After my inital idea i decided to research the genre. the first thing i found was that animation was not really used in Acoustic music Videos. So i decided not to go with the animtion idea but what are the stylistics of the Acoustic Music Video?
I decided to look at videos by popular Acoustic artists.
Jack Johnson - If I Had Eyes
The first video I looked at was by Jack Johnson with the early 2008 single "If I Had Eyes" the video was directed by Emmett Malloy. The Video is mainly black and white with colours edited in a certain parts of the video and a wide range of photographs are used to transist between scenes.
Lightspeed Champion - Tell Me what It's Worth
Mike Mogis’s video for “Tell Me What It’s Worth” by Lightspeed Champion is interesting as it only uses one shot and the only edit is the song over the video and sound effects to resemble the area at the beginning and ending of the video. It shows the artist walking getting off the ground and walking around and people follow him around . the mise en scene shows words creating a narrative specifically at the end with a group of different sign posts representing brand logos we have in our world saying “ I Don’t Love You Anymore” drawing a conclusion to the story which the music video is representing.
James Morrison - You Make It Real
What My Music Video Will Be Like
After looking at these three videos i found i had a good idea of lighting camera stylistics and other major conventions of the music genre. I liked the idea of a narrative that there would be a story there but inbetween live playing so i have decided to base it on James Morrisons - You Make it Real.
Case Study: The Candle Thieves - Sunshine Song Music Video
As a little bit more research I decided to look at a band who are not signed up to major labels and what they have been able to produce with small production companies. This would give me a better idea of what I would be able to produce as this video was made on small budget and from what I have seen created a better representation about what the bands and music are about.
“The Sunshine Song” by Peterborough band “The candle Thieves”.The band are signed to Alcopop Records and the video was commissioned through Radar Music Videos
Analysis of Music Video
The music video has a great use of cut out effects as well as bold pastel colours to express the colourfullness of the music. we switch between to scenes one inside a box area with film showing at the back and cut outs of the band infront and the other being a reference to the e.p cover and having elements from the ep cover to create a short story representing a woman travelling with balloons until the end of the night where as this is very basic it blends with the music greatly in order to create a surreal world where everythings perfect contrasting with the song lyrics while sung cheerfully have more serious notations "you are beautiful but you are going to die some day".
Further Research
I contacted the band the Candle thieves on the topic of themusic video they replied to me with this:
“The Sunshine Song video was done by a guy called Richard Cullen from a company called Pixelfing. He's a lovely guy and amazingly talented. He contacted us to do it coz he said he loved the song. It was mostly done to blue screen, we wanted to create this other world for this song and he made it happen! We just started filming our parts for the next video a couple of days with him once again.”
Scott McEwan
I then contacted the website Pixelfing and sent this message:
hello I am doing some research into music videos for my A2 mediaStudies coursework and one of the videos I was looking at was \"TheSunshine Song\" by the Candle thieves. I contacted the band forinformation on the music video and they said it was created byRichard Cullen. I was just wondering if you could send me someinformation on the production of the video, what programs whereused for editing, how ideas for the videos style and what itsymbolises came to be.
Thank you very much for your time and hopeto hear from you soon
update 12/02/2010
Hi AdamThanks for your email. I'm away at the moment so have only just pickedit up!
In terms of the software used on that video - after effects was usedfor all of the 'internal' shots, using photographed elements, scannedimages and footage of the band that was shot on blue screen. The'external' shots were created in Maya - the outlines of the shapeshaving been drawn freehand in Illustrator and then imported. Variouspasses were rendered from maya - colour passes, shadow, texture,ambient occlusion etc. And then they were composited in after effects.The edit was done in Premiere.
The idea for the video came from several places. The band had quite astrong visual identity which informed the look of the video, and thebudget for the project steered me towards something that was mostlyanimated. And they'd never made a video before, so we didn't know howthey'd be on camera. So we veered towards something that had anarrative thread to it - which also allowed us to do something thathad the same emotional shape as the song.
I'd had an idea about a house carried on balloons (before 'up' wasreleased!), and I wanted to do something that was a combination of 2dand 3d.The basic outline of the story was implied by the song, although Ididn't want to do something that was just a literal take, so I wentwith something that was essentially a metaphor - the idea of a girlbeing taken away.
Anyway - I hope that helps. Sorry if that jumps around a bit!
CheersRichard
Links
http://www.myspace.com/thecandlethieves
http://alcopop.wordpress.com/
http://www.radarmusicvideos.com/
http://www.pixelfing.com/
http://www.biglifemanagement.com/
Update - 20/04/2010
Since researching into this, the band were signed to downtown records popular for acts such as Gnarls Barkley and have an album out in the shops.
Update - 27/01/2010 Change In Project
I recently had to change my music video project due to filming issues. I had to change the band i was using due to time contraints and no recorded songs. I decided to ask other bands from the local area and soon after the Hull band "Infamous Radio" were willing to do it. The band of course are a different genre from acoustic thought they are Indie so here i have researched three indie music videos.
The Kooks - She Moves In Her Own Way
I Decided after these videos that i would prefer to have my own originality while still taking elements. The band had an upcoming gig and i thought what about a little documentary style video following them around. i was told by the band they would be busking in the afternoon, rehearsing, setting up and the gig itself. This would be perfect for the way i want to portray creating similarity to the beatles old videos whilke creating an up to date music video in use of technology and conventional camera shots. I want the video to show the struggles of being a small time band creating a linking ideology that this is what the band needs to become popular.
This video shows the folloiwng of the band on a trip showing a variety of different parts through different camera shots it creates a sense of realism about the band creating an ideology that this how the band really are altough this is to a large degree scripted to the driectors wants and needs.
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