Music video planning

Short Synopsis:

For my music video, I want it to be narrative-driven. The narrative will be about a heist but with a twist. The main characters will be 18-year-olds but they will have a very childish deminer. (Drinking caparisons, eating chocolate) And for the heist, they are stealing a massive jar of sweets. During the first section of the video, I will have the heist set up/plan with everyone along a table discussing the plan. There will also be a character reading a newspaper with a picture of a detective and the caption "Best detective since Sherlock!" This sets some sort of tension between the group but doesn't get mentioned until the end. The middle section of the video will be executing the heist and with nerf guns. Once they find the sweets they will take them and run back to the car and drive back to their home. Once they get home they eat all of the sweets and go crazy. Once we get to the end of the song the detective is one of the people doing the heist and shoots them all when they are not looking with their nerf guns and then takes his mask off to reveal the detective at the beginning on the newspaper.    

The song I have chosen for my music video is BROCKHAMPTON: ST. PERCY - 

This song has a very gritty tone with a minimal beat to it until the end where it drops and the song goes more intense. The beginning of the song is just bass so I might have cuts to the bass tones and make it in tune to the song.  

Audio:

I will be making my music video to a song called ST. PERCY. I also want to have an intro to the song and that song will be HEAVEN BELONGS TO YOU, in the album this song comes before ST. PERCY so it transitions perfectly into it. This song has a music video but it is very short and doesn't have any aspects that I am going to be using. ST. PERCY will be the centre point of the video. Its also only 1 minute 30 seconds long so it's not too long of an intro.

The song has a very dark and grungy tone that I will be contrasting with the video in some way. Maybe for some of the scenes, I will mix them into the song so that there is a mixture of diegetic and not diegetic sound in the video.  

The ending of the video will be mixed into another BROCKHAMPTON song called IF YOU PRAY RIGHT. This also has a very smooth transition. This song has a music video but I am only using around 20 seconds from it. The reason that I will be having around 20 seconds of this song at the end of the video is that it will make the ending of the video more smooth. If I didn't use this song for the ending would be very abrupt. 

Visual inspiration: 

I want the beginning of the video to be black and white with harsh contrasting shades.  I have seen some clips from the film "pi" I want my music video to resemble this artistic style of harsh shades but only using the colours black and white. The black and white style makes it look very gritty and serious which will be a good contrast between the subject matter. The characters will be using childish mannerisms and using nerf guns to defend themselves, so the song and the visuals will contrast with the actual visuals.  


I want the video to be black and white throughout and then towards the end of ST. PERCY has the video change the colour and has it very vibrant.  

Shot list:

Scene one: The Setup

-Throughout this scene, the shots are predominantly in slow motion so that shots linger 
- Close up to long shot pulling back from character reading magazine
- "It smells like ginger" have a character come next to the main character reading a magazine with ginger and press it against their nose
- "Dead leaves in the breeze we've got chimneys" Shots of leaves and the chimney (closeups) 
- Filler shots of the people setting up the heist with a layout of the house and entry and exit points. More shots of empty sweet wrappers and caparison cartons to emphasise their demeanour.  
- "There's a war in my head just like the middle east" Main character will point at the nerf gun and another character will slap their hand and then say "no guns" 
- "When you wanna get money get them riches" Close up of the sweet jar drawing on the whiteboard with a slight dutch tilt, then a reaction shot of all of the characters looking at the sweet jar with the same dutch tilt
- Rest of the song will be a montage sequence of them getting in their car and getting ready to go 

Scene two: The Heist

- As instrumental builds to the vocals have shots of them getting closer to the house with shots of them driving past people on the street. 
- Shots of inside the car (pov)
- Security camera shot from outside the house as they approach 
- "Young Nolan, PlayStation controller" Close up of the owner of the house playing the PlayStation with headphones on so he can't hear anything.
- Tracking shot behind the 3 robbers as they get closer to the house 
- Close up of their feet as they walk closer towards the door.
- Close up of the robber kneeling down to get a key from under the matt and then looking at the rest of them high-five each other. 
- A reaction shot of the person in the house as they take their headphones off to look outside and see nothing.
- Shot from outside of the robbers ducking down to avoid being seen. Once they have stood up one of them hits them on the head. 
- Robber with the key counts down from 3 and then they put the key in the door to open it. 
- Close up of the key going in the door.
- Inside the house close up of the door handle turning to open. 
- Once inside close up of their feet walking towards the kitchen
- Mid shot of the door that the person was in looking at them walking past the door into the kitchen
- Tracking over the shoulder shot of the robbers walking into the kitchen and then beginning opening draws and cupboards
- 3 separate shots of each of the robbers (tracking shot) of the opening and closing cupboards and draws looking for the loot.
- Mid shot of one of them pointing to something off-camera
- Static shot of the robber pointing at the camera and them running towards the camera and picking it up (camera as the loot)
- Over the shoulder shot of robber placing it down on the table to then open it
- Pulling back and forward while rotating at different angles
- A reaction shot of the robbers from the perspective of the loot 
- One continuous shot outside the house down the road and into the getaway car

