Music Video
I originally had an idea for a music video before i actually found a song i wanted to use, this unfortunately meant i had to look for a song that would fit the purpose of my video. It had to have the right sound to it and have the right lyrics to match with what the viewer would be seeing. After a while i found a song by Catfish And The Bottlemen called Hourglass, this song was perfect as it had the right tone and feel. The song isn't too long and isn't too short which means the viewer hopefully wont get bored watching it. The song its self is about missing someone and thinking about them all the time, the lyrics show that the person is struggling to cope without them, and this is how it relates to my music video. The content of the song is this person trying to get someone back into their life, the lyrics state that the person is sorry so they must have done something wrong for the other person to leave, it then goes on to tell all of the things he will do when when they see each other. The song has no specific narrative too it and the band itself is classed as indie rock but this song is more chilled out than other songs by them.
Research
An idea i had for my film was for it to be in black and white, this gives it more atmosphere especially as its meant to be quite a dark video. so i looked at some black and white music videos like fire starter by the prodigy. The songs genre is punk so it doesn't really fit in with the my music genre but it gives a great example of how a black and white video can create a certain atmosphere. The main song that inspired my music video was "Hozier - Take me to church". This is because of the story behind the music, when there is a story it takes the listeners attentions so then as well as listening to the music you are also being entertained by the narrative.
Pre-production
The first thing i needed to do to plan my music video was to created a mind map. This helped my to generate all the ideas i had and get them together to see which ones were the best. The key bits that i wanted do include in my music video was a narrative and for it to be black and white. The narrative gets the viewer interested and the black and white sets the right atmosphere. I also wanted there to be some sort of twist at the end, this took a while too think of as i was struggling for ideas but in the end i decided that there was going to be a murder in a house, which results in the murderer going to a cliff and contemplating death. In the middle of this he will be driving to the location where the cliff is. This idea is good because it fits in with the lyrics of the song and is at a good pace. I then turned my idea into a storyboard. The last bit of preparation would be the equipment. I used my own DSLR for filming and borrowed a Glidecam from the college as i wanted the footage to be as steady as possible seen as though i am going to be moving quite a bit.
After i had made the storyboard i needed to find actors and find locations. I needed an actor who could play the role of a murderer and take the act seriously. I used my dad for the murderer as i didn't want anyone my age as it might not look as believable, and i think he fits the role perfectly. As the murder victim i used my dads girlfriend as i needed a female to be the murder victim, this is because the song lyrics for my song talks about a female. I didn't need anymore actors as i didn't want to take the viewers attention away from anything else that might distract them from the murderer. When i had all my actors i needed to think of some locations. I decided that the murder was going to take place in the living room, and i would be filming it from the outside window. The next location is in the car and as its a 20 minute drive to the last location i could get plenty of car shots on the way. The last location is a place called Alderly Edge, its surrounded by trees and has a big cliff which is exactly what i needed for my video.
Production
The night before we started filming i got everything i needed ready, like the camera gear and props. To make the murder more realistic i got one of my dads old white t-shirts and covered it with the fake blood (which was made from red food coloring, flour and syrup). Also i needed to balance the Glidecam, but because my camera is so light i didn't have any weights on the bottom which meant is wasn't as stable as it could have been. I changed the video setting on my camera to 60 fps as some of the shots were going to be slowed down, and then made sure my batteries were fully charged.
On the morning of the shoot i woke up about 8 and decided that i wanted to film the cliff scenes first, this is because if i left it till later then it might have been really busy and will have been unable to film. The only problem with doing this is you might get some continuity errors. As we were driving the Alderly Edge i filmed some shots of my dad driving in the car, and filmed an important scene of him wiping blood off his face. Once we got there i started to follow my dad walking using the Glidecam, this made a big improvement on how the footage looked. I walked around the forest area getting footage of him climbing up hills and rocks, and finally footage of him standing over the cliff. I shot a close up of his face when standing over the cliff as i wanted the viewer to see the facial expressions as he stands there.
When we got back from the cliff the last thing i needed to film was the murder. originally i wanted to film the silhouette of the murderer and the body but as it was quite a sunny day all you could see was me and the camera, even if i got out of the way so i was out the shot you couldn't see inside. I had to rethink my shots and eventually decided to film my dad walking out of the living room and then as he walks out of the door i end the scene there. I preferred doing this as i like the fact there is movement in the scene rather than it being a simple panning shot. Another prop that got used in this scene was a knife, i filmed him drop the knife when he comes out of the house ad in post production i wanted to slow it down a little bit. The last bit of filming was me following him into the car and then driving off. All that i needed to do was take the clips from my camera and put them onto the computer at college.
Post-production
I opened up premiere pro and made a new sequence which was 1080p 30fps, i wasnt sure on where to find 60fps so i went with the highest one i could find. Once i had my timeline i started importing my footage and placing it in the timeline. When i dragged the first clip in a popup window came up saying if i would like the change the sequence setting to match the clips or to keep the sequence as it is, i clicked on change as it would then see that all my clips are recorded at 60 fps. I edited all of my clips and placed them into the timeline and once i had added music and was happy with the way it looked, i went into effects, selected Black and White, and then dragged it onto the first clip. To add the same effect to all of them i right clicked on the first clip and then clicked copy, this copy's all the attributes that the clip has. I highlighted all the remaining clips and pasted attributes so when i play the video all the way through, every clip should now be in black and white. Now that i had finished editing i needed to export the video. I went into export media and chose H.264 and then clicked on 1080p HD 30fps, but when i looked at the estimated file size it said it was 507mb, this is a problem because the maximum size for Vimeo is 500mb. To fix this i just lowered the maximum bitrate down a little bit so that the file size went down.
