Research Into Newer Ideas for Music Video

As we are changing our ideas for the real life section of the music video, I have decided to do some research into what sort of generic mise-en-scene features are usually found in Folk-Indie music videos, and if our newer ideas (posted previously) match or mirror these features. The artists in the pictures supporting this research are The Kooks, The View, Paolo Nutini and James Morrison. These artists all have a similar style of music, and they all have strong musical links to the Indie-Folk/Rock/Pop category.

Firstly, wood/neutral settings do seem to pop up within this genre of music videos, including the fore mentioned bands. The "simple" setting is a popular feature to the mise-en-scene in these videos, shown in the photographs below of James Morrison, The Kooks and Paolo Nutini. James Morrison is featured at a beach, with high cliffs. Although this is beautiful, it is also very simplistic, as his video features him walking along this beach, however we see barely any of the beach (as we see more of him). The Kooks pictures are featured in a blank room, and outside the Eiffel tower. The blank room has its obvious simplicities, however the Eiffel tower setting is less so. The way these bands use the setting is ideal, as the camera focus is on them, having the background fuzzy and out of focus. This gets the audience to concentrate on the artist more, as well as including an attractive mise-en-scene.

The next few pictures (including The View, James Morrison and The Kooks) show the artists singing in the mise-en-scene, towards (but not directly at) the camera. This is an extremely popular feature to Indie genres for music videos, as it gives the artist a chance to show off their talent. However, these video clips aren't usually from live performances but from staged-live performances for the camera, for example, James Morrison's picture below where he is playing in the middle of a busy street (perhaps London). The uses of the miming to their own song doesn't have a preference to whether they use a microphone or not. In the pictures below, The View and The Kooks are both using one, however James Morrison is not. This seems to be an option, but the microphone promotes the "live" performance aspect. However, a microphone is used in settings where its suitable, for example The Kooks' and The Views recording stuido look-a-likes, however James Morrisons busy street wouldn't be suitable, perhaps meaning we should not try to use a microphone in the middle of our woodland setting.

The next feature is the instruments. Some of the above pictures have already shown instruments being used wherever the singing is used, and this is usually the case. The following pictures furthur support this notion, with Paolo Nutini, The View and The Kooks. These artists have clearly used their musical abilities to promote the band through their music video (as well as in their songs). As mentioned above, the bands seem to use singing as a popular aspect to their videos, and the use of instruments from the main band member, and the rest of the band (usually situated behind the main member). This promotes the image of the band AS a band, marketing them as a whole to the audiences who consume their videos. As we cannot use a whole band, we are just using an actor for the main band member, which is also popular in this genre (however usually, there are shots of the other members). After looking at alot of videos, we decided we will definately be using a musical prop for the video, to promote the musical image of the artist through the video.

I also looked into the use of a wolf, which surprisingly was quite popular over many genres. In James Morrisons video "You can't stop the rain" (Stills shown below), there are shots of real life wolves (which unfortunately, we are unable to use) shown in a similar setting to the artist. There isn't a wholly main concept based around the wolves in either the lyrics or the video, however it does make the video more interesting to watch. This shows that although the use of a wolf is a popular concept, we need to use it correctly to make it successful.

Revised Animation for Music Video Ideas

After finishing shooting our animation and watching it back post-edit, our teachers gave us some valuable criticisms and advice.
For starters, the animation was too slow moving to fit in with the fast-paced song we had chosen. We ended up re-editing and speeding up the pace of our animation to see if the pace of the mise-en-scene matched the tempo of the song. This helped alot, as we decided it looked much more interesting and we could add many more exciting visuals, making the animation and the music video better to watch.
Another point was that the animation was rather "boring" in a sense. This was mainly because the animation was mainly shot as a long shot or medium shot, with no interesting variation or change. Over the past week we came up with newer ideas to integrate into the animation, and captures close-ups, extreme long-shots, and medium close-ups of the wolf in the animation, providing a good variation making it easier to watch and much less boring.

