Locations.

For the location of our music video shoot, the group decided we wanted to have somewhere quiet and isolated with a feeling of being lost. With this idea in mind I suggested an abandoned house and warehouse which I believed would provide the ideal setting.

In order to give the other group members a good sense of what the location would entail I took several photos for them and received their approval to use this as our location.

Copies of the photos can be seen below.

The Gossip - Heavy Cross

The Gossip front woman Beth Ditto has become an icon since the band's first hit "Standing in the Way of Control" which featured as part of the soundtrack to the popular teen drama Skins.

The new album features the above track, Heavy Cross and the video shows their alternative status in the music industry. The video features an abstract styled performance which focuses largely on Beth Ditto, the band members are also featured within the video but mostly in the background.

When compared to our production group's aspirations I found this video particularly good to look at as it provides another example for how female fronted bands in the industry are protrayed.

The minimalism with the use of shadows to create an effect of eerieness and abstract art rather than a narrative makes it interesting to watch and with the focus on Beth Ditto the power is given to her.

With Girls on TV I believe that our front woman also needs to be the centre of attention on camera, because of this as a group we are looking into appropriate clothing and make up.

A blog will follow up on our research shortly.

Singer costume ideas

Bryony; Edgy indie look
- shirt
- skinny jeans
- converse/plimsoles
- back brushed hair
- lots of jewelry, big earrings, earrings in all piercings
- big eye make up

Bryony; More girly indie look
- leggings (coloured, patterned)
- long top - tunic top - black & white, picture on it/patterned
- converse/boots
- chunky cardigan - coloured
- lots of jewelry
- big eye make up and face make up - blusher etc

Tom; Mime 1
- black top
- white jeans
- braces
- black shoes
- top hat
- stick
- black and white face paints - with a tear etc

Tom; Mime 2
- stripey black and white top
- white/black jeans
- beret hat
- plimsoles - black or white
- braces
- stick
- black and white face paints - with a tear etc

Costume ideas - Mime

Using face paints, we are hoping to be able to recreate a similar effect as the one in the above picture. The tear drop like eye make up we thought would look particularly effective as we want the mime to be particularly eerie to give the video a surreal edge and create a good divide and be significantly different from the ideal love stories you see on TV.

The bottom picture shows a typical mime's costume which we are going to be recreating simply with the striped t-shirt and skinny jeans

Paul McCartney - Coming Up

We were recommended to watch this video because the techniques used in it our similar to the ones we are aspiring to achieve.

The video, released in 1980, was a very early example of technology trickery and Paul McCartney is seen to be playing 10 different band members and his wife Linda plays a further two. The different members were depicting various different impersonations of artists such as: The guitarist, Hank Marvin from the Shadows and Ritchie Blackmore Rainbow/Deep Purple.

We have found watching this video very helpful to watch and its given us high aspirations for the final results of our video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDBkySeyiDo

Final Concept and Shot List

At our last production meeting we pitched our music video concept and got approval from the group.
The concept we have decided on include the split screen introduction that we discussed in our last blog. We will be focusing on the performance and having cutaway shots to create a narrative which will link to the lyrics of the song. The performance will be a member of our group being filmed playing all instruments and dressed as a mime edited together using a cut screen to make it look as if he is playing all the instruments single handedly at the same time. We will also have a female lead singer with an indie style and wearing colourful clothes in contrast to the black and white outfit of the mime.

Shot List:
Shot 1: Begins with a black screen
Shot 2: One quarter of the split screen will introduce the guitar
Shot 3: Repeated with the bass
Shot 4: Repeated with the drums
Shot 5: And finally the singer's lips
Shot 6: The shot zooms into the singer's mouth and then back out to the girl in our first location, walking towards hand held camera, singing.
Shot 7: Long shot of band in line (split screen to show Tom as all band members)
Shot 8: Girl enters shot from the right, Tom on the right sees her, stops playing and walks towards her. Other mimes look over and watch.
Shot 9: Zoom onto to singer and band member pulls her towards band. Girl starts singing, mimes look at her oddly.
Shot 10: Girl runs away. Cuts to shots of girl running away, each getting further away.
Shot 11: Cut away narration at second location. Mime chasing girl.
Shot 12: Stiller, calmer shot of mime and girl happily together - "like the girls on tv"
Shot 13: Mime chasing girl.
Shot 14: Cut back to singer performance
Following shots will be alternating between:
- the mime chasing the girl
- the mimes performance
- the singer.
The final shot: Camera zooming into the singer's mouth and fading to black.

Idea's for the music video

Our final decision was to do Girls on TV. This is because we all had many ideas as we listened to the song. My idea was that we had a split screen of 4. The first image to appear in one of the screens would be the bass as it comes on in the music. The next image would be the drums as it comes on in the music. The next would be the guitar as it comes on the in the music, and the final image on one of the four screens would be the singers lips as she sings the first words. It would be a tricky thing to do and will take a lot of extra time on the college computers but my group and I seem keen on the idea. As the song gets into the verse/chorus/bridge, the camera will zoom into one of the four split screens and the action will go on in that scene, for example there will be some weird moments and shots that create a sense of eerieness - this would include a mime, or a band set up down a street, or the singer running away from something chasing her. When the action in that scene has finished, the camera will then zoom out again into the split shot. When on the split shot, the instruments and girls lips will still be going, and the chorus will be playing everytime the camera zooms out onto the split shot. When there is another verse, the camera will zoom into a different split shot, and another set of action will go on, whether its the band playing live or some other action packed scene. It will zoom out again, onto the split shot when the chorus is playing. When the last chorus says "Girls on TV", the camera will zoom into a shot from the split screen and it will show the singer singing on a TV. We hope to achieve this by using a security camera whilst the singer is singing into it, and recording the TV. We will then zoom out, and as the music fades to signal the end of the song, the images on the split screen dissapear one by one, until we are left with a blank screen.
This is just an idea, but after conferring with the group it seems as though we are set on it.