Music Video Concept Development

The past few weeks we have been working on developing a concept that we would then take into pre-production in the hopes of creating a final cohesive and entertaining music video.

I quickly found this difficult for two reasons.

First, attempting to come up with an entertaining concept for the video while not having a track to work with.

Second, finding an artist or a track that I could use legally while still having a level of artistic control. The music artists make are much like the scripts or films filmmakers make - hey are our babies and we only want the best for them, so handing it off to some random person is a big risk, they might not have the same style or vision as us but this is where my Co-Director Tal saved the day, he had a rough idea for a music video and a band willing to let us use their song for a music video, this is where 'Almost Psycho' was born, he had a rough idea for a vigilante cowboy going around town to capture two thieves that had robbed him only days earlier, this was a good starting point as it gave us a clear direction and there was still enough space to work on and fill.

After a few online conversations and meetings Tal and I had built our main storyline/ Idea, this would then be used to develop a script and treatments and other documents to allow our DoP, Production design and editor to also develop their own documents and plans for the shoot, although Tal and I have had ideas for this music videos in terms of shots and angles we will allow our DoP to work these ideas into his overall vision.

Below here is the concept we have worked out

Almost Psycho

Rushed outline (no band yet, no compositing yet)

- Opening on black eyed dude at home looking at his bounty board

- Cut to dude getting kicked around and beaten by the two people on his wanted posters

- Zoom into the different pictures and him studying them then zoom into most recent clue which is a house connected

- Dude drives in front of house with a backpack and a 2x4 plank of wood knocks on the door, the man from the bounty board opens it and the dude kicks the door in and chase’s him through the house eventually hitting him into a room where the dude pulls out the other bounty poster interrogating the injured man, the Injured man points at a poster for Nth Rd band poster. Zoom into the poster

- The band is playing at the grandstands at a park the crowd is going W I L D. the dude rifle in hand, he notices the second bounty, the second bounty notices him and runs through the crowd, the dude is forced to stop aiming the rifle and runs after him the band keeps playing

- Bounty 2 runs out of the crowd and down the street the dude gets a shot at him and it hits the guys leg, limping he sees an overgrown plot of land and hides in the tall grass, the dude follows the blood with his weapon drawn, bounty 2 slowly pulls a knife out of his sock, spots the dudes foot and attempts to swing for it. The dude lifts his leg up and brings his foot down on the bounties hand.

The dude aims the gun at the bounty, looks angry/crazy, he sighs turns the gun around and hits him with the butt of the gun.

- The two bounties are thrown in front of a police station, hogtied and lit by the brake lights of the dudes UTE. The dude drives of smirking.

Add in notes:

Compositions:

- Drawn skull face over dude at end

- String point/Zoom transitions (Match cut?)

Band Appearances

- Appear at each location

- Are the band playing at grandstands gig

We are currently in the stage where we will refine the idea and divide it up to what is possible and what will need more work or possibly need to be changed to make sure all aspects of the music video is achievable in the next few weeks.

We have already started this as some of the locations listed in our concept we have already start to find alternatives to keep not only inline with the style and tone of our music video but keep our production achievable and budget friendly for example we have changed from a open park with a concert we have planned to do it inside a warehouse this is one of the examples of our initial stages of refining our plans although cutting costs and locations may help us make this more achievable we need to insure we keep locations and scale of this production to a level that holds the style and look we need while keeping the video look professional as we have deals with this band to work on their future music videos.

Above is a picture of the script we have been working on, although its the first draft we do have plans on dividing it up and working out exactly when the music matches with what images.