Music Video Treatment

I put together a music video treatment to help utilise my ideas about style, look and provide a basic outline of plot.

Audience Profiling - Revisited

I have decided to revisit my audience-profiling task, in order to examine a more relevant artist to the one I decided to profile, which was Jessie J. Although I found a lot of things out about Jessie J and her fan base, she is not linked closely enough to The Lafontaines for any of this research to be helpful.

For this reason, I have decided to profile The Lafontaines.

Assumptions:

Gender: I don’t feel that there would be a noticeable difference in gender. Although the band is male, this would not dissuade women from listening to them. Their songs seem to address issues that face most people or irritate a larger proportion of people. Their song, Shark In The Water, addresses the issue of women being overly promiscuous for attention – but not in a misogynistic way, as the lyrics also pay attention to the fact that some women feel intimidated and overpowered by their female friends. Similarly, the song is from a male perspective, attracting male listeners.

Age: I would put the age of fans for The Lafontaines as anywhere between 14 and 30, but probably falling mainly between the ages of 18 and 24. This group is likely to be able to access gigs and festivals much more easily due to the lesser financial pressures put on them at this age than when they have a house and a family, and equally any younger than 18 may mean that they cannot access the gigs or have enough money to travel to see them.

Fashion: I feel that the fans of The Lafontaines most likely wear average clothes, much like the band members, who can be seen wearing t-shirts, jeans and shirts. They also have been known to wear suits at some of their gigs, such as when they performed their show ‘Club Fontaine’ in early April 2013 wearing full Morning Suits complete with bow ties.

            The lead vocalist, Kerr Okan, has a fairly sophisticated hairstyle, which is slicked back on top and shorter around the back and sides. However, this is not to say that all fans would replicate this; Jamie Keenan, the drummer and occasional vocalist, has a much more laid back style, with relatively long, wavy hair that is much more ‘scruffy’ than Okan’s.

Social Practices: For a less well-known band like The Lafontaines, it is important to have good social networking set up. They have a Facebook page, which helps them to reach fans, as well as a Twitter. They have a page on Bandcamp, as well as a Tumblr page, which doubles as their website, and a Myspace page (although this looks fairly abandoned). They also have a YouTube channel. 

As a result, I think fans will be fairly technologically literate and be able to follow the band on these various platforms. This helps them to spread their music too, as fans might share around links to songs they enjoy. Facebook has a feature which shares a story, such as a person liking a page, so people who do not know of the band might see something saying “John Jones has liked The Lafontaines” and then click on the link to check out what John Jones is interested in.

I think that fans of this band might also listen to radio stations such as BBC Radio 1, which plays a more varied range of music than Kiss or Capital FM, and has played the band before on late night shows. The Lafontaines also performed on the BBC Introducing stage at T in the Park in 2013.

Interests: I would assume that fans of this band would most likely be interested in fairly standard activities, such as meeting friends and socialising. I would also assume that they enjoy going to gigs, since the band still attracts a lot of fans through gigging in small venues around the Glasgow area from where they originated.

Fans might also enjoy listening to similar music and doing activities seen in the bands videos, such as going to festivals. I think they might enjoy listening to music of the genres which The Lafontaines’ draw influences from, such as from rock, hip-hop and pop genres.

Below this point is the raw text I used to create this post.

Shooting Map

This shooting map shows the position of the camera at the Charge Unit. The map shows roughly how the ramp are laid out and where I put my camera in relation to them. There are arrows showing which way the camera was positioned, and how close to each ramp it was.
I have also added some notes down towards the bottom of the sheet showing what kind of shot each one was, as well as the angle from which I shot it from.
A shooting map is a useful tool because it means I can recreate any scenes at a later date if there is a problem with any of my footage.

Locations - Revisited

This map shows the various locations that I will be visiting during my filming. A is the beach location, in Mundesley.

I decided that I would film a fairly small part of the video on a beach; I will use Mundesley beach in particular because it is fairly close to my house and a location I know quite well. I will use a less commercial part of the beach as there should therefore be less people around (even though it will already be quieter than average due to the time of year). The shots here will be quite short and I won't take many since this is a relatively small aspect of the video.

The next location is B - where my house is. I will be filming on the street outside my house.
This shot to the right shows Burgh Road in Aylsham, which is a dimly lit and fairly clear in the evenings. I think it will be an interesting setting and as the road only bends off slightly I think I may be able to have images of Max running down the road.
However, this may be difficult to achieve since it is getting dark so early. I may have to improvise and either film indoors or under street lamps to make up for the lack of sunlight - however this should be helpful in a sense as it is commonly thought that deviant activities take place in dark environments.

