Research - Costume

I need to research into costume and by doing this, I will create a video with people who listeners want to see and can relate too. Some viewers may take inspiration from the bands style of clothing, especially in my genre where many bands have their own clothing lines, which makes costume an important aspect. Often, certain genres and bands have a specific look and I want to recreate this in my own video. The genre of my chosen band and song is Alternative or Modern Rock. I will research into my specific band and other similar genres to pinpoint this style.

You Me At Six:

Liquid Confidence

You Me At Six are a band of a similar genre and style to Young Guns.  The video for liquid confidence shows their style with casual checked/denim shirts with the lead singer in a plain white T-shirt with a hoodie and jacket. The style is very casual and fits with the current fashion of their age group 17-25's.

The video for A Day To Remember's 'All I Want' features 25 different bands from a similar genre. This video really shows off the style of this genre and we can see that T-shirts and casual shirts with slim fit or skinny jeans reoccurs many times. T-shirts are usually of a plain, neutral colour such as black/grey/white. A lot of these bands often wear hoodies or a causal jacket/coat. The colour scheme is mostly dark with blacks and greys probably being the most popular.

Weight Of The World

Quilted and leather jackets are also a trend that reoccurs. We can see both in Young Guns' video for 'Weight Of The World'. All the band member are wearing some form of black. They are all wearing similar outfits, a shirt with a jacket and skinny fit jeans.

'Honour Over Glory', 'Big Deal Clothing', and 'Rebel 8' are all examples of clothing lines that sponsor a number of bands in my specific genre. They supply these bands with their clothing so that they promote the line when the bands play shows etc. HxG and Big Deal are British based lines which mainly sponsor UK bands, whilst Rebel 8 is a US company which supports US bands.

Research - Music Video

Francesqa - 'Years'

This video is quite similar to what I would like my own final outcome to be. It uses a lot of time lapse including clouds which I am planning on focusing on. Their use of time lapse is much faster that the piece I created as a practice so this may be something to consider. However this song is a lot more fast paced, so a slower time lapse may be more suited to my music.

I also like the performance shots used, especially the close ups on the lead singers. I love all the different angles and and the shots where the camera is very close just focusing on the lips. The framing for these shots is interesting as the singer is not always in central frame. I think that the very shallow focus used, which creates a very blurred background, is effective as it puts all the focus o the main person in the shot. 

I also like the editing where there are flickers of red/yellow/orange. This, however, isn't something I could use in my own video as I am planning on my video being black and white.

Planning - Shot List/Storyboard Planning

Before I draw out my final story board, I wanted to plan everything out so that I don't miss out any shots or information. Today, I listened to the song multiple times whilst writing down the order of shots I wanted.
I definitely want to include Performance shots as well as Narrative and will experiment with Time Lapse. I may experiment with other shots however am unsure about using them. This is the breakdown of sections I will need to film:

This is the initial order of shots I have come up with which I will then storyboard:

Planning - Time Lapse Practise

As time lapse is something I have never done before, I wanted to try it out before I committed to using it in my final music video piece. I set my camera up on a tripod and left it. The original clip lasted around 7 minutes but has been sped up by 1200% to last 33 seconds and to create the time lapse effect.
I think it has worked well, I played around with different speeds. I need to consider the memory on my card as it cut off filming once the card was full after 7 minutes. This means if I want to film more I will have to get a larger capacity memory card or have more than one memory card on me. I also have to consider the ISO. I left it on automatic for this test however when it got dark you could really see some of the grain and noise coming through.

Planning - Ideas

From analysing the lyrics of my chosen song, I am able to work out a narrative and a structure to it from what the lyrics mean or are trying to say. My ideas about what to use for my narrative side of the music video are:

Introduction Instrumental:
Time lapse shots of clouds building up,
Possibly some individual shots of the band introducing them.

1st Verse: 
Performance shots of lead singer
Shot of a little boy with a message in a bottle,
Tracking shot of how it floats away,
Pans back to the boy but actor has changed to an older character.
Showing a girl receiving the message in a bottle.

1st Chorus:
Performance shots
Time Lapse Shots

2nd Verse:
Male character walking through empty fields,
Possibly in the rain/bad/dark weather.
Flashback of memory of him and girl younger.
Performance shots

Instrumental:
Time lapse shots
Male and female both walking/running through fields
Performances shots

3rd Verse:
Male and female characters find each other.
Characters possibly miming the lyrics to this verse.
Performance shots

Final Chorus:
Performance shots of band,
Close up on lead singer as the last line is repeated.
Last repeat time lapse of clouds turning into sun with characters in shot.

Extra Experimental Ideas (with examples):
Ink in water
Oil in water
Ink in Oil

I think that I want to keep the video black and white until the final shot of the time lapse where the sun comes in. It could start off with colour fading to black and white as the clouds build up.

Research - Music Video

Young Guns - 'Learn My Lesson'

This is the new video the band I am have using have brought out this week. It is a single off their new unreleased album. This is the single and video that is, in a way, promoting their new album and to get people and fans prepared and interested in their new songs. 

The video is mainly performance, however they have kept their creative video flair by using a very strong, contrasting colour scheme of red and blue, again with very strong lighting. They have also used editing very effectively by having performance shot to look like it is being sung in real time, however everything else is in the background. They have also used the same technique but to look like everything in the background has been sped up. 

Back in March, I was involved in one of my friends band's music videos where they used this technique so I know how it has been done. The music on set is played either slowed down for a sped up background or sped up to create a slow motion background. I really like this effect and this is could work well during my own performance. It is quite a subtle but nice way of creating an unusual effect without making the video look over edited.

Research - Target Audience

Using Youtube's statistics, I am able to find out information about the audience who listen to my band. By going onto their music videos and clicking the statistic button it shows me informations such as Gender, Age, Country and dates of how the views have grown.
As the video for my chosen track, both acoustic and original, doesn't have enough views for this option, I have looks at the statistics for previous music videos.

Learn My Lesson (Oct 2011)

Stitches (Feb 2011)

Sons Of Apathy (Apr 2010)

Winter Kiss (Dec 2009)

From looking at this data, I am able to identify that my target audience is:

- Males & Females aged 13-24

- Mainly living in the UK

I can use this as my specified target audience and can work around this to create a 'Promo Pack' that will appeal to this audience. Using this Youtube feature, I can find other similar video that appeal to the same audience, such as 'Nicotine And Alcohol Saved My Life' by Deaf Havana. From this, I can find out what sort of videos appeal to my audience and use ideas for my own video to be just as successful.