Copyright letter feedback

There still has been no response from Sub Pop Records who manage Band of Horses, about using their song and all of the copyright issues that go with it. We will take this as good news at they have no desire to not let us use the song.

Possible locations

We started to film our music video last wednesday and thursday. We filmed and took our location shots at a church/graveyard in Horton Kirby, the first picture you see in our slideshow is of the metal gates leading out of the graveyard, the gates are perfect for when people leave and for when the girls bullies look over at the funeral taking place. We took six pictures of the locations that we could use and that we are may use in the future of our video. The pictures in my opinion are clear, they are very well lighted and they give the audience a clear sense of what to expect.

Animatic pictures

Charlotte has drawn all of our wonderful pictures for the animatic, our end product of the music video will definitely try and have the look of our animatic.

Animatic

This is the groups animatic, we hope our overall music video is close to our finished animatic, however i am sure we will add and takeaway parts of the animatic that we feel appropriate.

Preparing to film

As the deadline for all our filming to be complete draws closer, we will start to film the basic parts of our music video. We haven't yet sorted out our actors and actresses. So the filming that will take place during the week, will just be of hands and props.

We will be filming:

• Rose dropping to the floor
• Petals being picked off a rose
• A text sent to our actress, along the lines of "We hate you!!!"
• Three or four brief clips of cyber bulling, Facebook for example

The Drums, Lets go surfing - Video analysis

The video I am analyzing is Lets go surfing by The Drums, the videos genre is rock/indie whicis perfect for the genre that we are aiming for, this is pretty obviously shown to us by

the bands clothing, of tight jeans, short tight tops, indie style thrown back hair cuts and of course when the band actually start to play their instruments, of drums and the guitar.

In terms of their being an actual connection between lyrics and visuals in the song, there is only a couple of lines that actually work with each other. One for example, "honey, take a run down to the beach", the band members are running along the seafront on the beach. Also the line "i'll never let you go" this line is used frequently in the video, and is also played when the band members eventually drop off, one by one. There is a slight lyrics to visuals, in the lines "down, down baby down by the roller-coaster, sweet sweet baby i'll never let you go." These lines are repeated four times, and on the last repeat, the back two of the band stay, while the other two run off. But apart from these three examples the video has no lyric to visuals connections, I can understand the music director trying to achieve fluidity through out the video, but I think some clever lyrics to visuals links would work very well in this video. The line "there's a new kid in the town", they could have reunited with their band members.

In the video there are no shots or links to instruments and the music, there are shots of the guitars and the drums, but no real close ups of one of the instruments. In terms of the video cutting to the beat, the video has no cuts! It is one long sequence of film, the song is quite slow and dreary so in a way this type of filming does work very well with the video.

The main objective of course for any music video is to sell the track and the band involved. But in this video there isn't any close ups of the band, the video is shot all from a medium close up but showing below the waist as well, it is a stationery camera that films the band, but it is probably being drove along by a car/truck. Looking back at other videos from the The Drums, for example Best Friend and Forever and Ever, they do like the feel and the look of not so much a stationery camera but when the band is walking towards the camera, and they let the artists do their own thing, this is clearly seen in the video "Best Friend", where the camera is stationery and the band do their own thing. This type of filming does a give sense of freedom to the video, and i actually quite like how it is filmed.

- Lets go surfing Best Friend -

The video is mainly narrative based, but there are definitely parts of the video where there is a small performance for 20 seconds roughly. However the video still keeps to its traditional camera shot even for the performance part, you would think they would do close ups of guitars and drums but they don't in this case, I guess they want to keep that stationery feel through out the video.

To sum up this interesting video, I think the way the director has portrayed the band is very interesting there are no close ups of the band members and the instruments, hes just letting the music sell it self which I really like, obviously the way the video is shot on a beach ties in well with the song "Lets go surfing". I do actually quite like the way it has been filmed with the band members filmed using one shot all the way through, me and my group may consider this when it comes to filming our video.

Questionnaire to our target audience

As you can see below this is the questionnaire that i have published to our target audience. I gave it out to 10 people in the age range of 16 - 18 years old. The results were intriguing and helped myself and the group really figure out what the video should include, what they want from a music video and more importantly the parts that they don't want in a music video.

As you can see by the results below, the ten people I gave my questionnaire out to do actually support the ideas that me and the group have come with. The factor in our video that i was most concerned about is whether the audience would mind if the video didn't actually contain the singer/band who's song it was, but as you can see in the pie chart below, 80% wouldn't mind if they weren't in it.

One of the ideas we have is to film some of the video in black and white, not all of it, just the parts we feel necessary for that part in the video. As you can see below our target audience don't mind if the video is in black and white. I think if they did mind, then it would raise serious concern because the song is called The Funeral, and a black and white theme in some parts, would look really nice.

Important times in our song

The way this song is made is very intriguing and is exactly why we need to note down these important times. It starts slow and then speeds up with drums and guitars then will it slow right down again, with almost soft, smooth coral music. One of the key points to the success of our video is to make sure when we know to fit our shot ideas into the right slot, in terms of the pace of the music, the instruments and the pace of the singing.

Link to Band of Horses The Funeral

Key times in the song:

0.22 - The soft instrumental music stops and the lead band member starts to sing.

1.03 - The coral singing starts to build up.

1.22 - Big smash of the drums and electric guitars signals the start of when the fast pace starts to turn up, and become commanding almost, the singing is deeper (use cuts at this point instead of cross dissolves)

1.57 - The drums and guitars stop, the song starts to mellow back out again, it becomes softer and the instrumental is played again, like at the start of the song.

