New Planning DRAFT - Matt

The planning process is perhaps the most important as it incorporates the pooling of ideas and creative endeavours as well as then converting them into storyboard representations of what we envisage for the screen. This means specific analysing of the lyrics and the meanings of the song. Particularly for our video as we intend to use Friends of Mine by Bowling for Soup as our song. The reason for this is that the lyrics of the song play heavily on what the video will look like, the lines will, bring on certain cut-scenes and costume changes etc in the video. This means that we will have to keep it fairly simple in order for it to appeal to the general public. Our song is light hearted in tone and our singer’s presence and other aspects of the video should reflect that. In the same way that the Foo Fighters create comical videos e.g. learn to fly, long road to ruin, we will do the same. This will make the video visually entertaining to the audience. We want our video to appeal to the general mass as it has a catchy tune and is inherently likable. As we are taking our inspiration from videos like Learn to fly, it is evident that our video is not striving for realism rather the reason why it works and is funny is due to the audience knowing that these are the band members in highly silly and fake situations, and the actors don’t try and hide that.

The video will be composed of footage of a singer (shot on green screen so that all around him can be white) with an acoustic guitar, amongst flashes of little moments that coincide with the words of the song. For example on the line 'Now the hangovers are worse but we get through em fine' we will close up on the singers face and then as we zoom out he's not singing in this white room anymore and is instead waking up on the breakfast table of a family, hungover, shaking his head, and stumbling off, while the family sit there bewildered. The idea of having this lone singer in one room for half of the video came from Frank Turners 'Long live the queen' video. Ours ups the comic tones of the video but similarly features one lone singer on an acoustic guitar, relying on the words rather than theatrics. Our idea for the video, simply put is comprised of both a visually present singer and a number of lyric-relevant cutaways.

The visuals will be fairly simple, for the singers ‘room’ in which he is performing we will shoot on green screen, using enough green screen to enable us to pan around the singer slightly, varying the angles. The use of green screen will make it possible to remove all colour from the background so that the entire shot is white, which would add a stylised look to the video rather than shoot on a stage or use band footage. It also means that the lead singer has to rely on charisma and his persona to carry the video. For that reason he would have to be likeable and in fairly vibrant attire in order to be likeable to the general public, as the tone of the song is light hearted, everything about his gestures and attitude will have to echo that. As the singer sings the lines ‘Pulp Fiction, Blazing Saddles and Fast Times’ instead of having a cutaway, the singer, still on the blank canvas would have his attire change fluidly to copycat the lyrics. For example on ‘Pulp Fiction’ his clothes would change to John Travoltas outfit from the film of that name, followed by a change into a cowboy outfit of Blazing Saddles and finally a Jeff Spicoli-esque surfer outfit for Fast Times before seamlessly changing back to his original attire, we will make these costume transitions as seamless as possible to keep the flow of the video going and to make it look slick. Another instance of using this white background as a canvas would be on the line ‘We saw the world, and the world seemed smaller’ at which point the white background would become the map used in the Indiana Jones films as the red lines dart from continent to continent, this shot will run in the background from that line onwards as a backdrop.
The nature of the cutaways will be light hearted to the point of comical, for example on the line ‘there were casualties but we made it out anyhow’ we would cutaway to someone zipping up a body bag of someone who has ‘partied too hard’ so that it wont look sinister the person being zipped up would have felt tip pen all over their face with a party hat on etc, to stress the humorous nature of the song and that it’s only joking, with the person doing the zipping up pulling a ‘whoops’ face. The settings for these cut scenes would be varied, most taking place in areas where the events of the song are relevant, so with groups of friends ‘hanging out’ or at parties etc, for a more extensive understanding of what the video entails see the lyrics at the bottom of the page as the visuals will largely follow what they describe.

The institution we would aim our video towards is mainstream MTV. As our song is on an acoustic guitar with prominent lyrics that have a sing-a-long feel, we would want it to be viewed by a very general audience in order to spread the appeal. This video could range from MTV, TMF,The Box, Smash Hits, to even Kerrang and MTV Two as the band that sing the song (Bowling For Soup) have established themselves as a rock act. Our target audience is young people, in the same way that songs like Nickelbacks ‘Rockstar’ and Kid Rocks ‘All Summer Long’ and Noah and the Whales ‘5 years time’ had such a huge following due to the sing-a-long nature of the song we decided that we would aim to tap into that audience.


In our AS production we used two different cameras in our production. The first, a Canon XL2 was our main camera during shooting as it’s quality was of a higher level than that of any other camera we used. We were able to manipulate the look of the shot more so on this camera than any other and thus used it more. For this years production we plan to use the XL2 for the bulk of filming, possibly utilising smaller handheld cameras for some of the cutaways as it would provide a home video, real-life feel, that may add to the humour of the subject matter.



Lyrics

Well it was ugly but we made it this far
Some have gone but I forget who they are
Now the hangovers are worse but we get through them fine
Sleeping late but we're not lazy
Getting older but we're still crazy
I'm so glad that I have these Friends O' Mine
It started out at a coffee shop in a most unlikely town
And there were casulties but we made it out, anyhow
We stuck together through the good and bad times
Pulp Fiction, Blazing Saddles and Fast Times
I'm so glad that I have these Friends O' Mine
And jobs, girls, and obstacles did all but break us down
Night clubs and broken vans in every major town
Well I've got your back, and you've got mine
Like Johnny Cash said, "I walk the line"
And you can always count on me for one last beer
We saw the world and the world seemed smaller
We're getting wider but not getting no taller
I know we've grown up just a little at a time
We're sleeping late but we're not lazy
We're getting older but we're still crazy
I'm so glad that I have these Friends O' Mine
So glad that I have these Friends O' Mine
So glad that I have these Friends O' Mine