Let Me Go Music Video Details

Let Me Go
Music Video Details

Song : Let Me Go
Music Artist : NF

Let Me Go Was A Music Video That I Had Created For A College Project, The Brief Given Was To Plan, Film Direct And Edit A Music Video By Yourself As A Individual Creator. I Knew From Starting The Project I Wanted My Music Video To Display A Important Message And Have Impact, As I Was Inspired By Music Videos Such As "This Is America" By Childish Gambino Directed By Hiro Murai, That Implemented Many Metaphors And Inner Context Within The Music Video, This Would Give The Music Video Depth Purpose And Meaning That Gave The Music Video Replicability. I Started The Planning Stage Of Creating A Music Video By Researching Into Other Music Videos And Techniques, Such As I Watched A Range Of Styles From Narrative Music Videos Such As "Of The Night" By Bastille Directed By Dave Ma Which Showed A Interesting Concept Of The Effects Of Mental Health As We See, A Detective Go Through His Night Shifts Seeing Death And Hatred, Which Leads To The Detective Seeing The Worst In Humanity And People. The Countless Deaths He Witness Leads Him To Become Depressed And Guilty As He Cant Save Them, Which Leads To The Detective Loosing His Strength To Continue In His Life. This Would Be a Music Video That Would End Up Inspiring Me And Opening Up My Visions Into Branching My Themes Out For My Ideas And Was One Of The Videos That Helped Me Come Up With Let Me Go.

My initial idea is, to have my music video link to themes on mental health, I will accomplish this using symbolism to add context and detail to the music video so the audience can visually see the feeling of having mental health issues. I also wanted to present the mindset of a person who has mental health issues like depression and visually compliment the song in showing the audience the different ways they act as well as to guide a person who feels similar a way out, through getting rid of all the negative thoughts within their life. My hope is to connect to the audience through the feeling and message of the music video whilst entertaining the audience through the visual effects to keep the interested, I wanted to use my research into the mental health and utilize this to show signs and symptoms to the audience so there is a more awareness within the issues, so more people can help those in need. I also wanted to show the issues with social media and the effect it can have on people, as well as also show a representation of how only a slight negative issue that goes to a person experiencing these mental health issues can cause them, to have uncontrollable experiences to warn people that they should be more careful in what they say and do.

I believe from my feedback I have received I have successfully displayed my main theme of my music video as I believe u as a viewer can understand the themes within my music video as well as I believe I used symbolism like “this is America” and “lovely” to give each scene more context and detail in meaning and context. An example of this additional context could be the clouds that surround the artist is a representation of the clouded thoughts cause their mind is not fully clear due to all the negativity that surrounds the artist. The clones are used to show that many people who suffer depression the person who can make there mood lower is themselves especially people who have anxiety as in some cases some people, are not happy within themselves in how they look feel and they target themselves, for issues as well as people who regret the past also target themselves for the actions they make and they seem to carry these memories through there life.

The Initial Idea
Of The Music Video

My Inspirations
For My Music Video

From watching the music video "in da club" by 50 cent. I was inspired to create a shot that resembles the shot of 50 cent being upside down, I really liked the uniqueness of this shot and how it stands out as a viewer, I would develop this in my own way by adding camera movements that rotate out. Revealing the full body of the artist. I believe the result of this was great, as I liked the camera movements and how the performance is still happening while the rotation is happening. I think the developments I have made to this concept adds something new to the shot that it was inspired by and makes my music video look unique.

When doing the camera movements, I wanted it to look visually appealing for the viewer, so I used the rule of thirds grid to help me Aline the camera movements that I added in post in After Effects with the 3d layers with camera layers. I would then keyframe the rotation to twist in line and symmetrical to the center border (rectangle) of the grid, so it looked visually appealing for the viewer.

I'm happy of the result of the camera movement due to the limitations I had that I had no camera man due to corvid restrictions and my health, so I filmed myself and added camera movements in post. If I was to do this again, I would develop this further by having the transition into the reveal come from the eye.

