Ideas For Characters

As the sequence for our music video is a dream sequence we thought that we could dress the characters however we wanted as they do not have to be relevent to any surroundings or even the music style. We have three characters in our music video, the main character (the artist), the female character (there lost love) and another male character who we see once in the video. Our ideas for the characters are as follows:

Male Character 1 (the artist):


We felt that this suited what we wanted for our main male character most, it suits the style of the music whilst also bringing in the dream aspect, as he is in a dream we felt that we could dress him however we wanted but thought that a casual suit was the best option. The suit could appear to represent how the character wants to appear to the lost love and could also show what he dreams about being.

Male Character 2:


We felt that this would be the basis for our second male character as he fits the role of 'new lover' that we wanted him to play. We thought that jeans and a t-shit when compared with our main guys casual suit would be a perfect contrast in style.

Female Character (lost love):

Teacher Feedback on Pitch and Blog

Your pitch was excellent, it was clear that you have very concrete ideas for your promo video, your digipak and your magazine ad. It was also clear that you had thought about how to link these three products visually, which is also very good. I am confident that all group members are contributing equally at this stage and that you know exactly what your next steps are.
Your blog is reflective of the work you have put in so far. It is very important that you start making the backgrounds and characters as soon as possible. It might be nice to have some individual visuals, possibly rough sketches or found images from the internet, to illustrate the overall look you are going for with your characters and backgrounds. This will help your blog to communicate the mise-en-scene you want to achieve, it currently doesn't do that as well as it could.
Fantastic work so far, keep it up.

Rough Storyboard

This is a rough storyboard for our music animation. For now we'll use this as a starting point and see how our time line and shot list detail pans out.

Prop/Equipment List

We'll require the following things for shooting our animation:

• Cardboard mounted characters (Two males, One female)
• Collection of random images e.g. moon, sun, stars, clouds, tangerine man, cow etc...
• Thought dream bubbles progressively getting larger mounted on card. (5x)
• 18x Joint pins
• 2x curtains on cardboard's
  
• 3x trees on cardboard
• 7x clouds on cardboard
• Cardboard dark piano keys (different colors)
  

Backgrounds:

• Bedroom
• Exterior of house
• Dark sky
• Blue background
• Piano
• Black screen
  
  

*UPDATE* (8/10/09)

As of now, we've scrapped the utilization of the cardboard mounted characters as we found it rather daunting trying to cut the cardboard out accurately. Beforehand we've dismissed idea of having pins since this would make the transition of props more complicated and technical to adjust.

Awaiting Permission

Alas, we were unable contact The Hush Sound privately due to the persistent spam filter on myspace. The only hope was to publicise our message across on their comment wall.

*Update*

Recently we managed to get the private proposal message across on myspace so we hope that they'll take our response into consideration.

Goodwin's Theory on Music Video's

We thought it'd be use to keep a list of Goodwin's Theory intact on our blog so we can keep refering to it whenever we need to think or develop any ideas.

• Links between Lyrics and Visuals
• Links between Music and Visuals (Complimentary, Contradicting or Amplification)
• Genre characteristics
• Intertextual reference
• Notions of Looking (objectification of women)
• Voyerism (direct gaze, other people looking at artist, insight into artists life, screens and mirrors)
• Demands of the Record Label (representation of the artist)
• Performance based, Narrative based or Concept based music videos

Mandatory List

Our group has been instructed to keep a track of important things involved with the production of our music video.

• Storyboard
• Shot list
• Timeline (This ensures you have enough footage for the whole song)
  
• Location Scouting (Including images of real places)
  
• Props List (Images to support)
  
• Costume Details (Images to support)
  
• Confirmation of Actors
  
• Call Sheet (When + Where you will film, Who is needed, What etc...)
  

Track Lyrics

We thought we'd search for the song's lyrics just of reference.
The lyrics will also aid in giving us the literal interpretation for our storyboard and
help construct the time line for each shot.

Sweet Tangerines By The Hush Sound


Rain falls, quickly wetting my hair and clothes
My cries fall upon her deaf ears more tears
Let me in, please it's cold I'm freezing out here, I miss you my dear
You're all his and I'm all yours, like it or not, I'm all you've got

Everyone will make mistakes
Without the sour the sweet wouldn't taste and...

Sweet tangerine, will you please come back to me?
Cause I don't think that these feelings are gonna leave

Light cuts through the clouds and haunts me, like bad dreams
Outside lookin' in I'm feeling lost and cold as sin
A shred of hope a little bit of sweetness - anything please, except for defeat
If I could I'd lock you up and toss out the key, it's just you and me

Everyone will make mistakes (and I know I have)
Without the sour the sweet wouldn't taste and...

