Media Pitch

The Carpathian - The Acacia Strain 

My media pitch is a music video exhibiting both a performance cut and a narrative concept of The Acacia Strain's "The Carpathian"

The two main aspects of the video will involve my band miming the song with playback so we can mime it in time. We will most likely shoot the footage on Ilkley Moor, most probably a forest so it ties in with the music video's narrative. The performance cut will take up around half of the video's duration, and will cross-cut intermittently with the narrative.

The narrative will feature a girl being chased through a forest in a somewhat archetypal slasher nature, however, the antagonist will not be shown until the very end of the video. The song begins with a slow fade-in introduction which will be impossible to mime, so the music video will begin with a slow fade-in to a forest on a moor, and feature a protagonist sprinting through the undergrowth. The narrative will follow this style throughout the whole video until the end, where they are faced with who they are running from. Whilst this happening, the band while be miming the song through hidden playback. There will be lots of focus on instruments and each individual member, and at important parts of the song, so where there is only guitar, there will be lots of focus on the guitars.

The video will end once the song has ended and the band have finished playing, and are all stood still. The antagonist of the narrative concept will appear as a masked man facing the protagonist, and the video will quickly end.

I believe that this is a refreshing idea and will be fun to shoot, as well as a slightly different musical style to the rest of the ideas circulating. In addition, the idea for the narrative concept fits the song very well, considering the lyrics are extremely dark.

TIOTG update

Since the last post, we have since finished filming each rendition of The Lonely Island's hit "Threw It On The Ground" which included shots on location at one of the group's houses, around school and around our town at various places. We filmed the footage on HD Camcorders, uploaded and shared the footage onto Macs between us and split into pairs and started editing the footage.I have very nearly almost the task, ask the clips are all now in synchronisation with the .mp4 track and all the clips we recorded are uploaded and matching, but not totally, the actual video. All me and my partner have to do now is to mute some of the sound in the clips from the camera, brighten some of the frames and add a few titles and transitions to make the video flow better and look more presentable and professional. 

Film Pitch Finalisation

As a class (13C) we have finally decided on a music video to recreate. The nominations were as follows:

O-Zone's Numa Numa (SamB)

Yolanda's We No Speak Americana (Sophie)

Black Eyed Peas' I've Gotta Feeling (George)

LFMAO's Party Rock Anthem (Hattie)

Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 2) (Rich)

Men Without Hats' Safety Dance (Asa)

My choice of Threw It On The Ground by The Lonely Island actually won, and we begin planning next week. There are a lot of points we as a class need to consider when we start planning, such as where to shoot the footage, who plays Samberg, who plays the various vendors and how we recreate the objects being thrown on the ground. All planning, filming and editing (different versions, in pairs) to be completed and submitted by Friday 23rd September, after which we turn to forming coursework production groups.

Music Video Deconstruction 15

Song: Masterchef Synesthesia (Buttery Biscuit Base)
Band: Swede Mason 
Year: 2011

• "Swede Mason" is an underground musical comedian who is responsible for many mash-up videos. In an interview, he said this about himself:
• "I’m a 31-year-old man who lives in London and makes mash up videos."
• "I’m going to try and keep my head as low as I can. I don’t fancy loads of pictures of me being all over the Internet. The idea of being that recognisable scares me a bit if I’m being honest."
• For "Buttery Biscuit Base", Swede Mason said this; "I heard the ‘buttery biscuit base’ bit and thought of something I could do, got started then got stuck and had to shelve it for about a year because I was sick of it. After a while you can’t tell if anything’s good because you’ve watched it so many times, it does your head in. The breakthrough came when I returned to it a few of weeks ago, learnt how to make a wobble base on a youtube tutorial, added the sample and was able to finish it. I don’t know how many man-hours I spent on it but from watching the first episode to finishing the video was well over a year."
• The video samples used are all from a series of Masterchef, featuring Gregg Wallace and John Torode talking about a certain type of pudding they've recently analysed.
• The video mash-up is based on a vaguely simple drum-and bass looping song, made on Swede Mason's computer using Logic Pro.
• The video begins with Wallace stating that he likes the buttery, biscuit base; he then repeats this in a loop until the camera changes to a close-up of him talking about "base knowledge", and a video effect is then applied by Swede Mason to add a cheesy shine to Wallace's head.
• As the scenes switch between Torode and Wallace, Swede Mason begins to use other effects that can be found in Final Cut, such as glints and ripples on the foreground of the videos.
• There are also intermittent close-ups of Wallace, especially when he talks even more about buttery biscuit bases.

