New idea for narrative in music video

We decided to change our original narrative as we thought that it wouldn't stand upto repeatability. The general consensus between are group was that we wanted to create a music video that was more mysterious and encorparated narrative 'fuzz'.

The original story-line, was just 'Edd' following 'Lucy'. We felt that for the Music Video to stand up to repeatability, we needed to add a dramatic twist. This would make the video more intresting in the audiences eyes. The twist will be 'Lucy' and 'Edd' arguing and progressing into a fight, then 'Lucy' lashes out and kills 'Edd' as a result of him following her. We will use editing techniques like rewinding shots back, slow motion as well as speading up shots and montage editing to make the music video more intreging (which was the main problem with the original plan). By encorporating all of these different componants into our music video it will hopefully appeal to our target audience more than the original idea where 'Edd' finally got the courage to approach 'Lucy' and everything ended well.

We will use alot of camera movement, to make the MV more interesting, such as pans and handi-cam. As well as this we will use voeyerism as it is a key convention in alot of music videos. Another way that we feel that the new narrative will be better is if we reverse the timespan in editing as it will give the impression that 'Lucy' and 'Edd' are walking backwards. As well as this, it will also seem as if we will be rewinding from the begining to the start of the narrative. This will hopefully make the start of the music video more intresting, as the if the start of a music video isn't intresting then it can mean that audiences loose concentration and don't take intrest. Further more, the MV will incorporate different angled shots, and still shots. The still shots will help break up the continuosness of the shots as well as jump cuts with dissolve editing. We think these components will enhance the way that the audience consume our music video.

The reason we decided to change our narrative so late was that we found that after are first shoot that the narative didn't translate to the track as well as we wanted it to do. Which was the main reason for us innovating our narrative. We found that the original shots were too boring, and not constructed well enought. By this I mean that lighting was wrong, we needed a new actor (Edd instead of Josh) and that some shots didn't look right because they didn't follow the rule of thirds. Although these areas of our MV don't seem appropriate to our narrative, they are a good means in constructing the narrative and helping it flow. Although, we found in the original shoot that the car park next to the AXA PPP building in Tunbridge Wells was a good place to shoot the main part of our music video. This was because we found that the lighting was much better in there than outside on the streets. This changed our narrative as it meant that we now had one main location rather than many locations, where Lucy was pursued by the actor (now Edd).

In conclusion to this post, as a group, we feel that with the changes to the narrative and editing techniques that our music video will be improved significantly. I think that having two actors from outside the our group will be better as well, this means that we as a group can share our ideas and translate them better into the MV.

Filming #1 - 27/01/08

The whole group went out to start filming on 27/01/08. We wanted it to be completely dark with only street lighting so we met up at 8 o' clock. From studying our shots and after analysing our reccie shots we thought that the best way to start was with the opening shot in a location that we had found in our reccie. Here is a list of the shots and the locations in which we took them:

Shot 1, 2, 3, 4 - We filmed these shots in an alley near Hotel Du Vin in Tunbridge Wells and behind AXA PPP building. We found that the problem that arose from this location is that the natural lighting was not that great and it is quite dark, it also looks quite red. We experimented from various angles with different movements before finding the shot we liked. However, shooting these sequences did take longer than we expected.

Shot 6 - We filmed some of this shot near the millenium clock in Tunbridge Wells but we have not yet come up with the final shot we want of this. We used it experimentally. The difficulties we found were that the busy road caused delays and it is quite hard to find the distance of the shot we want. The shot also requires an element of timing so may need to film a few times. However, we do now have some quite good preliminary footage.

Shot 7, 8 - Again, we found this shot experimental and may not end up using our current footage. The phone gave off light that didn't look that good when on camera. We may need to find another location for this shot as the lighting wasn't ideal.

Shot 9 - We tried this shot in the middle of town in Tunbridge Wells but again the lighting was a problem. The advertisement lighting dominated the shot so it wasn't what we had hoped for. However, we got an idea of how it would look like so we can try to find a more suitable location the next time we go out filming.

Filler shots - We realised once we had animated our storyboard that we were probably a few shots too short. Therefore when we were out filming we decided to have a look around and possibly shoot some sequences that will be in the final video but are not in our animatic. Here is a list of the extra footage we capturted.


Camera on Car - Nat sat on the bonnet of Rob's car holding the camera, filming while reversing as Lucy walked towards the camera. This was a very good shot as the car park lighting worked very well and gave quite a nice effect.

Lucy running - We filmed one of Lucy's idea which was for her to run along a strip of shops and then when it comes to editing blur the lights of the shop to create a speed effect. We got a small amount of footage to analyse on the software before deciding whether we will be using the idea.

Planning review #4

I can see that you have started the entry for the animatic and you have exported it to school, but you have not met the deadline to upload. You have not posted an entry since December - you must be using the blog to record changes to your ideas, reccies, practice shots, and finally the animatic.

You should upload to the blog, explain HOW you completed the animatic and what you specifically learnt from it that will now inform your shoots.

Animatic

Upon completing our animatic in the week ending on the 25th January, we are fairly happy with the progress made, although we have realised a few problems with it. One of the problems that we have found is that although we have based our music video on a narrative story, we think that there is no real twist or enigma to it. We have realised that we need to fix this problem, and hopefully add more repeatability to the video, 0r add a twist of some kind. Also, due to the fact that Lucy is the main actresses in the video, we are going to need to decide when to film so that it fits her schedule, as she is often busy with college work. We are planning to film on Sunday the 27th of January, and get as much footage as we can. It is an advantage to film as late as possible, so that the streets are relatively empty and there is little traffic.

Our animatic has been uploaded to YouTube, and the the link is posted below.



http://youtube.com/watch?v=sOxR7_6hYAk

Mise-en-scene

In our video we have now decided to have Lucy as the main part walking through the dark streets. We want to use natural lighting from the streets such as streetlights and shop lights. We feel that this will give off an urban feel which is the effect we want to give. In terms of props, we will be using very little if any of our planned ones. Our main focus will be the actor throughout the video so the only other aspects in shot will be building and streetlights. However, before each shot we take, we will be careful about what is in the shot and may have to move objects to get the shot we are looking for. For costume, we will want Lucy to wear clothes that our target audience can relate to. Therefore, clothes that she would normally wear, such as jeans and boots, with a coat as it is at night, would be what we are aiming for in terms of Lucy's clothing.