Mood Board
To create this mood board, I collected various images which have influenced me throughout, the aim of this is to give an idea to both myself and the audience of the style of the music video, digipack and poster (Font: Fighting Spirit: http://www.1001fonts.com/fighting-spirit-tbs-font.html)
Influences:
- Tame impala's 'Elephant' music video
- William S. Burroughs -THE FINAL ACADEMY DOCUMENTS 1962-63
- A Google seach of 'Psychedelia'
- Carly Paradis – The Hope of a Favourable Outcome
As I havent yet thought of an original band name, I used the name of the band who produced the song I will be using.
With regards to issues of copyright, the band is small and confined, there are relatively unknown to the mainstream music industry. As well as this, I have attempted to contact them in an effort to have their permissio to use the song.
Music Video Ideas
The first of my ideas is heavily infliuenced by Tame Impala's 'Elephant' music video, I would use similar effects such as the receding mirror effect and would attempt to imitate the way the video uses colour to distort the image. The setting of the video is also a
strong influence as a dark room with a spotlight on the band will focus the audience's attention on to them. However, unlike 'Elephant' my artist will direcrlt adress the audience as inspired by contemporary mainstream pop artists as I believe it is a much more powerful way to communicate with your audience when you're looking at them.
Effects used in 'Elephant'
In keeping with themes of 20th century art I have also become aware of some of the works by William S. Burroughs, one of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th Century. One of his pieces is a video from one of his 'underground artworjk' pieces where we have footage of Burroghs painting, smoking and walking though Paris. The build up in the openeing sequence is to me very daunting and enigmatic, this is one of the themes I would like to touch on and therefore will be trying to emulate the opening sequence to his 'Final Academy documents 1962-63', interestingly, it was around the time that this video was made that psychedelic rock started making an appearence.
One of the main focuses of my music video for a piece of pyschedelia is that I wanted to 'take my audience somewhere', in the same way a halucenogenic drug will take the user on a 'trip'. However, instead of having a character in the video simply 'drop acid', I would use inspiration from the 'Final Academy Documents' and have the character arrive at a door or an entrance that the audience will follow him through, into the 'trip'. This metaphircal cannotation for taking a halucenogenic drug stems from the ideas that The Beatles would use. For instance, their song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is an obvious metaphor (although dismissed by the band) both lyrically and visually from their music video for a halucenogenic trip on LSD.
Tame Impala - Elephant
William S. Burroughs -THE FINAL ACADEMY DOCUMENTS 1962-63 #1
My second msuic video idea is more inspired by contemporary music videos. The first is 'The Johnny Cash Project', a music video project which allows audiences to draw individual frames of the original music video thereby creating a dynamic animation. This would be incorperated with another influence. Carly Paradis' 'The Hope of a Favourable Outcome' music video features another animation which is never ending. Meaning, the animation zooms in on concentric circles displaying small cartoons in a loop. Rather than using seemingly random cartoons, I would use footage of band members animated in the same way as 'The Johnny Cash Project'.
'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' music video
Lyric Analysis of 'No Growing' by The Olivia Tremor Control
if i should discorporate
trying to illuminate the lines
of my time
please tell the here and now
present the case somehow
and open up their lines
there is no growing
in knowing where you're going
without the light inside
what do you do when the magic's gone?
what do you do when the magic's gone away?
there is an ideal and i'm going to reach for it
there is an ideal and i'm going to try
open up your heart, open up your heart
there is no growing in knowing where you're going
without the light inside, without the light inside
without the light
As expected, like other elements of a psychedelic rock music video, the lyrics are very symbolic and metaphroical. This makes the lyrics vulnerble to a very subjective reading.
My personal reading of these lyrics is that the words are coming from someone who is about to die/wants to die in order to acheive something as a spirit/in the after life. This is suggested by the first 3 lines of the song. 'Discorperate' means to seperate yourself from a living body 'spiritually or as some kind of ghost. The lyrics then go on to talk about trying to 'illuminate the lines of my time', perhaps meaning he wants to reveal something about his past. In the final line of the first verse it says 'present the case somehow and open up their lines' meaning that he is also meaning to reveal something about someone else.
