Treatment

For our media coursework we have to produce a music video from an unrecognised band that is under copyright protection. The song that we have selected, Bloody Hands is the original work of Big Delusion. As this song is the original works of the band we had to ask for permission, through their MySpace page, which they then granted. The genre of the song is rock and knowing the genre of our song has allowed a collaboration of sorts to establish between visuals and sound in our video to create a rock related video.

The video itself ties much to the idea of the rock in the form of our locations which we carefully selected for heir gloomy and dark features. The locations themselves contribute very much to the rock based mood of our video. It is important when producing a music video to establish a target audience, which in our case is 17-25 year olds with an interest in rock music. By including the rock element in our music video, and taking influence off other rock bands popular to our age group we have met our target audience criteria.

The main storyline for our music video is, the female character has killed the main character. The idea of the killing ties in with the title ‘Bloody Hands’. She is running away from the fact that she has done this and is almost trying to deny what she did. This is shown by giving the female character a split personality by filming her in two roles. One of them is her conscience and the other one is her trying to escape what she’s done. There is overall only two characters of the main narrative, and the band themselves, which are based mainly around the performance side of the video. There are numerous settings for our music video which are, the church, the castle and the square. We have filmed in these settings during college ours only due to the time frame we were able to film in. For our settings we have aimed to incorporate the rock genre by using areas that looked very dramatic on camera because of the lighting in these areas and the locations where they are.

The producing format for our video is the mini DV. The mini DV is the videotape we used to record our film on. This was a vital part of our filming.

The genre of our music video is rock. We incorporated the rock genre introducing a slight gothic element to out locations. We did this by choosing locations that were quite atmospheric and created quite an aromatic effect. While creating our video we used shots such as close ups, long shots, two shots and mid shots to incorporate different effects. For example close ups were used to capture social expressions and long shots were used to get a view of a whole area and for the audience to view how characters interact with their surroundings for the actual camera use itself we used a tripod to keep the camera stead once to allow for good effect. In combination with camera use , editing was also an important factor in the creative process of making the video. The majority of the editing was compiled of fast cuts to create a quicker speed effect for the action scenes. For the performance scenes the shots were edited a lot less to make the band scenes seem slower to the viewer and allowed focus to be on the band for longer periods of time. This was done to emphasise the bands use in the video and as a link to lyrics and visuals. The video was very much linked to visuals in the form of colour. This colour comes in the form of the black and white of the female characters split personality and in the general colour scheme of the video in red and black, which was used as a link in our video to the rock genre. There is use of musical instruments in the band scenes t o emphasise the band members interaction with their surroundings and the singer. The music is used to create tempo in the video with fast paced music accompanying fast paced editing cuts. It was very important for the performance to look as good as possible. We managed to do this while editing by assuring everything to be in sync. A final element of the style of our video is the claim to originality. We incorporated this by using a parallel image in our narrative sequences. This was done to make the female characters conscience an actual being that was able to confront her at the end as a dramatic climax.

To produce our video we used the editing software ‘Final Cut express’. This allowed us to brighten and darken our video to link in with our style influences. Many more videos we have observed have used light9ing effects in their videos to relate to their target audiences, making their videos more popular. The basis of our video was selecting the right people to play our characters. For this we used students from our classes to play the main roles and extras. For the main singers role we had an actual band singer for the role. Using a singer for this role allowed our video to look good to look good to viewers as she was quite natural in the performance and knew what she was doing. While creating our video the roles of director and camera operator were equally shared between members of our group. The role of producer however was mostly performed by Owen.

The bands we observed in the original stages such as ‘Paramore’, ‘30 seconds to mars’ and ‘Big delusion’ themselves all had traits in their videos that are very common when producing rock videos. These were traits such as dramatic performances, rock associated mise en scene and atmospheric locations. We as a group incorporated these into our video to make it original to the rock genre. We wanted to make this video unique by adding our own features. We did this by encorporating a detailed narrative to our video to accompany the performance. The narrative has a certain theme of love and loss which is one rarely seen in rock videos, so it was a claim to our originality. This video was worth making as this has a claim of originality making our video unique in the media industry. This will hopefully allow people to view it and produce their own original ideas in the future.