Another editing style used by Swede Mason, where Torode has been superficially
imposed onto another shot, where they say the same word together.
 

• Around one minute into the video, there is a massive amount of transitions from shot to shot, between Torode and Wallace in different locations saying the word "but", and SM has turned into a verse in the song. 
• Mason has also used a variety of blurry effects near the end of the video to connote...madness of sorts, at the sight of two people talking so intently about buttery biscuit bases.
• He also uses a zoom-in technique on Final Cut to express some of Wallace's facial expressions even more, as pictured.

• The video ends with an array of mashed-up shots of Wallace and Torode describing various food with words like "sticky, slimy, nutty, toasty, crunchy, crusty, gooey" and Wallace finishing by saying "buttery biscuit base" and Torode fading out to black as he says "oomph!". 

Music Video Deconstruction 14

Song: Icarus Lives!
Band: Periphery
Year: 2010

Guitarist Jake Bowen shortly before the song's intro.
Periphery are renowned in the metal world for their unique
three-man guitar setup.

• Periphery is an American metal band from Bethesda, Maryland (by way of Baltimore, Maryland), formed in 2005.
• Between 2005 and 2009, Periphery worked with vocalists Jake Veredika, Casey Sabol and Chris Barretto, gradually moving from a Meshuggah-influenced sound to a more ambient, melodic sound, with a focus on innovative production.
• Periphery has toured extensively since 2008, supporting artists including DevilDriver, Veil of Maya, Animals as Leaders, God Forbid, Darkest Hour, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Fear Factory,Fair to Midland,and TesseracT.
• This is the second deconstruction I've done for a Periphery video, but it is their first single from their self-titled album.
• I chose this video because it is shot in a very distinctive way of shooting, which I will come onto later.
• The establishing shot is the most important because it sets the style for the whole video; the outer field and background is blurred, and the foreground is filmed behind a layer of glass, with watery effects; the whole video is shot this way, meaning the band members and equipment is blurred, and the most focus is on the glass, which was done by putting a small pane of glass in front of the camera's lens and squirting water onto it. There used to be a video on YouTube detailing the behind-the-scenes aspect of the video, but it has unfortunately been taken down since. 
• There are a few more establishing shots, which show Jake, Misha, Tom and Alex (Guitar, guitar, bass and guitar respectively) posing before starting the song. The camera then switches to Alex who alters a setting on his amplifier (to give the video a real atmosphere of performance), walk backwards, and begin playing the opening riff of the song. 

Guitarist Alex Bois beginning the song, and the water and glass effect is very
visible here.

Throughout this video, Periphery often incorporate their iconic logo
into some parts, such as here, where Spencer (vocals) is also portrayed at a
long shot.

• The song gets in full swing with its extremely heavy and groove-laden intro, and all of the band members are shown playing their instruments, done with close-ups, mid shots and long shots.
• The aquatic side of the video is down to the song's title and lyrics; it is about the flight of Icarus and Daedalus in ancient Greece, and obviously, as the story goes, Icarus perished when the wax wings he was flying with got too hot from the sun, the feathers disintegrated, and he plummeted towards the Icarian (named after him) Sea. The water probably reflects the sea in the lyrics.
• Cameras focus on the instruments during pivotal and important instrumental parts of the song, such as the introduction of the vocals, where the camera focuses entirely on Spencer Sotelo.
• Although much of the performance is out of focus due to it being in the background, there are sections where the zoom and focus change to reveal more of the band member, such as this:  

• These two shots show the camera's change in
  focus when filming a certain part.

