Now that we have decided on a rough idea we need to begin to story board our ideas to give our video direction. After this we will use our story board to create an anamatic on final cut. This will enable us to have a clear view of how our video will/should look. This will allow us to be organised on set as we will be able to devise a filming schedule and what props we will need etc. Firstly before drawing the final story board we did a rough draft so that we could fit what images we wanted to the timing of the music.After this Hulya went and drew the final storyboard at home. After she did this the pictures were scanned into the computer and we could edit them to fit in time with the music.
There were still a few blanks which we have not quite decided on yet but we are continuing to think of ideas and hope that once we begin filming we will have some inspiration. After the storyboard was scanned into the computer we uploaded it to the Apple Macs and imported the images and music to final cut where we began to create our anamatic.
In order to get started on our video and filming we first had to obtain approval from our teacher that our idea would work. Each group had to individually pitch their ideas to her and if she did not think it was suitable it was back to the drawing board. However we felt that we now had a solid idea with reasoning behind it which suited the music and lyrics of our chosen song. In our pitch we presented our moodboard to Mrs Mcluckie which gave an overall vision of what we had got from the song in the early stages; the things it made us feel and think and our reponse to certain lyrics. We also made a short powerpoint presenation explaining how we got to this point and how our ideas developed to give her a sense of what direction we were going in. (as seen below)
After this we also presented our mood board and then proposed our main narrative storyline idea.Once we had finished our pitch, our teacher gave us the go ahead for our ideas but also gave us some advice concerning past examiners remarks etc. She then advised us to go and watch our favourite music video and idenitfy things which make them memorable and things that we want to achieve in our own video.
After creating our huge mood board, we need to start developing a more directed idea for our story. Overall from our mood board the main theme we interpreted from the music were the ideas ofbeing trapped, feeling isolated, not in control, torture. After becoming clear that this was the theme we were going to be working with we began to jot down some inital ideas.
Idea 1: Our first idea centered around the main theme of fate. In this idea the main character of our story would have an event which will decide what happens in the rest of their life e.g missing or catching a train. In one story we would be showing if they catch the train the character will make it to their music gig and become famous and life will be good and he/she will be happy. If he misses the train he misses the gig and gets chucked out the band and becomes homeless with no money turning to drugs and his/her life begins to go in a downwards spiral. This idea was influenced by the film Sliding Doors (see video below:)
However after much group discussion we felt that this idea did not really suit our lyrics and we felt we were forcing some of the ideas to suit the music when in reality they did not fit. This would also be a very time comsuming idea as we would have to film both outcomes separately which would be extremely time consuming in such a limited time scale. We felt that overall this idea was not going to work and once again we were back to the drawing board.
Idea 2: Our second idea centralized around the theme of drug abuse as we felt some of the lyrics coincided with this theme. However we felt this was a sensitive, and hard subject to access and would be hard to make look realistic with a low budget. We therefore dropped this idea and went back to the drawing board
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Idea 3: This time we focused on the chorus and title of our song "Shadowplay" as we felt this could be a central theme to our idea. So what does shadowplay exactly mean? Well there is not just one definative answer and this is ambiguous. This was an idea we felt we wanted to play on and we decided the idea of our video would be ambiguous and could be interpreted in many different ways to different people. However as a group we decided that shadowplay is like when you are a child and you make shadows on the wall. This then became the focus of our idea and then in conjunction with the emotions we had drawn from the other lyrics and music of the song we began to develop this idea.
Development: As we wanted to portray the ideas of isolation, pain, torture etc. We decided to add a horror element to the simple shadow idea. This then led us to the idea of a puppet which is a symbol of childhood, but make it "evil" or a symbol of horror. The idea was now that the puppet tortures our main character who feels trapped in a world he does not understand.
