Animation Ideas
Considering the theme of my chosen song and the kind of direction I plan to take with my music video, the idea of including some video game-esque animations definitely holds considerable weight. My song choice Game Over has sound effects that sound incredibly similar to the retro 8-bit video game music, such as the first Mario games (or almost every Nintendo game created before the turn of the century).
Because of this I find the idea of creating video game-esque graphics incredibly appealing, and I feel as though if done effectively the addition of animations and gaming graphics to certain aspects of my video could be very innovative and would greatly improve its overall production value.
My initial idea was to try and match the song's use of 8-bit sounds by including 8-bit design and animation into my music video, but eventually decided against this for several reasons. For one, my music video is based in the modern day, not during a time when retro games where the new thing, so having 8-bit video game aspects wouldn't make sense and would break the continuity and realism of the video. Secondly the animations will be used in the aspect of the music video that focus on the in-game protagonist, meaning that the video game being played would be an incredibly modern one with modern, updated animations and graphics that give weight to it's likeness to modern gaming. This is why I have instead opted to use modern gaming graphics, such as health bars, stamina bars, menus, mini maps and level indicators, in the vein of modern action and adventure games such as Skyrim and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Furthermore I want to reference Shadow of Mordor in a big way in my music video, as this game has some very interesting and innovative mechanics and design choices that I found thoroughly immersive. But first, a little backstory is in order. Shadow of Mordor is an action adventure game released in October 2014 wherein you adopt the role of a ranger guarding the black gate in the Lord of The Rings universe. The game was released for current-gen consoles and PC, and received incredibly positive reviews that were good enough to warrant a sequel, releasing in September of this year named Shadow of War. This is an obvious indicator that the game is doing something right- and I know exactly what it was.
The nemesis system in this game was an incredibly innovative idea, and the first of its kind that we'd seen. In summary, there were captains in Sauron's army that you had to fight or dominate, and each one had a procedurally generated name, look, motivation and skill set that could change as they leveled up depending on how you interacted with them and how they interacted with other captains. This system gave every player a unique set of enemies in the game, and ensured no two people would experience the game in the same way. This not only gave the game life, but gave me an incredibly weighted idea for my in-game music video aspect. I plan to include a section in my music video in which when my character enters the video game, he is confronted by an enemy that he easily defeats. However later in the video, after bridge, He encounters this enemy again who is much more formidable than the previous encounter.
Moreover, I plan to have my band member's in game persona fight at least three times. One will be at the start of the game when the player first spawns in. the second will be during the montage sequence during the bridge of the song, and the last will be the boss just after the bridge of the song that's blocking the actual in-game bridge. Like in shadow of Mordor, these enemies will have characteristics and motivations that will appear on a menu with a slow motion close up shot of them. The first character will be weak, with a low level and a humorous motivation and will be easily defeated with a counter and will be played by Tom. Secondly, the character fought in the bridge of the song will be a moderate threat, with an actual motivation of 'climbing the ranks' or 'testing his strength' or something along those lines. He will also have an actual level, and will look determined unlike the casual nature of the first enemy. This enemy will still be defeated, but will deal small amounts of damage to the protagonist before being killed. The final enemy will be the boss, who will again be played by Tom because he came back to life and has a personal vendetta against you and will have a large amount of strengths and a motivation of getting revenge by 'killing you' and will have some serious strengths such as 'immune to counters' 'takes reduced damage' 'extremely resilient' and so on. However I also plan on inserting some more humour into the situation, and want some of his strengths to be funny, such as 'hung like a horse', 'f***ing p***ed' 'ANGERY' and 'probably gonna win tbh ngl'. The boss will also have a health bar that will be adjacent to the in-game persona's, giving an indication of rivalry and a sort of good and evil ying-yang feeling to the fight. The boss' level will be incredibly high, and I'm even considering substituting a level with just the words 'too high' as another humorous input
One idea that I would thoroughly like to input is the idea of counters, with a button appearing above the enemies head when you are able to counter their attacks. I want the first and second enemies to be countered. However in Shadow of Mordor there are enemies that are immune to counters, and that just damage you when you attempt to do so. I want the final enemy, the boss, to have this ability and for him to counter the hero at least once with a close up of the hero attempting to block an attack with the sword, and the boss grabbing the sword and headbutting the hero causing him to fall to the floor.
As a funny narrative direction, I want the only weakness of this particular boss to be 'simple sets of button presses' or something similar. This works well with the cheat code sounding phrase that Radke uses in the song towards the end, and as apposed to it being used as a cheat code, I plan to use it as a method of giving the boss a weakness and a funny way for the character to bring him down. I also want this boss character to be wearing one of the band's masks when he appears, and this will be knocked off during the battle. When this happens, another broken mask will appear in it's place, and the boss will become more aggressive, attacking more frequently, continuing until the actual button input aspect of the song. At this point my character will perform a series of ducking, evading and striking movements, leading to the defeat of the boss. When looting his body, he will receive the three masks that correlate to each of the band members, and will decide to discard them to symbolise the complete reformation of the band as a new artist.
Additionally my idea to include one of the broken masks is inspired by a character from a popular animation, Dragon Ball Z. This character also wears a mask which breaks, and I became a big fan of his art and his design very quickly, leading it to heavily influence the idea that a broken mask could indeed still be used and add value to my production. I plan on including close up shots of my friend wearing the broken mask, while he in character as 'The Nemesis' to further convey the heavy video game influence inserted throughout my coursework. (Images of Time Breaker Bardock below for reference).
