A Change of Plan

After much discussion we have dicided to drop the idea of a country lane for the basic reason it would be too difficult to do. Between us we would have have to have brought lots of different props, which considering none of us could drive would have been difficult. However, we have decided to keep the music studio idea and the blobs dancing down a street.

Location and props

We have decided to base our idea around one initial location - a country lane. We plan to have our lead singer walk down this lane over and over again, each time something new is happening around her.Other things that happen include a man riding a bicycle backwards and a black bin bag ful of rubbish stands up and begins to dance.To pull such an idea off we would need to think carefully of where we film - as we need somewhere quiet and out the way to film, yet quite close to home and the amount of props we need. I surggested filming near Epsom Race Course, as this was not too far and I knew of a perfect country road nearby that was quiet and easy to access. Lewis also surgested we do some filming in the new music studio at school, which I felt was a great idea as one aspect of our genre is it is quite a commertial song. Therefore recording it in the studio would reflect this. I surggested a surgessted a stop motion animation idea with dancing blobs, which the whole group liked. I then went away and storyboarded my idea, and decided to set in a london street for diversity from the country lane.

First Storyboards

Now our whole group is together: me, Siobhan Lewis and Alex. So me and Siobhan spent a little bit of time explaining our ideas to our other group members before we started cracking down with our storyboards. We all began to discuss the video and between us came up with a whole video based around the main singer walking down a country lane, and meeting other obsticals on her way. She then repeats the journey over and over meeting more and more obsticals untill she meets someone at the end. We all began to storyboard this between us. I personally came up with an idea of the singer meeting someone driving a bicycle backwards, which was down to me to storyboard.

Developing our intitial ideas

Now we have come up with our initial ideas we can develop these and start to be more creative. We all wanted to create an idea that was stange and weird, which suits our genre and will be fun to do. We then came up with the idea of moving houses, and thought we might use a stop motion technique to achieve this. However, after closer inspectin we found this would be too expensive, as we'd have to make the houses from scratch, so we decided to use photoshop instead on a photo of houses to create the desired effect.

Bulletproof Lyrics

Below are a scan of annotated lyrics from our chosen song 'Bulletproof' by La Roux. As a starting point me and the rest of my group have gone through the lyrics and tried to pick out key lines, whilst trying to come up with ideas of how best to portray the lines.

Theories we will apply to our video

Synthpop videos don't tend to be literal portrayals of the lyrics, and tend to be more abstract, with the main artist singing on her one in different settings (sometimes dancing in different costumes). Therefore our video will also follow this disjuncture theme, and we will also use a montage style as this is most common in music videos.

Planning

Now the research section has been complete I have a better overall idea of how music videos work, and I also have an idea of my chosen genre, and the image I have to portray with the help of my group. I can now begin to plan my own music video using all the theories, techniques and key features I have picked up from my research, in particular the idea of colour and costume. These are aspects I feel are important to the genre (vibrant colours and costumes that stand out). I also like the idea of using a country-like location which I observed in videos by Allyson Goldfrapp and 'Jenny again'; I feel this will give a new slant on the genre, though still staying true to the style.