(1) Preliminary Task Explained

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Planning Our Preliminary Task
In class, we were assigned the task of planning and producing our own music video as a practice exercise for our main project. Each group was randomly given two stimuli to base our video on; one was a classic fairy tale/nursery rhyme and the other was a random question. We had to choose one out of the two to gather inspiration from. 

 The fairy tale we were assigned was, 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf', and the question we received was, 'What if you said yes to everything?'.

  While we brainstormed both of the ideas, we mutually agreed to use the nursery rhyme as opposed to the question. This is because, firstly, this was the topic we formed more ideas for and each took a liking to - perhaps because of the familiarity we had with the tale and the moral lesson it served. Furthermore, this stimulus was more appropriate to use for a music video, as the question we were given seemed like it had a greater potential if dialogue was used, which wouldn't work in a music video very well and would be very difficult to pull off. 

 After deciding which stimulus to work with, we drew up a diagram to keep track of our ideas and help us come to a more informed conclusion. This is the mind-map we created: 



Potential Songs 
After we finished creating a plan, we began to brainstorm which songs would be most effective to use for our video. We first started searching for songs that had a direct link with our fairy tale:


AURORA - 'Running With The Wolves'
This was the first one we found, and although we all agreed that the song was relevant to our project, we ultimately decided that it was simply too dark to convey the kind of mood we wanted to create for our own video. 
   



Passenger - 'Boy Who Cried Wolf'
For our initial idea, we agreed to use this song. This is because the slow and emotional nature of the song was relevant to the sad and emotive themes of our story and plot. However, when we began to develop our idea, we felt we needed to change the song to fit the newly formed idea more, this is because the song has a darker tone to our idea which would feel out-of-place when paired. 
   




Lucy Spraggan - 'Puppy Dog Eyes'
This was the song we finally agreed to use, as the tone of the song suited our themes and ideas. 
    


Idea
Our Primary idea was based on the story of a young boy and his dog. The audience would learn that the dog was his best friend, and the overall mood that would be conveyed at this point would be lighthearted. For the most part, the audience would only see things from the boy's perspective, however, towards the end, the perspective will shift from his to his parents'. At this point, it will be revealed that the dog was imaginary all along and the boy is in fact alone. With a bittersweet ending, the audience understands that the boy's happiness he finds in his dog is, of course, along with the dog, not real. However, the boy still pretends that the dog is real and is left blissfully unaware. 

On the other hand, we decided against this idea. This is because it would be practically difficult, particularly when considering who to cast. It would be difficult to find both a young boy as well as two parent-looking adults who would be willing to act for us. 

We decided to develop our idea to better our circumstances. We decided to base our new idea on a couple who walk their dogs together. The video will depict their loving relationship. We haven't decided on a climax or resolution for our story, but have brainstormed different endings. For example, having the couple break up and leaving it on a sad tone, or having the couple break up and then reunite with a happy ending.

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