Rough Cut #4

I have finished my fourth rough cut of my video which, as I explained on the youtube page, will hopefully be the final cut. I am going to put together a director's commentary to explain my thought processes so far about the progress and changes from my first rough cut to this one.

Rough Cut #1: Director's Commentary

I've created a director's commentary version of my first rough cut which explains my feelings and thoughts about it and how I'd like to progress. 

I'm now working on my second rough cut keeping in mind all that I've said here.

River/Interlude/Forest: Rough Cut - Director's Commentary

I've recorded a 'director's commentary' explaining my thoughts and ideas for the process so far in putting together a rough cut of part of the music video. 

New Ideas

After talking over my ideas so far in class, I have come up with a few new ideas that I'd like to integrate into my video.

As one of the lines is "lay your ships bare" and I'm setting a portion of the video on the beach I thought shooting in front of the fishing boats would be an excellent visual signifier for the audience. 

Also reoccurring motifs are a good way of making music videos successful so I am looking to include one in mine and thought a paper boat might fit in well. I could use it in most of my locations; the beach, the river, the forest. The visual image of the paper boat floating out to see is a strong image, something I have looked at here. Otherwise on the river rapids would also look good. 

Another great new idea is to have my artist throwing rose petals into the water. I think this a really strong visual code for romance, being thrown away - akin to the line "we could have had it all". However, I want it to be a positive action so will probably have the artist smiling as she does it as she is glad to have moved on from the relationship.


I also realised I need something a little more unique in order to stand out in the market, which is why I had an idea to shoot some scenes at night. I'm not sure which scenes would benefit from darkness but my initial thoughts were the beach scenes - especially with the match falling shot as it would really stand out in the night. The scene doesn't have to be entirely shot at night, in fact intercutting day and night might up the pace even more, but the darkness would give it more of an edge. 


Lastly, I'd like to look a bit further into the representation of my female protagonist and how female artists are portrayed in music videos, which I wil put in a seperate post. 

Storyboards #1

Storyboarding

I have started storyboarding the song, so have come up with a lot more ideas and thoughts. My 'big' idea is for each chorus to be set in different locations and then come together at the end to intersperse to make a collective music video. This technique is very common in modern music videos (I will make a post later on this) and thus following some conventions, so may help to improve the quality of my video.

In order to create flow I will make sure costumes are right, lighting and most importantly the colouring of the video (probably towards the blue side) will match for each location so that it is obvious that it is one video. 

Here are my initial thoughts for images in song along with the respective storyboard... (Please excuse my terrible drawing skills!)

BEACH

0:00- 0:18 Begin on beach so nice parallel to ending, different shots sets up locations, throwing stones, close-ups of face, hands, feet, waves, seagulls, pebbles, sun etc, running along beach

0:18- 0:36 beat kicks in so upped pace, but still slow editing - BONFIRE?, in bucket, "fire starting in my heart"

also "bring me out the dark" - shadows/ silhouettes

0:37- 0:45 throwing stones, match falling in slow-mo, holding match on beach

0:46-0:53 lying on pebbles

0:54-1.13 miming to song, dancing on beach, spinning, close-up of lips singing

1:14-1:28 change in beach location to cliff area, looking out to sea still miming and dancing, close-up of making heart with hands

1:29-1:31 stop-motion here? flashes of different images in different locations (close-ups etc)

RIVER 

1:32-1:40 lying in grass reading book "no story to be told", running through grass, various dream-like angles

1:41- 1:49 ripples of water, skimming stones, light through water, possibly splashing in water

1:50-2:23  INTERLUDE #1 This is a very important part of the song, so I haven't sketched anything yet as I need more time to work out what needs doing here. An idea is using stop-motion as I like using this technique and is different and artistic enough to work in a dance music video. Ideally if I had a bigger budget I would love to film underwater in the sea - emphasising the "rolling in the deep" aspect, but budget restrictions mean this may probably won't be possible, however stunning the results would be.

2:24-2:27 waves from beach

FOREST 

2:28-2:43 walking through forest, jump-cuts adding pace

2:44 - 2:58 from above lying on ground below tree

2:58- 3:01 one shot held - facing camera miming with trees and sun behind

3:02- 3:19 hand-held camera rolling down hill

3:20-3:29 Focus on shots of drums, slow-motion?

BRING TOGETHER ALL LOCATIONS

3:30-3:46 Horn, spinning, laughing, dancing, miming to song

3:47-4:06 INTERLUDE #2 Dancing - preferably many different people/ ages, sizes etc (need around 8) on the street would give it nice urban edge, dream-like

4:06- 4:15 Flashes of various images (about 20 needed to match beats) used throughout ending on standing silhouetted on beach 

4:15-4:17 Close to white, on beach/sunset

END

Ideas For Final Piece

Here is a presentation that I made for class presenting my ideas for the final piece. It includes a song that I am looking to use and a mood board of ideas. Next I will develop further these ideas and look at music videos that will inspire me.

Ideas For Final Piece

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