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.