Research
- part i: primary research -
music video matt interview.mp4This is an interview i conducted with Annie to hear her opinions on music videos and a directors role within the music video. Her opinions were not a surprise in the sense that she thought the director oversees the creative side in the production of a music video. It was good to hear opinion on whether she thought the artist should be in the music video.
what kind of music videos to people watch, surveys, google forms (avoid asking how many music videos that people watch) locations, meaning, genre, performance, narrative, conceptual
- part iI: secondary research -
DIRECTOR IN MUSIC VIDEOS
ANALYSE MUSIC VIDEO FROM DIR. POINT OF VIEW
Promonews.tv
- part iII: production research-
Shooting at different frame rates
The frame rate of a video is how many frames there are per second meaning that the higher a frame rate is the more frames are per second of video. Slow motion shots are shot with a higher frame rate (such as 200,1000fps) as it allows more footage to be caught per second. A lower frame rate (such as 24fps) is used to capture most tv shows and films as it captures a nice motion blur on the footage.
FRAME RATE PRACTICAL TASK
To grasp a more concrete understanding of how frame rates work we experimented with speeding up and slowing down the sound and filming a performance of it at various frame rates to achieve a particular look.
Slowed down song
Sped up song
Lorn - Acid Rain
The music video for Lorn's Acid rain (2015 dir. Sherif Alabede, Pavel Brenner & Julian Flores, who use the collective alias 'R113') employed the use of an 'unsettlingly high frame rate' (not specified) to create an eerie and nightmarish atmosphere.
The high frame rate gave them the ability to play with the speed of the video. If you watch it, you can tell that each movement is slightly delayed and slower, this was done by slowing down the video.
We see the cheerleader dancing as she enters a stage of limbo (this is created by the high shutter speed, slowing the video down and making it more jarring to watch). We see her in her final moments of her life before she eventually joins her fellow cheerleaders at the end of the video.
my job as director
For this project I am the director. Which essentially means i am overseeing the production from a creative angle and will be at the forefront of planning and production. As i found the music video for Lorn's Acid rain to be an incredible experience to watch, aesthetically and technically, i felt it a good idea to analyse the video from a director's point of view.
Breakdown from A Director's Point of View - R113
When approaching this music video, as a director i think that narrative would be a strong point to consider. It is quite a confusing music video as it refuses to be entirely defined. In it's own right it is narrative based, in the way that it tells the story of a group of cheerleaders dying in a car crash; It is performative as the dance element is the most in your face part of the video; and it's conceptual as it has a large focus on the aesthetic and mood of the video.
If I were the director I think I'd pay the majority of my focus on the choreography of the dancing and how it will impact the overall production. You can see throughout the video how the dancing tells a narrative and focuses on their transition from life to death. You can see this blatantly in the style of cinematography and how the fast shutter speed creates a slower look to emulate the look of our protagonist being in limbo.
In an interview, Sherif Alabede (one of the directors) noted: “This was made when my former collective (R113) and I were still in art school. The program was so strict you had to write a full-length script and a treatment before they allowed you to shoot a single frame. In hindsight, it was good practice but at that time, a huge hindrance. Enjoy. Acid Rain, the gift and the curse...”
Script breakdown
Something that really interests me about the script is that although there is a lot of notes about the dancer's movement throughout the set (highlighted in red under 'choreography') there is actually very few notes on actually choreography. Giving the choreographer creative freedom to do whatever they feel necessary is a smart move in my opinion. A lot of the time, directors will be extremely specific about the choreography however I believe that it should truly be left down to the choreographers and the dancers as it is in their expertise.
The dressing also is something that I noted. You can most certainly tell the video was inspired by grindhouse and Lynchian Americana. The juxtaposition of a conservative idyllic small town tainted with disaster is a trope that no matter how over used or exploited always has a way of slapping it's audience in the face and this video was no exception.
Treatment
Sherif Alabede
There something very distinctive about how Acid Rain was filmed that i thought it was worth looking into the director more and found a few other video he had directed.
Arcadian - Symbion project
Arcadian is a music video that Alabede directed back in 2016 for music producer 'Symbion Project' and tells a dual narrative of the fantasy/reality of a prisoner on death row awaiting his execution.
Notes:
How it will help me in my own film
Find interviews or commentary?
Find other bits of work that he has done for it.
RESEARCH TO-DO LIST:
primary research - what kind of music videos to people watch, surveys, google forms (avoid asking how many music videos that people watch) locations, meaning, genre, performance, narrative, conceptual
research genre
research locations beyond location recce
look at similar music videos and deconstruct them
CONTACT WITH ARTIST
Over the course of the production period i wanted to keep in contact with my artist as much as i possibly could. I thought this was going to be important as at the end of the day the song is their own project and they know it better than anyone else. If I was going to make a music video to accompany the sound it made sense to keep in contact and see what they wanted.
Emails from 27/01/2022
These are the emails from a correspondence between Sirine and I as we worked out a good time for everyone to have a meeting. There was a bit of piecing together but eventually we got a solid meeting time and we were preparing when we got the unfortunate news that Sirine had covid meaning that the meeting was pushed to be over text message. This was so we had a verbatim record of everything she said and wanted which we could easily screenshot and share amongst ourselves.
Notes from a 29/01/2022 meeting
We had some correspondence with the artist over what they would like to see from the video or if they had any preferences or ideas. Luckily Sirine was quite happy to do whatever; whether performing or not and offered an idea of showing a happy relationship contrasting with the sad song 'Trusted you' that she had given us.
The idea actually is not too far from our new idea of two people dancing in an empty house while she performs a stripped cover of the song on a piano. I think this could work quite well with the overall theme of the music and may not be that challenging to make. The major problem we may encounter is not being able to find a place to film however there are a few people that we could potentially ask. A big inspiration for this music video will be Sia's Chandelier which has a similar look of dancing in an abandoned house, which we are currently looking into but it's all up in the air and everything can fall into place once we have a definite location.