Step by step the production of our video.

After we had thought up the initial idea for our song we began storyboarding the video. We planned out a storyline sequence putting together ideas that could match the song.
The basic outline for a story we came up with was that of our main character beginning the sequence as drunk and alone. He would then hear the song being played and begin to sing it himself. This then led on to his performance on a stage that he believed to be there although in reality he was just singing down in the ‘gutter’ somewhere.

Once we had thought through a basic storyline we researched locations looking around local areas to try to find a suitable stage-like area to film. The location we found was the underside of a bridge that had a low barrier which could act as the front of the stage. To begin filming we had then to improve our storyline to make sure we had enough to film and to make sure what we filmed matched the song especially as we were going to involve a lot of lip-syncing.

We thought of having a car go past under the bridge as it would seem appropriate that it was still in use and whilst the main character sat there drinking away his thoughts, the song playing on the cars radio would blare past and put the song into his head.

We began to film the opening sequence with the car going past the main character sat out on the barrier under the bridge. As the song played he began to tap his foot and his hand would begin to go and eventually he mimed playing the piano as it starts in the song.

Back to the drawing board we thought up how the video was going to play out, we thought of having the character singing the entire song as he was drunk but he would believe (because of his apparent location) he was on stage singing to an audience and performing the song live. We would show this as a ‘switch’ between what he was singing where he was in reality and what he believed he was singing and the stage he thought he was on. This led us to film each of the shots we needed in order of how we wanted them to appear, either in reality or in the dream sequence.
We planned to have the majority of the start of the song in reality so that the audience could get to grips with the storyline of a drunk beginning to sing a song he had heard. Then we devised certain areas in the song to be filmed in what he was dreaming. We improvised a spin which would take the video forward to his dream, which would consist of him singing indoors to an audience.
Filming each of these sequences was fairly straight forward as we had pre-planned our locations and the order of play in which we wanted to film. The difficulties we faced were getting the close-ups right so that the lip-syncing was in time to give a realistic effect to the end product. Overcoming this was simple in that we used an ipod so that the main character could sing the song in the exact time it was played from the version of the song we had. This worked to a good effect as we were able to place the audio over the video exactly making the lip-syncing look as realistic as possible, giving our video an aesthetically pleasing finish.

We managed to get through filming fairly efficiently and then began the editing process. During editing we cut and changed parts of what we had filmed so that we were satisfied with the clips we had. We then put them in order and began to add them together with the audio slowly creating our music video. We were then able to add different effects as necessary to give the video a smooth running feel to it.

Having edited what we had so far we showed what we had to a small audience and the feedback we got was positive. They liked the storyline and thought what we had achieved so far was good and this encouraged us to continue with the rest of the film in the same light.
Eventually finishing our filming with the end of the dream sequence and the jump off stage back to reality, the song ends and the main character walks off into the sunset. The location we had under the bridge slopped off into the distance which was perfect for the ending, luckily we had timed it just right so that the sun was setting as we filmed and were able to get the perfect ending shot.

We added in the idea of dropping the beer can (which the character had previously used in place of what he thought was a microphone) which then rolled back down into the gutter where he had performed. As a series of shots this was difficult to film as we had to get the exact roll of the can right, but eventually getting there it turned out to be a good feature in the video and worked well with the end of the song.