Final Major Project: Animated Music Video

Music

The first thing that I need to do before I create any sort of moodboard, focus group, or script is to figure out what song I will create a music video to. I have some ideas of what I would like to do in regards to my music video; the only ideas I have at the moment are some kind of mix between 3D and 2D animation, potentially using actual 3D assets but also potentially just using the 3D animation as a reference. This means that it would be easier for me to do more fast-paced, action-based shots rather than just motionless lip-syncing. I would also ideally like for my final animation to match the song's lyrics in meaning and theme; however, I don't want it to have too much outside influence from an already existing music video. Because of this, I have four criteria for the song I animate:

It has to have interesting lyrics, which I can see the meaning behind but also interpret in my own way.
It mustn't have an existing music video that could influence my animation.
It must ideally be fast-paced and have portions that could ideally translate to action shots.
The song ideally shouldn't be too long.

I have four songs in the running at the moment: Hayloft by Mother Mother, Devil Town by Cavetown, Qwerty Finger by Everything Everything, and Kingslayer by Bring Me the Horizon (feat. Babymetal). Here are some simple descriptions of the song and its pros and cons, along with a short example of the most interesting bits of the song (under a minute each). I have also done a small piece of concept art of what I think an animated music video would look like, mostly in regards to colour theory. I will say, as a small disclaimer, that a lot of the time my mental image of music is skewed slightly by the song's album cover (since I listen to my music on Spotify, and the album cover is the first thing I see), so I have included the album cover for reference.

Hayloft

"Hayloft", by Mother Mother, is a song about two young gay lovers who are attempting to hide their relationship from one of the characters' fathers by hiding in the hayloft. The song explicitly states that the father has a gun and "you better run". It is implied that he would shoot them if they were caught. When it comes to colour theory, this song is dark in themes and contains lyrical imagery of blood and violence, so I always imagine a dark red light and some kind of silhouetted girl shooting bullets. The character design that might go with this sound would be complex and contain hints to the song's meaning.

Pros:

Lyrics have a lot of meaning.
The song is fairly short.

Cons:

Already has a music video
The song is quite repetitive.
It isn't that fast-paced; portions of it are quite slow.
Lyrics are quite unadaptable; there is not much room for interpretation.

Hayloft (edited).wav

Devil Town

"Devil Town", by Cavetown, is one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite artists. It is a song about a child who is in an abusive situation with their parents, and they seem to be talking to their sibling. The child sounds very sad, and there are themes of suicide all throughout the song (such as the lines "we're all dead in devil town" or "falling doesn't feel so bad when I know you've fallen this way too"). As for colours, I have taken a fair amount of inspiration from the album cover of the "Cavetown" album, which this song belongs to, but I always imagine a glitchy, scribbly character design, as if drawn by a child, being the main focus of the music video, with a background of dark blacks and blues.

Pros:

Very fast-paced
Interesting lyrics
A fairly short song
There is no existing music video.

Cons:

Lyrics are quite unadaptable; there is not much room for interpretation.

Devil Town (edited).wav

Qwerty Finger

"Qwerty Finger", by the band Everything Everything, is, of course, a song that I have animated portions of in the past. I would love to do a full music video for this song, even now. The lyrics of this song are intentionally unintelligible since the singer's voice is very high-pitched and mumbly, and you can only really make out the odd word. While this means that I'm not able to base the music video off of the lyrics, I still have the song itself to go off of, which is fast, electronic, and high-energy. Because of this, I always think of bright colours and a person running dramatically through this space (you can see this in the bit that I animated previously). During the bridge, however, I always imagine the character instead flying through actual outer space, seeing planets, asteroids, and stars.

Pros:

Very fast-paced, lots of potential
Short song
There is no existing music video.

Cons:

No lyrics
Quite repetitive

Qwerty Finger (edited).wav

Kingslayer

"Kingslayer", by Bring Me The Horizon featuring Babymetal, is a rock song about a legendary warrior, seemingly living in a video game (as assumed by lyrics such as "system failure", "artificial to the day you die," and "silly programme"). I always imagine there being two characters: the one sung by Oliver Sykes (the lead singer of BMTH) and Su-metal (the lead singer of Babymetal). I imagine them as two in-depth characters participating in epic battle scenes, as indicated by the heavy music and vocals.

Pros:

Fast-paced, interesting music
Good vocals (good for interpretation)
Not very repetitive
There is no existing music video.

Cons:

Would require more complex character design (making it more difficult to animate).

Kingslayer (edited).wav

Album Covers

Mother Mother - O My Heart (contains Hayloft)

Cavetown - Cavetown (contains Devil Town)

Everything Everything - Man Alive (contains Qwerty Finger)

Bring Me The Horizon - Post Human: Survival Horror (contains Kingslayer)

Focus Group

In order to decide between these four incredible songs, I enlisted the help of nine of my peers and my tutor, allowing them each to listen to the clips, read through the summary and pros and cons, and then decide which one they thought would be best for me to do. It was very useful, and of course, since my peers are part of my target audience, they were able to give me some insight into not only which song they prefer but which one they would rather see as a music video.

The votes, I found, were surprisingly biassed. For starters, nobody voted for Hayloft, and in my face, some of my peers specifically criticised it for being too slow and for having too basic and repetitive a theme. Also, as an aside, this song is quite popular with my generation and was played a lot in general media a few years ago, meaning a few of the people I asked had a pre-set negative opinion of the song itself. In hindsight, this song would not have been a good one to animate, and I can understand my peers' dislike of it from a social perspective. Qwerty Finger was also fairly unpopular; it wasn't disliked, but many people simply found it uninteresting, and the fact that the lyrics were unintelligible was a significant con. My tutor was the only one who voted for this song, saying that it had the potential to be interesting and more surreal than the others.

The votes were mostly stuck between Kingslayer and Devil Town. Many people, like me, preferred the fast-paced, exciting potential of Kingslayer. I can definitely say that, personally, every time I listen to that song, I get the urge to animate to it, and I'm sure that others, like me, can see the action-packed scenes playing behind their eyes as the music plays. Devil Town, however, appealed to people because of the heavy messaging and the stylized aesthetic that I desired. Overall, it was almost an exact split between the votes; however, in the end, Kingslayer got four votes and Devil Town got five. Many people expressed that while Kingslayer was a very interesting image, it would be a little too ambitious since my vision would require complex character design and action shots. And so, in the end, Devil Town was decided to be the song I would animate for my final production.

Devil Town - More Info

Robin Skinner, better known by his stage name Cavetown, is a professional indie singer-songwriter born in 1998. His music is known for blending elements of a multitude of different styles, most notably indie rock, bedroom pop, and softer ballad-esque styles. Since releasing his debut single "This Is Home", which has over 250 million streams on Spotify, he has gained over 7 million monthly listeners and has released six albums, a custom mixtape, and over 36 singles, EPs, and covers. Cavetown is beloved by the LGBTQ+ community for being an iconic trans artist, and many of his songs are written with the intention of being relatable to trans and queer kids.

Devil Town was amongst Skinner's first original songs as Cavetown, a song written and produced by Skinner in 2015 as a part of his self-named album "Cavetown", This song has over 300 million streams on Spotify and is currently his most played song. It is one of the more upbeat Cavetown songs in tempo and overall pacing. The song has no music video since, at the time of its release, there was no budget for a music video; however, the lyrics alone tell the unmistakable story of a child being abused and neglected by their parents.

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