We have finished our first two batches of filming and have finished what we call 'the anger sequence' and the introduction. This is the bulk of our shooting and we are extremely happy to have been able to capture all of this in just two batches. There may still be shots we need to get once we have edited everything, however we cannot know now. All we need to concentrate on now is splicing the shots together and seeing what is missing.
I'm really happy with the footage so far, it looks really good and matches the storyboard really well. We have an abundance of shots as well, which is always useful with music videos as there always tends to be gaps. We were surprised by the raw emotion of our actor, something which we did not anticipate, yet can only be a good thing.
I'm looking forward to seeing what comes from these batches. Here are some images of what we were doing and where:
I recently saw a short film on film four, titled 'Six Shooter', directed by Martin McDonagh, the director of the film four hit 'In Bruges' and it stars the same actor as this film, Brendan Gleeson. I thought it was relevant due to the themes it incorporated, these being, how people cope with loss and the psychological differences between people and there strength to deal with depression.
This is what we intend to explore with our music video, as this is what the song is based around.
All main characters in the short film have recently experienced death of a close partner or family member and the contrast of how they deal with this struggle through each character is what is most interesting about this text. Although it is a short film, I still feel it is relevant simply through the themes, even though the means that it is represented will be extremely different.
This is the first part of the short film, with part 2 and 3 available as links to the left, it's about 30 minutes long.
This is the song Comfortably Numb, by Pink Floyd, from the album The Wall. The video which accompanies it is from the extended music video, of the same name. The scene at the start of the second solo where he destroys the apartment (4:30) is extremely influential toward what our music is trying to do, however, ours has different narrative depths and motivations. This video is a compilation from the video, not actually what accompanies it in the film.
We've been looking for an actor for a while, luckily we've thought of using our friend called Charlie Collet. He is a good actor and he's involved in a lot of drama orientated projects in school. He's agreed to act for us, which is really good. He also looks the part, being able to pull off scruffy looks with ease, in order to look appropriately suicidal at the times we need him to.
This is our storyboard, required as a visual aide when filming. This is a pretty basic plan and we don't expect to follow them frame by frame by any means. It does however provide help when structuring our film, knowing what emotion we need to portray at which parts to match the song.
Great Gig in the Sky is a song with strong meanings, many of the meanings can be observed during their construction in the production of the song. Roger Waters, the bands bassist and frontman, stated that the female vocalist came into the studio to record in 1972, he told her 'There are no lyrics, it's about dying.' so obviously this was the theme the band wanted to adopt. Also told by Waters was the fact that the band was called 'The religion song' or 'The mortality sequence' during production, so the themes are more than clear. The song may not have lyrics, but there are small quotes heard near the start of the song which have obvious death orientated themes, they state:
"And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do; I don't mind.
Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it—you've gotta go sometime." (At 0:38)
"I never said I was afraid of dying." (At 3:33)
We felt it was important to understand the themes so we can bring them into the music video. I think we've done that quite well with the storyboard, as the narrative reflects a story of death and the trauma of dealing with it.
To prepare for shooting we need to make sure we have a lot of the props and the costume sorted. I thought I'd try and find some vibrant clothing, potentially red, in order to give emphasis toward the emotional state of the protagonist. Luckily our actor has some old clothes he can wear, some ripped jeans etc. so that will work for the rest of his costume, giving the connotations of carelessness and negligence toward his own appearance. Obviously we're going to need general clutter and rubbish to fill the room he lives in, to make it appear as if it's built up over time, but this shouldn't be too hard either. Finally, we need to find objects for him to destroy throughout the rage sequence. We discussed this and decided to go to the Dump in Saffron Walden and pick up an old TV or some other appliances for him to destroy, maybe some furniture too. We're also gonna pick up some old bottles to smash.
Neither EMI or Pink Floyd have details on how to contact them on such a matter, due to the magnitude of the two I believe this issue would be of minor importance, mainly due to the fact they haven't given the public a chance to inquire. I will continue to search for a means to ask, however it does not look hopeful, perhaps Roger Waters' or David Gilmour's websites might have contact details or email contacts.
We're going to need to email EMI in order to ensure that they are OK with us using Pink Floyd's track for our music video. A copy of the email will follow and will hopefully follow that with their response. The institution's opinion is obviously extremely important as they have the power to say who can and cannot use their bands material, along with Floyd of course.
When we went to a location we found near great Dunmow, which we had been recommended as a dilapidated house perfect for our idea, we got to the house after a long journey to find that it was invested with doves and was in no condition to shoot in. This is a minor set back and are in the process of looking for new location right now, it should not be too hard to find an appropriate building.
We constructed our narrative knowing the themes of the song, because the song is about dying, we tok that into account. The man featured in our film is a tragic hero, and the order of the narrative is not standard, as it starts at the end and moves back in time and finishes where it started, the protagonist dying. We're doing this for a reason, focusing on the audience's understanding of what's going on, as you are left in the dark, right up until the end.
A lot of Floyd's videos were animated, especially from the ablum 'The Wall' due to the film made to accompany of the same name. They were pretty shocking, some of the animation, and displayed the relevant themes really well. The Wall was a concept album, therefore it had an under lying story throughout, the film portrayed it. Here's an example of one of the songs from the album:
These Videos are the alternatives we looked at originally, they have fairly similar themes, however these focus primarily on drug abuse, rather than the themes of death which Great Gig in the Sky focus' on. These still provide a good influence however, especially Beetlebum. It has a good sense of meaningless and desperation, we hopefully want to emulate.
these are the results we gathered from our questionnaire. From these, we can see what the audience feels is important within the psychedelic genre and with music videos as a whole.
This our questionnaire we've undertaken in order to research how we should aim our music video at our audience. This should hopefully determine how we should include narrative and other elements and how we should approach conventions within the genre all in regards to how the audience receive these various elements. I will upload the results soon.
We studied the song and themes which could be linked in with it to try and fuel some ideas for our video.
We've listened to the sound of the song and how the emotion fluxes with the tone, it follows a narrative, rising from a calmness, to stress and an extremely emotive sound, and then slows again. Considering this progression in the song, we thought we could follow it with our music video. We just have to make sure that we don't make the video too much like a short film, rather than a music video.
To make sure we do this, we need to create a flow in sync with the music, as is common with music videos. Otherwise, it will not work.
There are a few issues which we could potentially encounter, hopefully considering them now could help avoid them, although some are inevitable. One issue, for example, is the magnitude of the band Pink Floyd, and the copyright problems we could encounter. We will have to make sure appropriate efforts are made to contact them. Another problem is in the video itself, and ensuring that the visual story follows the music. The song does not have lyrics, and the emotion is put across through the sound itself, there is a womans voice providing an emotive shout/sing but with no lyrics. This gives us a lot of freedom as we are not bound by the lyrical narrative, however, we have to make sure that the video follows the emotion of the song at the right times and to the right levels.
After a lot of discussion we finally made a descision on which song to make a video to. Seeing as we wanted to have psychedelic influence in the video we made, we decided to do the song 'Great Gig in the Sky' by Pink Floyd. This song has a powerful sound and has sufficient psychedelic features in the song, this means we will be able to include the intricate cinematography which we originally wanted to, as it fits in with the genre. There is not currently a music video which accompanies the song, therefore it will be relatively easy to avoid any preconceptions people may have when they listen to the song. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished piece.
I am Edward Chambers and this is my A2 media blog. This will be following the creative process which my group (Tom and Alec) will take in making a music video. We've had a few ideas on what to do but aren't fully decided. We are currently discussing what to do for the music video, we are planning on doing something with psychedelic influence, this'll mean we can introduce some interesting camera angles and shots.
