Song Ideas

We began to plan what song we were going to select for our music video almost immediately after we finished our AS Project. Nikil and I discussed what songs we wanted and how we could attach some filming to whatever song we had chosen so that we could create a music video.

Our first chosen songs:

• ACDC - Black in Back
• Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son
• Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze
• Stranglers - Hanging Around

At the very start of the project, Nikil and I thought about what we could do to create an ideal music video. We had originally discussed about the idea of incorporating some footage from 3 video games we both knew and played quite a lot; Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield Vietnam. A close contender for the music video was the track "Purple Haze"written during the Vietnam War (1965 - 1975) by the legendary Jimi Hendrix. This game play (footage from a video game) would have ideally fitted into the video as it illustrated genuine historical combat footage and hence clearly demonstrates the war. It portrayed this in two ways firstly at a certain time of the year in Vietnam there is a natural purple haze that forms in the top canopy of the rainforest. Secondly, it has been well documented that due to the horrors of this war many very young soldiers turned to drugs in order to cope and block out the scenes of warfare, and therefore this led to them functioning under the influence of drugs and their thought processes being hazy.

The starting point of planning of our project was to combine the selected song we would have carefully chosen with various types of different military/battlefield footage, for example, air strikes by high-speed jets mixed with the gritty ground combat and the addition of naval combat too. We had planned to create and obtain the majority of this footage from using a screen capture software called FRAPS that we were both very familiar with and knew exactly how to use. We would then use this computer program to record the audio and visuals from our gameplay whilst playing military action games such as Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield Vietnam. These three video games are very realistic in comparison to a real battlefield and depict an idea picture of what we wanted. We know it is realistic because they were reviewed by game testers and people who genuinely fought in these particular battles. These reviews both stated how realistic all 3 games are.

Our idea was to compare the combat from the times of World War 2, the Vietnam War and Modern Warfare. The songs that we were going to choose were also made and released around the time of the Vietnam war, so it would suit the style of the video we wanted.

To obtain some actual military/battlefield based footage, Nikil and I had planned to go to an air show at Duxford, Cambridgeshire. Attending an airshow would enable us to observe and film different war planes from the various ages. They would be on display and would fly insane stunts and flybys over the area and in front of us. We would film the planes as they flew over perilously low doing stunts and simulated dogfights. This real-life footage would be absolutely ideal to enhance our music video and to help portray the devastation and reality of war.

One of the camera shots we wanted to use was to a "Mise-en-scene" camera shot. Ideally I would have had someone dressed up in a military uniform, preferably the singer, positioned and stationary at the end of a runway whilst a plane is taking off directly above them. We would have then edited this clip by slowing it down and mixing it with a sort of purple-haze effect.

Below is a screen shot from the ideal video we were going to use:

However, after we analysed the songs, we realised how they would be difficult to approach in consideration to making a music video. This is because the lyrics to the songs did not really give us a clear picture of an ideal story upon the results we found through the questionnaires. But all was not lost... I was listening to my friends I-Pod when I first came across the song "Everybody's Changing" by Lily Allen.

I had recognised the song as it was originally sung by Keane. After listening through the entire song I knew that this song would be the ideal piece of music to create a video. The rationale was that upon hearing the lyrics I knew that I could easily create a story-board. I personally don't like this version of the song sung by Lily Allen. My preferance is the original release by the group Keane, but their track was too lengthy and therefore, wasn't suitable to make an effective video, whereas Lily Allen's version of the song is just the ideal amount of time.