'End Is Here' - Music Video

So this is me and Aaron’s music video that we created for our Media Diploma at college. For this unit the class was split up into groups to work on the videos, with group sizes ranging from 1 to 5. Fortunately we were allowed to work just as a two man group, and so didn’t have to work with any new confusing people!

So with the music video now done and dusted I thought we could go on a little walk down its production road, as well as go into the aftermath of the video.

To start, let's go right to the beginning.

So… I’m not exactly sure where this video came from…

Our initial task was to pick three songs and create music video pitches for them; basically a summary of the video, plot, tone, effects, etc. It’s somewhere between a synopsis and a full script. So once it was done for three different songs we then spent a few lessons narrowing it down to one choice through peer feedback and our own judgement.

And the choice we arrived at was a track created by Aaron himself; ‘End Is Here’.

Again, not sure where the concept emerged from… I guess just listening to the song really.  The mood and tone come straight from the song, that epic and screeching darkness but also quirky and amusing. Something about the song it’s self just makes it a black comedy, and for the video to be anything else would be just wrong.

The Zombies basically came from me and Aaron loving Zombies. As shallow as it may sound, the Zombies are there because we though, “wow Zombies are cool, we’ve gotta have some of those!” The chalk pit from our classic ‘Squid and the Daleks’ suggested it’s self as a good setting for a desolate wasteland with roaming Zombies.

So I had Zombies, the chalk pit as a location, and a black comedy tone. From these elements I knew we were going to be using Zombies in a slightly different way than usual. Something off beat and quirky and playful.

Even though I prepared three pitches I already had ‘End Is Here’ in my head as the one that would go through to be made. I loved the tone and the narrative, and the way it fit the music perfectly. It was also the most achievable of the pitches, it was designed around the things we knew we had; the chalk pit, the two of us being the zombies. Looking at this pitch we knew we could pull it off.

After this we spent a few weeks developing the pitch and getting it ready to shoot. We drew up storyboards and created shot lists. Take a look-see:

And we also did paperwork… so much horrible paperwork…

But finally after all that Pre-production we were ready to record.

Recording took two days and despite that rather short shooting time it proved to be a tricky and fiddly business. To save you the heart ache we endured, as well as to try and keep this post relatively entertaining, I shall pick just a few of the best filming moments.

MAKE UP! Oh that lovely lovely frustrating and itchy make up. We were aiming for a 'Night of the Living Dead' style make-up, simple pale face with black under the eyes.

We originally bought a make-up it from a party shop, which promised to contain all the elements needed to make a Zombie face. It did not. In fact the whole kit was a really bad buy and a waste of money. It contained no white make up and the grey face paint made me look like the Tin Man. We swiftly abandoned this kit.

Luckily we found some white powder lying around (god knows why it was lying around, but thank god that it was!), and basically brushed that all over our faces. You know talcum powder? It was basically just that. It only sort of stuck and flew around the room in great clouds.

We used some of the black face paint from the kit to darken under our eyes and complete the look. Of course once the make-up went on it wasn’t coming off until we finished shooting, this meant walking around a good chunk of town all Zombied up. Aaron took full advantage of wandering town fully Zombie-fied, moaning “brains” every time a civilian walked by. And oh boy, the looks they gave us.

The disgraced make-up kit...

I also learned a great lesson that YOU, yes YOU, can learn from. Back up. Buck up, back up back up. The specific lesson is camera related. For filming we used a very fancy college camera that could pull in and out of focus. It’s a lovely thing and can be used to make very nice shots. I've never really been able to play with the focus on a shot before, having never used a camera awesome enough to do that, so this was a very nice opportunity.

However this coolness comes at a price; the battery runs out really fast, it literally seems to just leak out the camera as you use it. And so I cunningly decided to take my own camera along as a backup. This saved the video. Whenever fancy camera ran out, old reliable camera was ready to take its place.

The moral of this tale is BACK UP! It can be applied to more situations then cameras. Basically when setting up a shoot, assume everything will go wrong, and make a plan for when it does. This is a time when destructive thinking is actually helpful!

One of our most striking locations was a very interesting slightly run down car park. Now there was a lot of graffiti on the place, and on our location scout me and Aaron suspected it might be a haunt of local gangs. So out of fear of “youths” we planned to shoot there on a weekday when all the sinister kiddies would be in schooling. However there is something we didn’t anticipate on being at the car park… CARS! We were just minding our own business, doing some sweet acting running up and down the car park, when a car pulled in. Aaron had his back to it, so I heroically spotted it first and dived out of the way shouting; “CAR” The best part was that it seemed like the driver totally didn’t even care he almost ran the two of us over. The dude didn’t even shout at us! Just carried on with his day unaffected… Good for you almost killer!

