Production: Budget

	sub-total	amount	price	item
	£10.00	1	£10.00	Boil and bite mouthguard
	£7.99	1	£7.99	Casting epoxy resin
	£10.00	1	£10.00	Clear nail acrylic
	£49.99	1	£49.99	Sword
	£45.00	1	£45.00	Sword
	£34.99	1	£34.99	Sword
	£74.90	1	£74.90	Long coat
	£24.88	2	£12.44	Contact lenses black
	£91.60	4	£22.90	Contact lenses blue
	£33.00	1	£33.00	Helmet
	£2.15	1	£2.15	Necklace
total	£384.50

I was given a budget of £400 so I tried to use it sparingly. I decided an Excel document would be a good way to set out the list of things I needed and the price to get them. For the teeth of the different characters I looked at buying some materials to make fake teeth that I found the recipe for (See post on 'Research: Teeth for Costumes'). I then chose 3 different swords for the sword fighting scene and a long coat for the main character to wear. I also bought contact lenses, a helmet and a necklace, all of which will add to th

Production: Treatment

Treatment A2 Media Studies Music Video

“Turn Loose the Mermaids” and “Rest Calm”

A Traveller starts out in a gravyard staring at a grave stone. He proceeds to walk away across a valley, dessert, jungle and moor. He is a man that has travelled for many years. Throughout the different shots of him walking across the globe the band is shown either playing in a black room, or single shots of the lead singer in many locations. When the song speeds up the traveller starts to move faster accross the land eventually running into a dark forest. This is when the first song stops. There is a short pause as a shadow moves past the camera very quickly. The traveller turns and looks around him. 

The second song starts as the travellers eyes turn blue and two men face him with black eyes. The traveller draws his sword and there is a fight. The fast passed music fits with the fight and the film goes into slow motion as the song does. The band this time is seen playing in the forest. At one point in the song the bands eyes are seen changing to bright blue. Once the man kills the two men he walks onto a moor. He sees an army before him. He draws his sword again and the film cuts to black. 

Research: Textual Analysis of Genre Conventions

Research: Music Video Genre Codes and Conventions

Research: The British Music Experience

The British Music Experience was a very useful tool in giving me some ideas for what I could do for my music video. It was research that I found to be quite useful in the way I set the music to what was happening in the film. I was able to get some great ideas for what would happen when trying to get the music and film to fit together seamlessly. Although I found that a lot of exhibition was not what I was looking for, I did find some very useful and interesting information that I could use for my film.  

Research: Teeth for costumes

I found a website that was very good for creating things. I found a way to make fake teeth and decided to use this for the costumes in my film. It was a very simple recipe and easy to follow.

Research: Basic Ideas of a Music Video

A music video is not merely a film with a song. The music video has to encompass ideas that the song is trying to portray. In the case of 'Nightwish' for instance, is the video 'The Islander', a song about a lonely gentlemen doing his job on a remote island.

However, I wanted to go down a different route. I wanted to take the mood of the song I am portraying as opposed to taking the words at their meaning exactly. I would take the words and use them as guidance, but I would not use them as a script.

Research: How to Make a Music Video

I started to look at how other amateur movie makers made music videos on a low budget. I decided that my best bet was to check 'Film Riot', a group that show how to get a professional look for a low budget. I have watched many of their films before for useful tips, so I knew they were reliable.

Research: The Band's Previous Videos

What I noticed about the past videos this band has done is that they are all very dark, and are mostly set under gothic ideas. I also noticed that a lot of them seemed to be set around fantasy worlds and objects. I decided it would be a good idea to incorporate some of these ideas and aspects into the film I was going to make. I decided to set the film around the old idea of Lycans vs Vampires. I, however, wanted to go back to the routes of vampires and lycans and away from the new 'Twilight' style ones. So with this in mind I designed my cast to be dark and evil.

Some of the past videos of 'Nightwish'

Research: The Band

The song that I want to film is by a band called 'Nightwish', from their new album 'Imaginaerum'. This album is very different from most other albums today. Instead of the album being a collaboration of different songs that the band has created it is written as an actual album that is designed to be listened to as an album. This makes it very difficult to choose one song from the album to film. So instead I chose a set of 2 songs of very different styles.

Because this album is written as a long story, it means that I will only be telling part of a larger story. So as such I decided that I should write a base idea for this longer story.

Research: Music Video History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_video

The Start
In 1926, with the arrival of "talkies" many musical short films were produced. Vitaphone shorts (produced by Warner Bros.) featured many bands, vocalists and dancers. Animation artist Max Fleischer introduced a series of sing-along short cartoons called Screen Songs, which invited audiences to sing along to popular songs by "following the bouncing ball", which is similar to a modern karaoke machine.

Following On
In 1964, The Beatles starred in their first feature film A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester. Shot in black-and-white and presented as a mock documentary, it interspersed comedic and dialogue sequences with musical ones.The Beatles' second feature Help! (1965) was a much more lavish affair, filmed in colour in London and on international locations.

The Next level
In 1981, the U.S. video channel MTV launched, airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" and beginning an era of 24-hour-a-day music on television. With this new outlet for material, the music video would, by the mid-1980s, grow to play a central role in popular music marketing.

Modern Times
The website iFilm, which hosted short videos, including music videos, launched in 1997. Then, 2005 saw the launch of the website YouTube, which made the viewing of online video much faster and easier; Google Videos, Yahoo! Video, Facebook andMySpace's video functionality, use similar technology. Such websites had a profound effect on the viewing of music videos; some artists began to see success as a result of videos seen mostly or entirely online.

Research: Music Through The Decades

Music has always been a part of my life, and as such I knew a lot about music history. However, I didn't think I knew quite enough for my A2 Media. I solved this by doing research into how music developed from the early stages of rock 'n' roll all the way up to modern day pop. What I discovered was that almost all of modern music came from rock 'n' roll, which in turn had been influenced by blues. I found this very interesting because it meant that at it's base, different music styles had a common ancestry. I believed I could use this to my advantage when making my video.

http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/music-through-decades

Research: Sundance

On the 26th of April I went to the Sundance Film and Music festival. This was a perfect exhibit for my A2 Media project as it was about the collaboration of film and music. My A2 media project was a music video, so being able to see the crossover of music and film really helped with the way I saw film making. The day was a collaboration of film directors and composers, so I got the best of both world and got I started to see how film and music fit together perfectly.

Although I missed the actual day due to school, I was able to catch the speeches on a seminar later on a recorded webcast.

http://www.sundance-london.com

Research: Raindance Film Festival

As a member of Raindance, I decided it would be helpful to go and see a course on film making as it cost nothing. So I booked tickets and on the day I went up to London to watch the seminar. It consisted of 4 parts and 2 speakers. 3 of the parts were by a man who has been in almost all parts of the film industry, and the 4th part was by a film director. I found this part to be the most helpful because it showed aspects of filming that I had never thought about. Most of this was placement of actors, but it was also showing how, just because it looks stupid in real life, often means it looks great on camera. I learnt the key fundamental about being a director on this day, which is when an actor says they feel uncomfortable, or that they don't like how they are, there is simply one thing you say 'Yes, but it looks great'.

http://www.raindance.org