Music video first ideas

After a few failed attempts to get a song for my music video, I have finally been given permission to use a track. I sent off an eMail to Unkle, asking to have permission to use Lonely Soul. I got permission, so that’s what I’m using. I had been given permission to use a track made by a local artist, but I really wanted to use something more professional. I’m not entirely sure what genre to label Unkle as; the majority of James Lavelle’s work would be catagorized as electronica, but he often uses guest artists in his tracks so his work falls under different genres. Lavelle, throughout his career, has worked with many different artists including DJ Shadow, Richard Ashcroft, Ian Brown (of the Stone Roses) and Radiohead. There were a few tracks that I was interested in using, but i settled on ‘Lonely Soul’ for a few reasons. Firstly, the lyrics do not have a narrative so that gives me some freedom in the narrative of the video. Secondly, the song doesn’t have an instrument set-up that I could replicate. By this, I mean that the song doesn’t use drums, guitar, piano, etc., but has a looped drum beat, strings and ambient sounds and a piano melody. I think it would be difficult to match the instruments in the performance part of the video. I don’t see this as limiting me, instead I think this also gives me freedom in choosing what the performance element of the video will be.

In watching the music video for The Devil’s Spoke, I was convinced that I would be able to make a video without a large amount of performance. The video showed me that simple things like shots of landscapes can be used to great effect. This made me decide that I will use a fair amount of landscape shots in my video. I think there is a lot of potential within Lincolnshire for some great landscape shots. In my GCSE music video, I used locations in Lincoln which I think worked well. I’d like to follow a similar approach that I did then which was just walking around, looking for things that would look good in shots. I know a degree of planning is necessary, but I won’t know what I can use until I find it. The things I was thinking about looking for were forests or ruined or very old buildings (Harry Elvin, Chris Elmer and Andrew Reid used the ruins of Tupholme Abbey for their video). Aside from that, I don’t have any plans for the locations and I’ll see what I come across.

Here is the track (darn WordPress won’t display the video on the page)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__r0gwxzeVE

I think this is the official video, but I’m not sure. The track is over eight minutes long but there isn’t really much song in the second half so I’ll just cut it off at around the 3.45 mark.

Music video research

Tenacious D certainly have a unique style for both their music and their videos. Their videos often break the fourth wall and are parodies of music videos. The video has been made to look like a low quality music video with very bad special effects and music video cliches. The self-mocking nature of the video is what makes it good but i think that attempting to do something similar for my music video wouldn’t work because instead of looking purposely bad quality, it would look like a very bad student-video.

In contrast to Rize of the Fenix, Wainwright’s Out of the Game has virtually no performance within the video. Most of the shots are of Bonham Carter lip-synching to Wainwright’s voice. This gave me the idea of also using a ‘gimmick’ in my video (possibly some reverse-motion). In addition to the absence of performance, most of the video takes place within the same library, showing that a successful video does not have to have a huge variety in location. It also occurs to me that the video has little to do with the lyrics and the meaning of the song. This gives me some freedom in terms of what narrative i will have in my music video.

The Strokes’ music video is much more performance-based than the music video i am looking to produce but it still gives me an idea of how band members and performance are presented in music videos. I have noticed that band members are often shown apart from each other, appearing in different locations. Unsurprisingly, the lead singer is focussed or more than the other members and appears in m0re shots than them. Close-ups of instruments are used fairly frequently and close-ups of the singer’s face are very frequent. The video uses a few conventions of rock videos; the band members appear indifferent to the audience and often look away from the camera.

Both Spektor’s and Apple’s videos use surreal imagery as the main part of the video. Spektor’s video is a more quirky surreal, with plates of jelly, porcelain hands and a flaming trumpeter. Apple’s video is of the more disturbing variety, using marine life and snails to evoke disgust from the viewer and to make them uncomfortable. Whilst the effect created by the theme would not be difficult to achieve in my own music video, i would have to make sure that i do it very well in order to ensure the video does not look like a bad quality student video.