Construction of the animatic

We used a new sonny mpeg2 sd nxcam, that was positioned on a tripod to stabilise the shots and film our paper story boards, we did this so we could transfer this onto final cut pro, the camera is a hard disk, therefore there is no tape involved and we can download this on the computer super fast. It took half an hour to shoot everything, but ten seconds per a shot. Once this was done, we then uploaded the shots onto final cut pro and started to cut the shots to the track. However the track was too long so we had to cut the track, after few trial and errors, we managed to finish the cut sounds making sure the track was clear of any errors .We went through the track and decided what the best time was to cut between shots- making note of key rhythms that will help make editing easier. Throughout the track we used markers to ensure we knew where everything was, thus would make editing easier. Becoming involved with editing has broadened my understandings of the media technology that is a necessity that has to be used. However again we had to elongate and cut shots in order to fit the music in and also reflect the mood of the music. This is important due to the fact that we were telling part of a story in our video.

Story boarding process

When we initially started our story boards, we started drawing many of the images with our first ideas and themes. we constructed our story boards, to convey the various ideas that we had for our music video.

Our first story board had many images of fire, as we wanted to use the fire as metaphor and a dramatisation of emotion in the artists mind. However due to major health risks we could not use this idea moreover we wanted to use the fire to burn down an old house, however this was extremelly difficult as to create fire and find a location where we could actually burn down a house was a little unrealisic, we found out that we would actually have to have a fire engine on standbye.

We put our heads together and came to an agreement. We drew up a new story bored to reveal our new ideas. We also thought of using a helicopter to further break away from a rather old country western style, however we came to understand that the expense and reality of using a helicopter was out of the question, we wanted to use the helicopter to symbolise a turn into the new modern world we live in today, thus breakingaway from the sterotypes.

Moreover we thought of using scarecrows to create a synical atmosphere in our music video, however we did not all agree as making a scarecrows look realisic and alive was very hard, furthermore scarecrows are often associated with country western styled music videos, thus we want to move away from this. Furthermore the scarecrow was to sepcific to the horror genre and we didnt want to alienate are audience, our references on you tube were also really extreme
and therfore we did not think we could pull of the right look without making it comical.

Below are some of the initial ideas.

Each of us had different ideas and enterpretations on what we wanted for the music video at times it was difficult as i thought we had a few extremelly creative ideas. However we came together as a group and decided that we need to come to an agreement, the story boarding process took alot longer then expected, i struggled at some moments as im not the best drawer, although i promoted our final idea that we all came to agree on.

Our new ideas where extremely imaginitive, yet a little excentric, we decided to use people on chaines that were entrapt and felt imprisoned, thus symbolises the corruption of society and is a meataphor for the demons in the leading singers head. There are shots on the story board that show the lead singer chasing after his lover, his "black heart" is broken and this is shown throughout our music video through the shots and images of the leading artist looking depressed and heart broken. The actors and actresses are chained to various parts of battersea power station, the people look decrepide, lost, dirty, aniamlistic and depressed, which creates an opressive yet rather indeering atmosphere, we see so many of the same music videos and ours really is different in terms of location and the atmosphere is a little emotional and uncomfortable and a rather dark take on country western music. Therefore Ithink our video stands out and is diverse thus making it rather attractive to the audience.

We are trying to break away from the typical country western style, therefore using our ideas that are revealed on our finished story boards, show a unique and diverse vision that is like no other country western music video. We decided to shoot our music video in Battersea power station, which further breaks away from the typical farm or desert setting. Our concluded story board shows varies shots of the "goblin" humans and shots of a man, our leading actor and singer in great pain through his first love, he is heart broken and has gone mad from this, which is shown through the meataphors of the decrepid humans and the entrapment through the chains .