Prelim Music Video Idea

I've been looking at music videos we can recreate for our prelim task and have found it difficult to find ones which are effective and interesting whilst also being achievable for us to do on a small budget. However, when looking in class on Friday with Rob and Ellie we saw a video which we think we'd be able to do. Our suggestion is 'Titanium' by David Guetta ft. Sia.

We really liked this because we thought the narrative was clear, concise and easy to replicate. There is only one real main character so we wouldn't have to carry out a huge casting process and rely on other actors. 

The locations would be relatively easy to recreate - there are woods in Ilkley, we could easily film at someone's house and down a residential street. 

The destroyed school would be more challenging but we think we could make a corridor in school look more dishevelled by adding some overturned chairs and tables and pieces of paper scattered down the hall. We may even be able to experiment in aftereffects to try adding rubble or dust to the shots. 

We would be able to recreate some of the camera work relatively accurately such as the master shot of the school corridor, close up when he walks into the house and high angle shot when he's trying to open the door. 

However some shots would be difficult to get such as when he's riding on the bike. In the video he's riding very quickly and there are close ups of it in motion as well as tracking the boy; it would be very challenging for us to gather this kind of footage but I'm sure we'd be able to create something, maybe just having the bike passing the camera from different angles and using different shot types rather than trying to track it directly. 

I've noticed that a lot of the panning and tracking shots are done on a steadicam rather than handheld so the footage is very smooth and doesn't jerk with the movement of the camera man. We do not have access to this kind of equipment so may have to compromise the 'smoothness' of our shots by using our handheld DSLRs or having static shots and keeping them on a tripod. 

We would be able to recreate the news report relatively easily in a similar way to how I did my news report in my AS film opening - using a green screen and adding it in. 

Mise en scene may be challenging as there is not only a destroyed school to try and create but also a lot of details in the boy's bedroom such as the planets in the top right hand corner which it's likely we won't have. Again, with elements like this we'd just have to do the best we could with what we've got when dressing the set. 

However, I think the most obviously challenging and therefore the most exciting element of recreating this video is the special effects. The boy turns out to have supernatural powers and therefore makes keys fly towards him and teddies spin in the air. 

We would not have the software available to to this however, I think it is achievable. We could tie a thin piece of thread to the teddies and hang them down to make it look like they're floating. We could also do a similar thing with the keys, cutting two shots together using action matching to make it appear as one movement - we could have the first shot with someone yanking the keys off the table using the thread and then have a separate shot of someone throwing them towards the actor and having them catch them (arguably the most difficult part of the process). 

Alternatively, instead of using string we could film someone throwing the keys onto the table then reverse the video so it looks like they fly up. Overall I think this is manageable and it would be very fun problem solving as a group over how best to recreate these scenes. 

The scene at the end could be shot in the woods in Ilkley using torches or even just phone lights to create the sense that the boy's being hunted. 

The final supernatural occurrence could be created in aftereffects to add a flash of bright light. Alternatively, we could shine torches into the camera lens from behind the boy causing him to become silhouetted and creating the illusion that the light's coming from him.

The illusion of the explosion would rely on people jumping backwards to make it look like they've been hit by a huge force. If possible someone could stand outside of the shot using a leaf blower to disturb the ground and add to the effect. 

Overall I think this video would definitely be a challenge to recreate but it would also be very fun and is possible if we are creative.