Revised Ideas for Digipak

As we have changed our ideas for the music video, including actor ideas, setting ideas, and a new plot, I decided I needed to update and improve my Digipak ideas.
This has included using the new actor, and ideas of strong links between the visuals in the music video, and the pictures for the Digipak.
I am planning to edit the photos, to make them look surreal to fit in with the theme of the animation in our music video. I plan to do this by using an editing tool I discovered on Microsoft Word, that transforms an image to "Black and White" (not grey scale) showing high contrast and creating an effect similar to our shadow puppetry. I believe this will market the artist still, but create an interesting mise-en-scene that will attract consumers.
I also want to include various shots of the artist (the actor, Tamas, posing as the artist) to keep with marketing the image of the band. I am planning to use similar generic costumes to the one used in our music video.
I have also been advised to link the music video and Digipak in more than just the ways I have fore mentioned. This could be done by using screen-shots of our music video, then editing/tweaking them so they fit in with the Digipak. I plan to use this idea for some of my covers. For example, I could use an image from the video for the back-cover, and then add text to it for the song names and small-print, creating an interesting image that links subtly to the music video, keeping a consistent mise-en-scene throughout my productions.

Revised ideas for Real Life section of Music Video

After filming recently with 6 actors for the film, we uploaded the footage to find it uninteresting and dull. We have decided to change the storyboarding of the real life extract of the music video to include less actors (1 boy and possible one girl). As the main target audience of this song appears to be gender neutral, we thought by having a male singer in the band, we could appeal to females sexually, and to the males with the characters style/talent.

Furthermore, we decided to also include instruments (acoustic guitar for the male lead) as this will relate to the song track strongly, and strengthen the genre within the mise-en-scene, as most indie/modern-folk bands include their instruments within their music videos, such as The Kooks or The View.

The male actor will be:
1. Tamas Dalmay.

And the possible female actress will be (if used):
1. Caroline Gooch.

These actors are reliable and suitable for the role, making them easy to work with to get the best footage possible for the scenes we have thought of. Also, the clothes needed to suit the band and to appeal to our target audience (who like boutique shops, TopShop and H&M) go well with these actors, and they already have most of the suitable costumes planned out in a previous post.

We have also decided to shoot most/all of our shots in a green-land or wooded area, as this mise-en-scene will link strongly to the animation parts of the video, as this depicts a wooded area with trees and woodland animals. It also can focus on mainly the artist and the instrument, which will help promote the image of the artist that we are marketing with this music video (also, similar bands as The Kooks etc, have videos in neutral places that aren't glamorous, and some even have scenes in woods, showing its a generic factor to these sort of videos).

Another additional thought process we had was to include a picture or representation of a wolf into the music video (outside of the animation) to create a stronger link between the 2 sections of our film. We thought that a wolf outfit could be interesting, for the band member/s to meet him as if he had come out of the animated woods into real woods, similar to an initial idea we had with the 6 band members. However, this proved difficult as we could not find a wolf outfit that wasn't gruesome for halloween, and we thought it may look overly silly and amateur.
We then came up with the mask idea, and integrating it with the band member/s. At first, the mask was going to be put on another actor, like the outfit would have, but then we thought that adding a mask to our actor, tamas, whilst he was playing the guitar or singing, could suggest that he was the wolf, and that he was in the animation world but came out and is turning human with the song and as the song progressed. This would be an effective and easy way to link the 2 sections of our film and we thoroughly liked the outcome after filming.

We did not know how to end our film, and came up with a few ideas of the actor going back into animation, or just a fading walk away. However, the end of our song ends on a strong beat, so we wanted a strong ending that went with that beat so the visuals linked impressively with the audio. Our final decision was to have our actor Tamas waking up from the sequence of animation and real life, cross fading the wolf mask over his face. This would connote his waking up, and that the music video had been a fantacy. We also wanted to show that he wasn't just dreaming of it, that he was an artist, so we included him getting up, picking up his guitar and leaving the room with a band member (played by myself). This was a good ending because we will be able to synchronise the door shut/slam with the end beat of the song, creating a linked ending between them.

Initial Digipak/Magazine Advert Ideas

During filming one weekend, i decided to take a few photos of our actors as the band, as it was the opportune moment. I decided to go with a playful look, as the music and band are hardly a serious-photoshoot type of band, as the folk music is mainly about having fun and enjoying what you do. Below are 3 of the photographs i took, with the edited versions of them below the originals:

This first picture depicts the band as close friends (as do the other 2). The edited version has heightened contrast and saturation, with a similar level of brightness. This has made the picture warmer, and given it a "glow" to make it look like summer (instead of the original cold picture), to fit in with what we originally shot for the music video.

These 2 pictures have similar editing techniques, as i have changed the contrast, brightness and saturation for all 3, giving them all the warmer look (however for the last picture, i lowered the brightness a little to bring out more of the contrast change).

However, as we have now changed our actor for the music video, i am changing these photographs. The Digipak will market the bands image as well as the music, so using the same actor for the artist in our music video and on my Digipak is vital.