Initial ideas PLANNING

So the audience does not have too much to think about and the shot isn’t too busy, my video will have quite a simple loose narrative, also enabling the audience to take into account the fact that it is actually the photos that are moving.

The narrative will include a day in the life of a teenager / young adult, this could involve him getting up at home, getting ready / getting dressed, possibly a morning routine such as washing or eating breakfast, going out for a walk in the day, participating in activities such as going to the park? Maybe a transaction in a shop? Then the main character walking home and going to bed or going back to his house / room.

It will be heavily disjunctured due to the loose narrative we as a group are looking to incorporate, but that has no relation to the lyrics or concept of the song. One technique that a lot of music video directors employ is switching between narrative and performance when there is a change in the music, for example between chorus and verse, but I don’t think that we will do this, we will just stick with the loose narrative and keep it one continuous piece of loose narrative.

The idea that we have for this music video incorporates two artists influence, firstly the work of Mr.Taijin Takeuchi who first came up with the idea of using printed images to recreate movement in inanimate objects, and secondly the work of David Hockney who uses many close up printed images to make up a picture instead of just one zoomed out image. As a way of challenging or developing this convention we are going to include a loose narrative within our images and we will create stop motion within stop motion.
In order to challenge the conventions of the Electro / Pop genre, we must integrate some of the same technical aspects into our video, some of these we can take from another Owl City video called Fireflies such as:

· Sweet playful objects
· Objects that relate to the tempo or beat, for example the lights in ‘fireflies’
· Central focus – close ups of the objects within the video
· Possible subtle links between the lyrics and certain objects
· Perhaps daydream or fantasy world theme due to the genre
· A general happy feel to the video

Another way that we can reinforce the idea of movement within the stop motion is to move the photos in the direction of the action, for example if the character is walking to the right, move the photos to the right as well. This is a concept used in the PEN story and it works brilliantly enhancing the illusion of movement within still images.

In an attempt to get permission to use Owl city's song Hot air balloon, i sent this email to their managment explaining our situation.

From:
gregg stone (gregg-stone13@hotmail.com)
Sent:
16 December 2009 21:33:44
To:
ocmgmt@foundationsmusic.com

Hi Steve and Brian.Just a quick email to ask if we could use Owl city's song Hot air balloon for our A2 media studies coursework in which we are required to create a music video?Me; Gregg and my group, Fletcher and James would really love to put our music video to this song, we won't publicise it or take credit for the song in any way. Full credit will be given to Owl city and Adam Young and the name of the band and title of the song will be at the beginning and end of the video.We are big fans of Owl city and would love to be able to take this opportunity to show our appreciation for Adam's music by using it in our coursework.

yours sincerely

Gregg Stone