Our Idea: What now?

The thing about our original idea for the song "Home" was that we wanted to have a shipping container which would be turned into a photographic dark room, with a guy developing pictures. Click here to get to our old idea. The only issue we've had with that was that we didn't quite know what to make of the pictures that the guy was developing. We can keep the idea and incorporate other elements into it. This would mean some kind of performance element, and another.

The kind of dark room we were thinking of

When looking around for inspiration, I came across a video that was made by a group of hurtwood students a few years ago. Similar to ours, it barely has any vocals, and therefore would be a good exemplar to look at.

The video created using the song "Bonfire" by Knife Party

What stands out to me immediately is that the song has a narrative, which is the main focus. Then there is a performance element with a DJ and people dancing, which is more in the background, and just added in to give the effect of the music being made. When looking at most music videos that are produced at Hurtwood, most of them are very vocal heavy. This was suggested to our group as well, as we could film an entire performance element with the band and, if something went wrong, would have that to fall back on. 

What we were thinking for our performance element is similar to what it is in this video, but because our song is in the style of the 1920s, and not 2000s, we cannot really incorporate the same lighting effects and everything as they did here. Click here to get to our chosen song. In the song "Bonfire" which is depicted above, the narrative and the performance element barely have anything to do with one another. Whilst we would like to link the elements within our music video, the performance element will still be seperate from the narrative in most parts. 

For our performance element we were thinking of a dancer/a group of dancers, as it would be quite difficult for us to get a proper performance element together for this song, as we do not have the instruments available to us. If we had the instruments, or find a way to work around the issue of not having them, we were thinking that we could incorporate something similar to "Bang Bang" by will.i.am. Whilst they do have a strong singing element, the people who are playing the instruments in the back are more heavily dance focused, and also probably don't quite know how to play the instrument in the first place.

So, taking inspiration from both songs and music videos depicted above, we have created a little sketch incorporating what we want to include in our video.

To make sense of this sketch: The middle piece depicts the dark room idea, which is a guy developing photos. The prime question is; what kind of photos is he developing? To add an element of mystery, we were thinking that we could include a sequence that could intruige the audience. What we learnt from Ollie Allgrove was that we need to intruige the audience within 20 seconds, or else the video won't be successful. In order to do this we need to engage them. (Click here to get to the post about Ollie Allgrove).

What we were thinking was to have the guy who is developing the photos in the dark room, have photos of someone, and use them to blackmail this person. The person that is being blackmailed is in the audience where the performance element is taking place (so that can be seen in the background). This would play out throughout the entire video, and why the person is getting blackmailed would be unsure. As of now that is what we were thinking.

To make the performance element a bit more funky, as the song is rather strange, if we cannot get proper instruments (as in, if the department at school doesn't have them, or we cannot find people who can play them (it's impossible for us to rent them)), we were thinking of blow-up versions of them. They are quite cheap.