Initial and Developed Shot Ideas

Shot ideas

The song I have chosen features a slow melody and tempo. I have decided that a mixture of concept and perfomance based shots would work well in the video to this pace. From my own experience of watching music videos in the genre I have witnessed a majority of shots being based around nature or the natural world. Therefore I feel the tone, pace and melody will fit shots of nature very well in my own video. However since the song is so slow it does have a danger of being too depressive, which is not the effect I desire from the music video. To avoid this effect I aim to include postivie imagery such as focusing on the sun, and general  "happy" images- for example a close up shot of a smile.
 My favourtie music videos are very stylistic and almost film like. For this reason and the fact that I feel the song fits the stylistic approach I intend to include this in my own work. This includes allot of long and short shots of not neccessarily the artist.

A few shots that I have had in mind are: The main melody and musical accomaniment for the lyrics is a piano piece. This is especially evident at the very start of the song.A shot idea I had for this stage was a close up of my artists hands playing the piano. I also had an idea to use connotations of age in my video, so the idea of dust motes being another focus in this shot also appeals to me. This would be a direct link between the visuals and the sound so I would have to have some tight editing to match the two in synchronisation.

Throughout my music video I intend to cut between natural shots and also shots of my performer. Since my artists are not very well known I feel I should succumb to the rule I found through my research and include them. However I find that the music videos which focus the majority of shots on the artist bore me and end up a little tacky. I have researched further into these videos and have found a few which create a good balance between this and concept shots. In my recent study of the music video for "falling" by Haim I discovered the effect of tight focus shots on aspects of the artist- for exmaple close ups of either the lips, teeth, eyes or hair- and then a shot of the artists full profile. This gave a very good effect as the audience never compeltely saw the whole individual, and when this image was shown it created a bigger impact. I also feel this close framing echoes the stylistic approach I intend to use and would work well with the song.

As I have mentioned I would like there to be a heavy focus on nature and the natural world througout the video. This will make the filming trickier as I have specific shots in mind that could be very weather dependant. A few nature shots I had in mind are: A shot of sunlight through branches/trees, sunlight catching dust motes, sunlight on my artists hair. I feel this would create a warm glow and atmosphere that could deter away from the somewhat cold, sad nature of the song. Shots which focus on leaves and plants are something I also noted from the Haim video and is something I would like to add in my own shots. In the video I studied by Foals (Spanish Saharah) there was an abundance of water shots which I feel works beautifuly with slower paced film. I have a few in mind that I feel could work, especially those with waves and ripples or reflections.

The final shot idea I have had is to do with motion. Due to the slow nature of the song I have focused on mostly static shots of close ups. However I do like the idea of adding a panning shot (up, down or across) of a landscape. For this I would need a tracking dolly which could be difficult as I plan to shoot mostly outside on somewhat uneven terrain. A shot I have seen before in a few different places and one I would like to add in is also a moving shot of the sky and trees from a vehicle driving along the road. The camera would be angled straight up so that the framing would catch only the trees rushing by ahead.

These are all just inital shot ideas that I have been developing in my head and still need piecing together or mixing up depending on wether I end up creating a narrative or concept based video.