Final Idea Pitch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcQGtigeadM

The track I selected to do is "come together" by the Beatles. Its quite a slow song but I felt that the lyrics would give me some good visual images. The song was written to help a political campaign for Timothy Leary. He was famous for experimenting with LSD, and strongly believed that if taken correctly it had positive effects. When the government made a crack down on LSD users, he was arrested and afterwards decided he wanted to run for governor of California. He asked John Lennon to write him a campaign song, "Come Together, join the party" was Leary's slogan. Timothy Leary's campaign never really worked very well but the slogan gave Lennon an idea for this song. So lennon went away and wrote this song, the lyrics are "gobbledygook" and are quite interesting. So I feel this gives me license to be quite abstract and surreal and a little bit random with what I put into the video.

Style and Influences For my video I didn't really start off with a narrative idea so I tried to get a general style idea, and I started looking at other Beatles songs and quite like the look of the videos for "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and a couple other Beatles songs. I like the surreal look of the videos, they are pretty trippy looking which I feel would suit the song I've chosen. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7F2X3rSSCUw.youtube.com/watch?v=A7F2X3rSSCU

This image is from the video and you can see that it has an interesting combination of colour and styles. The grey, statue looking figures are slightly less cartoony in comparison to the figure moving. The look of it is quite surreal and i would like my video to hold the same sort of feeling. I also looked at the Terry Gilliam and Monty Python animations. The Flying Circus, Dancing teeth, televisions bad for your eyes. These have the same sort of randomness to them that is included in the Beatles videos and I think that the animation, cut out picture style is would be easier to achieve than that in the beatles videos. Monty python animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1BKtrG7qxQ&NR=1

So having looked at cut out animations I thought that maybe some live action in a cut out would be a good idea, so i started looking round for videos that might include this to see if it would be a good visual effect to include; and i found the song "Nothin' on you" by B.O.B. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PTDv_szmLo

I think that it would fit in with the rest of the style choices I have made for the video, and also allows me to include some live action, not just animated cut outs. I think that I am gonna create a rather artsy looking video, I was also thinking I could include some sort of split screens, to create maybe some sort of comic book/lots of pictures piled up look. The closest I could find was a video by Velvet Revolver called "Come on come in". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8k7xJBXv30&feature=related

A screen shot from the velvet revolver video which shows the kind of thing i could include, this shot showcases more than one visual style which i could include, on the right the pop art look, the black n white/washed out colour one in the left and the normal one in the centre. All styles i could use and in a simple lay out too.

Narrative Idea Now the style has been sorted out I need a narrative idea for the music video, I need a story for it. With the effects i want to use I think that a video with many images in it would be a good idea, so I think that a situation or a location that would include lots of photo's or pieces of work would be a good idea. Location then would be something key to decide, an office or workspace maybe, then I could have a notes board full of post-stick notes and photos and then the guy could knock some papers over then I would have more surfaces to work with and images to create. So an office would then mean an office worker, he is working either late or early because the rest of the offices are empty. As the song has a drug related background the guy could have taken some drugs which then cause him to hallucinate; they could be anti-depressant drugs that have a side-effect of hallucination if too many are taken because, well an office job is hardly one of the most interesting or happy jobs out there. So the plot so far is, a depressed office worker is working late one night and he takes too many of his medication, which then causes him to hallucinate and the photo's, notes and pieces of work, his computer screen, mobile phone and other bits and pieces come to life, a little like the photo's and portraits in Harry Potter. The video is going to be shot from the guys perspective once he starts hallucinating. I feel that this idea would give me enough license to be as random as the lyrics are.

Other Ideas I have another idea, this one is more influenced by the songs title "come together". This is essentially what would be in the video, people coming together. I was thinking about following one character and then throughout the video he gets joined by more and more people until there is a huge crowd of people all together in one place in a celebration of togetherness. The potential problem here though is the availability of all the people needed to have a crowd. Another idea is a coming together of two people, friends or lovers it would work with either. We follow two people that are lonely and sad until they meet and then we see them spending time together and being happy.