The First Videoshoot.

The first video shoot, which was unfortunately a solo mission as my co-worker George has other organised events to attend,  took place at the Old Corthouse in Dartford. The shots are really lovely, however, due to the poor lighting in this venue, the HD camera did not perform to its usual standard, and the camera often goes blurry and out of focus. This is a shame, however, our original location idea was to be at Bar Mondo at Dartford, so I'm more then happy to re-shoot these.
To give you an idea of what the lighting is like, we took photographs of our work in progress; my digital camera has a flash, my HD camera doesn't - but even with the flash, you can see there's dull areas, and not a lot of lights (well, there's lights that do not work in this case).




 Here is one of the clips we shot, which, believe it or not, was done on a HD camera...

A New Idea.

e've had a re-think about our music video, and came up with the conclusion that we could make the video look really good, or really bad. Due to the possibility of the latter, we have decided to start a-fresh, which includes a new video concept to a different song.
The song we now intend on using is called The Girl by City and Colour (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZqnqH9s1jk). This song is very different to the original song we were going to use, in terms of Genre and vocals. We are aware that the new song does not fit in with the typical associations of our band, but we have come up with a solution to this - many bands of the pop/punk/indie genre do 'one-off' songs that sound a lot different from their usual sound, for example, the band All Time Low wrote an acoustic song called Remembering Sunday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erspkBDsTm0) which sounds completely different from their usual stuff, such as Break Your Little Heart (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0b_F-EW2cA) and Dear Maria, Count Me In (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcNiKCmWdYE).
So, our new concept...
The song we aim to perform is about a man who is very much in love with his girlfriend, but never seems to have enough time for her;


"I wish I could do better by you,
Cause its what you deserve.
You sacrifice so much of your life,
In order for this to work.
While I'm off chasing my own dreams,
Sailing around the world,
Please know that I'm yours to keep,
My beautiful girl.
When you cry a piece of my heart dies,
Knowing that I may have been the cause,
If you were to leave, fulfil someone else's dreams,
I think I might totally be lost.
You don't ask for no diamond rings,
No delicate string of pearls,
That's why I wrote this song to sing,
My beautiful girl."

We have decided to try and portray the song's message using a narrative video. It opens with the singer (Martyn Kingsmill) sitting on a stool in a bar, with his acoustic guitar. We want to introduce the idea of him giving a performance to the public. About 20 or so seconds into the song, he gets off of his stool, puts down his guitar and makes his way over to his girlfriend (played by myself) who is seated at the bar, waiting with 2 drinks, for for her and one for him. He takes a sip of his drink and we assume he is going to sit with her, but then his friends come in and call him over, and she 'abandons' her. The rest of the video just shows the idea of a potential breakup, because of his seeming stupidity, but they eventually sort the issue out, and we're going to show this using a variety of different shots, which are left open for audience interpretation.

This is an animatic of our new idea -

We are beginning the shooting of this video on Thursday 10th December.
Here are the storyboards ( CLICK EACH PHOTO INDIVIDUALLY TO VIEW FULL SIZE) -

The Story Boards

A Bit Of An Update...

Basically, we've spent a lot of time collaborating our initial idea and working in into a storyboard.
The idea of the video is to show a group of friends enjoying themselves, partying and playing their instruments - I suppose you could call this a 'house-gig'.
The video begins with one of the band members asleep in her bed; there's a few shots of the surrounding neighbour hood - this is in black and white. Then when the music kicks in, we cut to a shot of her phone ringing on a bed side cabinet; the phone will turn into colour (representing life kicking in), and this will wake up the band member. She realises that the band are behind schedule, and she rushes into the next room to wake up the other band members. In this room, there is a lot of litter (specifically empty alcohol containers) lying around, and band members crashed out on the floor - showing that life is just a bit party scene (hopefully the audience will realise that we are trying to show them that they've just been awoken from a party the previous night). All the band members are then frantically trying to get ready, and pack all of their equipment and instruments into the back of a van. We then show shots of the van travelling to the gig venue; and shots of the passengers inside the van. Before the van arrives, we have shots of people already at the party, displaying generic party banter - showing that they are eagerly anticipating the arrival of the band. Moments later, we show the band arriving and offloading; inbetween this, we have quick cuts to and from generic party banter. Then the band play and we all involve ourselves in the party banter. Finally, as the song draws to a close, everyone passes out on the floor. Setting up for the same thing tomorrow :)

Dayglo Animatic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7Ni1d_TkiY
We decided to upload this video to YouTube as it meant quick and easy access; and makes the process of sharing a lot quicker and more efficient.
Hopefully from the video, you can gather an idea of how you'd like our music video to look.