As I Have Mentioned Before. There Was Many Different Parts Of The Lovely Music Video I Research That Helped To Inspire Me When Creating My Music Video, One Shot Was The Cloud Above The Artist Within The Music Video, The Cloud Represent Depression, I Really Liked The Metaphor With Having The Cloud Represent Depression As It Is A Great Visual Interpretation Of The Feeling, Due To This Within My Music Video There Was A Lyric Called Clouds Falling From My Dark Skies This Gave Me The Idea Into Having A Shot Of A Cloud Implemented Within My Own Music Video. To Develop The Cloud In What I Saw In Lovely I Added It Within My Music Video Being Dark To Compliment The Rain Falling From My Dark Skies Lyric. The Cloud Here Just Like Lovely Is Meant To Represent Depression, If I Was To Do This Again I Would Like To Develop The Cloud Further By Adding A Detail Which I Liked From The Lovely Music Video By Having Lightning Zap Around The Clouds I Believe This Would Give The Look Of The Clouds Have More Of A Aesthetic And Corresponds Towards The Anger Some People With Depression Face. One Thing I Liked Within My Music Video Was The Concept Of Showing As The Clones And Negativity Fades Away We See The Clouds Start To Move And Disappear In The End To Show That The Depression Is Gone

The first concept of the phone in my music video was a mirror, I wanted to have the artist see a version of himself in the mirror that looks different showing, the artist is always striving to be a better them who they were before due to them not liking who they are now. However, I believed the message was not impactful enough, I also wanted to develop the inspiration more, so the effect looks unique for my music video.

This is where I thought of using a phone representing a mirror, as the artist self reflects. The phone is also used as a self-reflection for the artist as he displays his emotions in the song, we see the glass cracks to cut between the two shots. The glass cracking is a detail showing that the artist emotional barrier is now broken and that's why we can see his true feelings it’s also meant to show the fragile ness of mental health and how one, tiny push which is a basketball being a metaphor for an issue can emotionally destroy them and cause them to have harmful and dangerous thoughts on their life. This is complimented by the lyrics also displaying these potential thoughts, and how out of control their emotions can be. This shows mental breakdown, of the thoughts a person can experience if their mental health gets to damaged, just like the glass that's cracked their feelings can become cracked and this is also referenced to the numbness they may feel due to them having dangerous thoughts in this state they could potentially do something unexpected. So, the phone here is also used as a metaphor of a heart being broken as their feelings become numb. This is due to people have come to idolize phones so much to the point they are a part of many aspects their life.

I also deliberately used a phone also cause many mental breakdowns before the unexpected actions of the person gets posted on social media. I wanted to show the fake ness within the people online and how many people don't help people within these situations and not enough people care before these actions to stop these issues from taking place.

The concept of the phone smashing resembles the video of "when I’m gone" by Eminem where he breaks a mirror. This was what first gave me the inspiration for this effect. The camera angles used was also partially inspired by how the angle is used within the Eminem music video the difference is that we don't see the front angle view of the artist, the camera angle for my music video takes the same structure however I developed it to pan right as its zooms out then zooms back in for the smash.

Looking into mental health my research I did stumble on ways people get treated. One of the treatments people with depression must do is journals these journals are where they write their feelings on and the days, I wanted to reference this within the context of the letters line, by having 7 entries all create the word freedom which links to the types of words to what people with depression would write within their journal entries that they want.

This also links to the concept of my idea that the artist, is stopping himself being free as he is trapped in this bad state of mind. Locked away, an idea and concept that's also meant to link with anxiety and how people with anxiety suppress their own actions due to the worry of the consequences, due to the negative thinking.

I took inspiration from my past projects and developed other ideas I had in the past and put them to use within my music video, I developed some concept art I made for stop bullying to years ago I took different aspects of concepts, such as the message I wanted the message text to be the main concept I take from this. As well, as the chain concept which I would uses to chain the artist down.