Sweet tangerine, will you please come back to me?
Cause I don't think that these feelings are gonna leave (yeah, yeah)
Sweet melody, you'll be singing in your sleep
But this time you're not listening to a word I say

Crept through the curtains, as quick as the cold wind
Slowly exploring the room where you sleep
The stare of your portrait, the passing of your scent
Left me no choice but to stay

I will dissolve into the dark beneath your bed
My hands will wait for a taste of your skin

Sweet tangerine, will you please come back to me?
Cause I don't think that these feelings are gonna leave (yeah, yeah)
Sweet melody, you'll be singing in your sleep
But this time you're not listening to a word I say
A word I say

Influential Ideas For Project

We were set the task of looking at music videos to see if we could find anything that we could replicate or that would interest us enough to create ideas that we could do in our own music video. We looked at various music videos from all genres and music video styles but eventually settled on animation as our chosen style of music video. We were particulaly impressed with istop animation and as a group chose this to be our medium through wich we would animate. One video produce by a previous group that we liked was 'Milkmaid':



This video captured all the styles and ideas that as a group we would like to use. Our music video will be of a similar style to this one but much more ambitious and with the animation. It will also be more challenging to the audience as it is more abstract and follows the lyrics less closely than this music video.

Detailed idea for music video

Our idea for the music video goes as follows:
Shot 1: The main character is asleep in a bed, and dream bubbles slowly appear next to his head, one by one, each one being bigger than the last. The picture within the bubble will be blurry.
Shot 2: The camera cuts to a close up of the main characters head with the thought bubbles coming out.
Shot 3: Cut to a shot of the room with all the thought bubbles there.
Shot 4: Zoom in on to the largest thought bubbles, both have blurry images on them.
Shot 5: Zoom in on the largest thought bubble as it gradually takes over the screen.
Shot 6: In his dream bubble, there is a guy (the main character) standing outside of the building in which there is a man and a women. The weather is stormy.
Shot 7: The other male character in the house flies off to the right while the main male character and female character fly off the left.
Shot 8: Both female and male character fly off into the air up through the clouds and off into the stars and land on the cloud.
Shot 9: The cloud speeds along with them on it while many random images fly past, e.g. tangerine, banana, sun, moon etc...
Shot 10: The cloud comes to a halt and smaller clouds begin to appear which look like foot steps down onto the ground. The characters begin to walk down the steps.
Shot 11: The characters fly towards the floor through the air.
Shot 12: A piano keyboard can be seen and the female/male characters slowly descend onto it.
Shot 13: To the beat of the piano music, the male and female characters jump around landing on the keys as they change colours.
Shot 14: The female and male character spring off the keyboard up towards the stars.
Shot 15: They come to rest on the crescent moon which acts as a seasaw.
Shot 16: To the beat of the music, the moon begins to rock backwards and forwards more violently and eventually propelling them off towards the original building.
Shot 17: They characters fly back through the sky past the same objects as before (in shot 9)
Shot 18: Inside the room (in shot 1) the male and female characters begin to appear through the curtains (relevant to song lyrics).
Shot 19: The characters glide into the room and eventually settle onto the bed.
Shot 20: The bed covers slowly creep over the characters.
Shot 21: Blank screen *FINISH*

The video will be animated as this gives us more freedom to develop ideas.

Magazine Advert for the digipak

This image is the basis of our main character and we think that as the song is from his point of view and is his dream, this should be included on our advert. It would feature in one of the bottom corners of the page.







Another idea would be to have a man made out of tangerine peel, which would also feature in a bottom corner.

The prominent feature on the page will be a picture of 'The hush sound' with their finger to their lips. All the ideas are closely related to those of the special edition single cover.

The words 'The hush sound' and 'Sweet tangerine' will be written at the top of the page in large orange letters. Another idea would be to write both titles in orange peel and take a photograph of it. This makes the font original and will capture people's attention.

Amongst these images, random images that will be included in the video will also feature for example, leaves, a rabbit, a cow, a tangerine, musical notes, banana, moon, sun, clouds, house, ghost, stars, flowers, chair, other male, guitar, lips, shoe and a piano.

A possible idea for the background would be to make the advert after shooting the video, and sticking all of the cut out shapes and characters onto some card and then photo copying it.

The very very basic idea of what our advertisement will look like is:

Digipark Design (CD/DVD)

We've been set the task of designing a digipak for our chosen song (Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sound). We brainstormed a few idea's and these were our concepts.

