We had our filming day today! Three different locations over 12 hours, we were SO exhausted afterwards. We began filming at Conor’s house near the city at 11am, moved onto Footscray streets after that and then finally arrived at our pool location. We officially finished filming at 11pm. We felt pretty accomplished afterwards though. Everything seemed to run pretty smoothly and all of our extras turned up for the pool scene which looked great on camera. We had a bit of trouble trying to get the $2 stores to agree to letting us filming inside but finally found a few that would let us. I’m keen to see how this is all going to look when we edit it!

‘JUSTIN BEIBER’ – FORTUNES SHOT LIST

Fortunes – Justin Beiber

Concept

The video opens with introductory shots of a pool party, lots of people and bright colours. This cuts to the lead singer of the band, Conor, walking down the street at midday as the song starts. Conor goes to cluttered $2 stores to shop for party supplies including streamers, plastic cups, party poppers and other classic party essentials. This is intercut with Conor singing and dancing in his own style in the store.

Returning home, Conor begins to set up for the pool party, decorating the space and trying on outfits, this will be edited using fast-paced cuts and close ups.

Finally Conor is seen floating in the pool on an inflatable pool toy, alone. It seems no one will actually arrive and he has set up this party for himself only.

The band, Fortunes, are an established Melbourne duo whose musical genre is best described as RnB electronica. Their aesthetic style matches this genre, a heavy emphasis on urban streetwear, often dressed in Adidas hoodies, Nike sneakers, buckets hats, etc. As clothing is such an expressionistic element within this music genre the video will showcase particular styles Conor dresses in. This particular style is experiencing a steady rise and is evident in other bands such as MØ, ALTA, Habits and more popular celebrities such as Miley Cyrus.

Production

The film clip is basically divided into three sections; The Introduction, Part 1, 2, and 3. The Introduction will occur before the clip begins and shows a number of people splashing about a pool and taking part in a pool party with Conor at the centre of it all. Part 1 features Conor walking to the shops to purchase party items as well as playing around with these items within the store. Part 2 will show Conor setting up for the party and Part 3 shows Conor floating in the pool by himself as it becomes apparent that the party he is throwing is just for himself.

Locations

Each section of the clip has its own location. The Introduction and Part 3 are set in a private home pool. We’ve already received permission from a family friend to use their pool in Yarraville for these scenes. Part 1 will require us to gain permission from one or two $2 stores around our filming location in Footscray/Yarraville and Part 2 will be filmed inside Conor’s house as well as around the pool.

Inspiration/Similar Style

The concept for the video was partly a leftover idea from a previous music video concept and partly brainstorming with the client to create a tailored idea for their particular song. As this was the primary method of development there was no major inspiration as such. However we developed some aesthetic ideas on how to film various locations from other music videos, such as Banoffee’s With Her and Lorde’s Yellow Flicker Beat for the pool scene, ALTA’s Stay Awhile for the urban scene’s and Jungle Giants’ Any Kind Of Way for the party scene. These video’s all in some way express a similar style that we would like to achieve. We also looked into other music video’s that involve pools and parties and discovered style’s that we wanted to avoid, such as Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry.

Michel Gondry was today’s director in focus. He’s a quirky sort and clearly quite an interesting and vivid thinker. Here’s a clip he directed for Bjork that we watched in class and the entire thing is like a mini movie. It made me realise how much can actually be crammed into 4 minutes and you can tell an entire story in such a small amount of time. Also the set and the production element of this vid are exceptional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJnhaXwK86M&list=RDXJnhaXwK86M#t=13

So we still really like the idea of using a beach or pool for our video clip. We’re beginning to establish our concept. Because the song is so fun, it might be nice to have some kind of pool party occur, however we don’t want it to be too cliche. So maybe a pool party where no one turns up? That might be cool. Also Conor has some rad dance moves so we definitely want to show those off within the clip.

Flesh Without Blood was entirely directed, edited and coloured by Grimes herself. On top of this she not only wrote and sings Flesh Without Blood, but produced the song herself as well. This is one of the main reasons why Grimes is one of my favourite artists, because she literally is an artist in all aspects of the word. As discussed by Railton and Watson, the music industry is full of sexism and women still struggle to be taken seriously within it. Grimes is overly aware of how female artists are depicted in the music industry and this is a driving force behind her creating everything herself.

What makes this video clip extra unique is that it actually encompasses two songs within it. The first track and first half of the clip is ‘Flesh Without Blood’ and the second track and second half of the clip is a song called ‘Life In The vivid Dream’. Both songs entirely juxtapose one another but fit extremely well within this doll-like, somber fairytale world that has been created in the video. In an interview, Grimes outlines how she chose to incorporate these two songs into the one clip to accentuate the fact that every song on her latest album are entirely different from one another. So the making of this clip was a somewhat strategic move on her part. The best part about this clip is that it provides so many different genres and styles which is exactly what Grimes new album offers. This was released as a teaser for her new album ‘Art Angels’, so it makes perfect sense that the clip reflects the structure of this new album.

The clip essentially showcases a series of Grimes’ alter egos who are even listed in the credits at the end. We see her dressed as a cowboy angel, an Edwardian dutchess, a Michael Jackson-type swinger girl and a hipster gamer playing video games in her dungeon. The overall vibe is a Mary Antoinette meets gothic fantasy type aesthetic and it’s beautifully mesmerizing to watch. Everything from the colours of the costumes and the sets to Grimes’ dance moves to the captivating shots of her dressed as a bloodied fallen angel perched on a branch all meet together to create a real work of art.

