Our idea begins in a darkened theatre with shots of a girls eyes looking scared and anxious. There will be a spotlight travelling around the theatre. Our female protagonist will then be changing positions in the theatre on each jagged cut. The last shot of her in the theatre will be her falling on the theatre’s main floor and looking up suddenly. Next scene is the same girl running through town’s backstreets in the daytime. Her costume will then become apparent and we will see her in a scruffy white dress. She will continually be looking back and when we enter Chinatown’s backstreets we will see a clown that is chasing her. He corners her down one alleyway and she struggles to find a door that is unlocked (all the while cross cutting between the two characters). She finally finds a door and in the darkness there is the faint outline of a man. As she leans in to kiss the man he disappears and she falls into the darkness. Which then turns into our animated sequence. A black background with green, blue or white horizontal, moving curves. She is turned into an opaque minimized version of herself in the chosen colour. She is being bounced around by the bass waves which will match the bass of the music hopefully. This will be cross cut with a scene of what we believe to be her and another male, who is not the clown, dancing behind a sheet, they are doing a mixture of ballet and street and it is going to seem very interpretive and emotional, they will be silhouetted behind this sheet. The lines of the bass will then straighten out at a downward angle and the animated girl will slide out of frame. The next frame will show the girl falling into shot; which will be our final location of Fletcher Moss Gardens. She will fall into a sea of tall grass in a new clean white dress. The clown is no longer following her. She catches a glimpse of the man in the darkness from earlier and runs towards it, she loses him but continues to run toward a lake where she finally stops as she sees him across the lake. Taking off her cardigan and letting her hair down she descends into the lake, her dress floating around her in the water. She swims over to him and gets out embracing him. As she embraces him he disappears and is replaced by a sad, young child, who is clutching onto her. Her dress begins to become stained by a variety of colours and when she lifts the childs chin, we are shown clown face painting smeared by the child’s tears.
Monday, 10 October 2011
Initial Idea.
Music video for "Numb" Oh land
Lyrics of our song choice "numb" by Oh land
She is shy
While we are waiting for her message
Constantly graping in her darkness
Firefly came
All expectations make her heart feel
She got a local anesthetic
And the light fainted
She heard the siren calls
From the shadowy side
She built a house in the darkness
As the light fainted
In an open country
And her heart was
Numb
So Numb
She is dancing in her grass skirt
While we are waiting for her silence
Thunder and rain
will weigh on her shelter
Morning rise
All expectations make her heart feel
She got a local anesthetic
And the light fainted
She heard the siren calls
From the shadowy side
She built a house in the darkness
As the light fainted
In an open country
And her heart was
Numb
Production treatment
Production treatment: Matt Moran, Anoop Selvin, Yemi Moses
Music video Oh Land - Numb
Duration: 4 minutes 38 seconds
Audience: The main target audience for our music video will be primarily females in their late teenage years (15+), this is due to the genre of music and theme of the video, but may also appeal to older audiences, particularly the experimental, more individual types, as opposed to typical mainstream audiences, again due to the genre of music.
Resume: The song Numb by Oh Land has no straightforward narrative within the lyrics, as the lyrics are more poetic and have no obvious meaning. The lyrics are open to interpretation, this allows us more freedom in creating the music video as it allows us to interpret it visually ourselves, we intend to recreate the artsy feel of the music by creating a loose metaphorical narrative of a woman’s escape from her emotions/grief, symbolized by her running away from a clown in the video, the clown representing emotions, and her white dress representing her being emotionless.
Suggested elements Our music video is going to be like amplification/disjuncture type of music video as it wont have an obvious link to the lyrics or the music video. The music video we will be doing is going to be a mixture as it will be narrative/art video as it will contain no lip sync but will be telling a story through the video. The main character of our video will be a female ballet dancer running through the backstreets of china town in ragged white dress, but when the mood changes she will also be wearing clean white dress to symbolize purity happiness and to show that inner beauty. The video is going to include a lot special effects, however the main sequence including special effects will be later on in the video. The main actress will fall out of the frame and the video will enter an animation-like sequence, in which a silhouette of the woman will be sliding along lines on an background created in Adobe Photoshop, this will last for around 20 seconds, then the woman will slide out of the frame and back into reality on a slide. There are a few key location in the film one is the back streets of the china town where the female actress is running to show her distress and the other is in the Hulme co-operative theater and 2 more important one which we are unsure about which is 2 park location, one is Tatton park and the other is Fletcher moss gardens.