Update: My idea of including at least three encounters between the protagonist and The Nemesis has now changed, considering the length of the song being relatively short, and that only two encounters are required to convey the idea that the battle represents the idea of the masks and the old band. Instead I feel as though the time the extra confrontations would take up could be put to better use, by showing how the band members are struggling to write new material in shots inserted throughout the video, instead of just sections at the beginning and end of the video.
My initial idea was to try and match the song's use of 8-bit sounds by including 8-bit design and animation into my music video, but eventually decided against this for several reasons. For one, my music video is based in the modern day, not during a time when retro games where the new thing, so having 8-bit video game aspects wouldn't make sense and would break the continuity and realism of the video. Secondly the animations will be used in the aspect of the music video that focus on the in-game protagonist, meaning that the video game being played would be an incredibly modern one with modern, updated animations and graphics that give weight to it's likeness to modern gaming. This is why I have instead opted to use modern gaming graphics, such as health bars, stamina bars, menus, mini maps and level indicators, in the vein of modern action and adventure games such as Skyrim and Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Furthermore I want to reference Shadow of Mordor in a big way in my music video, as this game has some very interesting and innovative mechanics and design choices that I found thoroughly immersive. But first, a little backstory is in order. Shadow of Mordor is an action adventure game released in October 2014 wherein you adopt the role of a ranger guarding the black gate in the Lord of The Rings universe. The game was released for current-gen consoles and PC, and received incredibly positive reviews that were good enough to warrant a sequel, releasing in September of this year named Shadow of War. This is an obvious indicator that the game is doing something right- and I know exactly what it was.
The nemesis system in this game was an incredibly innovative idea, and the first of its kind that we'd seen. In summary, there were captains in Sauron's army that you had to fight or dominate, and each one had a procedurally generated name, look, motivation and skill set that could change as they leveled up depending on how you interacted with them and how they interacted with other captains. This system gave every player a unique set of enemies in the game, and ensured no two people would experience the game in the same way. This not only gave the game life, but gave me an incredibly weighted idea for my in-game music video aspect. I plan to include a section in my music video in which when my character enters the video game, he is confronted by an enemy that he easily defeats. However later in the video, after bridge, He encounters this enemy again who is much more formidable than the previous encounter.
Moreover, I plan to have my band member's in game persona fight at least three times. One will be at the start of the game when the player first spawns in. the second will be during the montage sequence during the bridge of the song, and the last will be the boss just after the bridge of the song that's blocking the actual in-game bridge. Like in shadow of Mordor, these enemies will have characteristics and motivations that will appear on a menu with a slow motion close up shot of them. The first character will be weak, with a low level and a humorous motivation and will be easily defeated with a counter and will be played by Tom. Secondly, the character fought in the bridge of the song will be a moderate threat, with an actual motivation of 'climbing the ranks' or 'testing his strength' or something along those lines. He will also have an actual level, and will look determined unlike the casual nature of the first enemy. This enemy will still be defeated, but will deal small amounts of damage to the protagonist before being killed. The final enemy will be the boss, who will again be played by Tom because he came back to life and has a personal vendetta against you and will have a large amount of strengths and a motivation of getting revenge by 'killing you' and will have some serious strengths such as 'immune to counters' 'takes reduced damage' 'extremely resilient' and so on. However I also plan on inserting some more humour into the situation, and want some of his strengths to be funny, such as 'hung like a horse', 'f***ing p***ed' 'ANGERY' and 'probably gonna win tbh ngl'. The boss will also have a health bar that will be adjacent to the in-game persona's, giving an indication of rivalry and a sort of good and evil ying-yang feeling to the fight. The boss' level will be incredibly high, and I'm even considering substituting a level with just the words 'too high' as another humorous input
One idea that I would thoroughly like to input is the idea of counters, with a button appearing above the enemies head when you are able to counter their attacks. I want the first and second enemies to be countered. However in Shadow of Mordor there are enemies that are immune to counters, and that just damage you when you attempt to do so. I want the final enemy, the boss, to have this ability and for him to counter the hero at least once with a close up of the hero attempting to block an attack with the sword, and the boss grabbing the sword and headbutting the hero causing him to fall to the floor.
As a funny narrative direction, I want the only weakness of this particular boss to be 'simple sets of button presses' or something similar. This works well with the cheat code sounding phrase that Radke uses in the song towards the end, and as apposed to it being used as a cheat code, I plan to use it as a method of giving the boss a weakness and a funny way for the character to bring him down. I also want this boss character to be wearing one of the band's masks when he appears, and this will be knocked off during the battle. When this happens, another broken mask will appear in it's place, and the boss will become more aggressive, attacking more frequently, continuing until the actual button input aspect of the song. At this point my character will perform a series of ducking, evading and striking movements, leading to the defeat of the boss. When looting his body, he will receive the three masks that correlate to each of the band members, and will decide to discard them to symbolise the complete reformation of the band as a new artist.
Additionally my idea to include one of the broken masks is inspired by a character from a popular animation, Dragon Ball Z. This character also wears a mask which breaks, and I became a big fan of his art and his design very quickly, leading it to heavily influence the idea that a broken mask could indeed still be used and add value to my production. I plan on including close up shots of my friend wearing the broken mask, while he in character as 'The Nemesis' to further convey the heavy video game influence inserted throughout my coursework. (Images of Time Breaker Bardock below for reference).
Update: My idea of including at least three encounters between the protagonist and The Nemesis has now changed, considering the length of the song being relatively short, and that only two encounters are required to convey the idea that the battle represents the idea of the masks and the old band. Instead I feel as though the time the extra confrontations would take up could be put to better use, by showing how the band members are struggling to write new material in shots inserted throughout the video, instead of just sections at the beginning and end of the video.
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