Art of the title: Inspiration (Point 12)

This post is based off of the information shown in the post linked below, please read it first as it is crucial to the understanding of this post, I had intended them both as the same post originally but was advised to make them separate.

21 Guns, lets anyalyse this shall we?

Point 12 is asking me to explain how this will inspire me!

This video will inspire me based off of the emotions present in the video, the band shots, and the costumes. The emotions are very important to the plot whilst the band shots and costumes are more to do with Mise-En-Scene and visual aspects of the video instead of the underlying story.

• Our video is about a breakup based off of a cheating partner, so heavy emotional baggage is present during the video, as it will be in ours! Whilst in 21 guns the emotions felt are very equal with the two characters, both of them obviously feeling regret and sadness, our video will instead have only one character feeling sad as the other is cheating on them.
• The band shots are another thing that shall be inspired by this video, the band is all playing in a small ‘garage-band’ aesthetic, this shall be taken into consideration for our video as a lot of pop-punk bands started off as garage-bands or as low budget teenagers rebelling and we want to give off that impression. We will be filming ours in the ATC-huts on campus to get this feeling.
• Costumes involving modern, laid back clothing, not formal. The two protagonists are wearing black true, but I am not looking at the colour and instead the actual clothing they wear, the band and the characters in my video shall from this, take a very laid back and casual clothing feel, to further express the garage-band aesthetic. Thankfully we all have this sorts of clothing on person, so having to buy them or acquire them through external measures isn’t needed.

Risk Assessment

Plan and collect all props and costumes

This is a list of all the props and costumes we will need for the video.
The story-board, shooting script and shot list made this very easy as I can quickly cross reference and write down what we need.

A doorway, bedside table, a bed and multiple chairs and sofas!
Gel and makeup for the cast, to be used in hair and on faces!
Dark ‘edgy’ clothes or stereotypical teenage clothing such as jeans and hoodies!
Lighting (spotlights and stage lighting) and portable lighting (torches) as well as all the electrical equipment needed for the pre-mentioned lighting such as the wires and cables and all the fiddly bits.
Band instruments including (but not limited to) drums, drumstick, guitars (electric), guitars (bass), multiple microphones on stands, a number of amplifiers (the bigger the better(estimated at 2-4 amps).

 

Thankfully we have all of these props and devices at school, and on-campus allowing us to not have a cost or pricing list.

Cast and crew!

This post will describe who we have chosen for each part and why.

The crew for the movie will obviously be myself, Fraser, Edward and Ellie as we are the people producing and making the movie, however the cast is another story, we have enlisted the help of Grace Pritchard, Ciara Middleton and Charlie Bailey (listed in order of appearance in pictures)

Grace Pritchard

 

Ciara Middleton

 

Charlie Bailey

 

We have chosen these people because of the age that they are, that in music videos the cast tends to look attractive, and because they all in school have an edge to them; a certain piece of attitude that makes us think of them the second we think: pop-punk. Charlie will be playing the boyfriend AS WELL AS the lead singer in the band; songs tend to be about the main singer/other band members. Ciara will be the girl that Charlie is cheating on his girlfriend with and Grace will be the girlfriend that Charlie cheats on.

Location!

Location, location, location. That’s a saying isn’t it? well saying or not it is what is needed for our music video to be a success. And as such my group and I have come up with the perfect locations for our music video to be shot. If you direct yourself back toward the animatic then it will be easy to see why we have chosen the places we have. All the shots will be taken on campus.

The first location is Ogstoun Theatre:
It is a large open and expansive space and allows us to take our band shots there in the comfort of an environment where bands and performances normally take place. not only that but the adjustable lighting allows us to use it to its fullest potential! Stages are often used in pop-punk and I feel like it is a regular code and convention used!

North Gate:
Next we have the always lovely and available north gate, the old entrance to the 200 acre estate of gordonstoun. We have decided to film the shots where the boyfriend sneaks off here as we find that the empty location and almost contrasting landscape before and after the gate to be edgy and dark and foreboding much like the genre OF pop-punk!

The Silent Walk:
The silent walk is a quiet walk down to the Michael kirk cathedral, it is amazing for long shots due to its long straight path through the trees that can both represent beauty as well as a slight hint of attitude due to the wicked looking trees (at the right time of the year) as well as instilling a sense of loneliness!

Edit:
As of now, we have forsaken the plans for the usage of the Ogstoun theatre to film our band shots, whilst we are still using the exterior of campus such as the silent walk and the North gate as seen in our first edit, we are going to also be using the ATC-huts for filming our band shots.

The ATC-huts are very ideal for the band shots as, much like a lot of other pop-punk videos I plan to give off a semi garage-band feel to it. And this cannot be done in Ogstoun theatre, so instead we shall film in the ATC-huts. The ATC-huts are small rooms with musical equipment which look like a garage, windows with bad patterns on the curtains, heaters in the corner etc. giving off a very vivid impression of what the band was like before they were signed on to make the video.

