Storyboards.

In our group we each drew up a brief storyboard to give us various ideas to work with. ( PS - I may be pointing out the obvious, but click on the images to enlarge them.)

The first storyboard shown below is Alex's idea...

I have already posted a fairly comprehensive preliminary shooting script, which has since been further expanded by the group at large, so further elaboration is probably not needed. I'm just going to explain how I came up with the idea for this post. It was rather randomly thought up. The suggestions we already had were very 'samey' to me and I began imagining what I could actually do in the video. The image of a ghost-figure came into my head, and I thought that this would be a brilliant experiment, and was rather different from the proposed ideas we already had. Thanks to this originality in comparison to the other ideas, this seems to be why Thom and his band chose this idea.

Charlotte's idea is shown below...

My idea

When I was coming up with an idea, I tried to bear in mind the lyrics to "In Disguise". I thought the video could begin in a park. During the instrumental introduction, we would see various shots of the park, trees, the sun. The atmosphere would be very warm. We are first time we are introduced to the main male character is when we see him sitting on a bench. He is wearing a mask, as is everyone around him. (This was to symbolise that they here hiding behind their disguises) (http://www.mardigrasoutlet.com/_images/kt/H1.jpg) He stands and we see him begin to walk down the main path of the park (We can assume he is making his way towards the exit of the park.) While walking, we see him stop and we do a match on action of him looking at the reason he has stopped (the girl) and the girl. The girl is not wearing a mask, and therefore stands out. We see her sitting her reading a book. We cut back to him looking in awe at her and her beauty. We see her collect her things, and get up to leave. He tries to chase her, but remains a good bit away from her. She leaves the park, and he is unable to catch up with her. We see him sit down on the bench, and put his head between his knees, disappointed at her leaving. He looks up at her again, and then runs in the direction she ran in, determined that he will find her. We cut to him standing on the pavement looking round. He see's a cafe, and looks in it. We switch to a shot from inside the cafe, looking out, where we see the girl passing him in the back of a taxi. His back is to her. Events like this continue to happen, and they both just miss each other. In the end of the video, we see her run up to her, after finally having caught up with her. He bravely removes his mask, revealing the real him to her. He taps her on the shoulder, and she turns round. The girl is now wearing a mask. We see his face fill with disappointment. Fade to black.

I thought this was a good idea, because it represents the song well. It sticks to the theme of being "In Disguise", and interprets the disguise as a means of hiding ones real self- their deepest emotions. I think this video would be memorable, but simple, and would be quite artistic looking. For the most part, the video is happy, fitting in with the song, until the sudden end. I hope this idea is chosen, because I believe it would be the most effective, artistic and memorable video.

***

Another final idea was suggest by Lauren, it is shown and briefly explained below...

After listening to this song and talking to Thom about his inspiration for the lyrics, I think I began to grasp the meaning. I tried to convey this in my storyboard by my initial idea, which was to center the video around a relationship between a boy and girl.

The band features alot in my storyboard also as I only think its fair for them to be a main part. I was thinking of them in a sort of 'garage scene' or basement maybe. With low lighting, concrete floor with a 'stage setup' of instruments and maybe a seat for the lead singer to sit on. Also posters all over the walls of inspiration of music the band are into, aswell as an old vintage, stand-up microphone for the lead singer as he sits down.

The beginning of the song will open with the guy following the girl through the park, I have toyed with the idea of the guy wearing a mask over his eyes, or maybe just the band in masks? It has still be be decided! I was thinking it would be quiet cloudy and dull and she sits on the bench and he keeps his distance. As the lyrics kick in at 13 seconds, we cut to the garage scene just before this and the lead singer come towards the microphone, low lighting and spotlight on him. This lasts for about 10 seconds and then the band join in on cue.

As the song begins to get more up-beat we then watch them leave the garage and we cut to the park again. The guy is standing staring at the girl as she sits on a bench, maybe reading a book or writing in a diary...she is very mysterious. The band appear from the background and the music continues, the lead singer slowly moving forward towards camera from a distance.