The following location is C, which is the skate park in Norwich, known as the Charge Unit, which can be seen to the right. It is an indoor skating location, and Max is friendly with the owners and works there on occasion. It is probably a better location in the sense that I will be able to get lots of good shots of him with constant light - from the floodlights above.

I feel that using a variety of locations will help to put across the point that Max is an active, sociable teenage boy and therefore he is never in one location for too long.

This post is an adaptation of an earlier post, which can be found here. I decided to adapt it as for someone who does not know the area well it might be difficult to envisage the filming process. There is a distance of 40 minutes between points A and C.

My Chosen Artist

In this entry I will be expanding on this post, which I created at an earlier stage in my planning. I think it is important to give more explanation as to why I chose them over other artists and why I chose Light Up The Background in particular.

The Lafontaines are a Scottish hip-hop/rock/pop band from Motherwell. There are five members, including two vocalists (one that sings and one that raps), a bassist (the singer), two guitarists and a drummer. They were unsigned when I chose to use them in my coursework. I had seen them at a gig supporting the band 3OH!3 in November 2012 at the Waterfront in Norwich. I bought their CD from the merchandise table, had some pictures taken with some of the band members (see right) and they soon became one of my favourite artists.
During the time I was trying to decide which artist to do, we moved house and we were looking at a house which I felt would be great for 'Wrapped In Fashion', an older Lafontaines song that talks about an ex-model with a daughter and an alcohol problem. Whilst not one of my favourite songs, I thought it would go well with the location I would be moving into, as obviously filming at home is a good way of ensuring continuity and of getting permission to use a location.
We did not move to this house, but I was going to continue to use 'Wrapped In Fashion' because I had already developed the idea in my head of how my music video might look. However, I soon realised that there were aspects of the song that seemed quite unprofessional and it was not as fine tuned as some of their other tracks.
Therefore I decided to make my music video for the song 'Light Up The Background' instead. As well as being one of my favourite songs, it is more fast paced and exciting than 'Wrapped In Fashion' and since my thriller opening was a very quiet and slow piece, I thought it would be a good contrast to do a more challenging song that required a different style of editing.
I decided to use The Lafontaines over any other artists because I felt I knew them as artists fairly well and considering that they were unsigned, it seemed a great opportunity to make a music video for my favourite band. What I didn't anticipate was the difficulty in finding similar artists and in identifying their genre.

I understand now that it may have disadvantaged me to have chosen a band is fairly inaccessible to me in the fact I cannot film them as they are not a local band, nor one that is easy to contact. This may be problematic as most new musical artists have performance based videos to help people get to know them as artists - in fact, the Lafontaines other videos feature them quite heavily. In contrast, my music video will be narrative based and telling the story of a boy and how he is struggling against the many negative influences a teenage boy faces in day-to-day life.

Pace of Editing

We have been asked to look at an artist similar to the one we are using for our music video and look at one of their music videos to look at the pace at which cuts were made throughout the video.
I looked at the band Middleman, and at their song Spinning Plates, which has a narrative based music video.
First, I listened to their song without watching the video and estimated the number of cuts from listening for changes in the music. I predicted there would be 24 cuts during the first 33 seconds of the video.
Next I watched the video and kept a tally to record how many cuts were made in the same time period. I found that there were 16 - quite a few less than I thought.
I think this tells me that in my own video I should have fewer cuts and perhaps span some visuals over a few beats rather than cutting it so quickly, in order to make my video a little more dynamic, as well as giving the video more substance and more for people to focus on.
For instance, I predicted there would be at least 4 cuts in the first 5 seconds, but actually there were only two. This is effective as it gives more value to the opening of the song and also gives off the impression that the first few seconds of visuals are important, as they do not flash on quickly and then disappear.

Filming

I did the majority of my filming on the 29th of October and I shot a small amount on the morning of the 30th.
I reviewed my footage today (5th of November) and I am happy with the footage that I have so far. There are still quite a few scenes that need to be shot. These are predominantly those that include other people. Max was unable to get any of his friends to help with filming on the 29th and we could not get together to film at any other point.
Therefore I am in the process of deciding a date and contacting Max's friends myself to ensure I get footage with other people, as the group mentality aspect to the video is quite important, I think.

There is some footage that has been recorded that is not what I had originally planned to include. For instance, there is a scene where Max is examining his damaged face after what looks like he has had a fight (despite this actually having come from a BMX accident and exaggerated with costume make up) and also a scene where he is watching some boys BMXing on his computer; it was filmed at the same time as the scene where Max is watching the Mr Freeman footage. I think it might be helpful in showing Max moving away from his friends and bad influences towards things that are better for him.