Song Choice Development

Since my last post on the song choice there have been a few changes. Originally the plan was to take a track and work to it. After narrowing down which genres and which artists I would want to work from I decided I would use a local artist. As I play drums for local singer songwriter, Shaun Colwill, it made sense to ask him. Unfortunately due to legal reasons Shaun wasn't able to give me a track to work with. Instead he suggested that we would write a piece. At the moment this is my "Plan A" because this shouldn't take too long to produce and it would also mean I could tailor the song to the video and vice versa. However, should this not come to fruition I have been trying to find a backup track that I will use if plan a fails. For this piece I wanted to find something which mostly consisted of instrumental playing. Due to the location, lighting, actors and other factors that were pre-decided, both by me and by circumstance, I wanted the piece to work with those factors so that If the worst case scenario occurs I can seamlessly transition and adapt my work.

For these above reasons I have settled on the artist Tycho. For a while now I have listened to their work. Tycho is predominantly Scott Hansen, however there are other contributors and live touring members. Hansen is hugely interesting to me because he does what I love. He works on music and photography, amongst other things. Because I consider the whole creative sphere very linked I would imagine that through touring and photographing his surroundings Hansen has been influenced. Therefore I feel like his music has a certain depth that would work well with my video concept of having a part performance part abstract shot video. Obviously this concept would somewhat mirror Hansen's main interests and passions, therefore actually complimenting the piece of music. Tycho also uses a very clear graphical aesthetic, which is something I appreciate and also aim to do. For example I am thinking of having his track Spectre as my plan b. This track works well as it isn't as long as most of his work however it is atmospheric and also includes all of the instruments that I have access too. The album artwork for Spectre is typically minimalist and uses very beautiful muted colours. I could very easily use these colours in my video. So far I have been exploring the effect of monochromatic lighting. In my Editing Test post I explored applying a specific colour way to my footage. With Spectre I would potentially use the colours used on the album artwork as they all compliment the music greatly and also have the intertextuality of referencing the artwork.

This picture on the right is a shot of Tycho performing live. From a live perspective I think they have hit a new high in terms of performance by using projectors and lighting to add an abstract element to the live show. This is why I feel a part abstract part performance video would be hugely appropriate. Before deciding on having Tycho as my backup plan I had referenced them in my Lighting Examples. 

So far I'm feeling pretty confident about this project. Obviously I want my first choice to come through however now having found a more than viable alternative I'm not so worried. I do need to produce a storyboard, pitch and treatment within the next week, by the end of September, therefore I need to secure a track from the first source sooner rather than later however there is a bit of leeway.