Set Build and Lighting Design

A set design and lighting plan is a very necessary part of a pop video for obvious reasons. Khuleshov states that 70% of meaning is in the visual, only 30% is portrayed through sound. The set and lighting creates the whole meaning of a video, it gives the first hint as to what the band is trying to portray and what the style of music is. However, it can subvert stereotypes of what the audience is expecting. For our new band trying to break into the music world we will need to pay a huge amount of attention to our set build and lighting design as it will be the first thing the audience see of our band. It will also be the audiences first impression of our band and first impressions count hugely in the music industry, especially when it is a new band that will be trying to achieve a larger share of the market they operate in.

Once we had drawn up the set and lighting design plans we had to present them to our technician (Dan) so he could get a feel as to what we are trying to portray. We also played him our song he could understand the stance we were trying and the genre of music which we were operating. We spoke as a group on how we wanted the set to be built and the kind of lighting we wanted, E.G. low key, high key.

When we showed Dan our set design plan we talked through each option, he had a catalogue of studio design options. We chose out each piece of design that we would want in the studio to make it look authentic. He then told us that a couple of months each year he worked at an opera house which was attached to a very grand but dilapidated house. This is exactly the type of location we were trying to create in the studio. The house is called The Grange and is located just outside Winchester, although this will be quite a long way to get or band and all their instruments we are prepared to make the journey in order to get a really authentic looking location. However, we are unable to visit the location before to work out very detailed lighting plans and storyboards. Although, another member of the group and I are visiting the location as part of the crew on another pop video shoot so we will try and look at what we think we can do in the space. We will think about specific areas in which we think will look effective to shoot in, as well as location of lights and possible gels we want on our lighting.

When we showed him our lighting plan he agreed that the lighting should be fairly low key to reflect the mood in the song. We also suggested the possible use of some gels on the lighting to create a sort of "yellowy" tint to the image. He did say this could be done in AfterEffects however, we did not want this tint to go over the whole image, just the people in the image. We decided that the way to get this yellow tint would be to mix several filters in order to get a feeling of depth as well.

This is an example of the colour tint we would like on our image.