Design Ideas by Jade Podmore

The song we have chosen to create a video for is called "Chess" by "The Gospel According To John". This song has been created by an unsigned band and does not already have a music video, which we feel was a contributing factor in the decision to use this song. This is due to the blank canvas that using an unsigned band offers us; we will not have to conform to any already 'established' ideas about the song or Band that our video must adhere to. We have also decided that their 'image' and their 'sound' are suitable for the audience that we are aiming to target, this being males and females aged 16-20.

Below are our design ideas:

Story line/message

The main story line of our video is based largely on the lyrics and message of the song. However, we have tried to incorporate our own interpretation of the song. For example, one of the lyrics is as follows "Im Robin Hood" and "Did you have fun? Driving my heart?". This lead us to the idea of having Robin Hood and Maid Marion characters running through a forest, with Robin chasing Maid Marion as she tries to run away from him. This is inverting the traditional love story of Robin Hood. Maid Marion is in love with Robin and encourages this love, however in our video, she is portrayed as a woman who is leading Robin Hood on, making him chase her endlessly and controlling him, like his heart is a machine (like a car) and she is the driver, this scene aims to be an extended metaphor for the stereotypical relationship between men and women, where men have to chase after women and women lead them on. This is the typical stereotype of the female gender. However it also inverts this stereotype as it gives the female power of the male that is a-typical of the established gender stereotype of women.
     We have also tried to en-corporate the idea of love being a game, this idea came from the lyrics "and we'll have a game of chess". This made us think about how love is all about strategy, competition, out smarting one another and in the end, defeating your 'opponent' or 'partner'. For these scenes we have chosen to use a giant chess board, on which the band members who played Maid Marion and Robin Hood will play the parts of the king and queen, their aim being to be the last one standing, like in a game of chess, this being another metaphor for love.
     Our aim is to invert tradition and represent the more realistic side to love, the side that may be 'harder to swallow'. The message we are trying to send with our video is timeless. This has lead to the idea of combining both the traditional setting of the Robin Hood love story, 'Sherwood Forest' and a far more modern, less 'romantic' setting of a built up area, perhaps a Terrace estate or industrial centre. This will send the message of the struggle between a man and a woman in love is one that is timeless, and is still relevant today.
     Throughout our video, we want clear splashes of colour, these will come from the actors clothing, Mise-en-scene of the forest and any background colour from signs or posters in the streets of the more built up areas that will feature in our video. We hope that by doing this, we will be representing the band as young, fun, care-free and different; we want them to stand out against the bleaker background of the streets or forest.
  
Style of Editing/camera work
For our video, we have chose to use small sections of 'stop-start' animation. This decision has come from looking at other video's from bands/artists that share a similar image and/or musical style as our chosen Band, such as Alphabeat and the Macabees. We think that this technique is original and will give us a chance to emphasise the childish, care-free simplicity that we feel is vital to the message and representation of our video.