R+P Post 19: My influences and vision for the project

In order to fully establish our vision for the project, we collaborated our ideas and created a 'Steal-O-Matic': a visual collection of ideas, references and influences.

The Steal-O-Matic allowed us to confirm that we all had the same vision for the project, as well as to determine how feasible and successful our ideas would be in practice. Additionally, it allowed us to see how we were using and developing the ideas of different music video theories.

Opening Shot:
We decided that the slow pace at the start of the song lent itself to a shot of the band getting ready to perform. This conforms to Frith's theory of music video structure, as this scene allows us to introduce the performance element of our video. This was common in the music videos of other artists within the same genre such as Sleeping with Sirens.

'Establishing' Shots:

After introducing our band in the performance element of our video, we felt it necessary to reveal our concept. These references were chosen to show our 'infinitely white' setting and the lone male singer, who will be our lead.

Concept:
To fully illuminate the previous shots, we intend to demonstrate the first of our concepts. We plan to have several piles of paper with our lead singer in-between working at a computer. These piles of paper will constantly shift height and increase to represent the power of technology. This shot is similar to the effect we intend to use to manipulate the height of these piles.

Performance meets Concept:
From here, we decided that we need to establish a link between our two scenes. This process will begin with elements of each scene crossing over, most likely for the lead singer in the conceptual element to begin replicating the actions of the performance. As we were unsure as to whether this was enough, we found references for our other concepts. One of our ideas was to cover the face of our lead singer with painted circuitry in order to represent how ingrained technology is in our society. This would also allow us to connect our two scenes, as the painted circuitry could appear in both the performance and the conceptual scenes.

Chorus:
We all agreed that our chorus had to have a lot of impact, so we decided that the conceptual scene should have an element of hysteria to it. The lead would become overloaded by the work and start destroying the set, kicking the piles to the floor and throwing things around the room. This would be cut between the performance. Whereas the slower pacing of the verses means we'll opt for more close ups and 'beauty shots', the chorus would consist of more distanced shots showing the whole band. Furthermore, revealing this hysteria in the chorus follows follows Andrew Goodwin's theory of music and visuals; in which there is a strong relationship between the music video and the song. This hyperactive scene during the chorus allows us to illustrate and amplify the energy of the song.