Concepts

This lesson we sat down and talked through our concept ideas so we could collate them all in one document which we can use during our pitch to the class and also take when we meet the band so our ideas are clear and more solidified than before.

This is the list:

The big things we need to discuss with the band are:

-Do they want to be in it or use an actor for the narrative? Depending on their availability, it might be easier to use an actor we know e.g. someone from Rob's drama group as they would be likely to have more time to meet us and spend the time which the project is going to need. 

-What is the purpose of the video? Do they want to send a political message, raise awareness, motivate people to take action or just entertain? All of this will have a huge impact on how we position the video. 

-Was the song written for someone? What prompted them to write about this particular issue, did they know someone it affected? If so, it would be good to perhaps get an interview with them or someone with a similar story at the start of the video. 

-What part of 'homelessness' do they want to represent? Do they want to show the difficulties of living on the streets, the way things can be recovered, how people got there, the challenges faced by people in difficult situations e.g. illnesses, job losses, abuse that can lead to homelessness a la 'I, Daniel Blake', how you can help people on the streets, or present a journey of hope? It's a very broad topic and we need to know what element of it they had in mind when they wrote the song. 

When we were discussing narrative ideas it became clear to us that we would have to be very careful in the way this video presented homelessness. We don't want to victimise the homeless by showing them as passive victims waiting to be helped by someone else. We want to show them as strong people in traumatic situations but who can get through it. However, we don't want to go too far the wrong way and say that they're absolutely not victims of circumstance and we are very mindful about sending the wrong message e.g. that they got themselves there and should get themselves out. Therefore we must handle the issue sensitively and always be aware about how we're presenting the character. 

 We looked at some more music videos, focussing particularly on Ed Sheehan's 'A-Team' music video where we really liked some of the techniques used e.g. the time lapse with lots of movement around a static homeless person.

We thought this would be effective in Leeds station where there is a really heavy footfall or on Shipley Station bridge which is a very interesting, strangely symmetrical location. We also liked the black and white effect and thought this could be really symbolic in the video, especially if we started to seep colour into it when the situation starts to improve, really gradually and starting with muted colours so the audience don't really notice until, all of a sudden, there's colour.

We also wanted to emphasise the idea of some people being inside and others being out by showing those with homes in contrast to those without e.g. looking through house windows or filming the band at a gig and having a homeless person watching from the window. This really emphasises that simple struggle of them being excluded not only from comfort but also from society.