Final product
Overall i think my music video has turned out great but next time i would choose a longer song as i feel like i could have done more with the footage i had.
Research
An idea i had for my film was for it to be in black and white, this gives it more atmosphere especially as its meant to be quite a dark video. so i looked at some black and white music videos like fire starter by the prodigy. The songs genre is punk so it doesn't really fit in with the my music genre but it gives a great example of how a black and white video can create a certain atmosphere. The main song that inspired my music video was "Hozier - Take me to church". This is because of the story behind the music, when there is a story it takes the listeners attentions so then as well as listening to the music you are also being entertained by the narrative.
Pre-production
The first thing i needed to do to plan my music video was to created a mind map. This helped my to generate all the ideas i had and get them together to see which ones were the best. The key bits that i wanted do include in my music video was a narrative and for it to be black and white. The narrative gets the viewer interested and the black and white sets the right atmosphere. I also wanted there to be some sort of twist at the end, this took a while too think of as i was struggling for ideas but in the end i decided that there was going to be a murder in a house, which results in the murderer going to a cliff and contemplating death. In the middle of this he will be driving to the location where the cliff is. This idea is good because it fits in with the lyrics of the song and is at a good pace. I then turned my idea into a storyboard. The last bit of preparation would be the equipment. I used my own DSLR for filming and borrowed a Glidecam from the college as i wanted the footage to be as steady as possible seen as though i am going to be moving quite a bit.
After i had made the storyboard i needed to find actors and find locations. I needed an actor who could play the role of a murderer and take the act seriously. I used my dad for the murderer as i didn't want anyone my age as it might not look as believable, and i think he fits the role perfectly. As the murder victim i used my dads girlfriend as i needed a female to be the murder victim, this is because the song lyrics for my song talks about a female. I didn't need anymore actors as i didn't want to take the viewers attention away from anything else that might distract them from the murderer. When i had all my actors i needed to think of some locations. I decided that the murder was going to take place in the living room, and i would be filming it from the outside window. The next location is in the car and as its a 20 minute drive to the last location i could get plenty of car shots on the way. The last location is a place called Alderly Edge, its surrounded by trees and has a big cliff which is exactly what i needed for my video.
Production
The night before we started filming i got everything i needed ready, like the camera gear and props. To make the murder more realistic i got one of my dads old white t-shirts and covered it with the fake blood (which was made from red food coloring, flour and syrup). Also i needed to balance the Glidecam, but because my camera is so light i didn't have any weights on the bottom which meant is wasn't as stable as it could have been. I changed the video setting on my camera to 60 fps as some of the shots were going to be slowed down, and then made sure my batteries were fully charged.
On the morning of the shoot i woke up about 8 and decided that i wanted to film the cliff scenes first, this is because if i left it till later then it might have been really busy and will have been unable to film. The only problem with doing this is you might get some continuity errors. As we were driving the Alderly Edge i filmed some shots of my dad driving in the car, and filmed an important scene of him wiping blood off his face. Once we got there i started to follow my dad walking using the Glidecam, this made a big improvement on how the footage looked. I walked around the forest area getting footage of him climbing up hills and rocks, and finally footage of him standing over the cliff. I shot a close up of his face when standing over the cliff as i wanted the viewer to see the facial expressions as he stands there.
When we got back from the cliff the last thing i needed to film was the murder. originally i wanted to film the silhouette of the murderer and the body but as it was quite a sunny day all you could see was me and the camera, even if i got out of the way so i was out the shot you couldn't see inside. I had to rethink my shots and eventually decided to film my dad walking out of the living room and then as he walks out of the door i end the scene there. I preferred doing this as i like the fact there is movement in the scene rather than it being a simple panning shot. Another prop that got used in this scene was a knife, i filmed him drop the knife when he comes out of the house ad in post production i wanted to slow it down a little bit. The last bit of filming was me following him into the car and then driving off. All that i needed to do was take the clips from my camera and put them onto the computer at college.
Post-production
I opened up premiere pro and made a new sequence which was 1080p 30fps, i wasnt sure on where to find 60fps so i went with the highest one i could find. Once i had my timeline i started importing my footage and placing it in the timeline. When i dragged the first clip in a popup window came up saying if i would like the change the sequence setting to match the clips or to keep the sequence as it is, i clicked on change as it would then see that all my clips are recorded at 60 fps. I edited all of my clips and placed them into the timeline and once i had added music and was happy with the way it looked, i went into effects, selected Black and White, and then dragged it onto the first clip. To add the same effect to all of them i right clicked on the first clip and then clicked copy, this copy's all the attributes that the clip has. I highlighted all the remaining clips and pasted attributes so when i play the video all the way through, every clip should now be in black and white. Now that i had finished editing i needed to export the video. I went into export media and chose H.264 and then clicked on 1080p HD 30fps, but when i looked at the estimated file size it said it was 507mb, this is a problem because the maximum size for Vimeo is 500mb. To fix this i just lowered the maximum bitrate down a little bit so that the file size went down.
Final product
Overall i think my music video has turned out great but next time i would choose a longer song as i feel like i could have done more with the footage i had.
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