Wiriting to the record company

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.

Sourcing Props

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.

Storyboard

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.

Band Brand Image

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.

Costumes

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.

Mood Board

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.

Cast List

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.