Initial Time Line

Using our initial ideas and inspiration from previous music videos, we constructed a time line to fit our chosen song, Birdy- 'People Help the People'. The song lasts for approximately 4:11 and we plan on shooting a video to fit this length. We have incorporated the dancing which was suggested in the brain storm, along with the walking and the slow motion which we picked from the original music video. We have also constructed a story board to match this timeline with visual aids to suggest the poses, camera angles, scenery and so forth in our video. 

Specific Research: Birdy- 'People Help the People' Continued

We have decided to use many original ideas for our music video such as the contemporary dancing and the fade from black and white to colour. However, we have gained inspiration from the A team video, specifically the section where the young homeless person, in this case a woman, is sitting down, shown to be in slow motion while the rest of the world rushes by. We plan on shooting this differently but using the same editing feature, speeding up the surroundings whilst keeping the main character still. 

We plan on using the same form of establishing shot in our video as the original music video, although ours will be of a field, which will be where the video starts and finishes- playing with ellipsis of time. The original Birdy video uses an establishing shot of london, showing the scenery of the city, making a slow succession of cuts. We plan on mirroring this, however, we plan on using the more natural scenery of a field, the flowers, the sun shining through the trees etc to ensure the video beginning is not too similar although the concept is closely linked as we feel this is a strong way to introduce the video. 

Additionally, we have decided to take our lead on a 'journey', to enforce the narrative that where ever you go there are always people in help. We especially liked the shots in the original video of the lead walking and hope to recreate this in our own video with the girl walking off the pier and through the high street.

Using these concepts, along with our own original ideas, we have created a storyboard and time line for our music video although this may need to be tweaked slightly in the final cut. 

This is the original music video for our chosen song. We have focused primarily on the journey aspect, incorporating the use of scenery such as every day people, cars driving past and close up shots of the artist herself etc.  

We then also looked into more music videos which focus on the journey, particularly with multiple walking shots. The Verve- Bitter Sweet Symphony, showcases exactly this, with the lead singer miming to the song whilst walking down a busy street. The music video location is particularly urban, shown by the shutters of the shops, the road sign and multiple people walking. We will use this urban mis en scene in our music video, as both the Birdy video and the verve video incorporate this. We will use the high street as our 'urban setting'. 

The location shots in Sinead O'Connor- Nothing Compares 2 U are also something we would like to use as inspiration, particularly the use of the water which is reflective and matches the theme of our song. The video also shows images of the lead walking through the park which we will try to recreate. 

As we plan to change our video from black and white to colour, we researched into music videos which were mainly in black and white. There were many videos which used this feature yet limited ones which changed to colour. We found the scripts- If you could see me now as this used both colour and black and white in the final cut. The black and white is inter-changed throughout the video, rather than the black and white changing to colour as we are interested in trying to achieve. We do, however, we do like the fact that the colour is used symbolically, during times of happiness which we also want to use.  

As we were interested in initially incorporating dance into our music video. We struggled to find a dance video which used a soft ballad rather than a full dance to a club song. We settled for Pink- Try as this used the contemporary dance which we liked. The music video uses a vary of angles when shooting, which makes the overal look dynamic. The music video also has other features other than dancing, meaning we can also add a narrative which seems to be a usual choice for most music videos. We will have to look further into the dance filming as the sequence will have to be choreographed around the camera to ensure fluidity.  


Research: Hannah 

Music Video: Ideas for Location

We plan on shooting our video outside in public areas so therefore need to ensure that we can shoot in these places. We plan on shooting on a pier, which is owned by Erith county council and Erith High street which are both public areas. We will not need to gain permission to shoot in these places, yet, if any inconvenience is caused we will explain our aim- that we are A2 media students shooting a music video. The pier is renowned for being deserted, something which attracted us to the location in the first place. 

We also plan on shooting in a field and a rose garden during the opening and ending scenes in our music video, which although open to the public- Hall Place House and Gardens, will be needed to be contacted in order for us to shoot on their land as recently it has been upgraded to part of the National Trust. I plan on contacting Hall Place personally and asking for permission. 