Shot list

Here is the shot list for our A2 media music video, it was made by Fraser Bishop and Edward Masters as I worked on the shooting script! It shows off all the types of shots that we will use, it includes camera angles such as ‘Dutch tilt’ or ‘upward’ etc. as well as including camera movement. It is essentially the script that the camera will follow and the things it will film!

Shooting Script

This is the shooting script created for our music video, it shows the characters needed for each shot, the props used and any music/effects/sound used as well. I consider a prop any part of the set that is touched by, or used by, the actors. I also should mention as we are dubbing the music over the video we will have no exterior sounds or effects, the one time we have text that is valid to the story and plot is when you see the text on the boyfriends phone.

Storyboard Animatic

As we all know, I Liam Acornley and my good friend Elinor Brownlow are amazing at art, so amazing that art had to decline us from accepting us into its A-levels because we’d make the rest of students look bad. SO AMAZING THAT ART ITSELF was altered so as to make other people less self conscious, but me and Ellie will always know that you Leonardo’s and you Michelangelo’s have nothing on us.

Presenting our storyboard animatic, this is the animatic for our storyboard (funnily enough). It was made as a collaboration of myself and Ellie and Ed Masters did the lovely editing and photography!

Point 21 AKA storyboard

Here is the storyboard created by my group and I in a collaborative effort!
Enjoy!

The first shot is when the man gets home to his girlfriend and everything is all happy and lovely, this is key as it establishes the characters, the setting and the intimate relationship these two people share, which only makes the story of him cheating on her more heart-breaking.

The second shot is when the girl reaches for the phone to see who is texting her boyfriend, this establishes that they lack mutual trust in the relationship and you start to question whether or not they are as well off as you think they are.

The third shot is when the guy strikes his girlfriend, you immediately feel empathy for her and are sided with her now, and for the rest of video, making you look at the events that occur in a different light, it also enables us to see how far he would go to keep his secret.

The fourth shot is before he sneaks off to cheat on his girlfriend and this is important as it allows us to once again feel empathy toward the girl and sheer contempt toward the guy for being….well….such a  dick. It shows us that what we first perceived as a good relationship is actually an abusive relationship without trust or love.

The last shot is fairly self explanatory, you meet the girl the guy is cheating on his girlfriend with. You feel more empathy than ever, it wraps the story up nicely, and it allows us to have an ending point.

OKAY! Story plot time!

This is the plot for our music video, our synopsis if you will.
This is the original idea typed by the amazing Fraiser Bishop.
And as a bonus, if you make it through the story plot, you can see my take on the story and how I would change it because Individuality saves the day!

“Our song is all about keeping secrets from people. Our side storyline within the music video is going to be about a boyfriend keeping secrets from his girlfriend. At the start of the video there will be shots of them arguing and falling out which shows they are not the best of couples. One shot in particular that we are going to use around the middle of the video is them arguing about a text message that the boyfriend gets from another girl. His girlfriend tries to read the message but she isn’t able to read it and the boyfriend storms off in anger that she doesn’t trust him. The final shot of the video is the boyfriend sneaking out and going to see this “other girl” and they run off into the sunset holding hands and showing the audience that the boyfriend is cheating on his girlfriend. What he doesn’t know is that his girlfriend knew he snuck out and followed him. We will show this by zooming out of the boyfriend with his new found lover running away until the actual girlfriend who is standing at a distance watching them run off comes into the shot.” – Fraser Bishop

I like this idea, but I wish to change it, firstly so that there is a very clear difference between this post and my group members, also because I don’t agree with the story plot put forward, and even though we are using it I would like it to be of the one described below.

I like this idea BUT, and there is a BUT I feel like I personally would make some changes. Whilst it is very common place to have a guy cheating on a girl it is almost unheard of and very niche to find a girl cheating on a guy in this sort of song, and I feel like doing so will help widen the audience tremendously, not only would the boys like the music of it but the video wouldn’t be showing them as the bad guys as the videos tend to do. This would mean that our target audience who I know is both girls and boys (but is primarily boys) wouldn’t feel like they are the bad guy and so they might enjoy it a bit more because of that. Of course we could also use it as a form of how whilst boys might like to go on about how they have been “knee-deep with seven bitches at a time” girls are much more shy about this sort of thing, we could use this to break the stereotype that has been surrounding that for ages. This would once again make the boys like it because they don’t feel like the bad guys, but the girls would also like it as whilst it is not morally sound, it does empower them and make them seem more human other than objects that the guys use for cheap laughs as in this case it would be the guy that is being used for the cheap laughs.
Feminism aside though I really like the idea and kudos to Fraiser for coming up with it.