December 2021 - March 2022​​​​​​​

I started preproduction and coming up with the ideas for making the music video in December 2021, when I got in contact with one of the guitarists. The band was local to my university, and so I was aware of their influence in the local town.

I would frequently listen to the song on Spotify and sketch out ideas for different locations, costumes, and camera angles. As they were a punk band, I wanted to make it more messy and chaotic. I also didn't want to spend much if any money on this video and source things from what we already owned.

From listening to the song I got clear indicators of what different characters were in the song. The song featured three prominent characters from the narrator's point of the video. There was a "man on the dole", a "mother" and, a "girlfriend". I used these and assigned them to the members of the band. As Connor, the bass player, was singing this song, it made sense to have him as the narrator role. This was basically him anyway as he wrote the song, I suggested he should wear the clothes he usually wears to their gigs, which is a flowery shirt. Billy, the drummer, voiced the mother in the song, he became the mother. I wanted to bring some wigs so he could look different. However, I also wanted to have him as the shop keep to add some more interest into the video, I changed him up by giving him a different wig for this role.

In prior projects, I had mostly used my phone to record videos, but for this project, I wanted to invest in a camera. I wanted something small so I could easily move it around, as well as be in small places for future projects. I bought a Go Pro Hero 10, which I used for the first time for this video.

Below are some sketches from my diary, where I would sketch out my ideas. I started off by writing bits of the lyrics from the song and then how I would visualize it.

On the day of the shoot, we recorded it at one of the houses of two of the members. They wanted to record some of it in the bathroom to give a unique video, which is where we did most of the group recording in. We switched around places where people were so we had multiple different takes.

After the group shots, we moved on to single-person shots. I started off with the bass player, Connor, who I videoed in his bedroom. Then I videoed the drummer, Billy, who we used pots and pans instead of drums as they are too big and bulky to have brought into the house. Then I videoed one of the guitarists, Kyle, who was in front of the front door. Finally, I videoed the other guitarist, Rhys, who was outside. The locations were picked based on the character's story within the song. While I was recording all the single shots of the band, I got the other members to write out the key lyric "You can't tell me what to do!" So I could edit it into the video. I wanted them to write it so it kept a punky, handmade effect.

Originally, I wanted to record some parts of the song in different locations, however, we ended up recording it all in the house. We used different angles to convey different parts of the video. For the Birds pasty shop and the mother in the kitchen scenes, I just filmed from different parts of the room so it didn't look too repetitive.

We recorded some of it in the conservatory as well, so we had a different location included. I really liked some of the things in the room, like the pebble dash walls and blue wooden planks. I thought it created a nice backdrop to them playing their instruments.

When recording, one of the members of the band suggested that we attached the Go Pro to Connor's head and follow him as he moved around the house. Using a wide-angle lens, created a more intimate feeling of the video, which felt like we were more invested in the story of what was going on. I had been using a wide-angle lens for all of the videos before this as I liked the effect it created, as it felt more inviting and less intense.

For the first scene, which was the narrator going into a store to buy a sausage roll, where he encountered a man who was asking for a ride. I wanted to shoot it in one long video where it was very handheld so I could follow the narrator in the room. I had taken multiple videos, including some that were more overhead. However, I liked the one I included as it was more casual and allowed us to be closer to the narrator.

For the second scene, I wanted it very close to the characters to show their intimacy and tension with the narrator and the mother. I included lot of the shots are very close up, with a cutaway scene to show what the narrator was experiencing. We included a hand drawn picture of the grandmother which made it feel more chaotic and relatable.

For the last main scene of the story, between the narrator and the girlfriend, I wanted to have it a bit more dramatized. So I filmed some parts of the story outside. I didn't use all the footage, but mostly the bits that felt important to the story to break up the continued video style like in the first scene. I wanted the video to be a tracking shot like the other two scenes however, I wanted to be further away from the narrator to show his neglect for the girlfriend.

For this music video, I used Premiere Pro as that was what I was most familiar with. I watched through my rushes and made notes of which clips would be the best for me to use.

I wanted to have the chorus of the song be all group/ single videos and have some text written over it by the members of the band. I had used their handwritten lyrics and redrew them digitally on my tablet on an app called ibis paint x. I changed the colour of the text for each word that was said. I only had four versions of the written lyrics, which meant that I could only use it four times. I included them in the first two verses, every other time they said it. I felt like this kept enough continuity of having lyrics in the video.

I knew from pre-production that I wanted to include some form of animation over the top, I used some ideas from my sketches in the video, such as the lighting coming from the guitar. I also redrew their logo in the same kind of pen I used for their animation, which felt scratchy and blotchy to add to the chaos.

The Doinks had a photoshoot for their first album, back in 2019 with some illustrations over the top. I wanted to keep the same sort of style like this. I colour graded the video in a similar way to match it. I kept it very yellow and green tones to match.

In the last clip, Connor kissed the screen, which was something I wanted to keep in to show to fun-loving nature of the band.