A wolf mask - this wolf mask isnt conventional of our videos genre but we wanted to give our video an abstract feel to it and felt the use of a wolf mask would do just that. The wolf referes to the main character and his problems.
A vintage bike - The bike is used as a mode of transport for the artist in the video so he can travel around the valleys and the woodland looking for the owl.
A guitar - The guitar is obviously used for performance by the owl. This is also conventional of folk music videos as you would see the artist performing their instrument and they normally play acoustic instruments
A laptop - at the begining of our video our main character is using his laptop to watch the film 'Dances with wolves'. This helps set the scene for his dream.
We wanted out character to dress like a conventional folk artist so we made him wear a red checkered shirt and jeans. Fortunately, he already dressed very similiar to this so it was not a problem for him and it was easy for us to find the costume as he already owned a pair of jeans and checkered shirt.
After sitting down and disscussing our video we decided we would change the location and the change a few ideas within the video.
We decided not to do the video in reverse like origninally planned after seeing the Coldplay video and stick to conventional folk ideas. We also changed our location to Millington Woods as it is definitely more conventional and it would definitely look better with the woodland and the big open fields and valleys. It would also allow us to be more creative and allow us to get a lot better camera shots and cinematography instead of just filming down a street. We decided we would also include and animal mask in our video to give it that abstact/surreal feel to it.
Now, instead of the narrative being about the main character losing his girlfriend, it is now about him in his dream trying to find a mysterious owl, which represents his problems. This again gives the video an abstract/surreal feel to it.
Orginially our music video was going to be of the narrative and abstract form and was inspired by the video for 'The Scientist' by Coldplay where Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay walks backwards whilst singing, telling the narrative of the song. We was going to film our video down the Avenues, where there are big trees, almost the natural look we were looking for, and long streets which would make it good for the artist to ride his bike, the Avenues are also close by making it convenient for us. Our video was going to be reveresed so he is travelling backwards whilst telling the narrative of the video, how he split up with his girlfriend.
Boy and Bear are a 5 piece Australian indie rock band from Sydney. They formed in 2009 and have had 2 albums out. They are singed to Universal Republic Records and Island Records Australia. They are listend to in Australia, America, South America, most parts of Africa, Asia and the Uk, but are most popular in Australia.
This video for 'Rabbit Song' by Boy & Bear is very similar to what I want my video to be like as this video features band members riding their bikes and they also have very strange costumes and masks making it a surreal video, and I also wanted to use animal masks in my video. Although this video is very surreal it does have some sort of narrative as it follows the man in the video, possibly the lead singer of the band, through his day from the minute he awakes and follows him on the journey he goes on.
The majority of the video is set in the city, somewhat of a concrete jungle, whereas my video will be set in a woodland area, however the last minute of the video is also set in a woodland area.
This video is most popular among females aged 13 to 24, but only popular among males aged 25 to 34.
The video starts of the lead singer waking up in bed, we then see a wide of shot of him sitting up and it then cuts back to a close up of him. This is followed by a series of close ups of him in the shower, eating breakfast and buttoning up his shirt, genereally going about his day in a normal way. We see a close up of the pens in his shirt pocket and we can see an ink stain as his pen as leaked, we then see him dip his fingers in to the ink. It then cuts to a close up of him drawing stripes on his face with the ink. It cuts to black and we then see a wide shot of a busy city street, we then see several shots of the lead singer crossing the road wearing a hat and a cape made of ties, this is definitely surreal. We then see a close up of a man wearing a mask made of keyboards and tape cassettes pointing at someone across the road riding a bike. We then see the caped man riding his bike and the lead singer then follows him down an alley way and pulls out a bow and arrow made from a coat hanger. The lead singer then finds a bike and chases him down the alley ways and back streets of the city. It then cuts to a wide shot of four men stood in a field. Two women with wings then run past the lead singer and we see a mid shot of him looking confused and he then walks in to the woods. We then see a wide shot of of people stood at different positions all around the woods and it then cuts back to a mid shot of the lead singer. He keeps walking into the woods and we see a lot of mid shots and close ups of the people in the woods, this is as if we are looking at them from the lead singers eyes. We then see a wide shot of three men dressed in red capes, who look as if they are important, it then cuts to a close up of the man in the middle and he looks of scree, we then see a mid shot of a women smiling at the lead singer and then it cuts back to a mid shot of the lead singer also smiling. We then see another close up of the man in the middle and and another close up of the lead singer. It then cuts back to a wide shot of the lead singer waking up in bed, as the whole video was one surreal dream.
