Animatics: Planning a Music Video Remake

Now having presented our information to the class, our task has been extended. We have been told to select a minute-long excerpt of our chosen video to remake, shot-for-shot, as accurately as possible. 

To get us into the habit of recognising and replicating shots and angels, we were introduced to animatics. In filmmaking, animatics are used as an optional stage of pre-production planning that clarifies the vision projected by the storyboard. Essentially, animatics are very basic projections of how the finished film will look; they tend to use illustrated or computer generated graphics with very little or no movement to show the angle, position and composition of each shot. The main benefit of stringing them together in the form of video is that the timing of cuts, and transitions can be conveyed in real-time, as it is intended to be in the final product. Sounds, or descriptions of sounds, can also be overlayed with the images, to give viewers a true sense of how the film should turn out. Overall, animatics are used because they can convey a lot of information in a way that is definitely more intuitive than storyboards; instead of imagining the film in their head, filmmakers can actually watch a very basic outline of it. 

As an example, here is a link to an official animatic for a music video, and here is a link to the actual music video, so that you can see the way in which an animatic conveys the intentions for tone, pacing and look with only basic preparatory illustrations.



To help us plan our music video remakes, we have been advised to produce our own animatics in a kind of reverse-engineering process. Above is the animatic I produced, and in creating it, I certainly feel that I have gained a better understanding of the shots used in the music video, and the frames I have drawn out on post-it-notes should prove helpful when it comes to shooting the actual remake.

Music Video Research Presentation

As our first task for A2 Media Studies, we have been asked to choose a favourite music video, research it, and present our findings to the class. My immediate choice was the video for Fallen Angel by the British alternative rock band Elbow. The video is excellent, and despite watching it over and over, I still enjoy it, because new subtleties reveal themselves each time. 



Although I was familiar with the video even before the research task, I didn't know much at all about the actual production of the video, or how this linked to the meaning of the song and the promotion of the band and their album. 

The research itself actually proved to be rather difficult, because the video isn't particularly popular or well-known, and the band were only enjoying quiet success at this time. At a point when I was almost ready to give up, a trawl through some 10-or-so pages of meaningless Google search results presented me with this: http://www.mvdbase.com/, a resource which proved very useful, at least for crediting on the production of the video. For more detailed information, such as the production budget and location of first exhibition, I tried contacting Flynn Productions, but to no avail. As a result, I had to rely on what little information I had.

Below is a slidecast of the presentation I gave to the class, including both the slides I used and an audio file of my speech.Music Video Research Presentation Slides

Introduction

Hello, I am Blaine Kenneally, and I would like to welcome you to my A2 Media Studies blog. Here I will document all of the thoughts, ideas, plans and processes that occur in relation to the creation of my A2 Media practical production. Last year's AS Media Blog can be found at this link, and it illustrates the kind of things I will be posting here, although this blog will be more specialised and progressive; building upon what I have learnt, rather than simply returning to it.

In the coming weeks of summer, I will be working on an optional preparatory production to reestablish my skills, and from September onwards I will be choosing a brief, performing relevant research, planning, experimenting, organising and producing. At the end of it all, I will be looking back over the main and subsidiary tasks and evaluating my work.

I look forward to cultivating this small section of the the World Wide Web as my own, and I hope you enjoy perusing it.