Jason Mraz - Im Yours Music Video

This video is going to be a strong influence on our own. Through watching this we have anchored the idea to use lots of motion in our camerawork. We will also use slowmotion and lots of cuts and shots, almost at random to best tell our story and make our visual stimulus the strongest it can be.

Influence

As we were beginning to bring our ideas together, we took a variety of different influences from other videos. The difficulties of visualizing a video is creating an aestetical template to work around, or having a guide line to follow in order to make it seamless.

One artist we though had a similiar music style to Jason Mraz was Jack Johnson. Johnson, however, has a more thematic writing style which he usually puts into his video. Themes such as surfing and beaches are commonplace in his videos. Although this does not directly influence our video, it is clear to notice a motif or continuity in his videos, and these patterns are things that we can take influence from.



We also watched a lot of Parkour videos. The interesting aspect here is the way the city and urban buildings are used. We are intending to use or film around urban buildings, and the dynamics that are in the parkour videos reall exhibit the environment well.

Jason Mraz - Myspace

Jason 's Myspace is mostly cream in colour, featuring a minimalist aestetic and simple design. The page shows drawing and a 'sketchbook' feel which fits well with Mraz's acoustic sound.

Mraz has a large number of tour dates up, along with a sizeable number of page views. This shows that he is a popular artist. The myspace layout compliments this by being easy to use and simple to find information you might be looking for. Jason also has a music video of his on his myspace, which we will analyise to further develop our own ideas.

Costume - Scott

Lip Sync Tests Redux

To further our experimentation with abstract filming technuiques, we shot a second lyrics text from an interesting angle. Here is the result.

Style Influence

Scott has used a video as a potential example of how we would like to edit and pace our own video. This video is his friend Teg's latest Parkour video, the parts in question in paticular are the opening and first song in general.

Locations

This is the Bridge Of Sighs in Cambridge. we think that its archaic architecture and rustic quality would make it a good setting for parts of the video, possibly with whoever will be miming on the bridge, but shot away from the bridge.

This is the exterior of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Similiarly, this has a very natural, relaxed feel yet has a modern quality. We feel that this will make for a good contrast to the bridge.

This is the whale skeleton at the Zoology museum. This setting will look visually very different from the others, completely differing from the bright, vibrant settings of the other two.









Bridge Of Sighs - St. John's College

Fitzwilliam Museum
Trumpington St
Cambridge, CB2 1RB

Zoology Museum
Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ

Anamatic Review

We have now uploaded our animatic for the first minute of our video "On love, In sadness" by Jason Mraz.

We then analysed 'Wonderwall' by Oasis to see how many cuts and shots are in a professional final music video. In the Oasis video in the first 55 seconds (the same length as our anamatic).

16 individual shots
26 cuts



When we first watched our animatic back we realised it doesn't look like a proper music video. It doesn't seem as if there is enough happening but now we have done some research we have found that all we have to do is add more cuts and a few more shots.

Our original anamatic had 10 shots and 10 cuts, no reusing any shots.

To rectify this we have re-edited our anamatic with a few more visual effects and repeated shots, just like how in our video we will be re-using angles in different parts of the song, just like a professional video would.

To film this we may record the ENTIRE song for a majority of our shots, so we have complete freedom for editing, this may cause problems; however, as we may have TOO much and difficulty editing to a concise and concentrated piece.

Here is our revised anamatic.



Shots 10
Cuts 14

While 4 extra cuts may not seem like a lot, the pacing of the anamatic is remarkably better and the production feels much higher quality.

Now we have re-edited and with the use of motion and more cuts and repeated shots we have made a more dynamic anamatic which can better reflect what we wish to accomplish with our final piece.

Limitations and Problems

Slowmotion: After undertaking our water droplet test, we deliberated and analysed what we could plausible do with the cameras. Unfortunately, our cameras cannot shoot fast enough to capture the slowmotion footage in a format that would be suitable for us, thus we are forced to abandon this idea. We still hope to utilise similiar principles yet without such striking time effects.

Reverse: We also planned to use a thematic from the Pharcydes 'Drop' video, in which the song is learnt and the video recorded backwards, then when the footage is reversed, the artists appear to be singing in normal time, with the rest of the world in reverse. We reversed the song yet found it to be too warbled to attempt to learn in reverse, so instead we will use the idea and peform reversed shots, just without lip synching. We can then use these shots either in instrumental parts of the song, or over lyrics and then simply have only certian shots with lip sync, as it is not mandatory to lip sync every shot.

