Change of Plans...again

Due to Max not being available the story has had to change, but its nothing too big.

FADE IN

ALEX is tied to a chair in an dark, empty, concrete room. The music starts and petrol is being poured on the ground. A match is lit, falls to the ground and the petrol is ignited. She regains consciousness and struggles to free herself. She escapes and runs to safety.

ALEX regains her strength and plots her vengence, gathering cloth, a stick and petrol.

Arriving at the unknown villian's house, she smash's a window, throws the petrol about in a rage and lights the stick and cloth and goes to light the petrol...

FADE OUT

Inspiration from Art

My plan for the video involves a lot of imagery of fire, so I went looking online for images of fire in art that could inspire a few ideas. I found an expressionist artist called Moin, a bit pretentious but anyway, the pieces are actually quite good.

What I like about the pieces above are the figures distorted by the fire and the heat that comes across through the colours. This instantly conjured up some ideas for shots in my head that I will hopefully be able to carry out.

Inspiration from Filmmakers

While I know of quite a few good examples of characters being tied to chairs, the one that sticks out most prominently in my mind is Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs . Even from the treatment alone the inspiration from the film is apparent. The famous Ear Cutting Scene is were I got the idea to let the viewer know somebody is going to be killed at the end of the video but to not let them see it so it draws the gore from their imagination.

If you haven't seen the scene:

I mentioned that I knew quite a few examples of this as well as Reservoir Dogs, so many so that it is quite cliché but this is intentional on my part as I will then be able to use the viewers own experiences of the cliché to create a bit more depth to the video.

Treatment

Before it's even asked, me and Alex have already worked out all the kinks to lighting fires so 'filmability' is dead on. Here it is:

FADE IN

ALEX is tied to a chair in an dark, empty, concrete room. The
music starts and petrol is being poured on the ground. A match is lit, falls to the ground and the petrol is ignited. A silhouetted character walks out the door.

MAX wakes up groggily from being knocked out. When he realises ALEX is missing he starts to running. He runs through various alleys ways when he notices smoke pouring out the doors of a small warehouse. He runs in and pulls her out.

They regain their breathe and both start to run again. They find themselves in another garage, where they gather petrol, cloth and sticks. They arrive at the unknown villain's office, light the sticks and smash open the door.

FADE OUT

Basically the song sounds quite heavy and fast, so an action packed, fast paced music video is exactly what I'm going for. It also sounds quite raw and dirty and that's what gave me the idea for dirty-warehouse-type locations and the strong focus on the elemental imagery of fire (it also mentions fire in the lyrics as well).

During the narrative, clips of the band playing the song are going to be included to fill in the gaps of the boring parts that can be skipped. Also, the narrative is purposely lacking a motive to why it is happening to the main characters as well as a conclusion as this leaves it open to speculation and therefore gives it repeatability.

Bit of the Ole Research

Audioslave have a good few music videos so I went on to youtube to refresh my memory, gain a bit of inspiration and get the feel of the band's music videos.

Heres some links to different types of their videos:

Performance - Like A Stone, Be Yourself, Cochise and Revelations

These videos, although purely performance are very good in my opinion because the cinematography is ace. They also have the repeatability factor because there's not story you'll see and not care about seeing again. Revelations is my favourite video in this type as its edited extremely well with some interesting effects.


Narrative - Show Me How To Live and Doesn't Remind Me

I like Show Me How To Live as its a really exciting video which gets its inspiration from the 70's car chase film, Vanishing Point. Doesn't Remind Me isn't such a watchable video as, despite its making a strong political point about Iraq featuring a son who doesn't know his dad is dead while the mother worries about what's next, it's quite dull.



The Best Video - Original Fire

Original Fire is on it's own because it's the best video of them all, it's mostly performance mixed with tons of images and it's all edited together really well. It's extremely repeatable cause it looks class.


Unfortunately for my video I will have no control over the performance aspect as I obviously cannot get the band to play. But despite this I believe the performance aspect to be essential in an interesting video, so I will be looking for resources that I can use for my project but definitely keeping it my own work with the majority of it the narrative aspect and any resources I do find re-edited.

Change of Plans

Instead of the original song I'm going with Audioslave - Set It Off and sticking with it.
Twas a bit too long, so I shortened it a bit down to around 3:30.







Its a bit redundant cause the band have split but they're my favourite band so I'll care a bit more about the video...... but without any self-indulgent shite.

Website: Audioslave
Last.fm : Set It Off

Lyrics

He was standing at the rock
Gathering the fog
Getting there with no directions
And underneath the arch
Turned into a march
And there he found a spot to set this fucker on

Set if off
Set it on my children
Set it right
Set it off
Set it off my children
Allright
Set it off
Set it on my children
Set it fire
Set it off
Set it on my children

Suddenly a shot
Ripped into his heart
He needed some attention
And there he played his card
Going into shock
The last thing that he said was set this fucker on

Set if off
Set it on my children
Set it right
Set it off
Set it off my children
Allright
Set it off
Set it on my children
Set it fire
Set it off
Set it on my children

Alright [6x]

Jesus at the back door
Everything is alright
All we need is some direction
Everytime the wind blows
Everything you dont know
Turns into a revelation
It all ends up inside your head
Time is wasted

Set if off
Set it on my children
Set it right
Set it off
Set it off my children
Allright
Set it off
Set it on my children
Set it fire
Set it off
Set it on my children

Alright [6x]

My Music Video

For my MIA music video task I might pick a fairly unknown band called Racoon. They're dutch but but their songs are in english. Some of their songs aren't great but a there are a few that are pretty good and mostly its just easy listening.

If I pick them I will be using the song - If you know what I mean - because its catchy, quite fast paced, relatively short and it was easy enough to conjure up an idea for the music video.

Here is a link to the bands website: www.racoon.nl