The girl the gets up and begins to walk away from the park. The next scene cuts to a street where we see shops and a pub. Time has passed and the guy is now drunk and waving about a pint outside the pub as the girl walks past - he pesters her. As she briskly walks off and the song gets more up-beat instrumentally again, he slides down the wall outside the pub - and sinks into a frustrated depression. The guy cannot get through to the girl. At this point the video could be filled with some different clips or even still shots in relation to the story, maybe explaining the situation to the audience.

The next and final scene moves on down the street, the guy has started to follow the girl and runs, the girl slowly turns round, she is drawn towards the guy and cannot run anymore. They come to a gradual halt and stare at stare other. The band in the background, the guy and girl slowly walk towards each other...we get a close-up of the guy as he removes his mask he has worn all along and it dawns on the audience that the characters have a connection. They look at each other and everything that caused problems before seem to be omitted...lastly the video finishes on the band in the 'garage scene,' the video blackens out. Credits roll.

Of course the types of shots being used etc need to be thought out in more detail if this is to be the chosen idea - but for now...hope you like it :)

Thank for reading,

Lauren

***

We emailed these 3 storyboards to Thom with our brief descriptions. He seemed to be drawn towards Alex's storyboard as the one to work with!

Thom got back to us some feed-back and his thoughts on the video through email...

I loved all the work your group have put into this so far guys, and after looking over the ideas and storyboards I think i'll go with Alex's ghost suggestion. I like the original idea behind it and I want people to watch the video and actually remember the bands song. I think we could play about with some really good effects in this to make something stick out for the audience!

Thom

Idea

The band has chosen the ghost idea, we have a winner!

Ghost Idea Shots

Ghost Idea-Shots

POV shot.
Long shot - circles around her as she looks about her, then then flips and does a 360 of her environment.
Close-up of her face, confused as she doesn’t know where she is.
Over the shoulder (OTS)- walks down a deserted street. Switch to POV as a person appears in the distance. Extreme long shot of her running to catch the person up.
Mid shot- different mid shot cuts of her trying to get the persons attention. Interspersed with close ups of her and his. Possibly shot reverse shot.
Mid shot of her antics beginning to subside and she begins to tear up. The stranger continues walking. Switch the focus from her to him.
OTS over him looking back to the girl. Slide focus from him to her. She looks confused and hurt. When the character has become fairly small she begins to walk away. Closer, oscillate between mid and long shots, tracking her as she tries to find out where she is.
OTS of her looking at a signpost. She looks at the sign, but it has become completely blurred. Swing the camera round to a high shot. This scares her, close up of her face as she rubs her eyes. Then POV looking at the still-blurred sign. She runs off, follow in a mid shot, just running after her, it doesn’t matter if the shot jumps about.
Mid shot/high angle of her running into a crowd of people outside a building. Film her trying to get peoples attention with close ups shot from both low and high angles.
Long shot as she stumbles out of the crowd. Allow to become a mid shot as she gets closer, then turn to a high angle mid shot as she slides down beside a wall. Switch to a close up of her face. Zoom out when she begins to stand up. Long shot as she begins to walk on. Possibly film her shadow for a while.
Long shot of her walking down a street. Turn the shot greyer in the edit as time goes by.
Shot reverse shots of her looking into peoples faces and being ignored.
Mid shot, zoom to long from behind her as she reaches a road. OTS as she hears a car coming then POV as she sees it turn the corner. Close up of her face.
Low angle mid shot as she walks onto the road in front of the car. Close up of the windshield of the car.
Long shot as the car reaches her and passes through her.
Flashbacks of earlier shots from different angles. Her getting out of her body. Running through the crowd.
Long shot as she fades away, zoom to a close up on her face as it disappears. Change to grey, then black.

Market Research and Audience

In order to determine what type of audience we are aiming for with our music video, it is important that we look at the main audience for bands similar to SKETCH. The first of these is Radiohead. The majority of Radiohead music videos are extremely artistic. Whenever their music is combined with their music video, it is very difficult not to get drawn in. An example of this is "Creep", where the video is really quite simple, with the only visual effects appearing to be coloured lights, we are still very focused on the video. Their videos are very imaginative, and we would like this aspect in our video, which is why we picked quite a challenging idea, for which we will have to experiment a lot with effects. We would also kind of like the 'creepy' effect that some Radiohead music videos have, for example "Just", which I have embedded below. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only copy that doesn't have embedding disabled, and it is fairly low quality.

