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