Natasha Khan, or Bat For Lashes, which is her stage name, is an English indie pop muscian. She sings and plays the piano, bass, guitar, harpsichord and the autoharp. Her debut album 'Fur and Gold' was released in 2006 and her second album 'Two Suns' was released in 2009. She is signed to; She Bear Records, Parlophone, Manimal Vinyl, Caroline and Astralwerks.
This music video from Bat for lashes is primarily an abstract video with perfromance, and it doesnt have a narrative. It is one long continuous shot with no editing, this is unconventional of a music video as music videos normally have a lot of different shots in different scenes and fast, or slow, paced editing to fit to the beat. This video focuses on the girl, the lead singer, riding her bike down the road. The road is all dark and the leader singer is wearing a bright blue jumper which really makes her stand out in the dark. After 40 seconds, 4 masked men on bikes appear from behind her on bmx's and performs tricks. The fact the men are wearing animal masks adds to the abstract form of the video, after 1 minute 13 the masked men dissapear again. After 1 minute 20, she stops on her bike, and we see her look of screen then the camera pans around to the side of the road and we see two characters dressed in long mysterious cloaks, the camera then pans back to the lead singer and she carrys on riding forwards, again adding the the absract form of the video. She then drives through a cloud of smoke from an over turned car and the masked men appear again, only this time there are more of them, they again perfrom their series of tricks, possibly representing the youth of today as they are on bmx's. They then dissapear again and the camera zooms out leaving the girl in the dark and the video ends.
This video is most popular in America, England and Australia, I know this as Youtube shows all the statistics for the video.The target group for the video is females aged between 13 and 24, and suprisngly males aged between 35 and 44. I thought this video would of been a lot more popular belong teenage males as it is the type of music I believe they would choose to listen to.
This video is similar to what I would like my musiv video to be like as I will feature a man riding his bike however my video will not be one long continous shot and will feature lots of different shots.
Danny MacAskill, also known as 'Danny MegaSkill', is a Scottish trials cyclist, from Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye. He works professionally as a street trials pro rider for Inspired Bicycles Ltd. In August 9th of 2011 Cut Media released a video named "Industrial Revolutions". The video, set to 'The Wolves' by Ben Howard, features MacAskill doing tricks in an abandoned Scottish iron works. It was created for Channel 4's documentary Concrete Circus
Although this video is a short film and not a music video, it features a song, which is in fact the song I will be using in my music video, and is similar to my video as it features a man riding a bike. In my video I would also like to use an area like the one in the video but think it would be really difficult to do so, but I really like the industrial mis-en-scene of the run down iron works and the overgrown shrubbery. Even though it isnt a music video, it is still performance based as the video is about him performing tricks on his trials bike.
The video starts with two still shots of the iron works and then a close up of one of the towers, we the see Danny ride his bikes up to the gates of the iron works, along with the music these shots look really calm and peaceful. The next few shots also look calm and peaceful as they are just long shots of Danny riding his bike through a nice location, however when the artist starts singing he starts to perform his big daring tricks on his trials bike. The editing then becomes a lot more fast paced and we see a lot of different shots ranging from extreme close ups of the bike wheels to long shots of him riding across the top of a broke down train, this is conventional of music videos. The majortiy of the shots are long shots and wide shots as the tricks he performs take up a lot of space so we can easily see him perform them with the use of long and wide shots.
Surprsingly, according to Youtube, this video is most popular with males aged between 25 and 55. However I thought the target audience would be teenage males and men in there twennties and possibly early thirties as trials biking is quite a cool, outgoing dangerous sport I thought it would appeal to them more.
