Rationale

I have chosen to produce my music video idea for The Heavy's "Short Change Hero" because I like this song a lot and it has a very distinctive kind of sound, that being quite western and bluesy. I was able to come up with a plausible idea for a music video using a mixture of live action and stop motion animation and plan on casting my younger brother as the lead character.

I am taking lots of inspiration from the title of the song "Short Change Hero". It has given me the idea to use a wannabe 'hero' as the main character. I also want to have a running theme of the hero using 'short change' (pennies such as 10p coins) to try and help others with, like leaving pennies dotted around or handing them out. The word 'short' in the title also gives me the image of the hero being short, which has inspired my to cast my younger brother who is 12 years old as the hero. I want to use lonely looking landscapes for my settings to reflect the style of western movies that use lonely desert scenes. I want to use locations in my local area, such as countryside lanes, woods, fields and a lake.

Treatment

My idea for my music video is to star a young boy as the "Short Change Hero", having him dressed in western-style cowboy clothing walking around a desolate town that he feels like he must be the hero of.
I plan on using live action film and a little bit of stop motion animation for my music video.

Shot Inspiration
For my live action sequences, I plan on following the conventions of a western movie due to the style of the song. The conventions include the use of guns, horses, typical western outfits (such as stetsons, jeans, boots, card games, vast deserted landscapes, loneliness and some sort of confrontation or fight.
I want to take these conventions and interpret them into a style of my own. As I will be using a younger male actor as my lead role, I will edit his surroundings to fit with his age yet still tie in with the western theme. For example, one idea I have it to use shots of the lead in his western outfit alone in an empty kids park, inspired by the common film convention of filming cowboys alone in the desert or in a derelict town.

These screenshots are from the famous western movie 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly'.

I also want to use the same melancholy tone of using a child exploring alone, similar to the style used in Naughty Boy's music video for "La La La".

For my stop motion pieces, I plan to use a similar style to Mykonos by Fleet Foxes. It uses pieces of simple shapes made of paper/card and moves them around to create characters and locations using stop motion. Creating this would be a very lengthy process (depending on how long the piece of stop motion I need is) but would look very impressive and different.

I want to use hand-painted backgrounds to my stop motion animation. A good example of this is the music video of the song "Aquarium" by BAYY.

Locations and Settings
I plan on using existing locations in my local area. I want to use my local park, woods and lake and the streets and alleyways in my local town.

Colour pallet
The colour pallet I plan on using is going to consist mainly of orange and brown tones to give a warm look similar to a western movie set in a desert. However I may also use some colder tones to highlight the main character's loneliness which will also juxtapose against the warm tones.

Brief overview of narrative
The narrative will consist of the story of a young cowboy who takes it upon himself to become the town's hero in anyway he can, be it big or small.

Costume & Props

The costumes I want to use will be just one for my main character in the style of a cowboy from a western movie. To create this costume, I will use blue jeans, a brown belt, a plaid shirt and a costume stetson.

Changed Initial Ideas

After choosing to use 'Fader' by Temper Trap as my song, I have decided to change it as I struggled to come up with a do-able idea for the music video. I thought of some ideas however they did not fit with the style of the song 'Fader'. I have therefore changed my chosen song to the song I chose as a back-up: "Short Change Hero" by The Heavy.

This song is very rhythmic, melancholy and western-styled, giving me a clear theme to help me come up with ideas for my music video.

The song:

Annotated Lyrics

I annotated the lyrics to the song I am going to use in my music video. I noted some ideas for my music video's narrative. For my initial music video idea, I annotated the lyrics of Fader by Temper Trap:

My other initial idea I annotated the lyrics of Short Change Hero by The Heavy:

Initial Plans

I plan to create a music video for a song that is within the genre of indie rock. I have chosen this because it is a genre I am very familiar with, it being a personal favourite of mine and I feel I will be able to do a better job with a song I like.

My initial plan was to create a music video for Paramore's "Still Into You" and already had ideas for shots, props and costumes. However, I came to realise that my ideas were very closely based off of the actual music video for this song. So I have decided to completely change is and go for a song that I like but have not seen the official music video for.

Below is a list I made of possible songs for my music video:

As you can see from the blue asterixs, I chose "Fader" by The Temper Trap and "Short Change Hero" by The Heavy as my top two favourites. I decided to go with the song "Fader" by Temper Trap and see if I can come up with some good ideas to go with the song for my music video. This song is very upbeat, catchy and at a pace that would be entirely possible and quite fun to edit in time with. The song is heard-of without it being overplayed. Most importantly, I have not seen the music video to this song and plan to keep it that way so that my ideas will be fresh and entirely my own creation.

However, I plan on using "Short Change Hero" as my backup incase I wish to change my song.

The song:

Group Textual Analysis

Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons

Camera Work: 

• There is a major mix of close-up and wide angle shots. The close-ups all focus on the band members and their instruments in detail.

Close-up of guitar

• The camera is used to make the objects and subjects seem more dynamic. This is done by either tilting the camera or leaving it on a 180o angle.

Low angle shot

• Some of the shots go in and out of focus, similar to a trombone shot. This makes it look unpolished, rugged and rough similar to that of the appearance of the band.

Shot that gradually moves out of focus

• Tracking shots are used to show the band all together and to give the audience all the angles possible. This also seems to slow down the pace of the video as the shots last for a long period of time compared to others.

Tracking shot that slowly moves forward

Editing:

• As the music itself speeds up so does the pace of the editing. This is to keep the editing and the music in time, this makes it aesthetically pleasing.
• The cut rate of the video is 112.
• The transitions are forced and match the emphasis of the lyrics. This gives it a montage edit effect.
• The colouring of the video is based on yellows, browns and earthy colours, this is again to go with the rough, rustic effect of the band. This is also a continuation of the colour of the album itself.

Yellow colouring

Mise-en-scene:

• There is a varied types of lighting used. There is the smaller light bulbs, mixing in with the few bigger stage lights. They give some shots a brighter, detailed look and others a dark, shadowy, silhouette look. Both types of lighting give a simple look, again this is the style of the band. 
• The simple look of them on the stage, with little to no props is the style that is associated with that of the genre they are, folk. So this would be looking at making things minimal and stripped down.
• The location being an empty, old, deserted building also matches their rugged, broken look. Again an old fashioned folk look. This also goes with what they are wearing, the old messy suits.
• The fact it is as if they are in a concert, acting like they would when performing to an audience makes them seem true to themselves and is a folk, outgoing, confident, simple vibe. They are also doing their signature 'foot stamp' this is something
• they have been known for and is recognizable to the band, like a symbol.

Undercranking

We got the chance to try out undercranking and did so using the same song "Lonely Boy" by the Black Keys like last time. The difference in this process to that of overcranking was that we had to film while lip-synching to a slowed down version of the track so that the footage could then be sped up later in editing. Once again, I did the lip-synching in the video. It was much easier to keep up with the lyrics this time, compared to having to keep up with a track twice as fast.

This is the result of our attempt:

Overall, I like the outcome of undercranking quite a lot as it looks fun and entertaining. However, from our attempt I would, next time, try to move around a bit more and do less of the habits I didn't realise I was doing at the time (such as fixing my hair or giggling). I also think that there should be more going on around or behind me throughout more of the video as the parts of it with other people playing around in the background looked very funny and effective. We could've also done with some more interesting props. There were a lot of features that worked well in this test, and so I think that we'd just need to include more of it if we were to attempt it again.