Recording days
To complete this music video we would need around 1 week, depending on the weather and other arrangements (booking the theatre…). We would need around 3 weeks of college time to complete the overall video, editing inserting transaction and other SFX, the blog would be done in-between and as well at home time and we would have a lot of time spare to add the finishing touches and also to complete the CD cover and the poster
Budget Estimate
The hulme Co-opreative theatre booking – 15 pounds (max)
The clown (costume) – 10 pounds (max)
Transport – 10 pound (max)
Total – 35 pounds
Costume plan
Costumes Plan: Written by Matt Moran.
Clown:
One important aspect of our music video is the appearance of the actors that appear in it, as our music video is heavily reliant on symbolism, the costumes are chosen to represent different feelings and changes within the narrative. One character will be dressed as a clown, as clowns have symbolic origins of death and new life, the clowns white face is said to represent death, and the bright colours painted on top connote new life. The storyline our narrative will be loosely linked to is that of a woman trying to cope with her grief, and as she is running away from the clown, she is running away from her grief. The clown costume will also be in shocking contrast to the bleak background colours of the video, this creates an attention-grabbing effect and will also help to get our music video get noticed.
We researched different clown-looks to choose one that we could model our character on. We did this mainly through the internet search engine ‘Google Images’. A few potential choices that stood out for us were:
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This is the clown in the horror movie ‘It’, we liked this choice as it has strong elements of fear, and we think the clown needs to be scary to fit our ideas for the video.
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This child-clown really stood out to us, due to its
Controversial aspects, we also liked that the child was crying, as it suggests grief and sadness, both of which are elements of our narrative. The fact that the clown is a child has connotations of innocence and purity.
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The idea of a black clown appeals to us as it is unusual, clowns are stereotypically white Europeans. Therefore, a black clown would break this stereotype and make our video more noticeable.
We decided to incorporate elements of all three of these clowns, the clown chasing the woman throughout the video will be of black ethnicity, however the costume and face painting will more closely represent that of the clown in it, as the white face, red wig, lips, and nose will be in harsh contrast to the characters skin-colour. We will rent the clown costume from a costume-shop in Manchester Arndale center; a professional who is a friend of one of our group will do the face painting. The wig will also be bought from a costume or wig shop.
The child clown also provided inspiration for a section of our video, in which a sad child clown will appear to be crying, the face paint will run onto the main actress’s white dress, symbolizing her finally feeling her grief.
Main female character:
<!--[endif]-->The main female actress will be wearing a dirtied white dress throughout the video, this was chosen as white is symbolic of purity and innocence, and also emptiness and simplicity. The dress will be borrowed from a member of our group. Her hair and makeup will be simply done, preferably she will be petite, blonde and white-skinned, to further the image of innocence, however we are unsure if we will be able to find a suitable actress, so this may be different. She will also be barefoot.
Adult Male character:
The male character in our video will not get much face-time, as he will often be in the shadows and only vaguely and briefly shown, however is costume still has to be relevant, therefore we have decided to show him in ordinary clothing, the colour of which will be black to represent his death and to be juxtaposed with the woman’s white clothing. He will be a young (18-25 year old) white male, quite attractive, with black hair.
ß This image of Leonardo dicaprio is a good image to loosely base the character on
Numb- Why we chose it
Oh Land – Numb
The song Numb by Oh Land fits into a variety of genres dissimilar to her usual, stereotypical work that can be classed as alternative pop.
Instead she experiments in the electronica genre and on the basis of this lies our interest in her.
This song currently has no music video which also attracted me to it because it prevents any ideas being borrowed and encourages originality and a blank page to start from.
When searching for a song I originally had no idea on a possible idea, however when hearing this song for the first time, ideas on narrative, character, cinematography and location all became apparent. I think it is the electronica and alternative vibe of the song that gives so many options for a video. We thought that the song was quite dark and ominous so hopefully our final music video will mirror this. Our idea also has aspects of fantasy and surrealism due to the unique sounds of Oh Land.
Conversing with a production company.
Monday, October 10 2011, 10am
Phone conversation with Kas Latif, one of the 2 directors of Westfield Films. Enquiring as to whether they have any actors/ dancers that would be willing to help. A meeting was arranged for Wednesday this week where I will be meeting with both directors, Matt Thompson and Kas Latif to speak further about ideas and to recognize whether they are initially interested in helping with casting and/or props.