• The lighting of the video is very pronounced; there is a massive amount of artificial light when focusing on Spencer. Like the water part of the video, the light would be representing the sun, which caused Icarus's downfall.
• There are also a number of fixed camera angles as the cameras don't move around much; some of them are located at these points; 
• Jake's amplifier
• Through Tom's amplifier
• Below one of Matt's (drums) cymbal stands
• One featuring Misha (guitar) and Spencer
• One just featuring Spencer 
• Alex being shown in a long shot
• Tom being shown behind a logo
• Misha being shown behind a logo (mainly for when he does the guitar solo and the camera needs to be focused on him, pictured)

An example of focus on an instrument, also with a blurred foreground as
opposed to the background which is more regular in this video. This is an
 example of a binary opposite used.

• The lack of focus on the band member's faces may also be made to create a narrative enigma, in the sense that you don't always see their faces clearly.
• After the guitar solo, there is another groovy part, and then the video ends the same way it began; silence apart from the dripping of water; diegetic, as it runs over Periphery's logo. 

Music Video Deconstruction 13

Song: Bleed
Band: Meshuggah
Year: 2008

• Meshuggah is an experimental metal band formed in Umeå, Sweden in 1987.
• Meshuggah first attracted international attention with the 1995 release Destroy Erase Improve for its fusion of fast-tempo death metal, thrash metal and progressive metal with jazz fusion elements. Since its 2002 album Nothing, Meshuggah has used downtuned eight-string guitars.
• They have become known for their innovative musical style, complex, polymetered song structures and polyrhythms. They were labeled as one of the ten most important hard and heavy bands by Rolling Stone and as the most important band in metal by Alternative Press. Meshuggah has found little mainstream success as yet, but is a significant act in extreme underground music.
• "Bleed" is a single from their most recent album, obZen, released in 2008.
• The video begins with a little extra audio that's not in the song, but is added for atmospheric effect. 
• There is a variety of extreme close ups of a clock's mechanics and cogs, as the wind in the non-diegetic sound continues to play.
• The pummelling, heavy main riff of the song begins and the shot changes to a series of extremely surreal opening cuts. There is a man laid on the floor, shown in a mid-shot, then a fisheye lens. 
• There are also some strange close ups of what looks like a cockroach writhing around on the floor. 
• Opening shots such as this give the video an extremely feel, especially as there is no performance aspect to the video at all and is purely narrative concept.
• The camera alternates between this man panicked and afraid, and the bug in the sand, which is really creepy.
• There are often shots of EXTREME extreme close-ups, such as the man's eye. 
• The editing for "Bleed" is very quick, and the shots change every half-second or so, so the viewer is shown more. 
• After these shots, there is a two-shot featuring the man and another man, on all fours in terrifying make up, in a collar behind him. The man on the ground is dressed in traditional "black metal" facepaint that is a big scene in Sweden, where Meshuggah are from.
• The main protagonist of the video is slowly slipping into insanity; this is characterized by the use of distorting the camera lens so it bends the shape and alters his appearance. 
• There are also lots of flashes used in the lighting, especially when the two men are screaming at eachother. Similarly, there are plenty of recurrences of similar shots used throughout.

There is a reference to the album cover of obZen as well, as
this figure is the same as the art.

• The narrative follows the protagonist quickly being taken over by darkness as another strange character turns him into his slave using his mind.
• I think the lighting is the most imporant feature of this video; most of it is dark apart from light focused on the light fixed on the main characters, though there are flashes of red as well to reinforce the song's message and title, which is about a brain aneurysm. 
• The filming style carries on in this hectic way up until the point where the man becomes the mysterious entities' slave, becoming so which is depicted through a series of strobe lights and mid shots. This video focuses heavily on the mindset of insanity. 