Drop by The Pharcyde

Water Droplet

One idea for the opening shot was to have a water droplet on the opening beat. We found some really good slow motion videos of water droplets on "youtube" and then we decided we would do a test shot for the water droplet. We found that our camera couldn't go fast enough to film the water droplet and then be able to slow it down to look as slow as we wanted.

Here are the videos of the water droplet which we tried to copy and the water droplet test.




Heres the video we got the idea from of having things in slow motion. Seeing the shape of the balloon in the water made us want to try and recreate this in our video.

Anamatic

We made a storyboard and then scanned it into the computer. Using Final Cut, we animated and timed this collection of images into an anamatic which we can use as a rough guide for our piece, so we have a stronger direction of narrative and theme.

Here is our anamatic.

Shotlist

Our original shot list is as follows:

Opening Shot- Water running into a drain then comming back out.

Shots 2&3- A shot of a droplet of water falling and splashing (hopefully in slow motion if we can make it work)

Shot 4- Main character (singer) walking towards the camera whilst singing.

Shot 5- Main character walking away with his back to the camera.

Shot 6- This will be the first shot when we play with the speed of the music. We will slow the music down, the singer will sing along to it when its slow with traffic on the background. We will then speed the shot up again and hopefully it will look like the singer is singing at normal speed while the traffic is moving really fast behind him.

Shot 7- This is the shot where we poor water over the camera and have the singer walk infront of it. We could play this is both forward and reverse, this way the water will go back up the screen.

Shot 8- In this shot the singer will be filmed walking backwards through a busy street (not singing*), We will then reverse the footage so it will look like the singer is the only person walking in the right direction.
*We decided that it would be too difficult to learn the words backwards and would waste time also we thought it could come out really badly if we dont get it right o we think it would look more proffessional if we dont sing in this shot.

Shot 9- This shot hasnt been fully decided yet becuase it coul cause a few problems. Our original idea for this would be to smash a guitar on the floor and play it in slow motion. There are a few problems with this. We would have to buy a guitar only to smash it again, we would only get one chance to shoot the shot and would have to get it right, we have done some tests with slow motion and have found that our camera doesnt have a fast enough framerate.

Shot 10- We have a guitar in the singers hand and drop it on the floor. This will then be reversed so it looks like the guitar is flying up into his hand.

River Jump

One initial idea was to have Scott jump into the river, akin to the James Blunt video for "You're Beautiful". However, in further research, we discovered that:

For students' own protection, Clare College has banned entry into the Cam from any college property, including the bridge and river banks. In May 2006, there was a terrible accident in which a student nearly died after falling on to a broken punt pole hidden below the surface of the river. Students should recognise that the river is potentially extremely dangerous, because it contains submerged bicycles and other objects, is muddy and weedy, and can carry diseases; the risk of drowning is especially high after eating or drinking alcohol. In addition, it is illegal to swim in the river along the Backs apart from places that have been specifically authorised by the Cam Conservators; jumping into the river from a bridge or a boat is also illegal if it causes annoyance or risks injuring anyone. As this is a major health and safety issue, any transgressions will be regarded very seriously.



Due to this, we have decided jumping in the river is not a good idea.

Visual Style And Composition

What i think is most important to the music video we are creating or any music video is the visual representation of an artist and his song. I feel that some music videos which go for a narrative approach over a unique look generally fail to create a memorable image that can primarily exhibit and secondarily advertise.



In this music video for R.E.M's Losing My Religion, director Tarsem Singh and band frontman Micheal Stipe are the creative source behind the composition. Stipe envisioned a mere performance video of the band, whilst Singh wanted to bring a more exotic look to the video. What is evident here is the isolation and closed-off mood of the song, which is shown through a plain room in which Stipe sings. Yet, we also see a lot of Indian imagery, undoubtedly a product of director Singh's nationality and influences. The video is artistic without being overly flamboyant, but really carries through an edge which parallels perfectly with the song.

One big idea for our music video was to have a water theme. I think this is the perfect opportunity to express the colour and reflective nature of the song. Because of the unpredictable way in which water moves, we can use it to create interesting light effects with the camera. I would say that the song has a similiarly fluid nature and the water will work well as an rhythmical counterpart



This stock footage shows the way in which a bright light becomes completely twisted and distort by water. It makes for a really eye-capturing motif in music videos, and i think will work well in ours.

