I first had the idea for this music video when I was listening to the soundtrack of the hit film The Fault in Our Stars and at the same time noticed a picture with a blackboard in. Jake Bugg has a very old-fashioned/folk style of music which gives off quite a happy-go-lucky mood about it. Here is the song;
My idea starts with someone sitting in their bedroom doing some work at a desk. They look bored and then the music comes on through their headphones and they start getting into the song, so much so that they start taking down all of their posters, sweeping the work off of their desk etc. This then cuts to a three walled room made completely of blackboard. The person continues to draw pictures on the blackboard whilst it cuts back to a band with a lead singer, performing in the then completed blackboard space with drawings all over the walls that look like this:
I feel like the solid colours of black and white really portray what the song is all about and when this is incorporated with the musicians presents a very happy and simplistic music video which fits the image of Jake Bugg perfectly.I also this the length of this song is perfect for a music video like this. As this is a very old-style type of this, I can imagine all of the musicians to have a similar look to Jake Bugg who looks like this:
I feel like he has sort of a Beatles-esque type of look so it would be quite interesting to have the band all dressed up with the same hair-dos and similar clothes, in similarity to The Beatles. My vision looks a bit like this:
So there is only a narrative at the beginning of the video and from then onward is just the build up of all the drawings on the walls of the blackboard room. The ending of the video could be of the boy or girl lying on the floor of the blackboard room looking up at some chalk stars and moon they have drawn on the ceiling with all of the other drawings around them. The idea is basically a classic feel-good type of video that fits perfectly with the upbeat and happy song. The costuming would be very basic and fitting to the black and white theme. The person who is drawing the pictures on the blackboards should be very happy and enthusiastic and fast-paced to keep with the image of the song.
The reason why I chose this song was because it was on completely the other end of the indie genre to the song previously analysed. Although they are both in the same indie genre, they display completely different characteristics and therefore completely different ideas for a music video. This song is called Possibility by Lykke Li:
This song is obviously a bit too long but it is very easy to cut into a nice shape and length for our coursework. The song has a very simple structure and chord progression which provides quite a powerful atmosphere. My idea was to have the main performer, a woman, of the song standing in a bare black set, perhaps portraying the role of a model. I feel this song could be all about the music/media industry and how is causes the demise of the people who aren't 'strong' enough to cope with the pressure. As the song progresses, this woman is constantly having paint/dirt/other liquids being thrown at her. We could use the effect of over-cranking to create a slow motion sort of effect which would fit very well with the song as it is quite slowed and paced. Some example of what I was thinking are these:
To coincide with the physical 'battering' of the girl, which portrays the mental knocks and breakdown that she suffers from from being judged her whole life, we could have small clips of her being rejected by casting agents/directors etc. We could also have small clips of her arguing with her friends and family and therefore losing everyone she loves. These could be shown intermittently to fit with the pace of the song. I feel like this conveys the message of the song and the artist very well as the idea has a mixture of fast paced small scenes and then straight onto slow paced powder/paint throwing.
So there is a partial narrative and a performance but no musicians as the song is fairly basic instrument-wise anyway. I feel this idea for a video really fits in well with the style of the song as it shows the simplicity of 'life' which is also conveyed in the simplicity of the song.
Lykke Li doesn't have much of a brand image as she's an indie artist and therefore has a very niche fanbase/target audience. However, I feel like she does not have a very 'out there' style choice and is rarely in the public eye. This is a picture of Lykke Li:
I feel like in similarity to this picture, there could be shots in the music video that are shot in black and white to convey the simplicity of the song and the concept.
The Knife are a fairly popular electro/pop individual band who's songs are more famous for people covering them instead of the original songs themselves. Since their song 'Heartbeats' is one of my favourite songs and it doesn't have a video yet, I decided it had the qualities and was a good style to create a music video concept around the song. Here is the song:
Since the introduction to this song is fairly long and very repetitive, I had the idea of a group of a young man sitting in a darkened room in front of a computer. We could start with a close up of his face and when the beat starts to come in, we see a shot of the computer and he is playing a old-fashioned style computer game called Metroid or something similar. The game would co-ordinate with the beat of the song. The editing I feel would be based very much so with the beat of the music, so he could open up a can of soda on one particular base hit for example. There would be a performance element within this video as there is a partial narrative. When we watch the computer screen, we see that the picture changes into an electro band with a female lead singer, a keyboard, a guitar etc. Personally I feel like this song sounds very robotic and paced so another idea could be that the other musicians are wearing robot helmets to coincide with this theme. As aforementioned, the video game he could be playing could be incorporated within the robot theme as I feel the song radiates a strong electronic and paced theme. There could also be use of the old-fashioned style 'kaleidoscope' effect which is popular in older music videos and would fit in with the edgy and slightly strange style of the music video. For example:
Here is an idea for the costumes:
The set the musicians would be standing in would be dark and have a strong electronic theme, with wires coming from everywhere around the instruments. As I said before, the set for the musicians could be linked to the video game the man is playing, as if he had been sucked into the video game. This could also be a potential shot using special FX which shows the man being 'drawn' into the computer. This fits with a 1990s style period and genre and the video game would be set around this time. For example, Metroid was released in 1994 and had this style of graphics that would really fit the video well:
To coincide with the performance/robot element, we could also keep cutting back to the man's family/friends coming into his room to find him not there and finding clues to where he might be such as books on video games and things like that. We could also have a wide angled shot/fisheye of the parents suddenly realising that the boy has been absorbed into the game which would look a bit like this:
So the overall narrative of the story is that a young boy gets absorbed into a video game he's playing whilst drinking soda. The performance element includes the musicians dressed as robots and the little boy transforming into a robot/musician, whichever fits best. The to coincide with the 'real world', we see shots of his worried parents in his messy bedroom and discover that he is in fact inside the computer, performing with the robots from Metroid who are performing the song Heartbeats by The Knife.
The ending of the song is fairly abrupt so I decided that the female lead singer/robot should wave to the young boy and just before the song ends, he arrives back in front of his computer with a shocked look on his face.
I believe this video fits in with the style of the band The Knife because they present a very electronic and indie style to their performance and band image. They produce the sort of music that would appeal to young people between the ages of 16 and 25. This video idea fits in with that style because as the song appeals to people of that age, they will be the one's who remember games such as Metroid and find the songs more interesting and exciting because they understand the concept. The Knife present themselves as being very retro but therefore a bit stuck in the nineties. This is recent picture of them:
And here is a not-so-recent picture of them:
I believe this retro style of music video would fit in very nicely around their star image and fits in very well with this particular style of electro genre song.
.jpg)