Our protagonist exhibiting a massive amount of rage, another key theme of the video.

• The video ends with the man slowly transforming into another one of the creatures that first pursued him; this is shown through another series of flashes and shadows, and the man is shown below his master, almost identical to the design on the album cover. 

Music Video Deconstruction 12

Song: Meddler
Band: August Burns Red
Year: 2009

• August Burns Red is an American, Christian metalcore band, from Manheim, Pennsylvania, formed in March 2003.
• The band is primarily known for their heavy breakdowns and odd-meter riffs. They state Between the Buried and Me, Misery Signals and Hopesfall as their main influences.
• "Meddler" is taken off their third album, Constellations, and was released in 2009.
• It is the second single to be taken off, after "White Washed".
• "Meddler" is both a narrative concept and a performance-based music video, with the band playing in one location and other events happening elsewhere. 
• The video begins with an extreme long shot of a hill's horizon set against a burning orange sky, with a man holding what seems to be a massive balloon.
• There are a few following shots of various members of the band (you assume so, they are all silhouettes, shadows) creating a narrative enigma, toying with the balloon and examining it, all on the horizon.
• The vocals come in and the performance of the video begins; the band begin playing in a corn field at night, but there are huge lights burning down from the sky in the backdrop. 

• The two sets of narrative begin; the band start playing with lots of close-ups and panning shots to include every member, and the surreal narrative concept begins again as well, people running around brandishing balloons.
• There are lots of shots involving the camera encircling a band member, normally at a close-up range, in order to focus on everything they're doing.
• In addition, some of the footage is obviously done with a hand-held camera as there is lots of shaking shots, especially during heavier parts of the song.
• During the first solo, the camera is focused almost entirely on JB, the guitarist. There are a few intermittent shots of the strange narrative as well. 
• There are many shots as well of Jake (Luhrs, vocals) performing his role against the same backdrop as the narrative concept, i.e. the sunset and the bright orange sky, yet no other band members are shown this way.
• There are a few moments where the film is tilted to the side anti-clockwise, such as the men running with the balloons about two fifths of the way through.
• Dutch angles are also used frequently when filming Matt (Greiner) on his drums, yet the tilts are subtle and not overbearing. 

More of the video for Meddlers' strange narrative; there is also a constant narrative
enigma as to who the figures are, yet I assume it's the band. This part of the video
doesn't seem to have a storyline either, just a series of random occurences.

There is also a large focus on instruments during certain areas, like this close-up of
JB's guitar whilst playing his solo.

• There is also a varied mix of lighting, the orange skies often blend with the bright white lights of the band's performance area, giving the video a more striking feel. 

Music Video Deconstruction 11

Song: The Bloodening
Band: Johnny Truant
Year: 2006

• Johnny Truant was a British, Brighton-based metalcore band, formed in 2000.
• The band recorded their debut release The Repercussions of a Badly Planned Suicide (which featured three remixed songs from their second demo) in 2002 which was released on Undergroove Records. Their second album, In the Library of Horrific Events was produced by Killswitch Engage guitarist, Adam Dutkiewicz. The band have toured the UK, Europe and Canada with the likes of Killswitch Engage, As I Lay Dying, Cancer Bats and Alexisonfire as well as playing Download Festival in 2005, 2006 and 2008.
• They were set to support Bring Me The Horizon in the US with Misery Signals and The Ghost Inside, however on October 31, 2008 the band unexpectedly announced on their Myspace that they were to split following their December UK tour.^[1] The band played their final show on December 17, 2008.
• The video for The Bloodening is taken from their second album, In The Library Of Horrific Events, released in 2005.
• It begins with an extreme long shot of the band as the guitarist plays the opening notes of the song; in the second bar, it switches to a regular long shot of the band.
• They are all wearing white t-shirts and black jeans in this video, and all instruments are darkly-coloured.
• The lighting is very limited as well; the only light in the room shines on the band, with the rest of the area in darkness.
• As soon as the drums, vocals and bass come in, there is a very brief flash of lettering across the screen, the title of the song. It appears for about a fifth of a second, and it was very hard to get a picture of on YouTube! 
• The camera begins to focus on Olly Mitchell, the vocalist, as he begins the vocals of the song. The camera is on a crane due to the height of some the angles used.
• The high-angle pans across the band as they play, following the guitarist, vocalist then bassist. 