The reason I looked to my past was because I wanted to see if I could develop these concepts further so I can see my progression. This has been an eye opener in seeing the developments in my knowledge now from the past in what I do and how better I believe I am now in developing my concepts than how I was in the past. An example is that in my poster artwork I believe I used to many words so within my advert when I used thoughts I would lower the amount I uses so it docent become over whelming for the audience, I would size the messages to take up the space of the image to uses a lot of positive space that creates a feeling of centrophobia for the audience as u can feel the words taking up the space. An issue with a render caused one of the texts to not appear making a tiny gap which if I had time, I would render again to fix the gap as I believe it takes away from the effect, I’m trying to put on my music video.

"The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem was a music video that inspired me to use clones within my music video. I wanted to further develop this idea and concept by this music video by having the clones look exactly like me, through using a green screen to create multiple duplicated clones. The reason I used green screen and did not use the pen tool to mask out different takes of me, was I was not planning on using the background, and the pen tool would be more difficult as I would have to rotoscope the footage and keyframe the mask path. Therefore, I had chosen to key out the clones.

I also wanted to have one of the clones to interact with each other as within the Eminem music video all the clones move but don't really interact with each other. This may be because there look a likes and not real exact copy of Eminem.

I was inspired by the movie infinity war, due to its scene where we see the characters turn to dust and disintegrate. I wanted to use this effect within my music video to show the artist getting rid of the negativity by having him turn the other regrets in his mind to dust.

Within my music video I was going to uses cc scatter to accomplish this effect as this can scatter the pixels of the image however it was too smooth so I decided to go with shatter and use glass and add the shatter particles to be high and dense, I liked the way the particles would fall as it looked like it had impact, making the scene more dramatic. However, if I had more time, I would have added shatter and have cc scatter layer on top of the shatter this way I could have the impact of the particles breaking as well as create dust particles. So, if I was going to do this again, I would do that.

I really saw a development with each music video I researched into, I felt that it helped me obtain important techniques that I could use to develop my own music video when I go to create it for my unit 9. With each music video it gave me different ideas in what techniques I wanted to include. Of the night, this is America, and lovely, all stood out to me for the messages there trying to display. These messages gave the music video a purpose and was what inspired me to choose an idea that would link to my music video having a purpose. Within "of the night" the music video is used to show the issues of mental health in the sense of showing anyone can have it and that not always people you suspect, this is shown by having a detective who we see as a powerful figure be shown more to have the attributes before sadly taking his life, The narrative and the message shown with the music video is impactful in displaying to the audience this reality to help make people more aware of, mental health as an issue.

Lovely the last music video that had a well in-depth message and it also was a music video that focused on displaying mental health this music video was a performance-based music video that used symbolism to reference the topics of depression as we see the artist music video Billie Eilish come to accept her depression and come to terms with it. The music video tells a story of how it feels to have & battle depression. The lyrics talk about how the person feels they may have found a way out past there depression; however, it never goes away from them as it follows them in the shadows. We can understand this due to the lyrics that are used within the song as well how the visuals and actions act this theme out. I really like the concept of how the lovely music video. Khalid is used in the music video to symbolize depression as if it was a person, this is also complimented buy the lyrics also talking about depression as if it’s a person, “I guess you got to stay now” the word you are being used to describe depression as having human qualities. “I guess you got to stay now” is the artist highlighting the fact that the depression won’t leave her, so she must come to accept it. This is then complimented visually as we see the artist Khalid follow Billie around, as if he the is depression trying to overtake the victim, once Khalid gets to close and puts his hand up, it magnetically pulls the person in with no control, we then see Khalid control Billie movements. This is a metaphor for depression controlling the lives of the victim until the very moment where the person says no, they want to be happy, that’s why I believe Billie then pushes of Khalid is used to represent someone that is fighting against their depression, as if they want to be happy. This is also highlighted at the ending as we see Billie is coming to accept her depression never going away, she begins to harmonize with Khalid which lyrically compliments that Billie is beginning to become in sync with her depression as she begins to accept it.