Storyboard

Here is the storyboard which I have personally created for the music video (baring in mind I am not particularly accustomed to art or drawing images in any sense the artistic value does suffer), however I created this in order to produce a fairly clear image of how the narrative corresponds with the live performance and the types of locations used for each part of the video.  

A Possible Idea

Cohenrently  me and Sean have thought of an idea for the beginning of the video (by which we mean the beginning before the acutal music plays), this is an idea that appears in multiple videos such as Crash by Fit For Rivals and Wonderwall by Oasis, this involves very ambivilant sounds which can include a tape recorder, general sounds of setting up equipment, people talking or birds tweeting in the background. Allowing this in the beginning of the video will allow us to establish the area around the live performance (note: this would only be used in the location of the live performance) and will allow us to have more footage throughout the video thereby allowing us to use more conventions or conform to the genre within a few breif moments. This is an idea developed by me and Sean since it appears in both my script and his script and as stated before this will only appear for a brief moment (around 2-5 seconds) and therefore should not be a major hindrance when filming.

All The Small Things

http://vimeo.com/7399262

Currently Katie is not available today as she is ill and Sean is continuing to work on his script still, since I have already read Katie's and completed my own version of the video I figured that instead of doing essentially nothing throughout the lesson (since I cannot converse with Katie about her script and my script and Sean is still working on his) it would be interesting for me to compare the original video of All The Small Things to the version that I created. It is tremendously noticeable that my version differs greatly to the original. In the oringal there is no emphasis on isolation or even a narrative and instead focuses on mainly comedic and playful, party elements. Throughout the video it features young teenagers and adults dancing in an obsurdly flamboyant fashion to express comedy, the adults and teenagers are clearly shown to be semi-naked whilst random dance sequences appear across multiple locations including a beach, an isolated factory and an airfield, some of these feature a live audience all dancing wildly to emphasize the party theme of the song and glorification of youth. This is similar to my idea in the sense that they both express a glorification of youth theme however my idea delves more into glorification via drugs (possibly) and alcohol which sets a slightly darker tone but I feel acheives an audience more related to teenagers and young adults rather than audiences like children who will be younger than teenagers. Interestingly the side angled close up shot which is shown whilst the lead singer is singing into a micophone during one of the live performance is virtually identical to the shot I wish to create (shown within the image) however instead of a live audience being blurred in the background I'd like to have the band playing their live performance in the background.

My Vision Of The Video

The vision I have of the video will be similar to both Sean and Katie's vision in the sense that it will obviously consist of a narrative cross cut with a live performance, my vision is still just a possibility and I am planning on taking into considerartion both Katie and Sean's ideas which means it is likely that parts of this vision will change. For me, the narrative will focus on an young isolated girl and boy who gradually meet and enter into a relationship by the end of the video, in order to conform to the typical conventions of the genre I.E. appealing to teenagers I think that a school should feature within the video at some point, I would have the school shown at the beginning of the video, with the girl and boy in the same class, they will sit on opposite sides of the room with no one around them to emphasize their isolation, I have a conflicting view that the narrative should be in black and white, in terms of the tone of isolation black and white would indicate this very clearly and add drama to the narrative, however I acknowledge that this will cause the tone to differ vastly from that of the video and may seem unnecessary as black and white contrast would suggest the narrative is very dark when in actuality the narrative is fairly light-hearted.

I feel as though the girl should be the main focus due to the fact that I think the song All The Small Things appeals more to a female audience, the way to do this would be to show her within more shots throughout the video, I feel as though she will need to wear dark clothing to symbolise her isolation, this would consist of black or dark blue jeans and a black jacket or perhaps a band shirt, I would also have the boy wearing roughly similar clothes in order to show a similarity between the two before they have met. I would begin the video with establishing shots of areas from the live performance and the narrative with ambient sound originally as opposed to the music starting immediately, I feel this way because of some of the videos I have seen such as Crash - Fit For Rivals begins with sounds of equipment setting up and slight muttering in the background thus setting the tone of a light-hearted song. I would not have this for very long, merely a couple of seconds to indicate a slight light hearted nature. The song starts off very fast paced, in order to conform to the genre I would have extreme close up shots appearing for brief moments of the instruments as the song plays, quick editing of the multiple instruments playing, as the song progresses I would gradually allow the camera to effectively zoom out going from extreme close up shots, towards mid shots and then to long shots at the beginning of the video, this means the extreme close ups will focus on purely on the instruments then the mid shots will show the guitarist/drummer using their instrument and then the long shot would highlight the whole band. I would have the live performance shown until roughly the second line of the song "truth care, truth brings”, after this I would cut to a scene in the narrative where the girl is seen in a classroom looking frustrated, probably looking at a piece of paper on her desk with her hands in her head as though she is very irritated, I would cut back to a close up shot of the singer in the live performance for the line “always I know” then cut back for the next line “you’ll be at my show” and the rest of the verse in which I would show the boy on the other side of the classroom struggling to do his work and getting frustrated, I would show the boy to be slightly more aggressive possibly by hitting a table and mumbling to himself, then the girl (who would be in the background) turns her head as he turns his so they’re both looking at each other and smiling, they then turn their heads back to their work.