• A close up of the artists with a finger pressed to their lips, the idea behind this is it is representative of the bands name hence the "hush sound" identity. This would appear to be silencing the audience. This image would correlate well with the bands name as the audience can imagine their genre of music as sounding calm and relaxing.
  (Illustrations below)
  
  
  
  
  



• A man made out of a peel of tangerine which bares a relationship with the singles title, "Sweet Tangerine". We discovered this idea from an image search from google. This image also fits with the bands comical and playful nature. This image will apear throught our music video and strengthens the links between digipack, music video and magazine advert.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



• A safe option as back up (in case the first ideas are problematic) was to create a collage of the band member's faces that are positioned next to each other in a row with a distinct font title to make their presence known.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



• Another idea is the three way CD cover containing the single "Sweet Tangerine". This would be a special edition and would contain track titles, history of the band, pictures of the band and a screen shot of the music video.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  

  
  

(Above and to the sides are the designs for our digipack which is a three fold special edition CD single)

Track Permit

We needed to ask "The Hush Sound" for permission to use their track as part of the traditional copyright policy. This was our proposal.

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Hi there!

We're a group of students studying Media A2 at Long Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge from the UK. Our group consists of Vincent (Myself), Nicola, Ollie and Beth. We recently came across your track "Sweet Tangerine" and as part of our preparation we need your official permission to use your track. Our basic concepts involve creating an animation to compliment your track. We also have a web blog which contains our detailed info for our project.

Here's the Link: A2 Media Music Video Q1-11

We hope to hear from you soon!

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Music Video Analysis

Q1 Music Video Analysis

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Q1 Music Video Analysis

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Q1 Music Video Analysis

View more presentations from Media Studies.

Q1 Music Video Analysis

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We were all arranged into different groups to analyse and invoke Goodwin's Theory on a selection of music videos. His theory involved looking into the relationship between Music/Lyrics, Visuals/Lyrics, Intertextuality, Notions of Looking and Demands of the record label. We also needed to identify the genre characteristics that are typically used in our music video. This involved picking out certain motifs, themes and recurring trademarks the artist has recycled from their past discography.

For the finale, our groups were required to present our powerpoint presentations and receiving critical feedback. Some of the feedback involved us in using more media terminology frequently such as the micro elements (Camerawork, Mise-en-scene, Diegetic/Non-Diegetic sound and Editing). So one our targets for our pitch is to make proficient use of these terms so we can confirm our place for the chosen track.

Music choices

We listened to all 12 tracks and after previewing them finally settled on 3. The songs we chose were:
- Sweet Tangerine by The Hush Sounds
- The rifle by Alela Diane
- A Long Time Ago by David Ford

We settled on these songs as they fitted the conventions of the music videos that we liked and chose to replicate. As we had chosen previously to do an animation we felt that a song with a high level of emotive and descriptive language was key to creating a successful animated music video.

The song that we will be pitching to produce is 'Sweet Tangerine' by The Hush Sounds. As a group we liked the style, rhythm and tempo of this piece of music. With a fluctuating beat and emotive language it lends itself well to being produced as an animation. The writer of this song has been clever using emotive and descriptive language to create images in the audiences minds, we can transfer these images on to the page with an animated music sequence more effectively than if we had chosen to produce it with actors and a real life setting.

We chose not to do the other two songs that we selected from our original three due to our final choice 'Sweet Tangerine' being more upbeat in nature, more colorful and with a higher content of emotive and descriptive language. We had discussed ideas for the other two music videos but felt that 'Sweet Tangerine' lends itself more to the animation genre and with a high tempo would be more of a challenge to our group and enable us to access the higher grades.

The ideas we put forward for the two music videos we didn't select (The rifle by Alelea Diane and A Long Time Ago by David Ford) are as follows:

- The Rifle by Alelea Diane:
Our idea was to follow the lyrics of the song very closely for example when the artist sings 'papa get your rifle' and 'they are coming from the woods' we would have had an animated sequence of pictures displaying these lyrics. We had seen a music video previously where the lyrics had be followed closely and the effect was good. However with this song it would not have been an as effective technique and not the best display of our abilities.

- A Long Time Ago by David Ford:
Our idea for this song was the artist represented by a male character in an animated style literally following the lyrics, for example 'i sat on the wall' we would have the artist in the animated form sat on the wall. The lyrics lend themselves to a narrative style of video as they are very descriptive and visual. However for an animation the music we felt was to slowly paced and the audience would bore quickly when presented with this work.