More Than Conquerors - Hearth And Home: Music Video

This is the final edited version of the music video "Hearth And Home" we produced for the band - More Than Conquerors.

Video Evaluation

In this evaluation I discuss the processes involved in creating the music video:

band website

I set upon making the band website on wix.com (a free, online html editor that alllows free publishing of the websites you design) wix allowed me to create a basic template with title, navigation bar, a main body of text, background images to the page and even social media icons that linked to our youtube, twitter and facebook. the wix suite even allowed for html players to be added so I added a few of the bands songs from their soundcloud and embedded them in the website.

the website has multiple pages including a homepage, gallery, albums, band and a contact us form for users to interact with us. The gallery contains a few slideshows and two videos, the slideshows are of the band and filming with them and the videos are of the animatic and the finished music video. I am pleased with how the website turned out and am glad it includes features for social interaction between the audience and us through the use of forums, facebook like buttons, twitter links etc. in the future I could possibly add a merchandise section to the website.

The website is live now at: http://sunnywithachanceofri.wix.com/hearthandhome

Filming at Conway Mill

We filmed the band at Conway Mill using a variety of shot types and camera angles including handheld, dolly, mid shots  close ups, overhead, over the shoulder etc. these variations in shot types in key moments throughout the song helped express the nature of the song. Various editing effects on some of the  clips were used, a camera shaking effect was introduced during a riff in the song to exaggerate the powerful effect of the string of notes.

The Mill itself made for a great set for our music video, it had a vast array of usable props we could make use of in the video such as led spot lights and big black sheets to block out some of the natural light. 

More Than Conquerors song

We were offered to make a music video from a local band on the small town america roster "More Than Conquerors." We were excited about the possibility of being able to work with a band face to face recording both a performance piece to the music with the band and our own separate narrative piece. we began planning locations for filming, shot types, story line, clothes and decoration for the set. We decided on a location for the performance part of the music video, this place was Conway mill Belfast  an old refurbished mill on the falls road. it was a prime location for our music video as it looked dilapidated and dark this would help fit the theme of the song which was about a person being secluded, driven away and forgotten about.

digipak design

For the digipak design i drew my inspiration from the bands previous album covers and references in their music videos. We decided the digipak should be mainly black featuring a coffin on the front as the song "Hearth And Home is to do with death, also a chalk coffin is used in "when the well runs dry" - another song of the bands.

the back cover of the digipak was designed to fit the song hearth and home directly as the back features a spotlight and two dark trees, this reflects the scene in the music video where the main character is being chased through the woods.

the inside of the digipak has the two main characters hands facing away from eachother with marridge vows imprinted next to them, this symbolises the seperation that has become of the two.

Also on the inside of the digipak is the collage which shows the filming process of the band, this collage was edited in photoshop to make the image seem as if it were drawn in chalk to make it reminiccent of the front cover

Cgi and green-screen

Cgi and green-screen make music videos out-worldly in nature and allows the directer to achieve things that aren't physically possible and incorporate them into the video, an example of this is Linkin park's "Castle of glass" music video, where cgi and green-screen are used to create a virtual environment and objects within that environment. In the castle of glass example the pictures below show a part of the music video in reality and after the editing has taken place.