2.00 - The drums and guitars are introduced back into the song, with a commanding thump on the drums.

2.45 - Crash of the symbols, there is silence for 3 - 4 seconds, the sequence has ended.

2.49 - The music starts back up again, with the slow soft singing and the guitar and drums at a much softer and slower pace.

3.08 - Music changes, the pace in the song increases and so does the loud drums and guitars.

3.40 - The instruments and the singing becomes less aggressive almost, the slow drums and guitars are back, the song starts to fade out.

3.45 - Song ends.

Secondary parts of the brief

Brief

1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• a website homepage for the band;
• a cover for its release as part of the digipak (CD/DVD package);
• a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

Myself and the group have decided to do the cover for its release and the magazine advertisement. We feel that these two objectives suit our skills better than the website, we can fully utilize our photoshop skills together, and also none of the group are very comfortable with website development, unfortunately.

Possible locations

Woods/Forest - This location is very important for the success of our video. It will be used on many occasions, for example when the girl is running away, sitting down reading the text and reflecting on what has happened. The woods do give the look of a mysterious future of what she will be facing, also it will clearly show her isolation and loneliness.

House - Using somebody's house is also important to the success of our video, the scenes where we film in the house will be where she would of been with her boyfriend enjoying herself, but now she sits and alone. Also the hate messages on her Facebook will be filmed in the house.

Graveyard/Church - The song is called The Funeral, we simply have to feature some sort of graveyard and church, whether it is just the outside of them, for an establishing shot for example. One part where the graveyard will be used is when the girl's funeral is shot, we have decided on the church we will use and will be asking permission to film nearer the date.

Public Park/road - This location will be simply used for 5 - 7 seconds worth of filming from when her and her boyfriend were happy together, so we can use the film for the flashbacks. We will also be using the public ark location for when she is sitting alone and cross legged, Oakfield and Dartford Park are the two favourites to film at.

The groups letter to Sub Pop records

Dear Sub Pop Records,

I am an A level student and I am writing to request your permission to use one track from the first album by Band of Horses entitled “Everything All The Time”.

The track I wish to use is “The Funeral”, track 4 on the album.

With your permission, this track would be used in my current A-level Media Studies project which involves creating a music video for a popular music track, as well as producing an album and a magazine advert for the artist.

If I received your permission, this track would ONLY be used in an educational context and be viewed by my media class, my teacher and the OCR exam board moderator. It would NOT be released to a large audience or uploaded to any public video websites.

The artist and your company would of course be fully recognized throughout pre- production and the final video itself. A copyright notice, with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full details.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Claire Martin

Lyrics to visuals possibilities

"I'm coming up only to hold you under" - Our model possibly in the bath, fully clothed, with eyes wide open.

"Really to late to call" - Model sitting alone where she had been previously with her boyfriend, but all of the props are still there e.g. picnic rug.

"Is to know me all wrong" - This lyric actually fits in perfectly into our concept of the girl being cyber bullied on Facebook and by text messages, we had the idea of filming her Facebook page, with her profile full of hurtful messages, this could almost be filmed in a blurred fashion or with a handheld camera to give the impression she is in shock and confusion about what she has seen. We also had the idea of receiving a hurtful text, for example "we hate you", i think this should be filmed over the shoulder, to give a personal touch to it, almost like the audience has opened the text, this could also be filmed using a handheld camera.

"At every occasion i'll be ready for a funeral" - Either some sort of church/graveyard connotations, for example. Gravestone, church, graveyard, etc. Or our model possibly looking down at a grave or even into a coffin.

"To the outside, the dead leaves, they all blow" - We had the idea of our model running through a forest or woods, surrounded by autumnal leaves, bare foot in a long white dress. We also had the idea of her sitting alone cross legged with the "dead leaves" positioned around her. This could be filmed in two different ways, one for example could just be a medium close up of her, but i think if we started with a close up of her face, (possibly crying) then gradually zoom out to reveal that she's sitting all on her own, again revealing her isolation and loneliness.

"At every occasion i'll be ready for a funeral" - This line is very similar to the one that i mentioned earlier, however it is now "a" not "the", its almost like its her funeral, so we could have the same grave she was looking into, but with her laying on top.

Feedback from our pitch

The group came with the decision that we had no real meaning and substance to our video, we had a lot of fantastic small ideas, but that would clearly not fit the 3:46 minute length, that the video has. We had the burning cigarette that would slowly burn out towards the end of the video, drowning in the bath, shots of a church/graveyard. But no real base to build those ideas from.

We came up with the idea of cyber bulling. It is a major talking point in society at the moment and something that relates to our video extremely well. We had the idea of a girl 17 - 19 years old, being bullied on the Internet and with the use of technology, for example Facebook and text messages. Texts reading, "we hate you", for example. She would then eventually commit suicide.

We would start the video with flashbacks of when she was happy and enjoying her life with a boyfriend and friends of hers, the story would then turn and reveal the truth, about her bullying and how upset she was. The flashbacks would also show happy memories where she had been previously with her boyfriend, however this time sitting alone, for example, at a picnic.

We also had the idea of her running away from everything, bare foot, in a long dress, into a deserted woods. This part would show her isolation from everyone else. We had the idea also of her sitting cross legged, whilst reading her text, or just looking lonely, possibly with a tear. The actual funeral scene itself will be split, across the grave, where she will be lying. With the people who drove her to her death and her family, her family upset and her bullies possibly pale and emotionless. Both groups of people will be holding the same flower, maybe that the girl had been wearing throughout the video. For example a rose. We are still developing ideas.