• The camera often zooms back out to its establishing shot, i.e. the extreme long shot that shows all the band playing.
• In the parts where Olly isn't screaming, and he's singing, a handheld camera is used, either that or a camera that's being shaken. There is a close-up of him that is repeatedly shook to add atmosphere to the song and video.
• There are a few over-the-shoulder shots used, especially when focusing on Paul (Jackson, drums) that are done using a crane as well.
• Similarly to the title card used extremely briefly, there are frequent flashes of shapes throughout the video, such as fire and rain. They only appear for a fraction of a second. 
• The shaking camera style is used extensively when focusing on vocals, and at both low and high angles it is used as well. 
• A brief bit of narrative concept is implemented around halfway through the song; various members of the band are seen running through series of grimy, stony corridors. The shooting style here is done using a handheld cam, and a lot of blurry effects are used to hint at the slipping of sanity.
• In the middle part of the section, with the clean guitar break, a strange orange tint is applied to the film, giving it a more atmospheric feel again, even though it is subtle. 
• Once the song lurches back into its metallic start, the same hectic style of filming is applied again, once more with a quick flash of text, this time displaying the lyric "BURY THE CORPSES". 

Another flashing title, this one only came
up for about a third of a second.

The pyrotechnics used.

• The video ends with the band playing the end of their song as a ring of fire and smoke engulfs them, adding a pyrotechnic aspect, and atmospheric one to the video, using the same ELS style of shooting as they had done before. 

Music Video Deconstruction 10

Song: (Threw It) On The Ground
Band: The Lonely Island
Year: 2011

• The Lonely Island is an American comedy troupe composed of Akiva "Kiv" Schaffer, Jorma "Jorm" Taccone, and David Andrew "Andy" Samberg, best known for their comedic music. Originally from Berkeley, California, the group is currently based in New York City. The group broke out due to their collective work from 2005–2011 on Saturday Night Live. Samberg and Schaffer continue to work at the show, with occasional input from Taccone.
• "On the Ground" (album version known as "Threw It on the Ground") is a song sung by the band The Lonely Island from their second studio album Turtleneck & Chain, and an SNL Digital Short which aired on Saturday Night Live on October 3, 2009. Andy Samberg is the lone member of the band who appears in the video. He plays a character who is extremely cynical and possibly in some sort of quarter-life crisis, walking down a city street and throwing things he is given on the ground.
• The video begins with a fade-from-black transition and a medium-long shot of Andy Samberg sitting on a stool. 
• The lighting of the performance piece of this video is immediately noticed, as the only light in this part is on Andy and his microphone, and the whole rest of the room is in darkness. 
• As he begins singing the lyrics to the song, the camera changes to a mid-shot and the lighting and his face become more clear. 
• He describes in his lyrics exactly what happens in the narrative concept of the video; Samberg is shown "walking down the city streets" and he refuses an offer made by a salesman by literally throwing the product on the ground in an enraged and comical fashion; every time he does this, the object, be it energy drink, cake, a hotdog or a phone, is shown careering towards and smashing on the ground in slow-motion.

Samberg refusing to accept a free hotdog.

I threw it on the GROUND!

