Turn Around

So, after a long hard talk about our ideas, thinking of locations and listening to the song time and time again, we decided to change the basis yet again. However, not completely! We still plan on having a large proportion of the song as performance based. - around 50% in total. We feel performance would be suitable for our song not only that you can create very professional and effective visuals with not an exceeding amount of time and effort, but really grasp the emotional side and deep meaning of the song through acting and 'putting on a performance'. So this leads me onto the concept theme. Having completely random  visuals wouldn't portray the actual meaning of the song in the slightest and could take away the effect of it. Therefore we are still thinking of incorporating concept visuals but with a more gothic and mysterious theme. Things like candles and burning, dark rooms and fairy lights. Around 15% of the video should be taken up with concept ideas that all link in with a similar theme so they are not completely random. And the final 35% of the video should be taken up with narrative - this takes me back to our original idea of the mother and child. Whereas we would just show snip-its of this narrative, enough that the audience can establish the situation and the story line - hopefully if they listen to the words this should be easily recognised but not the main focus of the video like we previously planned. 
We needed to start searching for locations that could be used for both the narrative and performance base of the video. We want to focus on using a lot of close ups for the performance therefore the location wasn't the focus of this area. However if we were to use mid shots, etc... We needed a suitable or even plain black/white background. To the left is a location we found of somewhere in Brentwood (very local for us). It was perfect - had the exact look we wanted. The only problem was these images of an abandoned mental hospital were taken almost two years ago and the site had been completely refurbished. However, we were not struck down! It just meant we had to search further. We spent some lessons and a lot of our own time simply watching musc videos, ones that aren't as main stream or popular, so more low budget and appropriate inspiration for us. The next few images show screen shots from a msic video called 'Run'. The song is by an artist called Joe Compass. He is a new artist and only just breaking into the music insudtry. He hasn't had much publicity but this new track of his has had over ... hits on YouTube.
The song is about someone running away from him to 'find love'. Therefore the video displays exacly that - someone running which shows direct links between the lyrics and the visuals. The whole theme of the video is dark and mysterious - similar to how we want our video to come out like. In the image above they have used an ordinary brick wall, adeed in some sort of spotlight and had someone run along it to create a shadow. This is something simple but extremley effective and something Claudia and myself will deifinatly be trying out! Similar, is the image above to the left. It shows some sort of metal gate/fence and again used a spotlight.

The equipment they have used is proabably a lot more advanced than what we have - physically and finacially, but we could even use the car as a tracking method or hand held to portray a more edgy and dangerous vibe. Throughout the video, there is a re-occuring theme of shadows, adding to the mysteria. Yet again, another low cost, simple and effective way to fill in gaps throughtout the video - still keeping to the matter of gothic and abstruse themes.

This image (to the right) is of the artist - Joe Campass. It shows a close up with a side angle of him singing the song, which is something we can do to add to the visuals - mixing things up. Not always having front view anagle, by moving the angle of the camera, it creates something more for the audience to look at.

This screen shot is from somebody's A2 Media music video - it's footage of him holding the camera or some sort of support as he spins around. It is really effective becuase the boy stays in focus whereas the background is constantlymoving - almost like an illusion. Even little changes like this will encourage the audience to carry on watching the video. Even if it wasn't of Claudia performing, and just something or someone different representing an item to do with our theme - such as a teddy (which was the daughter's), it's just a different way to visulise something.
The next set of images is from a song called Gas Pedal by Sage the Gemini. Now, if you listened to the song, you could not link it to ours in the slightest. However, the visuals for the song has a very limited connection to the lyrics. It think the only slight thing would be woman. In the opposite image we can se the artist being smothered by females hands. Even though this might seem like a sexual thing - which it is, however if it was a female instead of a male the whole manner would change from a sexual thing to a obscure and mysticla thing. Similar to this video we think we could in-corporate this several times over a specific area of the song or throughout it. Its something we can do even with our friends becuase we only really need about 4 sets of hands.

These images are of the artist singing the song towards the start as an introduction to the artist, song and location. As you can see I have screen shot 3 images over about 20 seconds. Everytime the shot went back to this the camera was closer. This is the only effective way, I think, of using a long shot - to establish the artist.

This shot to the right is Eliza Doolittle, in a music video of her most recent album. She shows strong emotion through her facial expressions which is something Claudia needs to perform. This is also something I will look out for when filming her. We will work together by giving each constructive advice and help and I can't wait to start :-).