The clip was shot in Vancouver over numerous locations which is also the hometown of Grimes. She enlisted the help of her brother to help her film the clip and act as assistant cinematographer. It’s interesting to see that in some shots, you can actually see cars and trucks passing by on a nearby highway, especially during the tennis courts scenes. Usually this kind of thing would break the world that had been created within the video clip, but in this instance, I think it actually enhances it. In the clip, we are offered various different types of styles and genres and see a mash-up of eras, so the cars almost serve in creating a new world where all these eras and genres co-exist together. In comparison to her previous clips, this one is quite extravagant and steers away from the simple ‘girl sings to camera in one outfit’ type that we would usually expect from her. The clip reads like a short film. It screens a title, a first act and a second act (which is something usually only seen in plays) and features credits at the end making it not your typical type of video clip. For me, the clip is actually quite reminiscent of Baz Lurhmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ due to it’s eccentricity, extravagance and playfulness.

WE HAVE A BAND! Like actually though, Conor from Fortunes said yes and is really keen, SO IT’S OFFICIAL. We’ll be making a music video for their latest single titled ‘Justin Beiber’ which was released only about a month ago so the hype is strong, weeeeeeeeeeee!  It’s a fun track and you can here it here:

SO WE AREN’T WORKING WITH LEISURE SUITE EITHER. This obtaining a band thing ain’t as easy peasy as me and Boujee Jaq first anticipated. BUT WE WILL GET THERE. We’re going to contact my friend Conor who’s the frontman in a band called Fortunes who have been doing rad things lately.

FINGERS CROSSED HE’S KEEN TO WORK WITH US.

In the mean time, here’s one of his songs to brighten the mood:

So we still haven’t heard back from our potential artist ‘Fontine’ so I think it’s fair to say that he isn’t going to be the one we’ll be filming a video clip for. It would’ve been great, Jac and I had come up with quite a few ideas already for it, but we’re not overly fussed. If Fontine does eventually reply saying he’d like us to do the clip but we’ve already confirmed another band, Jac and I were thinking of just taking on both projects.

We sent a message through to Leisure Suite and they’ve already responded with a yes so we’ve got that part sorted now. The song of theirs we’ll be using is really slow and sexy so Jac and I were brainstorming ideas about shooting it in a pool or beach at night time. I have this image of the lead singer, Bridgit, smoking a cigarette whilst standing up to mid-waist in the water and the cigarette smoke is swirling around her in slow motion. We don’t have the technology for under water filming which is fine, I’m pretty confident that we can deliver something outstanding without the use for under water technology.

At this stage we haven’t met with the band to discuss anything in detail yet, but are planning to meet them on Wednesday. We can pitch to them some of our ideas and also get a gage on what they would like aesthetically. We also thought it would be a good idea to look at their previous video clips so that our own video clip will be similar, but also distinctively different. However, none of their video clips have been released yet so we’ll have to wait until Wednesday to view them. I’m really looking forward to getting all of this underway and producing something amazing.

Today we watched ‘Control’, a film by Anton Corbijn that was released in 2007. It’s fair to say that I absolutely LOVED the film. It’s been forever since I’ve seen a movie that captivated my attention so wholeheartedly for the entire duration.

The film was about Joy Division’s frontman Ian Curtis, his life, struggles and eventual demise at the young age of 23. The whole film was shot in black and white, which was stunning paired with the bleak streets of England and the minimalistic way in which the shots were set up. I definitely had many little moments of video clip inspiration come up for me whilst watching the film, some of which I’ve listed below:

• A slow, close-up pan of a crowd that looks sweaty and entirely hypnotised by the band that they’re watching play at a live gig. This came about from watching the scene in ‘Control’ where Joy Division play their first live set I’m pretty sure. The shot of the crowd just perfectly captured what seeing Joy Division for the first time would feel like.

• A mid-shot of a person sitting on an off centre couch with a wall light or lamp dimly glowing above their heads while they sing. I thought of this in the scene where Ian is writing the lyrics to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’  sitting on a couch with a light just like I mentioned.

• A person’s lips are all you can see moving against a frosty train window as they sing. This from a scene where Ian is arriving at a destination where Annik soon comes to meet him as well as his band members.

As sad as the story behind ‘Control’ is, the film offers many points of inspiration and will definitely be one that I keep re-watching over and over.

Today’s first class proved that I’d definitely made the right choice in picking this summer studio. Making music videos is the perfect combination of two things that I love and adore: music and film and this course is going to teach us how to go about doing that.

In the second session we watched a few music videos made by Anton Corbijn. I hadn’t heard of him before now but I really should have. He’s the guy behind the clips for bands like Depeche Mode, Joy Division, U2 and many more famous bands of that era. His work is cinematically beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. It was also interesting to see how his video clips; which were made many years ago with older technology can still be praised and highly appreciated by the masses. I went home to watch the rest of the video clips that he did for Depeche Mode because they’re one of my favourite bands.

I didn’t realise that we’d be making a video clip for an actual band that could potentially be accepted by Rage. When I realised this my excitement doubled. that’s definitely going to a goal of mine within this course. We spent the end of the afternoon session sorting ourselves into groups and figuring out which band/artist we were going to email. I could’ve put myself with a larger group but I chose to just have a team consisting of Jac and myself because we have worked together on music media things before and plan to in the future. It’s also extremely rare for us to disagree on creative concepts which is a hard thing to find. We emailed an artist called Fontine who I’ve done an interview with before, asking if he would be open to us filming a clip for his song ‘New’. His manager replied sounding keen but we’re just waiting to hear from Fontine himself. If he says no then we have my friend’s band ‘Leisure Suite’ as a back up hopefully.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7nVr4Ys8zKM