Storyboard

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.

Songs meaning

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.

Mise-en-scene preperation

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.

Permission Email

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.

Permission

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.

Location Scouting

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.

Narrative

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.

Pink Floyd

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:

Influential videos

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.

questionnaire results

question 1	question 2	question 3	question 4
male: 13	10 years or under: 0	yes: 15	drug abuse: 20
female: 20	11 - 14 years: 1	to an extent: 10	psychedelia: 15
prefer not to say: 0	15 - 17 years: 4	no: 8	visual effects: 25
	18 - 20 years: 15		artistic style: 20
	21 - 25 years: 3		intelligent narrative: 5
	26 - 30 years: 0
	31 - 40 years: 3
	41 - 50 years: 6
	51 years or over: 1
question 5	question 6
yes: 12	the powerful narrative was fitting: 5
no: 21	it was too long: 3
	it was too bizarre: 2
	message overpowered the narrative: 2
	other: 0
question 8	question 9	question 7
yes: 21	yes: 28	yes: 20
no: 10	no: 5	no: 11

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.

questionnaire

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.

Production Notes 3

Production Notes 2

Production notes 1