Influences

Influences for 'Keep On Loving You'

The intention of my music video is to convey emotion without dialogue, and to provide the audience with something that could resonate with them on a personal level. Although most all music videos have no dialogue, I wanted to do something a little different and focus purely on expression and gesture in an effort to convey differing emotions that the audience could identify with. As I underwent the filming process, I thought of ways that I could convey certain emotions such as sadness, happiness and joy. Through research, I discovered the art of 'silent film'. 

A 'silent film' is a film with no recorded sound with a narrative that is expressed solely through gesture, mime and placards (pertaining to the eras 1895 - 1936). I was inspired by the concept of 'silent film' because of the way that narrative can be expressed without dialogue and can direct the audience to muster up their own emotional response and interpretation of the moving image. My research led me to discovering a pioneering silent film by none other than the great Alfred Hitchcock (who is incidentally one of my favourite directors!). 'The Lodger' by Hitchcock, is a classic thriller that follows the trail of uncovering the murderous path of a man who resides at a married couples home. 

What I found immensely fascinating from watching the trailer is that cinema can do so much without even trying! It evoked such a happy response that I'm going to watch the film over the weekend! The absence of dialogue didn't bother me at all, in fact, it urged me to work harder in discovering the narrative - but it didn't feel tiresome to do so. Because of this, it is clear that expression and gesture was going to feature heavily within my music video, which is why I felt that I needed to include varying close-up camera angles that told a story, whilst also conveying a particular emotion. I felt captivated by the way that the film was shot and how the camera managed to capture every single twinge of emotion on faces of the characters. 

Aside from researching the art of 'silent film', I was also inspired by one of my all time favourite films, 'Brick' (2005). Directed by Rian Johnson, 'Brick' is a neo-noir mystery/thriller film that follows the protagonist in his journey into the realm of a high-school crime circle following the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, Emily. The reason why this film is one of my favourites is because of it's aesthetic and the way that it was filmed. Overall, the film has a gritty and grungy appeal, but I pay the most attention to the use of cool toned overlays during several of the more melancholic scenes. 

The film features the same aesthetic throughout and convinces audience to maintain their engagement through a variety of camera shots as well as the complementary use of noise and grungy aesthetic appeal - this is what captivated me, anyhow. Focusing on the scenes of desperation and sadness that Brendan faces when uncovering his ex-girlfriends body, the footage has a soft, cool hue that intensifies the emotion that the audience are going to experience, but also highlights the pain of the characters. Because of this, I am going to use this as inspiration for my music video as I want to take the audience on a journey of emotion through my choices of camera angles and editing. 

There is also a discreet element of Colour Psychology here as the audience are led to feel the emotion of sadness and pain because of the associations with the colour blue. In my editing, I will be using this similar idea as I have already said, the intention is to evoke different emotional responses from the audience.

My footage

As mentioned in a previous post, I have also taken inspiration from a music video by Daughter. The music video, 'Doing The Right Thing' is full of the aesthetics that I want to achieve in my final product. Specifically looking at the colouring and editing of the video, the contrast with warm and cool toned footage is evident and is something that the audience will resonate with in terms of differing emotions that they are going to experience. It is obvious here that the main colouring of the screenshot that I have selected from the video is warm and exhibits a fire off-set to the right of the screen. For comparison, I have also included a screen shot of my footage of which details how I have drawn inspiration from this music video.

Footage from 'Doing The Right Thing' (Inspiration)

In addition to this, I also drew inspiration from the close-up shot of the eyes of the woman from Daughter's music video. I included an extreme close up camera shot of my mothers eyes in my own video.

Considering that my music video details the undying relationship of my parents and how it has grown throughout the years, I intended to use photographs that detailed their progression throughout their separate lives before meeting one another. So upon finding this video, it was with my luck that it actually had a 2 second frame of a wedding photograph of the two protagonists in the video. I observed how the photograph was filmed very closely and pondered on how I could make the photographs stand out in my music video. So, combined with the fire that I saw within the music video, I then tested how the photographs would look when filmed in front of my fireplace. It worked extremely well and had so much effect that I stuck with the idea. Symbolically, the flames over the photographs signified that their love for each other is undying and is ripe with passion and desire; as fire is typically denotes this.

Screenshot from Daughter music video (Inspiration)

The inspiration that I drew from the music video for Daughter was the use of extreme-close up camera shots. As you can see below, the screen shot from my music video exhibits my mothers side profile and eyes. Combined with the editing that I did through Final Cut, the frame conveys the emotion of sadness and shows my mother reminiscing about fond memories.

I didn't go into filming with the intention of copying the music video as considering that my band didn't have a music video for this song, I was given so much creative freedom.

Screenshot from my music video

Overall, my influences have been varied and I have enjoyed researching different elements that
would direct my music video in the right direction, but also satisfy my creative talent. Aside from the aesthetics and camera angles, I was also interested in the use of depth of field in the music video for Daughter. Because of this, you will see a range of transitional shots (see post about Transitional Footage for examples) that focus on nature and depth of field.

Screenshot from Daughters music video (Inspiration)

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Exploration of Transition Footage

Exploration of Transition Footage

This video documents my transition footage exploration as I play around with depth of field in my garden. The transition footage will be featured in my final product as this breaks up the video and gives the audience alternative frames to look at.

The test footage was incredibly successful and I have improved the way in which I filmed the transitions. I toyed around with the ISO and the Aperture so that I wouldn't have any noise in the clips. The footage came out crisp and sharp, and the blur and depth of field proves incredibly effective. I mentioned before that I would include slow motion editing over the footage, but for the transitions, I won't as this may detract from the clarity of the footage and could affect the effectiveness of the frames.

The first clip of the fence and the tree worked up until the point it reached the leaves - I wanted to see how well it would work if I had a nice depth of field but then blur it out at the end. It didn't prove as effective as I wanted it to be, so I filmed the same area again, but this time, letting the crispness of the leaves and the tree become apparent. The second time I filmed worked extremely well and I will test it out in Final Cut to see how editing the footage in different ways affect the meaning and interpretation. Moving on to the flower transitions, the second time I filmed worked well and the footage retained it's clarity and sharpness. However, the final time I filmed, I wanted to see how well the footage worked with me pushing the swinging flower basket and capturing depth of field. It proved ineffective and the footage looked messy as I was considering many different variables (i.e. the movement of the basket and controlling the focus and depth of field) - and I ultimately neglected the steadiness of the camera. Despite this, it was a useful exploratory risk that I took as I now know which footage and frames work best. 

I also asked friends and family which footage worked better and they all agreed that the second flower footage worked best, as well as the second fence and tree footage.