The second of these examples, and the most relevant to our music video is Beck, who have been a strong influence to the band. One of their videos (Beck-Loser) is particularly relevant, and I have included this video below. It has a lot of the kind of effects that we would like to experiment with in our video, and it still remains quite a simple video. We can see an example of this 35 seconds in, when it looks very ghostlike, and even when it is slowed down and a bit juttery. This seems like an effect which would suit the style of our video very much. The whole video has a sort of eerie feel to it, and for our video to be ghostlike, there will need to be an element of that feel. Another example is in and around 2.17, where we can see the area around him being blurred out.

The bands inspiration

According to Thom, some of his main influences are Radiohead and Beck. I have included some covers that he did:

One of Thom's major influences guitar wise is Andy McKee, one of the worlds finest acoustic soloists. His youtube videos alone, which were posted by independent record label "Candyrat" have collected over 20 million views, with most of his videos having a five star rating. At one point, Andy held the first, second and third postion for most Top-Rated videos of all time on Youtube. After becoming a hugely popular Youtube phenomenon, he has performed to sold out shows all overt the world. An example of him drifting is included.

I have also included a video I feel is a lot more similar to Thom's current style.

SKETCH

Thom Southern and his fellow band members have now decided on a name, and have called themselves "SKETCH (http://www.myspace.com/alternativemusic link to their myspace)

I have included a clip of the band playing their song "World Don't Shine" on Balcony TV in Dublin.

SKETCH are currently in the process if of making their first EP "World Don't Shine", which should be out soon. They are using Studio5 for their recording, a studio 5 minutes away from Belfast, and they hope to be finished soon.

Update

Just a quick update about how the project is going. We have 3 ideas planned to present to Thom Southern, and 1 storyboard ready, with 2 being finished off, that we can send to him along with the text plans for our ideas. We'll hopefully have that all sent off to Thom soon, and get a response about which idea he wants us to go ahead with shortly. Then we'll get our proper storyboard made, get actors, props if necessary, and scout for locations. Should be fun.

To update the update, we're currently waiting for Thom to tell us which storyboard he wants us to do. We're currently expanding on the shots and techniques within the current plans to save time when we find out which one we're doing.

Ideas to be pitched to Thom Southern

First Idea.
Begin following a male lead looking across a street at the female lead sitting on a bench, reading. Male lead is wearing a mask. Cut away to a band playing the song. Everyone is wearing a mask, and dressed plainly, trying to keep them looking as though they could fade into the background. Have the band playing in....a garage would work well. After they have played for a while, they leave their instruments and walk out of the shot.
Next shot returns to the lead, the band now walks up behind him, and follows him as he walks across the road. As he reaches the other side, the girl gets up and walks away. He sits down, the band standing about him.
Return to the band playing, male lead, now the singer, with them. Fade out after a while, to the male lead by himself outside a pub or shop. The girl walks by him now, but he makes an obvious show of looking away when she walks by. She doesn’t take any notice, and as she disappears he slides down the wall/window of the shop etc and sits on the ground dejectedly.
Cut to shot of the band and singer walking down a street, houses all about. Male lead lip-syncing to the song as they walk.
Final shots will be the male lead walking down a crowded, moderately busy, street. Girl is in the distance. She stops and turns. He keeps walking alone then stops in front of her.
Cut back to the band playing. They pull off their masks as they finish playing.
Cut back to the girl and guy staring at each other. He reaches to take off his mask. He stops, turns and walks away. Zoom out on the girl standing by herself on the street. Final shot the band together with their masks off, guy with his mask on.

Second Idea.
Uses Savage Garden-Truly Madly Deeply as inspiration. Start with him walking down a leafy, autumny road, probably in a park. On “figure of imagination” he sees her sitting on a bench, maaybe reading a book. When it says I want you to know, he starts quickly toward her, trying to reach her. Before he manages to reach her, she gets up and leaves (EH, EH). Has him trying to catch her before she leaves, but being too late. He follows her and a one points tries to push through crowds to get to her (Like end scene in the butterfly effect?) Any time it says “i want you to know, i need you to show” he gets really close to her, but then loses her again. At one point he reachs her, they turn round and look at eachother for a second, maybe he gets knocked into, so looks away, and when he looks back to her, shes not there.