Where our ideas came from
Where our ideas came from
I have chosen to compare Oh Land’s White Nights to Oh Land’s Numb for the simple idea that it is research into Oh Land’s usual music video ideas. Our initial idea for a video of Oh Land’s Numb therefore stems from her original videos.
I have noticed that Oh Land tends to conform to post/progressive rock norms because this video, considering Goodwin’s theory, would fit into the Narrative and Performance category’s – these are generic features of most ‘Rock’ genres (particularly Performance). White Nights has a basic storyline of waking up several times and living her dreams. However, it also fits into performance since there is clear lip synching throughout the video and there are instruments present at the beginning of the video which are blatantly in sync with the recorded song.
From White Nights I have used the idea of the artsy elements such as the dancing element. We have agreed to incorporate break, street and ballet dancing into our final video if all goes successfully.
Also, there is a point in White Nights; which is clear illustration, where there are eyes in the darkness. I have chosen to use this idea to compose our opening shots, creating a recognizable motif for Oh Land.
However, contrasting to White Nights, Numb is planned to be a lot darker in its overall vibe and much more sinister looking, rather than the positive, colourful tone that the White Nights video sets for Oh Land.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Analysis of Music video of Glosoli by Sigur Ros
Glosoli by the Icelandic, post rock/classical band Sigur Ros has an inventive, endearing, narrative music video. According to goodwins theory the music video would fit into the category of Narrative, as it contains a visual story that is easy to follow, there is also no lip synching, and the genre has links to a love story (common in Narrative videos). The lyrics and music video are loosely linked by the idea that the kids portrayed in the video are looking for the sun, however as the lyrics are more poetic and artistic rather than a straightforward narrative or description it is difficult to translate directly into visuals, therefore the director created an artistic video open to interpretation. As the band has a niche audience, there is not a need to promote the artist through the video on a large scale, therefore the video does not feature the artist in it. Arni and Kinski, the also Icelandic directors have created a Catcher In the Rye/Peter Pan feel in the video, a child’s haven.
The mise en scene in the video is remarkably symbolic of childhood, freedom and youth. For example, the vast, mountainous range as a setting represents the freedom and how unrestricted childhood is and how these children long to be forever. In that sense the video has a slight intertextual reference of the childhood story- Peter Pan- reinforced by the extraordinary flight scene nearing the end of the video.
Another point on the scenery in Glosoli is the Icelandic mountains, shown in the opening sequence through a long-shot.
These are timeless and I think that that is a reoccurring theme in the video, the video isn’t depicting an age of children but childhood wholly. Therefore things such as the costume of the children mirror this by the children wearing clothing associated with dress from as far back as the Victorian era to modern day fashion, I think that the video is post modern in that sense.
The video begins with a longshot of a lone child sat behind a backdrop of an expanse of water, the water suggests isolation and also gives the visual an ethereal beauty. This cuts to a close-up profile view of the childs face, shallow focus is used to draw attention to his face and to further the sense of isolation.
The video has mainly continuity editing throughout, to make the video smooth and fitting with the tempo and tone of the music, there is also an example of elliptical editing however, in which the children sleep and the screen fades to black.
This is followed by an extreme longshot of the children marching through the frame to a backdrop of mountain ranges, in this part the video takes on a change in hue to a sepia tone, which gives the visuals a dreamlike ambience. The gold is also connotative of the promise of a bright future.
The children are seen here to be setting fire to the car; this is symbolic of youth rebelling against adulthood and the idea of growing up
Another symbolic moment in the video is where the drummer boy and the girl with the fox mask kiss. This can be interpreted in many ways, for example: it can be said that the kiss is juxtaposed to the innocence of youth, and representative of the idea of growing up, it also has intertextual references to the stereotypical passionate kiss between partners before characters go to war in many war movies. The kiss is innocent however, and furthers the metaphor of childhood. The kiss is shown in a close-up 2-shot, and has shallow focus to draw attention to the kiss. Rule of thirds is also used to create emphasis on the lips and facial features of the children. The lighting is also important to consider here, the bright backing light gives the clip a beauty and naturalistic feel.
Supporting the idea of youth in revolt is the juxtaposed image of the main child beating his drum throughout the video. This, along with the marching of the children creates a war like atmosphere and impression. In the beginning he is on his own, with his drum beating it, this could, intertextually, infer that it is the beginning of a revolution. Most of the shots are high angles and make him look inferior, however, once other children join him, the idea becomes more powerful (as with a revolution).