3. A Few Ideas

Alright then, time for a few Sibley-grown ideas, straight from the horses mouth and such. Anyway, I've had the whole summer to think of of ideas for a music video so I'll run the numerous ideas I've had by you, dear reader.

Numero Uno
The Strokes - Last Night

This particular idea is a concept video. Mainly playing about with slow motion, speed and the effects this can create.

In my idea there would be only one shot. This would be a MS of a rough-looking guy sitting at a American style diner table (chequered table clothes, anyone?), as if he's been up all night (get it?). Framed in the shot would be half the table (in front of the guy) and the guy from the waist up, with a space over his head. The entire video would be filmed as a P.O.V. from someone to whom the guy opposite is explaing what happened last night (what "she said...") and the camera position would not move at all. Now for the cunning ploy, the entire music video would be filmed in slow-motion and the actor playing the guy will learn to mime to the Strokes song in slow-motion (thus giving the effect that the video is playing in real-time), the audience will only realise that the video is in slow-motion when the subject does things (such as dropping a spoon is his hand, to see it fall incredibly slowly) or when people walk around behind him (through the entrance/exit, to the bathroom, whatever).

I was partly inspired by that Spike Jonze video we watched of the rappers going backwards, mainly with a view of what you can do with miming, trickery and such. The other big influence came from the Radiohead (oh yeah) video for Street Spirit (Fade Out), in which Thom Yorke smashes plates of glass in real time, to have the glass fall down in slow-motion (actually, maybe this is how they did it! Or whatever).

For me, the slow-motion would represent how it actually feels the morning after the night before. As well as looking mightly cool.

Numero Due
Radiohead - Let Down

As an avid Radiohead fan, I had to get at least 7 3 1 of their songs into any plans we had for a video. So here it is, an idea for Let Down off OK Computer. And it's a bit weird, in a very Crash way (the 1996 one).

The song itself is basically explained by the title, in true classic Radiohead form, it's about how life is such a let down sometimes (or in the eyes of Thom Yorke, all the time haha). I felt this would best be represented through a narrative video (with actors!). The video would open with a standard, suit-and-tie businessman finishing work at the office and walking out onto the street. As he (for it is a he) walks out of the revolving doors and onto crowded the street the camera would pan around at the various faces in the crowd, occasionly trailing one for a second, to highlight the glum, clone-like expressions of them all. With pans back up to the central character's face for reactions. Deciding that life is a bit of a let down, he steps to the edge of the road, opens up his briefcase and throws all the papers over the crowd of pedestrians milling behind him, casually puts his briefcase down and steps out in front of a car (that was the weird bit, yeah)

However, the guy survives, and as Thom Yorke's falsetto voice sings "Shell smashed, juices flowing/wings twitch, legs are going,don't get sentimental, it always ends up drivel. One day, I'm gonna grow wings", there's a close-up of the guys fingers twitching and his eyelids bursting open. He then gets up, bleeding everywhere and just runs, runs and runs, eventually, with a noticeable difference in light, and a lot of blood and sweat shed, he reaches home scoops up his kid and hugs his wife, tears in his eyes.

So basically, although it gets dark, the video would really be a celebration of life (as I actually feel the song is, if you listen to the shimmering guitars and the soaring lyrics - it's no funeral dirge). The audience can be left to judge the motives of the guy...

Numero Tre
Aphex Twin - Jynweythek Ylow

This would be a concept video, in the form of a montage. However, there would also be a narrative, however this would be veiled through the use of the montage, and the audience would actually have to decipher the narrative, all whilst (hopefully) being overwhelmed by the beauty of the song and the striking scenes that they are being bombarded (lightly, it'd be a slow bombardment) with.

Anway, the song itself is an instrumental, and it has a very other-worldly, Japanese Zen garden feel to it. Taking this into account, I'd like to do a video with nature dominating it, with any human element not being far away from it (i.e. a window shows the natural world outside if it's indoors). The montage would have a guy playing chess, or reading, or meditating (as yet undecided) by a window with shafts of sunlight being cast on him. For some reason, he gets up (cue close up of chess piece/book being set down with out of focus guy walking away in background) and walks outside (where the camera joins him). Gradually the weather worsens (with this being shown through shots of the wind picking up and blowing leaves, corn, branches and shots of the sky clouding over, the landscape getting darker from the cloud coverage) and we join the guy in the middle of a field (where he possibly meets someone), watching a storm begin.

So yeah, that's my roughly explained idea for a natural, zen like music video.

Finito (for now)

I have a few more ideas, but I've got work early tomorrow morning so I've got to leave the ideas for tonight. Until next time then...