Ending could be like either of the butterfly effect endings, one being that they look at eachother, and share a “moment”, but he’s too insecure to say something- that’s why he’s in disguise.

Or could be like the “happy ending” in the butterfly effect, where they start talking, and walk off happily together into the sunset.
Possibly have the idea of masks. (kind of half stolen from alex, but he has the band playing with them instead.) Everyone had masks on apart from the girl and perhaps the boy. We could either have everyone else with the masks on (in disguise) apart from the girl, and at the end he takes off his disguise. Or we could have both the girl and the boy both in disguise.

Third Idea.
Opens from black looking up at the sky, POV character lying down. Stay in POV as the character is getting up. Then new angle, character looking around about him/her. On a street, hopefully a grey drab day. Make him/her unnoticeably transparent. S/He looks very confused, and sees someone walking towards him/her. They run up to the other person and try to talk to them (of course we just see they’re mouth moving, no sound). The character is ignored, begins to become infuriated, can be seen to start shouting. The other person continues walking on and the character stops following. They begin to walk off randomly, trying to find where they are. Stops at a sign post, but all the letters and directions are blurred out. Looking very confused, scared, the character runs away and comes across a crowd of people outside a building. Starts running around, shouting, trying to get everyones attention. Throughout all this the character gets very very very very slowly more transparent. After being ignored yet again they stumble off, crying. They walk around streets, people keep walking past, ignoring them, no one sees them at all.
End the video with the character becoming so utterly distressed they run out into the road in front of a car. Film the car coming up then move out to film the car driving through the character. The character beings to fade rapidly, the film fades to black and white, use the old film look effect too.

Influences in our ideas

At the minute we have three music videos/scenes from films that have been an inspiration to us.

I have included clips of each of these influences.

Savage Garden-Truly Madly Deeply

The idea behind this bit is that we would open with a

similar style shot. It would open to our lead singer walking

down a road, perhaps autumny, and we would take a few

shots from different angles.

30 Seconds to Mars- From Yesterday

The element of this video that is relevant is the idea of masks.

The title of our song is "In Disguise", and so we thought it

would be an idea to perhaps have everyone apart from our

lead characters in the video in masks, and perhaps have the

lead singer, and the woman with who he is to have an infatuation

with, without them. Either this, or have her not wearing one,

and he is, until they properly meet, and he takes him off and

takes off his "diguise". We are playing about with both of these

ideas. Another possibility is to dress everyone else but the main

characters in black, so that our attention is always focused on the

main characters, and she stand out very strongly to him, and in a

crowd.

The Butterfly Effect- Happy Ending

At the minute we are visualising some sort of an ending.

We thought that maybe this one could be a possibility, or

the one underneath this. The one above is more of a happy

love story ending, and the one below is more focused on

insecurity. The one below fits in with the song well, as the

person singing is talking about how they are "in disguise".

This could be interpreted as meaning they are insecure, and

their disguise is a way of hiding themselves. With the ending

below, he tries to find her and catch up with her, but when he

finally does, his insecure makes him so nervous about rejection

that in the end, he decides not to talk to her.

The Butterfly Effect- Open Ending

Soggy Bottom Boys

A video we found relevant for World Don't Shine.

World Don't Shine

Alex’s Plan for video.

Position a camera in certain areas of the school at different points of the school over the course of the day. Speed up the footage we have so that people blur out. Filter the video for effects. Play around with colour etc.

Charlotte’s idea for video.

Filmed outside, down by St Annes. Have someone walking, with a focus on nature in the video. Or, go to the music department and try to do the thing with the four different screens, with instruments. This would be good for our actual video.

Lauren’s idea for video.

Guy playing guitar, zoom in on fingers playing guitar, Split into atleast four boxes and then start to ‘jumble’ boxes and flash colours. Show drums playing in one box, guitar,

Expand to more than four boxes in actual project.

