Our Progress So Far

We now have everything planned including story lines, camera shots and locations/actors. I started by researching indie bands and artists in order to get an insight into the genre and the styles/tastes. I also wanted to see what a typical indie music video was like, so that I could take ideas from it and incorporate it into ours, ultimately making it as realistic as possible. Since we knew what music genre we where doing we just had to find a band. We searched for local bands, who we believed were of a high standard and would be easy to work with. Thankfully, I had a friend who happened to be in a band which fitted into our genre perfectly.

They are called 'The Native'. We got in touch with them and asked if they would be interested in working with us and having a music video made. They instantly accepted and were very enthusiastic. We then remained in contact and sent them shooting schedules so they could free their time and prepare.

It took a lot of collective thinking, work and preparation but it was worth it in the end. We have just finalised with our band 'The Native' when and where we will be shooting, and are ready to go. Our first shoot will take place on Sunday the 9th of March and will involve us meeting our two actors - Connor Carson and Bronagh Walsh.

We will go to town, and get various shots of the 'couple' walking down the street and sitting with each other laughing and joking. We will then get shots of the girl finding messages on his mobile, and storming off in a rage. This will be followed by Connor attempting to ring her both on his mobile and on a pay phone - both times she rejects the calls. There will then be shots of him frantically chasing her, and shouting her name as he searches. After this, we will get shots of Bronagh rejecting the phone calls then storming down the street, looking very sad with tears in her eyes. She will then go and sit in front of a fire, continuing to cry. At this point, Connor will come running over and tries to talk to her. She will then stand up and they will talk before hugging each other and kissing.

After we got these shots, we went to Lady Dixon the following day to get landscape shots. We went during the day so it would be bright, and took a lot of footage at the lake. We then went into the forrest area and got shots of various trees and scenery. We also got shots of us walking down the steps to the lake, which we tried to make seem like amateur footage by making them quiet shaky. The reason for this is that we believe this will be effective in the music video and will fit in with the upbeat manic nature of the song.

Now that we have all our storyline shots, we just need to get our live performance shots. We have been talking back and fourth with the band, and trying to find a time and location which suits everyone. We have collectively decided to film it in a studio in one of the members house this week. We will get various shots of the band performing, both medium-range and close-ups. We will also get separate footage of each person in the band playing their individual instrument, or singing. We also plan on getting some footage of them warming up and laughing/joking with each other, which may or may not be used.

We have now finished filming the live performance of the band. We spent a few hours meeting the band, telling them about the music video, and then filming various shots of them performing. We took both mid shots and close-ups of the individual members and we are very happy with all the footage. We have now begun editing and putting in the remaining footage with the other scenes which include the actors/storyline and the shots from Lady Dixon. We are working very hard on this part of the process and hope to be finished by next week. We are paying special attention to detail and want to produce an extremely professional video for our final piece. This means using filters, colour corrections, stabilisation techniques, lighting modifications, and motion tracking, as well as various other editing procedures. 

Our audience feedback was extremely positive, which is something we are very happy about. We spent a lot of time in the research process looking at consumer trends and reviews from various critics. We wanted our video to appeal to as large an audience as possible, so to do this we needed to know our target audience and what they wanted from a music video. We then took these ideas and put them into practice, which helped greatly with our end result.

When we first showed the video to people, they were shocked at how professional it looked. They were very impressed with the use of filters and lighting modifications. As well as this, they loved the fast, frantic pace of the footage. This was a result of making the tempo faster, and using motion tracking. The audience feedback also indicated we had the perfect mix between storyline and live footage of the band. We knew this would be crucial in holding their attention, because if we used too much of one they may lose interest.