Music Video Original Song Change

Song Change Contemplation

Bringing back "Hold Me Down"

After completing our new music video for Tori Lorente's "I Don't Mind", we were faced with concern from teachers and peers that the song was not engaging enough and whilst the visuals were stunning, the soundtrack lacked excitement and build-up.
We were given the task to see if we could edit the visuals for "I Don't Mind" to our original song, "Hold Me Down". This is because our audience generally preferred how this song has an increasingly fast pace and interesting lyrics, whereas "I Don't Mind" has minimal lyrics and the same beat is more or less maintained throughout the song.
It was a challenge at first to alter the clips and rearrange the order of the shots. Our shots were cropped and the pace of some were changed (sped up/slowed down) to fit the beat of the "I Don't Mind" soundtrack. This meant that we needed to spend a long period of time making the shots fit the "Hold Me Down" thought beats. Some of the beats in "Hold Me Down" required more advanced transitions between shots. For example: 
 

New Vision - Reflecting and Moving Forward

After receiving our Draft 1 feedback we realised that everyone loved how our video looked visually but found that there was no meaning to our video and they didn’t understand it. Our teachers have also been brutal with us and told us that we would not be able to achieve the grades we desire with the video we currently have. The majority of our feedback also stressed that we were only working at a Level 2 (Basic 15-23 marks) which is not what we want as we are all hoping to get Level 4’s. As a group we have discussed why we haven’t excelled in the music video creation and have come to the conclusion that we don’t feel a connection with the song, ‘Hold Me Down’, and have consequently been unmotivated and haven’t been enthusiastic – meaning that our video has lacked in creativity.

As a result, we have decided to recreate ‘Tori Lorente’ as an Urban character in order to fit our NEW song ‘I Don’t Mind’ (originally called ‘COLD’ by Urban Nerd Beats).

Our concept will involve the artist around the London Soho area. The lyrics in the song say ‘I don’t mind if we think about you’ so we are thinking about incorporating a narrative of the artist and a boy that she likes but can’t have – he is drifting away from her but she is willing to compromise her pride in order to make the relationship work.

The video will start with the artist being the focal point and then transition into her mind with various shots of her and the boy (but he will appear uninterested in her) and end with solo shots of Tori to explain that her relationship with the boy is just a fantasy and that she is in fact alone.

Tori, as an artist, will originate from Soho and have an urban, streetwear style which will be inspired by posts on the Instagram account ‘baesmentapproved’. We are also taking video inspiration from Streetwear Lookbooks on YouTube that have been used in our new Steal-O-Matic.

Feedback from Ex Student

"I really like the shots outside hylands, the dress and everything make it work really well! but i’m not so sure about the on the stairs or in the subway? the acting/miming in the hylands shot is really dramatic and makes the other miming scenes seem a bit boring. i feel like it would look more dramatic if she was either in the same outfit or something completely different in these shots."

 

New Idea

At first, we were set on the idea of taking inspiration from the Nickelback 'Rockstar' music video and asking members of the public to sing our song lyrics.  However, after discussing with the team and collecting footage of performance based shots of our artist, we decided that we wanted to create a brand with our artist and have her as the as the sole focus.  This also means that we are debating the dance element of our video, but we will see how it looks in our first draft and then make the decision after we have also received feedback.