This is 'Wiltons Music Hall' in London, a location that we were particularily captivated by.
'Barn Theatre' in Oxted. We particularily liked the historic feel.
'Kings Theatre' Portsmouth, which we very much likes the red materials, and simple colours.Disappointingly, non of these locations, amongst others that we scouted, were available or within our budget. A letter sent to the 'Barn Theatre' by a member of our group follows;
" To Whom It May Concern,
I am a student from a sixth form college in Surrey and am studying Media A2 level. For our coursework in the A2 year we are required to shoot a pop video, for our video we are shooting a band called They Toy Hearts who are an up and coming band who have just got home from touring in America. I am working in a production team of four people in total. I have visited the Barn Theatre recently to watch The Happiest Days Of Your Life and really liekd the look of the theatre and think it would look really good in our video. We would like to shoot the video on the 22nd November for a whole day. I would just like to know how much it would cost and what conditions you have. A quick response would be greatly appreciated so we can make alternative arrangements if necessary.
ThanksJosh Gorman "
Sadly, as with the others, this was to no avail.
We therefore discussed, with 'Dan' a professional set design technician, pottentially recreating a similar 'feel' with our studio. We played him the song so that he could get an idea of what the song was about and share his views. He offered us some advice on what we could do such as investing in to scale plastic moulds, cast in recogniseable theatre architecture such as columns, which we could paint and dress the set with. We then discussed buying some authentic deep red curtains. He agreed with our choice of lighting as we had previously devised, faithful to the mood of the song, but also suggested we considered 'yellow' filters, which give the image a 'yellowy' tint, to greater portray the idea of the theatre. It was suggested this could be done during post-production, using AfterEffects software but this would mean it went over the whole image, and we could not be selective, such as just lighing the band members. In conclusion, we decided a combination of filters combined would create the desired effect and also give some depth as would not be the case with a pure yellow filter or if it was done in post production.
Although we were making progress, and happy with our lighting design, and prepared to begin set building, we all knew we would not be able to achieve what we could with a location.
Luckily, Dan came back to us a few days later, with the news that he had the perfect loaction that we could use, free of charge. It is a big old stately home coimbined with an Opera theatre. The house is called 'The Grange' and is located just outside Winchester - internally it had the exact right character and arcitecture that we wanted to recreate in the studio.
STILL AWAITING IMAGES
As a result of the change in location, our story board has to also change. We have to wait until we have seen it before we can come up with further ideas of set design (if necessary) and changes to the treatment. Due to the distance of the location and it being privately owener, we cant go and visit the location as we please, therefore we have a planned 'recky' on the 5th November. After this, we will hopefully have more images and a further idea of treatment and set desigg. The plan is still to create a music video based primarily on performance as we feel this will allow us to capitalise on the fact that the band is a real, experienced band who have played, performed and made music videos together before. We anticipate that we will get a really good on screen presence from the band and are looking forward to working with them.