In keeping with my reading, the chorus lyrics could be about the consequences of dying in this way e.g. he will not be able to continue living his life (no growing) if he isn't alive anymore (without the light inside).
In the 2nd verse, the question 'what do you do when the magic's gone?' is asked, this could be in response to the chorus where arguments where made to continue existing, this verse is about the arguments for dying or comitting suicide, 'the magic' possibly meaning the love between him and another, 'magic's gone' i.e. there is no more love, therefore no reason to continue living.
The line 'there is an ideal and i'm going to try/reach for it' could be about what could be accomplished as a spirit.
'The magic' lyric meaning love then links in with the short verse towards the end, which, along with the chorus might be a final plea to himself to not die. 'Open up your heart' for instance could be about him asking hoimself to feel love once again for his previous lover where the 'magic' had been lost.
The final chorus then simply repeats the previous aguement. The line 'without the light inside' is then repeated twice except the last line finished before 'inside'. The abrupt ending could indicicate two things, either he has killed himself or has suddenly changed his mind about it.
While I am likely wrong about the meaning because of the obvious ambiguity of the lyrics, this analysis is useful as it allowed me to further gage how metaphorical the genre is. As well as this, although psychedelic music videos do not usually make reference to the lyrics, my personal reading could help influence the VFX used during post-production.
Since my first pitch, based on my feedback, I decided to combine both music ideas, therefore, for rougly the first 1/3 of the video will be mainly performance based, at which point psychedelic effects will progressively become more intense, until by the end, a montage of psychedelic clips and images will have been used.
After having decided on this format for my music video, I have since been seeking inspiration for my psychedelic montage, I was originally worried about the heavy post production taking too much time, however, I have found a video which seems to suggest other possible psychedelic styles to use which shouldn't be as time consuming as an effect such as kaleidescopic vision.
The music video is for a song called 'Tron Song' by Thundercat, directed by Eric Andre. The music video was created in a seemingly new format called $5k videos, whereby a budget of only $5000 is allowed to create the video. The result of which produces a very strange but equally creative product which looks as expected very
cheap with regards to the effects used and quality of film.
I found the video especially relevant as the genre of music that Thundercat produces is a form of psychedelia called psychedelic funk.
The montage will consist of a combination of effects and styles from the other videos such as Tame Impala's 'Elephant' and Carly Paradis' 'A Hope of a Favourable Outcome'.
Examples of a Joshua Light Show Performance
Another significant influence for my music video is the Joshua Light Show. The Joshua Light Show is liquid light show typically played over live performances of Psychedelic music. Using a similar effect to Milky Chance's Stolen Dance music video, the Joshua Light Show has 'pioneered the pyschedelic experience' at light shows. I was influenced by the effect of projecting a image of the performance often in my video as I projected footage of my younger sister edited in After Effects to make her look as though she is repeating a movement such as running or standing up.
For the logo in my poster, I was very much inspired by the album covers of 60s Psychedelic/Folk Rock albums of fitting text into specific shapes. I was specifically inspired by albums such as the Bee Gees '1st' Album, in which they fit 'Bee Gees 1st' into a circle. This was similarly done by The Beatles in 'Rubber Sould', a band whos music has very much influenced the psychedelic themes depicted in my music video.
I was then sent Milky Chance's music video for 'Stolen Dance', in which he uses the seemingly basic effect of theme-related images over the perormance. This was not only useful a useful influence for creating seemless transitions and therefore a psychedelic effect, but it also helped tie in the theme of repetition by overlaying edited footage of my younger sister over the performance of the band.
Throughout the production of my music video, through audience feedback at each stage of the process, I found myself using more artists than I initially intended to use as inspiration.
First, I found Bergen Kremer's 'Groza', a video which I initially came across on the Bug Music Site and was later reminded to watch again by my teacher. The video involves the use of the echo effect to a very high standard whereby a repetetive quality is produces, an element which I wanted to depict in my music video. I used this in my video when editing the footage of my sister to give the impression of a repetetive effect. For instance, my sister running in a circle could be enhanced with the use of the echo effect which I found in after effects. In other shots such as that of my sister standing up and leaving the room, I used masking to create a ghostly echo of my sister.