This then cuts back to the live performance for the line “say it ain’t so”. Afterward I have two concepts in my mind of what I would do, the first is to create a time lapse shot similar to the one me and Katie made in the Counting Crows sample video to show students walking from their class to another, the reason for this is because I think it could indicate that it is the end of the day within the school thereby leading onto the next scene in the narrative. The other idea is to simply have the girl walk out of the room and then follow her as she leaves which would then lead onto a scene where the girl and boy are walking down a street and cross each other in their paths. Either way once the girl exits the school or the time lapse shot is shown I would cut back again to the live performance for the “na na na” part and then once the verse “late night, come home” begins I would cut again back to the narrative showing the girl walking down a street in a similar shot to a dolly shot, then she accidently bumps into the guy walking across the same street and they start talking and smiling which then turns into them pushing each other playfully as though they are flirting. I think this would fit well here as it links into the line “work sucks, I know” as this would be something along the lines of which they’d be talking about, the boy may then lead the girl towards his house where they enter and start drinking alcohol and possibly taking drugs, the rest of the video would consist of them dancing like they’re at a huge party when in actuality it is just the two of them there. When the girl and boy take drugs and/or alcohol I would like to have some POV shots of them in the house with a blur affect and some possible superimpositions to reflect a hallucinogenic effect that the girl and boy are having. As the song starts to end I noticed it gradually slowed down, I feel as though the song should then end in the morning (as the “party” the two characters had would have spanned across the night) with the two characters lying on the floor asleep cradling each other. The final shot I would have would be the band with them strumming the final chords of the song as the cameras zooms out from afar and then gradually fades to black.

Prop List/Costumes

Prop list. – Night performance

Acoustic Guitar
Bass Guitar
Acoustic Drum Kit
Microphone
Microphone Stand
2 AMPs
Leads
400w Floodlight

Mise en scene

Lead singer – simple unkempt shirt, blue jeans Punk style.

Guitarist – roughly same

Drummer - roughly same

Narrative boy – Black jacket, Blue jeans, shirt

Narrative girl – band tee, Jeans

Locations - School hallways, tennis court, classrooms.

Night time

Tennis court with floodlights
Skatepark (Possibly)

These are subject to change and will be edited accordingly.

Changes

Over the course of the past few weeks me, Sean and Katie have decided that there will be no live audience within our live performance, the reason for this is because we felt as though the organization to do this would be very vast and the result which would not be as substantial or as effective as what we probably think it would. By not having a live performance this means that we will be able to have a less concern over continuity as if there are multiple people in a room we would have had to ensure everyone continues to wear the same clothes and does not move position too much. Having a live performance with just the band also conforms to a lot of music video conventions of the alternative rock genre, Muse's Uprising for instance and Numb are both videos with a live performances without an audience in sight. The Numb video in particular includes a performance located in a very isolated environment, this means that in order to conform to the genre we should try and film within a location that is isolated to some extent I.E can not have a vast amount of people around or be in an enclosed area such as a large room. The narrative of the video has to delve around teenagers and teenage habits, this means the narrative we will have a teenager (most likely a girl to conform with other videos such as Numb) who will be in school (to emphasize that she is a teenager) and be very isolated by having little to no friends, then we would like to have a teenage boy in a similar position to her and as the video progresses the two meet and start fall in love. This positive image is made due to the nature of the song, All The Small Things is a very uplifting and positive song which means that this should be reflective in the narrative. 

Treatment

TREATMENT FOR AN ALTERNATIVE ROCK MUSIC VIDEO

2^nd October 2012

Song: ‘’Blink 182 – All the small things’’

 

Synopsis

The music video will be accordingly 2 minutes and 53 seconds from a cover song from Tweedaa, the choice being ‘’All the small things’’ by the original title artist blink 182. The song focuses on five of the conventional themes, alcohol, drugs, freedom of youth, sex and isolation (at the beginning); the piece will focus on a three person band and two main characters.

The narrative of the music video will be chronological follow a young man and woman over a day, transcending from the theme of isolation to alcohol, drugs, freedom of youth and sex (and possibly party themed). There will be a lot of emphasis of these themes and during both chorus and verse, the narrative will reflect/portray (conventionally, reflect a ‘’fantasy’’ of the lyrics) the lyrics of the song. The chorus particularly will have abstract fill shots to emphasis on these particular themes.

The music video will also have a live performance section, often out weighing the narrative in terms of seconds; the live performance will take up just under 2/3 of the song (effectively the live performance will be 100 seconds whilst the narrative will be 73 seconds) in accordance to genre based conventions.

The characters in the narrative and live performance band members will reflect the themes of the genre as well as identifying conventions with their audience (teenage, male / female, young adult) e.g. this will be attributed through school narrative, type of song, themes, costume and possible props that we have identified throughout our research into the genre.

 

Style

The video will generally be up-beat and light hearted (with very little drama and tension except for the pre-get together of the two characters) whilst focusing intensely on the genre themes. The nature of the tone and atmosphere can be shown through the editing style of pace in relation to song tempo and emphasis on particular notes from instruments; in production, lighting may be used to further expose the shots to bring this method forward. In post-production (e.g. editing) template effects will be used to alter colour control (e.g. possible white balance could be slightly off put and slightly colourful) to reflect this further.

Audience

In terms of a demographic classification the age group “All the small things” would have will most likely be the age group oriented around the 13-17 category as the themes present in the song reflect the themes often associated with youth culture such as freedom of youth and a theme of the glorification of sex, drugs and alcohol. It is difficult to determine a specified gender since seemingly the audience for alternative rock is usually not specified as they try to attract both men and women and do not always emphasize a clear preference.

 

Technical requirements

The technical requirements of this production will be:

-          Digital Camera

-          2^nd Digital Camera (for behind the scenes recording)

-          Adobe After Effects CS5

-          Adobe Elements Premiere 4 &10

-          Adobe Photoshop Elements 10

-          Adobe Premier CS3

 

The availability of the cameras will depend on our shooting time scale (estimated at 2 weeks) and the availability of the equipment; all other software we have 24 hour access to for the period of 6 weeks.

 

Contingency Time

The project will have ¼ of the total time frame for production to finish, giving us 1 and ½ week if all else fails.