'California Girls' by The Magnetic Fields Music Video

This was the second main project in BTEC Media Production. The task this time was to create a music video for a song chosen by the teacher, from this we listened to the song and did a lyric analysis for it. From understanding the song, we then put down some ideas on paper on how the music video should go, we decided to go for a narrative music video because we didn't feel an artisic video would work as well, and we couldn't have done a preformative video because we couldn't the band for obvious reasons. We then storyboarded the video, made up equipment and prop lists, drew up a schedule and sorted out the production hazards and locations. With all that done we started filming.

For the 'plot' of the narrative video we went for a 'nerd' who wants to get revenge on all the 'cool' kids who have made fun of him, we associated the idea of the 'cool' kids being California Girls and the song about hating Calfornia Girls could be put onto the mindset of a 'nerd'. The main location included my bedroom, my living room and room 170 in college. Filming lasted around 6 weeks, problems included missing crew members, whether it was other commitments or just not being able to turn up. Other problems included unenquired props and equipment, overall these problems led to the long filming time and editing lasted another 6 weeks along side the filmin but it wa finally completed in April 2009.

This was the first main project in which we manipulated the lighting for the scene, the practice we got on 'The Big Burn' was put into good use for this project and we got the desired look for each of our shots. Some scenes were lit naturally but scenes such as the final one in 170 and a couple of shots in the bedroom to make the 'nerd' look more menacing when he plans his revenge on the 'cool' kids.