Ollie Allgrove is an executive producer at a production and visual effects company called "The Mill". Being an executive producer no longer requires him to directly, hands on, be involved with music videos. He now looks after the companies around the country and makes sure that what is being produced is good and right.
"Artists, technologists, and makers of all media are working at frontiers of visual narratives" - he believes that this is what sums up the company he is working at, and any other production companies, or whoever else may be attempting to create media texts, and he is right, especially in the field of film and visual effects, as they have to collaborate to create some astounding work, and can create things that wouldn't be easy to just capture with a camera.
Even though they don't like mentioning it as much, "The Mill" has won the first Visual Effects Oscar for their work with "Gladiator", and have gone on to do more visual effects within film.
He explained that visual effects nowadays allow anyone to make the impossible possible, as pretty much anything that can be imagined, can be built virtually and put together in film. This kind of applies to us, and even though it might be really difficult to use CGI in our music video, I think that if we think about things smart enough, we'll be able to create a cool music video with a little amount of money and still give the video an overall great look. Ollie mentioned that it is possible to make cool visuals with a low budget, you just have to have a creative mind. I think if we map it out clearly infront of us we'll be able to do something similar. This is especially important because we don't want our audience to loose interest and give them something to look at; this applies especially because of the song we have chosen, which has a little amount of vocals. A prime example of making the impossible, possible is the advertisement "Maya" by SSE.
Ollie also mentioned that a good place to start would be making a promo, for any filmmakers. This is because many artists want a starting video, and then collaborating in such a competitive environment can make it easier for anyone.
A tip which we recevied for our planning stage is that our treatment doens't exactly have to be really long, but should be clear and concise. Images are usually a good addition as it helps everyone to imagine what should be filmed, and can be pictured in our minds. He also mentioned that storyboards are almost essential, as it helps to be convincing when trying to convey an idea, and puts everything in order with the band (in our case, actors), and so on. I feel like this year we should attempt to have a clear order of our storyboard, as last year we didn't really have that and went all over the place. We didn't end up using the storyboard, really. It will also help us to be prepared beforehand and give us the ability to make a better music video.
One important tip was "not to do something that won't be well received". One example that was shown was "Wide Open" by The Chemical Brothers. The music video is very creative and keeps the audience engaged, which is probably what we'll want for our music video as well. We're going to have to come up with something pretty creative in order to be able to do this; what I was thinking whilst he was presenting it was "I could probably teach myself how to do CGI like that"; I have the necessary programs and am able to build sculptures in Blender. I'm not sure if that's really going to happen though.
The behind the scenes for this video.
The closing words Ollie left for us was "You need to set your own rules, the simplicity of the video is key, and the band has to be made comfortable around you (if you have one)".
Be organised.
Over storyboard it.
Over think it.
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