Monday, 22 March 2010

Website

We took inspiration from the same bands that inspired our album cover. We are still opting for a simplistic design, as is used on the Radiohead website. I'll be putting hyperlinks to the other websites on here so you can see for yourself.

Friday, 19 March 2010

Album Cover and Inspiration

Now we're beginning work on our album cover - back and front. The band has stated that they have been inspired by bands such as Radiohead, Bon Iver and The Smashing Pumpkins. These bands have generally had simplisticly styled albums and so we have decided that we would try to make our own albums simple. We used albums from the aforementioned bands for inspiration, as well as Blur and The Verve. We're going to post up some of the albums that we liked and post up our own. To create the covers we used Photoshop, which is actually really great to make a good-looking simple picture.

These are some of the albums:






These are the covers we have created:





Tuesday, 9 February 2010

CHOOSING LOCATION...

After Charlotte taking photos of various locations, we have finally decided on where the main scene will be shot. We have discussed the possible locations with Thom and he has agreed that this is the best possible location. The images below are the ones taken from the location, and we have included a brief summary of what will be happening at each part of the location.

*This shot is taken from the POV of Richard (The driver that knocks down Rachael) This is the road that he will drive down, and Rachael will be walking across when she is knocked down.


*This will be the spot where Rachael gets fed up with people ignoring her, and slumps herself against the electric box. It is from this point that she see's Marks car. (The car that will go through her after she tries to take her life)



*This is the road that Richard and Mark will both drive along, by turning left at this corner.


*This is a possible road sign that will become blurred as Rachael tries to read it, to figure out where she is.
This could be the shot where Rachael see's Paul coming. (The man who seemingly ignores her)



*These are more possible signs we could use for the blurry scene.

This is a road sign from further on down the street. As you can see, it is 30mph. We will include this in our filming, while doing a shot/reverse shot of Richards speedometer at 60mph. This should give the impression that he is going over the speed limit when he knocks Rachael down, which should make her death more believable.

Hopefully these shots have given you some insight to the layout of the video.

Monday, 1 February 2010

Shooting Script

Shot opens to a long shot of Girl standing on a street corner. We see her look around.

Close up
of her face. She looks confused

Switches to an
OTS shot of her walking down a deserted street.

Switches to a
POV. We see a person appear in the distance, walking down the street.

Switches to
Extreme long shot of her running to catch up with Paul.

Mid shot of her trying to get Pauls attention.
“Hi, umm could you..”

Switches to
Long shot as she stops as she sees Paul walk by her, ignoring her

“Hello? Excuse me?”

Paul continues to walk by her.

Camera pans, following Paul - Almost as if the camera is also ignoring her.

She waves her arms frantically.

Paul is oblivious to this.

She starts to anger, shouting. “HELLO?! ARE YOU DEAF?!”

Extreme long shot of her angrily shouting. However, her face doesn’t match her dialogue.

Close up of her face as we see she still looks worried.

Paul possibly looks behind him with an
OTS shot, but looks straight through Girl.

We see her begin to tear up, thinking that Paul has chosen to completely ignore her.

Shot/Reverse shot of long shot of Paul walking away, and a close up of teary eyed Girl, until Paul is fully out of the shot.

Still looking hurt and confused,
mid/long shots of her trying to find out where she is.

OTS Shot of her in front of the sign post, it is in focus.

Match on action of her looking at the sign post, and her eyes squinting. (Use focus pull with MoA)

Switches to
POV shot. The sign post has become completely blurred, and impossible to read.

Switches to
high shot, almost from POV of the signpost.

We see her squint, and rub her eyes.

Mid shot of her panicking and running away. Possibly jumpy shot.

Mid shot of her running into a crowd of people, following behind her, tracking her movements.

Varies between
high angles and low angles as she tried to grab peoples attention.

Mid shot of group of people smiling and laughing, with each other, ignoring Girl.

Extreme long shot
of her shouting at them. We see the panic in her eyes.

Switches to a
long shot as she stumbles out of the crowd. This develops into a mid shot, as she stumbles towards the camera.

Long shot as she walks over to a wall, and falls defeatedly against it, looking upset.

Close up of her face buried in her hands.

Zoom out as she begins to stand up. Her legs are in front of the camera.
Pan as she walks by the camera, looking at her legs as they go out of the picture.

Possibly film her shadow.

Switch to
long shot of her walking down the street. (Edited so the shot fades to black and white, the further away she gets.)

Switch to
Shot/Reverse shots of her going close to peoples faces and getting ignored.

Switch to
Mid shot, zoom to long from behind her as she reaches a road.

Switch to
OTS as she hears a car coming then. She looks in it’s direction.

Switch to
POV as she sees it turn the corner.

Switch to
Close up of her face.

Switch to
Low angle mid shot as she walks onto the road in front of the car.

Close up of the windshield of the car. The car doesn’t turn away from here, or swerve.

Long shot as the car reaches her and passes through her.

White flash, signifying flashback.

Close up of her lying on the ground with her eyes closed.

Switches to
long shot, where we see her stand up, coming out of her own body.

White flash signifying flashback.

Repeat earlier POV of her looking at the blurry signpost.

White flash signifying flashback.

Long shot of her running throw the crowd, passing through people.

Flashes back to the current time.

Long shot as we see her fade away.

Zoom to close up
of her face, as we see it fade away. She looks almost empty.

Shot changes to grey.


Grey fades to black.

Wednesday, 6 January 2010

CAST & PROPS....

CAST (3 character);
Girl main character
Older stranger (Mark Craig or Charlottes dad possibly)
Anonymous car driver (Richard)

PROPS;
Costume,
Crowd,
Car,
Sign post
Mobile phone

COSTUME;
(Girl) - Quite girly...skirt, black tights, top, cardigan, pumps
(Stranger) - Quite normal clothing...jeans, dark top, coat, shoes

LOCATIONS;
Deserted street and a road for a car, (sign post close by).
Trees maybe?

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

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

Monday, 14 December 2009

Idea

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