Blog Post 8: My Music Video

Planning my production is very important for everything to go smoothly, so I did my pre-production very carefully so I wouldn't miss out on any mistakes.

Narrative Inspiration

My narrative was inspired by Panic! At The Disco's High Hopes music video. Their video starts by establishing Brendon Urie as the main character, coming out of a car. He's walking along the street, being bumped into by others, not being noticed by anyone as everyone is just walking past him. The disruption comes when he approaches a skyscraper and starts climbing it. This surreal cinematography is used to amplify the meaning of the song, which is talking about climbing to the top, no matter how hard the goal seems. This is a literal interpretation of the lyrics, illustrating the lyrics through the video. After he reaches the top, there are shots of people clapping at the bottom, finally giving attention to Brendon. The video symbolises the idea of fighting for your dreams and celebrating once you get to the top. We can see this when the video shows Brendon meeting his band on the roof, breaking into a full performance.

From this video, I want to take the contrast between the journey, the turning point and the final performance. However, I plan to intercut the final performance with the journey, so the audience knows how it's going to end and puts more emphasis on the story.

I was also inspired by 'Stronger' by The Score. They make use of black and white, creating a bleak, gritty feel, connoting raw pain and strength. I want to use this in my video for when the boy and the girl are struggling with their lives, and it will transition to colour for their big performance. This means I can use the black and white effect to represent the past and suffering, while the colour represents the present. In their video, they also utilise a mix of CU and MS at different angles to create a montage effect. This training style montage is something I also want to include in my own video, as I can make it entertaining by cutting between both narratives. At 2:25, they have fast drums paired with quick punches to the beat. I want to achieve a similar effect by creating a flashing effect with my two characters.

For my male narrative, I drew inspiration from the narrative of 'Billy Elliot'. This way, people are already quite familiar with the story and I could explore how a person could break the gender norms and do activities which could normally be seen as an activity only for other genders.





I also took inspiration from Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off' video, as it is an example of a pop video that uses ballet. There are a variety of shots ranging from CU of hands to XCU of entire groups. Although Taylor isn't taking her dancing seriously, all of her shots involve some sort of action or hand gesture. I like the idea of focusing on different parts of the body when the boy is performing, using tracking shots to add another layer of movement to the shot.

When planning my narrative, the final shots were intertextual to the final scene of 'Whiplash', which uses a montage of XCUs and a cut to black after a big physical motion. I will do the same, cutting between both narratives, ending with the girl playing a big piano chord.

During my planning, I decided to create a mockup of my shots so I can see how they fit in with the narrative. The shot to the left is the piano chord shot where it will cut to black after being played.

When I chose the song superheroes, I decided to brainstorm some ideas. I initially thought about portraying the song through a literal sense through comic book superheroes with powers, but the audience of comic books are slightly skewed towards male and the CGI would not be possible to do. I also considered other people in society who could be considered "heroes", such as doctors, charities, donors and even bin collectors. Role models then became an idea that I wanted to explore. These society heroes can be considered as role models, contributing a great deal to society, but there are also more specific people who can be one's role models. These people usually are either real or fictional, famous or someone close that you may know. Finally, I looked at being your own hero, treating your body and your wellbeing well, pushing yourself to explore new unknowns. This reminded me of when I performed on stage, how it empowered yourself after you did all the hard work and practice.

On the second page, I looked further into examples of flawed heroes, and how people don't have to be perfect to be a hero. Some examples I used were comic/film heroes who didn't really have a perfect hero performance or played a big role in protecting society, but still had the role of hero in smaller situations. Some other heroes were trying to redeem a past action they had done, ending up taking the hero role even as a change of heart. Alternatively, I looked at talent shows as performers can be role models to others and performing is an act that requires courage. I looked up ballet performances and piano performances to draw from its iconography for my own video.

Planning and Production

To the right, you can see my artist board. This consists of my character moodboard, headshot, costume full body photo, costume design and lyrics. I did this so I could express how I wanted to artist to look like to others and what my artist's values were. Furthermore, the lyrics helped when I was referring to specific parts of the song when directing my camera operators on how to frame specific shots. Overall, it was extremely useful at organising and getting my idea of my music video across.

Above, you can see the location reccie that I performed in order to see whether my locations were suitable or not. I obtained permission from the parent of my actor to film in their house. I performed a risk assessment as it was important to maintain the safety of my crew and actors when they are on set.

In order to organise my week, I used this timetable to plan recording and editing sessions. I noted down which times people were free to make it clear when I could film with people and when I could work on my extra content.

These are the shootboards I used to organise my shoots. I had the day and time, shot number, shot drawing, movement, actors and props, crew roles and best take on my storyboard. This helped me plan out each shot and stay on task, while making sure to plan time for breaks and rests so that my actors and crew stay motivated.

I planned out the rest of my band's costume design based on the moodboard I created for my own costume. It consists of a contrast between dark trousers, jacket and shoes with a light, pastel coloured shirt. I chose yellow, red and blue shirts because they are primary colours, representing each person as different but linking us together as a band. The storyboard is made of post-it notes with details at the bottom. I did this so that I could easily move the post-its around if I needed to rearrange the shots.

To decide on what colour schemes to use, I looked on google for strong colours that people associate with superheroes. I decided to go for the 'Deadpool' colour scheme, although the character himself isn't really a hero but more of an anti-hero. However, I still like the colour scheme as Deadpool isn't a character that can do everything perfectly and is more relatable than most other superheroes due to his casual style. Therefore, it suggests that people don't have to be perfect of widely known to be a hero.

To plan out my narrative, I printed the lyrics to the video and analysed the different interpretations of each line so I could plan out how long each shot will be. I also wrote a quick timeplan for each of my shoots so that my actors knew where to go and what should be happening at a specific time.

Planning my music video well has allowed me to get the desired shots. Furthermore, I was able to spread out my entire narrative on a big piece of paper and highlighting any issues that I had to fix.