• Samberg sings the lyrics in the video to the startled vendors and salesmen at frequent points, such as the lyric "I ain't gonna be part of ya system!" in their face. These are normally shown with close-ups to reveal the expression on the characters faces.
• The chorus of the song always begins when Samberg throws something on the ground, as it is emphasizing the anger in his voice and the energy of the song.
• A few over-the-shoulder shots are used, like the picture above, as an unsuspecting employee tries to do something for him.
• The camera often focuses on Samberg after he's literally "thrown it on the ground" to capture the bad temper with use of a close-up.
• The lyrics are often shared between the performance cut and the narrative concept; such as him exclaiming after refusing a free hotdog "You can't buy me, hot dog man!" both sets of video sing this lyric.
• The video puts forward various clichés that would be found in serious types of this music; such as the double shot of the same person, singing in two camera angles, one a side-shot close-up and the other a mid-shot. 
• Even though Andy Samberg is a fairly renowned celebrity himself, the video includes cameos from two major actors, Elijah Wood and Ryan Reynolds who are having dinner at a restraurant when Samberg comes up to them, calling them "Hollywood phoneys" after being apparently asked if he wanted their autographs. He then proceeds to walk up to their table and flip it upside down in slow motion, much to their dismay. 
• The "phoneys" then proceed to chase Samberg and violently punish him with a taser, as the performance and the narrative fade to black. 

Music Video Deconstruction 9

Song: All I Want
Band: A Day To Remember
Year: 2011

From the top, left to right: Ed McRae from Your Demise, Vincent
Bennett from The Acacia Strain, Sam Carter from Architects,
Winston McCall from Parkway Drive, Jake Luhrs from August Burns
Red and Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon.

• A Day to Remember is an American rock band from Ocala, Florida. Founded in 2003, the band has released four studio albums, nine singles and eight music videos. They are mainly known for their unusual amalgamation ofmetalcore and pop punk as a musical style.
• On January 6, 2011, the band showcased the official music video for the first single taken from the album, "All I Want" through an MTV premiere.
• The video for All I Want is taken from the album "What Separates Me From You", released in 2010. 
• There are two parts to the video; one is the performance, and the other is kind of a mix between a narrative and a performance, as it is lots of members from other bands singing ADTR's lyrics.
• The video begins with some extreme-close up and panning shots of the band's flyers and posters advertising their band name and various shows, while a mono copy of the pre-chorus is heard playing quietly in the background, as though it was on a radio. 
• The camera then is blurred but then zooms out to focus on a microphone on the floor, and another shot of Jeremy (McKinnon, vocals) writing something in a notepad or book. It is a close-up without you seeing his head, then the camera changes again to a mid-shot of Jeremy, then to an ECU of what he's writing, which is "Thank You", which is for his fans. 
• For a split second here, you see a superimposed scribble on the paper, which has been done with CGI, and is used a lot in the video. 
• The song begins properly, and the band are shown playing in a small room with their posters and flyers plastering the walls and floor. It is mostly shot with mid-shots and close-ups, and more focus is put on the instruments when certain parts are played, same goes for the vocals. 
• When certain lyrics with a lot of emphasis are sung by Jeremy, the lyrics themselves often appear superficially on screen, like in the picture above.
• There are a few tracking and panning shots used during the band's performance, especially when following the vocalist's movements.
• The lyrics are often shown not just as words but as shapes as well, such as the words themselves being inside a musical note.
• This is where the most unique part of the video begins; many, MANY different bands, but all in the same vein as ADTR's genre, start singing the lyrics at alternating parts in the video; the bands are: Crime In Stereo, Tom Denney (ADTR's old guitarist), Veara, Bring Me The Horizon, Silverstein, Parkway Drive, The Devil Wears Prada, Andrew WK, Fall Out Boy, Millencolin, As I Lay Dying, The Red Chord, August Burns Red, Comeback Kid, Seventh Star, Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster, Architects, MxPx, Your Demise, Trivium, Pierce The Veil, The Acacia Strain, This Is Hell and Set Your Goals.
• These bands, or members from these bands, make an appearance each throughout the video, and are often shots with extreme close-ups or close-ups, so more emphasis is applied when they're shouting the lyrics at the camera. 
• The video ends in the same way, with the band ending their performance with a mid-shot, and Jeremy walking away.