Music Video Idea Pitches

The Smiling Lies - Space Elevator:
As a group we discovered that the majority of Indie bands music videos heavily emphasise the performance aspect of music videos opposed to the narrative like many pop videos do.

Pitch 1: My first idea focuses on the idea of time as it is closely linked to the word space in the name of the song title "Space Elevator." The band members would be filmed individually and they would each play at a different speed, be it through their own personal judgement or through our editing. They would then meet up, most likely around the drummer, and they would begin to play together in time. However as the band members begin to play in time, it affects time around them and people in the background would either be interacting at a rate that is either slower or faster than normal. I think that the band should be in a public space and also go unnoticed by the public as they go about their business.

Pitch 2: An idea that often occurs in Indie music videos is the idea of juxtaposition where two things are compared with each other but yet they are complete opposites. I was thinking that we could satire the mainstream pop music industry and have stereotypical concepts appear in the video such as Beauty shots of the lead singer whilst the rest of the band act like you would expect an indie rock band to. This would cause conflict between the members in the band until the band gets fed up and they surround the singer whilst he is posing as a generic Pop artist. The singer would then go out of shot whilst surrounded by the band and then reappear dressed as so he fits in again with the rest of the band. This would all happen before and during a live performance of the song with an audience.

Pitch 3: This idea would take a very long time to edit and it would most likely prove to be very problematic to create, but it could still be doable. Each band member is assigned a colour, most likely a primary one such as red, blue or yellow, the world around them would be black and white and very dull, but as each band member passed an object it would light up as there colour. I was thinking that the band members could each take multiple different routes to get to an empty venue but on the way they would each light up their respected route with their own colour. Before the band get to venue it should be empty but when they get there it would fill up with an audience and the colours would be highly satirised.

Pitch 4: A fourth idea idea that I think we could use is the band are shown playing the last couple of seconds of a song at a live concert, in a small venue, they only have one fan there though and they get fed up and wished they could have more fans. A warp like effect would then appear on screen where they are playing at a bigger venue and they have a much larger audience. About halfway through the song the audience will change from the bands idea of an ideal audience to something hellish and out of their nightmares. The band get caught by the hellish audience but when all seems hopeless the bands one and only fan from their previous show turns up and saves them. The band and fan then attempts to escape in an elevator, relating to the name of the song, before managing to get back to their original gig where they play the remainder of the song.

Pitch 5: My final idea is more loosely based around the idea of interesting camera shots while the band performs, there would be a small acted narrative either in the background of the video or it would cut to it every so often. These camera shots wouldn't focus on the band members as people but rather as body pieces and instrument parts. The band members faces shouldn't be revealed until the end of the song and even then their faces wouldn't be seen as they would be wearing masks that make them appear faceless.