Another idea of the video was to shoot in slow or fast motion, syncing words to the track slower or faster and then returning the footage to normal speed. Obviously, the video will not be a stop motion video, but may look similar to this:



Stop motion often creates a completely unnatural feel to footage, and is extremely eye catching. If we can re-create these effects with live action, we will have the perfect chance for something more standout.

Feedback on pitch

Our feedback was largely positive, our main point to develop was our narrative and locations. This is what we anticipated and we are pleased that our core idea is suitably executable. Good ideas which came from feedback were:
Use rain in the video and make it either slower or fall backwards.
Use a river so the water looks like its not moving very fast.
Use busy roads to film traffic and make it go faster or slower.
Use a busy street and walk backwards so when you replay it in reverse it looks like everyone is walking backwards except for the main character.
We think using water in the video would be a good idea because there are lots of references to water in the song.

Synopsis

For this production we plan to use an eclectic mix of camera technuiques, hopefully to allow us to create many effects and atmospheres in one video. Secondly, using such advanced camerawork will allow us to create a profressional piece, especially once coupled with costume and narrative.

Our Target Audience is mid-teens of both sexes. We aim to use a smart/casual fashion style to better identify with said audience, and will employ relaxed framing and lighting to make our video easy on the eyes, yet we plan to use lots of colour and contrast to give the video a more attention grabbing thematic.

Lyrics and Test Video

This effect is achieved by lip syncing at 200% speed of the song, then playing the song at 100% speed and the video at 50% speed. Thus the video is slow motion but the song is lip synced correctly.

Here are the lyrics to the song. Scott has learnt the entire song and Matt knows the vast majority of it. As Tom will be filming he does not need to learn it; however, chances are he will know some of it sooner or later.

On Love, In Sadness Lyrics
by Jason Mraz & Jenny Keene

Sing about that oh love it's a brittle madness, I sing about it in all my sadness
Not falsified to say that I found God so
Inevitably well it still exists.
Pale and fine I can't dismiss
And I won't resist and if I die well, at least I tried

And we just lay awake in lust and rust in the rain
And pore over everything we say we trust
Well it happened again, I listened in through hallways and thin doors
Where the rivers unwind, rust and the rain endure.
The rust and the rain so thin
Well I'm in like Flynn again
(I'm in)

So go on place your order now cause some other time is right around the clock
You can stand in line well it finally begins oh just around the block
You can have your pick if your stomach is sick whether you eat or not
And there is just one thing that I almost forgot

Oh, see, you and me, we lay awake in lust and rust in the rain
And pore over everything we say we trust
Well it happened again, I listened in through hallways and thin doors
Where the rivers unwind, the rivers unwind so easy
Oh, these are the comforts that be

You see, well, I'm feeling lucky oh well, maybe that's just me
Well you'd be(so)proud of me oh well, if you could only see
How we're gonna grow on up to be,
Ah yes we are thick as thieves

Sing about that oh love it's a brittle madness, I sing about it in all my sadness
It's not falsified to say that I found God so
Inevitably, well it still exists so pale and fine I can't dismiss
And I won't resist and if I die well at least I tried

And we just lay awake in lust and rust in the rain
And pore over everything we say we trust
Well it happened again, I listened in through hallways and thin doors
Where the rivers unwind and the rust and the rain endure
The rust and the rain endure, I'm sure.

Because I'm insofar to know the measure of love ain't lost, love will never, ever be-
Insofar to know, the measure of love ain't lost, love will never, ever be-
Insofar to know, the measure of love ain't lost, love will never, ever be lost on me

Oh not tonight, said love will never ever be lost on me.
(Love will...) never ever be lost on me
(Love) will not be
Love will never be lost on me
Love...will...not...be...lost..on...me.

Sources

Jason Mraz - On Love, In Sadness:

http://www.myspace.com/jasonmraz

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/On-Love-In-Sadness-lyrics-Jason-Mraz/DAD2B56F0AA94A9D48256CD9001F885E



101 Pianos - Lewis Parker:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Parker

First Blog

Our group is Tom, Matt and Scott. The song we are planning on doing a music video for is the song On Love, In Sadness by Jason Mraz. Alternatively, the other option is to do 101 pianos by Lewis Parker.

We have no solid ideas yet, but we were thinking of possibly filming in town, around the streets, going for style over story.

Welcome to GROUP 44