Part of the pre-production process of our video was to ask the record company of the band for permission to use the song we wanted to shoot our video for.
The record company for The Eels is Vagrant so one of my team members emailed them asking for permission.
Before our half term holidays, we made a list of all the props we needed and discussed how we would source them. Some of them could be arranged by the school and the remaining would be brought by us (the crew). This is the list we came up with after we divided up the required props.
One of the tasks we had to do as part of the pre-production process was to storyboard all the shots that we would have in our video. We did this by drawing each shot and writing other details, such as the length of the shot, the angle and a basic desciption of the shot. After that, we had to cut them out and stick them on a large white paper so we can film them in order to create our animatic.
One of the problems we faced was that we changed our idea after we drew all the storyboards. We therefore had to re-draw all our storyboards which was a time consuming process in order to create our new animatic.
These are some of the new storyboards we drew which didn't look as good as the first ones because they were done later and were a bit rushed because we had to finish our animatic on time.
The bands image is quite a “Geek Cheque” image with pastel coloured jeans, chinos or cords, geeky t-shirts and scuffed old trainers, bands that already exist like this are Eels, Weatus and Pavement. In terms of Dyer these guys would be a quiet clean group of guys with a geeky disposition, the sort of guys that are mates and have taken there friendship and produced a band from it. Despite there personalities they sing about a much more mature theme of career and life in general in baby loves me. They promote a there star image through there quirkiness and there appeal through there abnormal normality.
They would be considered a organic band through there naturalistic formation.
The costumes we chose for the band members needed to decided based on the brand image we were going for. We decided to opt for a more simple look for the band following Dyer's theories of being present and absent at the same time. By having the band dressed normally, the target audience can relate to the band because they look similar to them.
The dress suit for the magician on the other hand, is part of the narrative element of our video and it brings Dyer's 'absent' theory into practice. One wouldn't normally see a band member acting in a dress suit and by doing so, the audience encounter an unrealistic side of things.
This is a basic mood board explaining what the theme of the video will look like
The cards in the mood board are part of the magician's act - he thumps on the card with his fist and then reveals the shattered heart print on the ace of hearts card. He will be dressed in a dress suit with a top hat which is the conventional look of a magician.
The hanging rope, knife and the poison are the props that will be used by the 'suicidal guy' in our video. He uses one at a time to try to kill himself however he seems to fail every time.
The desk lamp represents the main concept of our video - lights. We plan to use different sort of lights that will be coordinated at different times to reveal something unusual.
When casting members of the band, we wanted to make sure they don't look to boyband-like which was a challenge because of the people available to choose from (they look quite boyband-like). We anyway managed to find people who when cast together will look quite different.
We had to come up with backups as well so that we were covered in case someone that we chose was taken.
This is the list of props that will need to be arranged for our video.
The instruments are pretty generic - they will be required for the performance element of our video.
The chair is needed for the performance and narrative element of our video. The singer will be sat on it at some points and it will also be used in conjunction with the table for the magician's sequence.
The hanging rope, poison bottle and knife will be used by one of the characters as suicidal weapons in attempt to kill himself.
The hat and the pack of playing cards are the magician's props which he will use for his magic sequence.
The M&M packets are a random prop that we might spread all over the piano which when shot with the light sequence, could potentially be a random and interesting shot.
The Eels is an alternative/indie rock band formed in America in 1995.
Singer and songwriter Mark Oliver Everett, also known as 'E' is known for his strange and often depressing lyrics. He is the permanent member of the band and brings in different collaborators for his compositions.This suggests that The Eels is a synthetically formed band. They are targetted towards a more niche market with their dark and possibly cult style of music however they have also had certain moments of mainstream fame.
The Eels are very diverse in terms of the genres of music they produce which makes it really hard to choose one specific type.
The song we've chosen for our pop video (baby loves me) is a sort of an electronic pop-rock genre.
It has a lot of electronic tunes in addition to the traditional rock genre instruments such as drums and guitar.
In terms of conventions, most of the videos of this genre have conceptual videos that are based around a specific theme, as opposed to having a narrative that is being told.
The official video of 'Baby Loves Me' plays on the concept of miniature places which are meant to look half real and half fake. This adds the strange and eerie sort of approach that such music opt for in their videos.
This is also shown in their video of Novocaine For The Soul - the main concept of the video is no gravity/flying. The band members float around in the air throughout the video portraying a sort of surreal, unusual and unique code for their music. They also pay close attention to the lyrics and they ensure that their concept ties in with the implications of their lyrics. They aren't too fancy when it comes to costumes, they keep it simple but instead focus on the high concept of the video itself.
After we received some feedback for our idea, we tried to develop it further to try and make it more interesting. We thought of a couple more ideas that we could add to this, but ultimately we figured out that it would not work out because it would still be very simple resulting in an unentertaining final product.
We thought of different concepts and songs we could use and settled on the song 'Baby Loves Me' by The EEls. The concept we thought of was lights, and how light reveals something that you may not normally see.
This is our final idea, we simply need to develop it more in order for it to work. We even tested this lighting concept in the studio, which looked really good as long as the narrative/performance elements were figured out.
