G324 - Considering and Choosing Song

The final decision that w had to make before starting to produce ideas for our music video was what song we would create the music video for. This was a relatively easy decision for us to make as we created a system to help us make our decision. This system required us to answer 3 questions for each song;

1. How much do you like the song?
2. How easily can you interpret a narrative and is this different from it's current music video?
3. Does it's current music video do the song justice, in your opinion?

We applied this to 5 of Frank Turner's songs before making our final decision.

Poetry of the Deed:


1. Sam and I both really like this song due to its fast beat and honest message. However, we both agreed that we feel like we could easily become bored of the song which would create issues when it came to spending lots of time with it.
2. Neither of us were able to come up with a strong narrative that would both suit this video and upstage it's current video due to the simplicity of the lyrics not leading themselves towards creating a narrative.
3. We believe that the current music video has been constructed really nicely and reflects the theme of the song extremely well. It helps to establish Turner's style and indicates the relaxed folk theme of the song.

The Way I Tend To Be:


1. Sam and I love this song due to it's popularity within the folk genre, its catchy lyrics and its simple melody. We both feel that we would be able to spend a lot of time working with the song without getting bored or irritated by it.
2. We both agreed, after listening to this song, that whilst we disliked the narrative that had been constructed for this song, that we found it difficult to come up with a different narrative. We liked the idea of purposefully reflecting the lyrics a lot within the video but couldn't decide on how we would be able to do this in a way that creates a strong narrative.
3. We believe that the music video that has already been created for this song does not do it justice as there is so much more that could potentially have been done with it. However, as we have no better ideas that we would be able to produce, this is something will have to accept.

Photosynthesis:


1. Neither Sam nor myself particularly like this song as we feel that it is too repetitive and would easily aggravate after listening to it more than twice within a short period of time. This would create many issues at every stage of the process.
2. Sam and I both felt that we would be able to create a narrative that focused on Turner growing up and by reflecting the experiences he mentions along the way such as his "angry adolescent years". This would be able to reflect the nature of the song accurately and could help to play on Turner's star image.
3. We agreed that the music video that has been created for this song does not do it justice in any way as we believe that whilst it reflects his most common style, the use of the school children was unnecessary and actually ended up taking away from what was being said within the song. Not only this, but it didn't have a strong enough connection with the lyrics and therefore seemed like the construction hadn't been fully thought out before the making of the video.

Polaroid Picture:


1. Both Sam and I really like this song as the message behind it resonates well with us both and we feel like the lyrics are really catchy and stick in our minds. This is good as it should prevent us from becoming fed up with the song during the filming and editing process.
2. Upon listening to the song for the first time, Sam and I were able to picture a narrative far different from that of the current music video. Unintentionally, our inital ideas matched up with each others and we had many of the same concepts which we wanted to develop.
3. We believe that whilst the music video Frank Turner has created for the song is well made and includes some very interesting shots, it doesn't do the song justice. This is because we believe that it would have been incredibly easy as well as more interesting to create a narrative for such a powerful song, rather than by going down Turner's route and using mostly performance shots.

Vital Signs:


1. Whilst we both like this song, we agree that we prefer some of the other songs and therefore we would rather work with one of those when it comes to making our music video.
2. Sam and I were both able to come up with different narratives for this music video, however they were very different from one another. Whilst Sam was focusing on creating a narrative focused around how Frank welcomes death, I was focusing on creating a narrative that focused on the leading line of "This country is my canvas - I leave paint trails as I go." Sam felt that the video could follow Frank through the last day of his life which ends in his unexpected death due to the line "I'll be dead but never dying." I saw the video as potentially following this narrative however ensuring that as Turner moves through his last day, he leaves a paint trail behind him. With this being the case, the video could have been filmed in black and white whilst the paint trail could have been left in various bright colours so that at the end of the video, we could pull out until the camera looked as if it were looking down on the earth, allowing us to view the painted image he left behind. However, we would not have the budget to be able to pull this off effectively.
3. We both agreed that the narrative of the music video is effective yet does not suit the nature of the song. We felt that this was therefore a poorly executed decision and would have changed many things about the video. We also commented on how we thought the black and white filming could also have been used to a better effect.

After completing this exercise, we realised that the best combination of answers came from Polaroid Picture and therefore, this is the song that we have decided to create a music video for. We have many narrative ideas already and due to our love of the song are willing to listen to it repeatedly in order to produce the best results.

Posted by Olivia Calver