The chalk pit was just good clean fun in the chalk. It all went smoothly if I recall… A few passers-by gave us funny looks but that’s about it. Oh, there were these really annoying little fly’s that would settle on anything still. So of course when I put the storyboards down to shoot, I came back to find the page covered in flies. No harm done, just sort of shook them off, except it turned out that on one occasion I forgot to shake them off before turning the page. That’s right – One of the storyboard pages has bits of squished fly and blood stuck to it. Nice and professional.

After filming was all done and wrapped in a bow, it was time for the delights of editing.

This video is probably the trickiest bit of editing I’ve ever done (so far…). Usually when I edit I have the scene that I’m trying to construct, and it’s just a matter of puzzle piecing that scene together out of all the different shots and coverage and takes. And usually, since I’m a pretty visual guy, I’ll have a pretty clear view of what I want the edit to look like before I even begin shooting.

However, this is a non-linear music video fool! No script to refer back to and neither of us knew exactly when each shot would occur, or how the different sections would be laid out. All we knew was that the edits and the action had to match the beat of the song. This is quite a lot of freedom, and almost limitless possibilities of how every could bit together… It was quite daunting.

Editing this project was very different to others, and the video only really came together in editing. Everything depended on this, a narrative, suspense, flow…. Everything. This was basically like the writing stage, where we had to piece something together from everything we shot. I suspect this might be how it goes for a lot of music videos…

Don’t get me wrong, it was actually a lot of fun to edit, although the pressure of working to a rapidly approaching deadline was quite tense. 

However, we battled past the stress valiantly, and I think we managed to put together a very good edit.

There’s actually been quite a lot of confusion from audiences as to what the narrative of the video is. This seems really weird to me, I mean it’s there! Look at the screen, the story is right there taking place in front of you! Look, it’s Zombies! Look at the Zombies! They have a guitar! What don’t you understand?

But then again when a video lives in your head, and just basically takes over your life for three weeks it’s always going to be obvious to you what it’s about. The audience is presented with just this final product, fresh in their heads for the first time and then after 3 minutes it’s over. So I can’t be too harsh on the confused folk.

So I thought I’d just take this opportunity to explain, from my viewpoint, what the video is all about. So what you have first and foremost is a really simple story about two Zombies roaming a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This dystopic land is filled with relics of the fallen society; books, toys, cloths, etc. The first Zombie is a serious fellow, stalking the land and just being zombie-like in general. 

Zombie #2 is a more playful creature, toying with the abandoned junk filling the land. They are brought together when they both set their sights on a stray guitar on the ground. They both go after it, and so end up meeting and fighting. After this it’s basically a Zombie bromance, with the two running around this deserted world, getting past their differences, and eventually working together to put on a concert for their good friend the teddy bear. And then they walk off into the distance together. That’s it. That’s your story.

Okay, so that’s the video right at the surface level. But if you want… 

you can go deeper *cue Inception music*.

Like most works of Zombies, the creatures here are used as a metaphor. However we did something a bit different from the typical metaphor, that being along the lines of “we are all just Zombies!” Or, “man is the real monster!”

It’s about how teenagers can be sort of shell-shocked into acting like children. Both the Zombies wear pretty normal outfits for the un-dead, no tears or blood stains, and whilst this might just look like our budget showing, it was actually intentional. They look like just normal teens because that’s kind of what they’re supposed to be. It’s this idea that life has beat them down so much they’re reduced to this Zombie-like state, where all they can do is stagger around the world, and to try and cope they retreat into toys and hobbies, the guitar, the teddy bear are their coping devices. All of this is a very nice metaphor, wrapped up in a wasteland world full of Zombies.

Not to get too sappy here, but this is also a theme that’s kind of personal to me. The world has been kinda crappy to me through my life, and I have often felt rather Zombie-like, sort of barley stable but having to stagger on, not really sure why I’m doing things but just having to do them. And to cope I used to, and suppose still do to some degree, retreat into the world of playing with my Power Rangers and Transformer toys. It’s actually only recently that I’m starting to overcome this, finding myself and then taking that self that I have found and having the confidence to put him out there. And I think this college course as well as my own recent film-making is a big part of that… Wow, this got suddenly deep and heavy. Let’s take a breather.

But yeh, I thought this was quite a cool meaning to put into the video, and also something I thought would be quite relatable to a lot of viewers. However so far no one has picked up on this meaning, or at least commented on it. Again, everyone just seems to be a bit confused!

 Maybe we could have done more to make the metaphor more obvious, and yet I really like the video how it is, and adding a final twist where we reveal the zombies are just normal teens would have been VERY cheesy and Shyamalan-esque (yuck) and would have destroyed the atmosphere.

Of course this is getting into the “Matter of Interpretation” realm of viewing, so if you see some other meaning in there, or think “I didn't see that! He’s talking nonsense!” then it’s totally valid.

Ok, we’re all done now I promise. But before I go I will just add that we’re very pleased with the video. The acting, the editing, the locations… Everything. And even though audience reaction hasn't been that good in our class, we very much hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it. It turned out to be quite the little Halloween treat!

And here’s hoping for a disfinction! (goodness me, with have PWG video in-jokes now!)