Mind Map

I've made a mind map of my progress and ideas so far to get an overview of my plans...

Equipment List

Here is the equipment I shall be using during the production of my music video...


1. Panasonic HD60 Video Camera

2. Sony a330 DSLR Camera

3. Tripod

4. Relevant costumes


5. Relevant props including:
- a rose
- paper boat
- match


6. Blanket for Artist to lie down on in the grass and forest locations.

Scouting Locations #1

Yesterday I managed to go to my first location - the river/ grassy area.
As we have just had Summer things have wildly overgrown and there is a lot of greenery. This will probably die down as we head into Winter, so depending on when I film the locations may change slightly. I quite like the idea of a more bare, wintery feel, but time constrictions may not allow for this.

 As well as the river there is a woodland area on the way to the river beach that may be good for a few scenery shots for cutaways.

Here is the grassy beach area of the river location. The grass was a lot taller than I expected so may be hard to film in. Also there are risks involved which I will go into in my Risk Assessment.

1:41-1:49 includes a shot of rapids of the river, so it was good to take some test shots of this to use. There are also plenty of stones for the artist to throw into the river. I did a few test shots of the 1:50-1:58 shot which I will post later...

One issue that I found was that the ripples were quickly moved away by the running water.
Below you can see the density of the grass...

But also there is a more sparse patch which I probably won't use, but may be a good place for some running about or dancing.

Next I travelled to a different location, crossed a bridge...

... and went to the location for 2:28-2:41, which can be seen in my practice video for Run.

Under the bridge may be a good 'plan b' location if it starts to rain.

 I took a few shots there last year and they turned out quite well. Below is an example...

Further up, there is a field that maybe useful for a few shots of the artist running around in.

There is also a waterfall that I also used last year (see below), but it has changed a lot and has overgrown so I probably won't use it. 

However, I managed to get some great shots of the water that I could use. 


I'm looking forward to getting to the other locations this week to see how they'll work out as well.

Inspirational Videos

In my Music Video Research post I looked at existing products which inspire me. Now that I have a clearer idea of what I'd like to do I thought I'd look more closely at videos which are either similar visually, in genre or have particular techniques which I'd like to emulate and critique them.


Firstly Example's video for 'Stay Awake' has an example of an editing/camera technique that I would like to emulate.

From 0:42 to 0:51.


Calvin Harris's video below is also very inspiring as he pulls together various people and locations and makes it relevant to the song making an effective video. It also has fantastic editing that matches the rest of the song, something I will most definitely be doing and great use of light and slow-motion. 

This video was in a similar genre and had a few interesting shots which are similiar to the sort of visuals I would like to have...

In Birdy's video for Shelter it is primarily set in a forest and is a huge inspiration for my forest location visuals. A technique or effect used recently is moving the picture in and out of focus, which is used a lot here and really works well to add to the atmosphere. 

I also admire the close-ups of the scenery around her, which is important to establish context and add to the depth of the visuals.