This document outlines a student's initial plans for a music video project. The student proposes interpreting a song by Muse and generating 3 ideas for the video. One idea involves a narrative of a character confronting a cowboy in a climactic stand-off. Shots of a band playing and other relative imagery would cut throughout. The student intends to use various camera angles and editing effects to achieve an abstract, stylized look. Potential weaknesses include a limited cast and reliance on effects over a strong narrative. The student will research video techniques, editing, and securing appropriate shooting locations.

1. Initial Plans
Kyran

2. Idea Generation
• Select a song/track that you like [or don’t like!]
• Generate three ideas for music videos employing styles, techniques
and conventions that we have looked at in previous sessions. Explore
how you could interpret the song differently using different methods
• You can add any extra info you think is relevant, images, mind maps,
etc
• For quick mind maps you could use bubbl.us to generate these

3. Idea one

4. Idea two

5. Idea three

6. Mind map of ideas
[summary of ideas]
Things/Elements I want to include –
• Change the colour balances to something more interesting – maybe a
black silhouette against a red environment or something.
• The concept has to facilitate the lack of a cast, due to this project
likely only being worked on by myself. This means that if I want
people playing instruments in the video it’ll have to be just me etc.
• Have the video play to the beat of the song, at certain points.
• To make up for the lack of a cast I will include footage relative to
what the song is about, like a shot of a crow for a vague example.
• Use a variety of filters, overlay effects footage, stutter effects and
other such video editing effects to change parts in the video.

7. Summary
• 5 strengths of your ideas you could use
• To implement some of the effects mentioned, notably, changing the colour of certain things
and other such editing effects.
• Edit to the beat of the song.
• Adding extra shots of relative meaning.
• Abstract theme.
• Shots of people playing instruments
• 5 weaknesses of you ideas
• Limited cast.
• Not really a good idea to have people pretend to play and lip-sync to the music.
• Pretending to have audience/fan participation.
• Probably be a good idea to come up with a loose narrative, at the very least
• Don’t rely solely on editing to make the video good, make sure there’s some good elements
apart from the effects.

8. Final idea – artist/title/info
• Name of track / name of artist – The Dark Side by Muse
• Brief biographical background – It’s a single from an album, it’s in the
rock genre
• Links to other artists – The band is often associated with bands of the
same time period, most commonly Radiohead
• Genre info - the band took a different direction with this album
compared to their others, swapping out an Alt rock sound for more
of a synth rock sound.

9. Final idea – track summary
• Summary/analysis of track [consider meaning, content, duration,
pace and style of the song]
• Duration – 3:47
• The song doesn’t have a very fast tempo to it, and has a lot of
atmosphere and tone.
• Even with the sound change the sound still sounds somewhat quite
orchestral, except using electronic elements to achieve this.
• The song has a dark tone it and relies a lot on the vocal melodies a
lot to carry it.

10. Final idea – your idea
• Your creative concept/video synopsis [describe your interpretation,
use of imagery or narrative, genre conventions, etc]
• The video will consist of three different types of shots: The main narrative, shots of things with relative
meanings and a band playing the song.
• The main narrative shots consist of a character leaving his house and walking into town, it is here that
he is approached by a cowboy, who challenges him to a stand-off. They go on to arrange a location to
fight. The final stand-off climaxes with the main character defeating the cowboy in some sort of
spectacle, either he explodes or falls to his demise; or both.
• The shots of the band, along with the miscellaneous shots, will show up every now and then during the
narrative through cuts. The band shots will consist of tight close-ups of the instruments being played,
with heavy visual edits over top of the footage, like overlays and visual effects like glitches to make them
look more interesting and professional. To get the look I want for these shots, I will primarily use close-
up’s, Dutch angles, and perhaps a limited use of medium shots to help the shots ‘breathe’ better. I will
also use video techniques like establishing shots, panning and tracking shots etc., to add a flow and an
interesting look
• The relative shots are there to give further meaning to the video, as they’ll be made up of small shots of
things like crows, or creepy locations. They’re there to set and build the tone more professionally and
visually, to better introduce the audience to the tone and feel of the video.

11. Final idea – techniques and styles
• Video techniques/style/conventions to be used [include how you
intend to implement these]
• My intention is to create a stylised/abstract music video, done so mostly through
editing effects. I intend to use a variety of camera angles: close-ups, medium
shots, panning shots and Dutch angles, all edited with effects, to help
communicate the abstract elements of the video. The camera movement will
also be fixed on following whatever the focus of the shot is, essentially each shot
will focus on the most important and integral thing that’s going on.
• I don’t intend to carry over every music video convention, the main music video
conventions found in my chosen genre tend to have the band shown throughout
the video, an emphasis on darker tones and often have at least parts of the video
where it’s just the band ‘performing’ the song. I don’t really intend on using
these conventions fully, as I really don’t want to just film people pretending to
play music in a depressive, dark location. I’m instead going to augment these
conventions a little bit to better fit my vision for my video.

12. Summary
• 5 strengths of your ideas you could use
• The idea of cutting to three different types of shots, with their own important content and
purpose.
• I’ve thought about what camera angles I will use.
• I’ve thought about what video techniques I will use, panning and tracking shots etc.
• I know what locations I’m going to use to shoot the video.
• Will have it’s own style and look.
• 5 weaknesses of you ideas
• Doesn’t fully follow the common conventions found in music videos of my chosen genre.
• Isn’t any plans to use an interesting location, however this is an uncontrollable element.
• Limited cast, but could work if it isn’t obvious or done right; I could even make it an
intentional element.
• The video could potentially rely on just the visual effects to make it interesting, this
wouldn’t be a good thing.

13. Potential research targets
• I will need to research some of the techniques used in music videos, I will do this
by watching and analysing music videos, making sure they are in the same genre
as my video.
• I will learn editing techniques/how to use Adobe Premiere by watching tutorials
on the internet, as well as experimenting with the software as I go.
• I will also need to research shooting techniques, which I guess you could call film
techniques, as a big part of this project will be actually shooting the video,
making sure it looks good and the shots do what I need them to do.
• For some of the shots I’ll need a location with a blank wall, this isn’t too much of
a problem as blank walls are pretty common to come by, however it’s the
location of other shots that will be the problem, notably the shots where people
are playing instruments. This is difficult because I’m unsure as to make it look like
a performance space, or a stage, this is a problem I’ll have to solve before I start
shooting.