Chapter 3: The reward 

- Slow-mo shots of them getting out of the jar with sweets
- Them placing down sweets (close up of hand placing down the jar)
- Slow-motion of the sweets falling out of the jar into the table (close up)
- Robber A eating sweets Slo-motion close up 
- Robber B eating sweets slow motion close up
- Close up of the nerf gun shooting X2
- A reaction shot of Robber B as Robber A falls to the ground 
- Close up of nerf gun shooing 
- Slow-motion shot of Robber C walking to check on their bodies tapping them as she goes by
- Slowly sits back down (slow-motion) takes off the mask 
- big reveal that she is the blue face killer and fade to black on her face

The timeline doesn't look that complicated of an edit but getting the timing right with the song was challenging. 
  

I also made a thumbnail for the video inspired by the other singles BROCKHAMPTON have released:

Final Film:

Evaluation:

Overall I feel like this was the best shoot and edit of a project. The overall plan of the video came together with the shot list. The shot list I made sure to have on set while shooting and it overall made the shooting a lot easier and it did save time. I made sure to not take any unessisery shots so that I didn't waste any time. While shooting we did discover some things didn't work out as with the "dead leaves in the breeze" shot we tried to make some leaves flow in the wind, there wasn't any wind and the shot didn't end up looking good so I decided not to do it. This was one of many of the decisions I and Chris had to make when shooting the video was what shots are necessary.

The editing process was very simple as I made sure to have the shot plan next to me and I used it as a timeline so that it made it easier for me to track. The video came out how I imagined it to with the edit but I did use more slow-motion than intended because some shots didn't last long enough so I had to use slow motion to make the shots work. But overall I think the use of the slow-motion made the video look better. The entire ST PERCY section was going to be all black and white. When editing it didn't have the same effect that I wanted. It just made the footage look bland and not as effective. I did have the black and white in on a small part of the song where it breaks down but that fit the tone of the song and video.  

Some shots in particular that went differently in post:  

While planning this music video I wanted to have some subtitles to accompany the visuals so that the song connects well with the visuals. When I added the subtitles it actually drew you away from the video and made you read when you didn't need to. I wanted to caption this "Guns?" When I put the caption in it wasn't needed. The hand gesture implied this and didn't need the extra exposition. 

Throughout the music video, I had lots of slow-motion shots. Originally I didn't want many slow-motion shots but when I put them in it made the video more impactful and enjoyable. When filming I wanted to make sure that I could slow the footage down whenever I wanted. So I shot in 100 frames per second. This allowed me to have as much creative freedom as I needed when in the edit. 

During the beginning of the second scene, there are lots of b roll footage of the 3 protagonists walking towards the location of the sweets and I felt like I needed to make these slow-motion. I wanted the viewer to really focus on these three people as they are the main focus of the video. I wanted the shots to linger on the characters, the 100 frame rate also helped me to slow down the footage to make the frame stay on the characters. 

I also feel like the CCTV shot was something that worked well even though it wasn't something that I had planned for the shoot. It adds another layer to the video as a whole and that the world is more connected. While we were on set I decided to get a high angle shot of them coming through the gate and this evolved into the CCTV shot even though it wasn't originally planned. It definitely adds to the video overall.

   
When planning the video I wanted to have it all in black and white to make the overall theme of the video to be serious but have that lighthearted tone to it. This plan didn't end up fully coming true. I decided to not have the entire video in black and white as it took away any bright colours coming from the sweet jar. The brought the overall look of the video down in quality so I decided not to follow this idea. I did want some black and white in the video and during the song it breaks down and slows down, I took this opportunity to add the black and white effect as well as some noise/grain. This makes the footage match the tone of the breakdown of the song. It also makes this part stand out the most as the colours and tone of the song have toned down.  

For this shot, It was something that we decided to do on set as I didn't know how to approach the reveal of the loot. The shot that we ended up using fits really well with the childish tone. The only thing that I wished the shot was different is that it isn't long enough. I wanted it to be a continuous shot of Jaz picking up the camera and putting it down on the other side of the room. It still is very effective but I only wish it were longer.