On a previous post I have made, I posted a photo of a basic list of ideas that we have come up with in relation to which ideas were each of ours and how we thought of some of the random scenes and actions in the video.
For example, the locations were mainly thought up between myself and Harry; this is because the barn location (for performance) is located at my Dad's house and was an ideal location to film in as the upstairs area is empty and is not used for anything currently. Harry's ideas developed from the locations around his land such as, the garden including the boat and trampoline, as well as the swimming pool, coffin, large hills and caravan.
The barn location was inspired by watching the video of Two Door Cinema Club - Something Good Can Work, their video is very simple and is filmed in an open space with nothing too fussy or complicated in it, just the band members and their instruments.
Also the caravan was inspired by the typically British TV series 'Royle Family', this links in with the indie/alternative genre as many bands of this genre share a typically British style.
image of cast of royle family in caravan
The coffin was the location that most people were shocked by when they watched the video, as if to say 'Who on earth has a coffin at hand?'... The answer is, Harry. The coffin is one of my favourite locations however as it is the most random and weird, after finding out Harry had a coffin we were able to use we all tried to think of ways in which we could incorporate it into the video. I then thought that the theme of gothic culture is ever popular; Meg and Harry agreed that the gothic culture could also be a connotation with the name of the band, 'The Skeleton Boys'. We were also going to paint the bands faces with face paint to make half of their face appear as a skeleton and half normal, however this idea was a more costly and time consuming one so we decided to rule it out and contrast the theme of the gothic coffin by getting the band members to dance next to it.
In addition to the locations, some of our other ideas were inspired by other music videos; such as the 'Carlisle' scene in our video. As random as it sounds, this section was developed from the text used in Cher Lloyd's 'Swagger Jagger' video released earlier this year; the text used in her video is illustrative however it is digitised and added in the post-production of the video whereas we wrote 'Carlisle' on a piece of cardboard and passed it along the band members. Our approach is much more traditional and faster to produce as we did not need to worry about adding in that special effect during the editing process which saved us some time.
The bike and other transport methods (skateboard and running) came from partly the band members own interests as the three boys skate as a hobby. There is also a video in which they use a similar method of showing movement with transport objects similar to ours, which also features one band member in particular, as does ours.
The Hawaiian shirts were Joe's idea, however Harry's Dad managed to supply us with four similar Hawaiian shirts, we assume these were bought on various holidays. This idea originated from Friendly Fires lead singer, Ed MacFarlane, his style of clothing in day to day life as well as during the video 'Hawaiian Air' features a Hawaiian shirt every now and again.
As I was given the role of 'band stylist' along with director during the filming, I had some input in the clothing that the band members wore throughout the video; obviously the clothes were all the band members own clothes so I did not have a huge choice in the style however they all fit the genre well and brought along the right selection of clothing. I focused on Georgia's appearance in particular as she is the only girl in the band, I either had the choice of making her stand out against the boys or letting her fit in a little bit so it was more of a discrete factor of the band rather than trying to create a hype around the only girl. Some of her appearance was based on the Crystal Castles member, Alice Glass - this was mainly because both Alice Glass and Georgia have short hair so it was easier to base her on someone similar. I feel that the clothing Georgia is in throughout the video was necessary and the black shorts and tights toned down anything she wore, they also blended in well with the boys in dark coloured jeans throughout.
At two points in our video we used chalk to draw on the floor of the barn, the first time was drawing footprints around one of the band members shoes as he walked along - this looked effective in the draft so Mr Smith advised us to try it again during the video, with the bike. We decided to include a short clip of stop motion when we used chalk with the bike, and the chalk track gets wider as the bike wheel turns along which also looks different and effective. The chalk and stop motion link came from a variety of sources including, 'The Wombats - ______' music video, 'Coldplay - Strawberry Swing' music video, as well as the Innocent Smoothies advert.
There were multiple random objects used throughout our video, these include things such as the coffin, Hawaiian shirts and accessories, mugs, leaves, balloons, inflatables etc. After watching 'The Maccabees - First Love' video, I thought of the idea of using random objects, this then was developed by each member of our group in some way, Joe had a think to himself about what random things he had in his house and he came up with some amazing costumes e.g. doctor, banana and monkey.
Meg then twisted the whole idea of random objects by coming up with the idea that two of the band members could be involved in a Benny Hill style comedy chase. The two costumes, banana and monkey were selected and Georgia became the banana, along with Steve, the monkey; we all agreed that this idea could either turn out incredibly well or it could end up looking like we had tried to be witty about the costume idea and failed.
The ending of the video is one of my favourite parts, I came up with the idea that all the band members should leave the performance area as it will finish the video well; I had seen these ending used in a video before and eventually remembered which video it was from, 'Vampire Weekend - A-Punk'. The band, Vampire Weekend, are similar to our band, The Skeleton Boys, in that they are from a similar genre background as well as their videos being fresh and unique in a sense. We filmed the band all leaving the set in the draft but it did not work properly as the guitar was still being played (on the song) as they were leaving; however we changed this due to feedback from our teachers as they suggested we could still use this idea but have them all leave after the song has finished. To which we responded positively, however I came up with the idea that Lewis (one of the guitarists) could be left on set as all the other band members leave, this is because it is only a guitar left playing at the end of the song. This ending worked really well and we are very pleased with it, the inspiration of Vampire Weekend worked but we also put our own twist on it; we also know that this must have been a good idea because after our draft was posted some other groups in other A2 classes took inspiration from our ending and developed their own similar one.
Our ending:
Vampire Weekend's ending:
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