasingly popular amongst bigger indie artists such as Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand. We will also include a rough narrative to it to make it standout more as a video and we felt it’d be too boring to work with having just performance, especially due to the fact that the last minute of the song has no words in it. Outdoors settings for both performance and narration parts because it just allows more open shots and gives a lot more natural light to the shot.

The initial ideas we’ve had for the video is:
• For performance part of the video, a abstract view of different situations of the band playing down a street or in a field and we could film from less traditional perspectives e.g. through a car window.
• "...it's gonna stop" line shown from sped up footage from passenger seat of car out the front window and coming to a red light, edited to finish dead on the "stop" beat.
• We had an idea, inspired by the film ‘Donnie Darko’ where we could have part of the narrative involving the main person waking up in different random places.
• We’re also exploring the idea of having different narrative incidents, possibly representing the lyrics, but editing them to be in reverse or different filters.
• One of our main shots that we want to include is somebody falling in to water but we edit it so it plays backwards and it looks like somebody is rising out of the water.

We may have found a possible band to star in our video, to provide a more professional feel to our music video and it will also help having actors who’re experienced singers so hopefully the lip syncing will be more accurate.

As far as the shot colour is concerned, we’re thinking of putting it in a lot darker gradient and possible coloured filter changes because it would add a lot more professional feel and increase the intensity of the video.

Luckily, Antoine in our group has a HD video camera so we have the option of using this to increase quality of the video.

First lesson

We had some very initial ideas about the are music video:
We decided that because CTE (cage the elephant), is quite an 'indie', to keep to the genre and use lip syncing, instead of just a narrative blind performance.
Also because of the upbeat pace of the song we decided to use quick cut shots and quick editing techniques. To insure the speed of the visuals, to keep with the music.
We also started thinking about content, maybe a band performance?

Lyrics

Artist: Cage The Elephant
Song: Lotus

After getting no luck on search engines or lyrics websites, we've sent a message to Cage The Elephant via Myspace.
In the meantime,from what we can make out at the moment, the lyrics are:

Intro
Woke before the morning sun,
(?)
........rising in the sky and burst to flamees,
........got be thinking bout the way that we live,
I've got this feeling it's gonna stop.

Verse 1
Dreaming about religion, running backwards down a one way road,
I cause collisions with decisions trying to save your soul,
Man, our first destiny is just a fancy word for...(?)
I got this feeling it's gonna stop.


Chorus
A billion faces running round my head,
All got opinions but they don’t mean shit,
Keep dropping bombs til the whole world is dead,
They say it’s all been done and it’s all been said,
Ill change this message tilapaperaman,
Facist statement, coloured politics,
You can mark me words they’ll put a spin on it,
They’ll say it’s all been done

Verse 2
Look outside the box my friend,
Your hearts been dancing to who knows where,(?)
It seems we missed the mark,
Lost all hope and given in,
Pack up the suitcase,
Take that handkerchief and wipe off your chin,
The fear that drives you needs to be stopped.

Chorus

Verse 3
Fell in to a daze, i found my mind was getting laid to waste (?)
A battleground indeed, where holy wars have taken place,
I saw the sunset, watched it travel and tear through the ground,
The hate that drives us needs to be stopped.

Deadlines

-Completed pitch written up on blog by end of next lesson (10th September).

-Each group to present pitch to the others in class by end of Fridays lesson (12th, September).

-Each group to have completed animatic storyboard and uploaded by the end of next week.

Welcome to GROUP 38