A video in comparison.

We the Kings – Skyway Avenue

I decided to research some music videos that could maybe give us an idea for what to do in ours. After a couple of hours of research we found the song ‘1985’ by the band ‘Bowling for Soup’ helpful to some extent. Through out the majority of the video the camera is focused on the band members playing in the garage. This gave us some ideas for angles to use and where to place the camera, but unfortunately the lighting and costume that they used in this video did not fit the Meta narrative that we wanted to create. The lighting was too bright and they used Intertextuality in the costume area. The band dressed up as lots of different acts like Elvis Presley and Marilyn Manson. In our video we want to go for the Indie look so we won’t be using the costume ideas or the lighting as we need that to be low-key. So despite not getting everything we wanted from this music video we did at least see some good camera shots and angles in this video.

The next video I saw was a song called ‘Skyway Avenue’ by a band called ‘We the Kings’. This video and band were exactly what we were looking for. The basic story line is a boy calls a girl from the previous night (we presume he met her at some sort of club), he then goes on a date with her with her not thinking it going to work out and him really eager to see this girl. Towards the end of the video their points of view switch as he doesn’t want to be a rebound for this girl and she begins to really like him. At the end they walk away happy together. Now although this isn’t the story line that we’re looking to create, it is a long the line of a teenage hook up. The actors are very similar to what we’re looking for as well. Only one main guy and one main girl. Through out the video there are a couple of friends that you briefly see but they don’t play a major role. These are the roles that we are looking to fulfill in our video.

Not only is the story line somewhat similar, but also the performance aspect is exactly what we are trying to recreate. The performance is based in a garage with low-key lighting. The garage has old bits of cars and basic junk surrounding the band members either on the floor, or on the wall. This is what we will be trying to do to make it look as if the band hasn’t made it; they’re not big and are willing to practice anywhere to fulfill their love of music. The camera angles used are what we want to use as well. In the performance aspect the camera is mainly held at a high angle looking down on the band from the front. I like this view because you get the entire band in the shot but obviously the lead singer at the front will be the focus of the shot. This allows him/her to go up closer to the camera or step back a little to show emotion about what he’s singing about. With this camera angle you can also see if the singer is jumping or swaying, these actions will reflect the pace and tempo of the song. The lighting will be low-key in our video, much like the one in the ‘Skyway Avenue’ video. We chose to use this lighting because it represents the fact the band is out of the lime light and are undiscovered in the music world.

The costumes used in the acting part of the video could be used in ours. I like the casual look that is used with just jeans and a t-shirt, but if we are using our lead singer as an actor we may have to go back to the indie look once again. As we want to create the look of the ‘not so popular’ group of people, we would prefer to go back to the indie look as we want to give off the impression that the band are trying to fit in with others by the way they dress (the common indie look).

The plan is to use the indie look throughout the video. This is why the costumes ‘We the Kings’ used in the performance aspect of their video can’t be copied into ours. They went for the casual jeans and tight t-shirt throughout their video where as we want the indie look. The costumes we will want to use will be very similar to what ‘The Kooks’ use in the majority of their videos. Such as ‘Seaside’ and ‘She moves in her own way’.