Final idea for video.

Have introduction with four screens gradually coming in, as each instrument plays. Have four boxes.

Intro

Gradually boxes in from solo guitarist, a split into the guitarist and a close up of the guitar (20 secs), split into 3 with the guitarist, guitar close up, and a drum kit (30 secs), split into four with previous 3 and a singer.(50 secs)

(1 minute for the intro piece of video)

Taking different angles of the singer in a small room singing. Switching to low and high shots and circling the singer. (15 seconds long)

At 1 min 25 take POV shots walking under the trees looking up to the canopy. Be slightly unsteady, but not overly.

At 1.50 green screen the guitarist in front of somewhere, i duno.

At 2.00 take a profile shot of the singer singing into a mic, probably take a few extra shots.

From 2.10 take a close up of the guitar being played during the solo.

From 2.20 have the singer walking down a tree lined path. Use mid and long shots and some tracking shots.

From 2.40 film birds flying above.

From 2.55 use cue cards in the style of the bob dylan video. “World Dont Shine” etc.

Around the end at 3.20 use effect to make the video shine as the last cue card falls. End about 3.24

Bob Dylan- Subterranean Homesick Blues

When we were discussing ideas for the music video, we felt this would be a very classic, inspirational video to reference.

The idea of the cue cards really applied to us, as it (if done correctly), can look extremely effective, We also realised,

after talking to a number of people about it, that Thom Southern's voice is actually quite shockingly similar to Bob Dylan's,

which I think we can agree, is a huge compliment towards Thom Southern, who I'm sure would be only too happy with the

comparison. After seeing the Bob Dylan video, we though it would be a great video to credit throughout our video, perhaps

every chorus, or every time they say In Disguise. We definitely think it's a rather artistic technique, and it is an idea we will

definitely come back to.

A few ideas that are bouncing around the line.

We have not yet begun to plan our video yet, but we have discussed ideas and techniques that we may be interested in utilising. We have confirmed that we will be using "In Disguise" by Thom Southern and the Band.

One of the techniques that we would very much like to use would be green screen, something that we have been toying about with on Final Cut. It was difficult to get to grips with the program and the technique at first, but with more practice I feel we will be able to use it quite successfully in our music video if we do choose to use it. We feel that this could be very useful in a music video that has pretty much no budget.

We have also been using the time and speed options on Final Cut, teaching ourselves how to reverse time and slow it, which has been immense fun and could produce some very interesting effects in the video.

We would also like to see if we can use the band themselves in the video. That is only a possible idea that could very easily be discarded.

"THOM SOUTHERN AND THE BAND"

We started looking for a band and eventually got in touch with "Thom Southern and the Band" through Charlotte. They linked us to their 'Myspace' and we were impressed by their music, a few songs inparticular stood out.

Thom Southern's music is a mixture of acoustic, alternative, anti-folk. He formed a duo with his sister, Lucy a year ago and has recently formed a band to play with him consisting of Tony Mchugh (Lead guitar + Vocals), Luke Bowen (bass) and Jonny Lee (drums + percussion). In the Autumn of 2008 Thom won the Belfast Busker of the year in the Belfast Busk til Dusk Competition in the city centre. In February 2009 Thom and his sister played in the Nashville songwriters festival held in Belfast where he supported Raul Malo, Benitta Hill and Anthony Toner (in the round) in black box. Through the festival he won the "katherine brick award" for "young songwriter of the year". He was awarded a new "Avalon Gold series".
Thom recently set up a home studio and is recording demo material for now. Thom and the band are going into a recording studio soon to record their first EP "World don't shine".

We still have to come to a decision about what song to use because there is a few we would like to get involved in...we were thinking of their 'In disguise' track? Anyway, but below is a link to their 'Myspace' :)
http://www.myspace.com/thomsouthern

Once we choose the song or track we think we could work best with, we will pitch various ideas to the band and work along with them!
Thats basically everything for now, we'll keep you updated :)

Hey everyone....

This is Alex, Charlotte and Lauren's media studies blog for A2.

We're only just getting things together so there are no posts as yet, but we hope to get things up and running as soon as :)!



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