Specific Research: Birdy - 'People Help the People'

There are two official videos for the song that we want to use, the British one, shot in 2011, an d a French one, shot in 2012. Both videos use the black and white theme we want to use in our own video yet have very different concepts. We have mainly focused on the British video for our inspiration but like certain aspects of the French one, such as walking down the street miming along. The French video also incorporates colour into the video, something we plan on using ourselves. 

We plan on using a dance sequence, as suggested in our initial brainstorming as blogged previously. We plan on using the contemporary dancers as shown in the video below as they are trained members of a dance/performing arts school. We have contacted them via text and they have agreed to also allow us use of their original choreography as shown in the video. They have also agreed to perform the dance for us. The video shows choreography for the whole song, however, we plan on only having a section of the music video in dance, picking and choosing the best parts in the final editing process to use. 

Song Permission: Birdy- 'People Help the People'

In order to use the song, 'People Help the People', performed by Birdy, we had to gain permission from the record label. The song originally had many record labels, mainly French due to the performer being of French decedent, yet we focused on the British label. We sent an email to the record label, Warner Brothers UK and then 14th Floor Records who were their sister company asking permission for the use of the song. We left a contact address for them to reply to our request.  

 

Introduction: General Research- Music Video

After initially working as an individual we came together as a team to discuss ideas and concepts for our video. It became apparent that the majority vote was for a slower, more meaningful song than say that of a dance/club video. This was due to personal taste and the ability to shoot as for accessibility it would be easier to use a few people in the video, instead of a mass mob of 30 plus people which would be hard to constantly rearrange and shoot. We also decided that a narrative would be easier to achieve with a slower song. 

We had numerous song choices, mainly from female artists such as Emeli Sande and Birdy who both have similar tone and style. Katie wanted to go in the more 'pop' area, looking into artists such as Taylor Swift although was undecided on how this would be achieved. Both myself and Danielle were much more lenient when it came to ideas due to our varied music taste although I was unsure about the practicality of shooting a huge music video due to resources so was less enthusiastic about a party themed video. My individual thoughts were generated more to a slower song anyway, 'Clown' performed by Emeli Sande so I was happy to continue on with this theme. Rosie was very passionate about moving forward with a song like this too. 

We decided to choose the song 'People, Help the People' performed by Birdy as our song choice for the video which features in the indie genre. We believed this had potential for a strong narrative but would also be able to incorporate other peoples ideas into the video. This was revolved strongly around Rosie's idea but tweaked slightly to incorporate other's ideas. Originally, Rosie wanted to use a girl who had been in a break down of a relationship and at the end they re-find each other. However, when discussing in a group this idea was compromised slightly as the 'break up scenes' could be rather cliche. After a discussion we also decided that this didnt really fit completely with the lyrics of the song, which are more noticeable due to the tone and slow nature of the song. Instead we collectively put in the idea of following the narrative which was to help people. As Danielle was rather interested in a dance idea, we decided that we could use contemporary dancers into the instrumental section of the song instead of the break up scene idea which can be hard to pull off due to the lack of professional actors. This would be easier to shoot as we would not need as much footage of someone miming which can be difficult due to timing issues.  

We discussed a few ideas such as:

• fading from black and white into colour 
• slow motion 
• dance section- shot in a dance studio
• manipulating the narrative/playing with time (starting at the end and finishing in the same position) 
• female lead (easily accessible)
• walking through streets (outside shooting)
• handing help (money to people) 
• miming (only a small portion of the video as this is rather hard to pull off)

These were just a few ideas and we will discuss these further and look into the editing process more to see if these were achievable. As the song is rather long at 4:11 it may be hard to shoot for the whole time so this also needs to be checked due to the amount of material needed. As long as the video is over 3 minutes then the song can be cut. We still need to refine some ideas although are certain that this is the direction we want to move forward in. Our backup option would still be in this genre/tone.