Monday, November 29, 2010

General research

i looked more deeply into the conspiracy theories on which my video is being created. since I've finally found some time to do this I'm going to search through the web to find the various strands of Illuminati beliefs to give the team some solid ground to work from, and hopefully i can refer to this post for any information needed. i intend to source a lot of my information from the following website, since it seems the best around: http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread20281/pg1
Like any conspiracy theory, Illuminati are highly speculated upon and the idea of a potential new world order is ridiculed by the vast majority. The website above is a timeline, listing all events to do with the Illuminati/ Freemasons. starting from the very bottom of the list, the organisation supposedly started in the 1700's, and is put on the web page as "Illuminati/Freemasons", the two have been supposedly linked in conspiracy theories for a long time. the name of the Illuminati is derived from bearers of the light, and supposedly the name also came from "Lucifer". the organisation was supposedly started by Adam Weishaupt and Jesuit Priest, along with the Freemasons.



Through the 1700 and 1800's the Freemasons and Illuminati spread their routes and adopted many other organisations such as the Rothschild's, aside from this there is very little activity or development up to the early 1900's where most events are relatively unimportant to our video. events such as the wall street crash of 1929 was supposedly caused by the Illuminati along with other worldwide economic depressions, showing how the Illuminati are linked to famous events taking place since their supposed creation.

The Illuminati are then blamed for financially backing Hitler for his invasion into Poland in 1939. At this stage the Illuminati are looking like a scapegoat for all bad things since the 1700's onwards. nothing of importance to our video then takes place until 1989 when George bush is elected president of the USA, and he is supposedly a free mason, who are still strongly associated with the Illuminati. before 1989, the Illuminati are Incorporated into many theories about assassinations of world leaders, such as only one man being arrested for the assassination of president Kennedy is found with 5 bullets from separate guns in his body. Also a prime example is the crash of flight KAL 007, the flight which Larry McDonald is on board. the plane supposedly flown over a shortcut which commonly used with low fueled planes, however the flight was high on fuel. it flown into restricted air space, at which point fighter pilots shot warning shots past the cockpit, which went un- acknowledged, so the flight was shot down. all bodies were recovered except for the pilot and co pilot. eye witnesses saw 2 parachutes from the plane. this is a fantastic example of how our video will be portraid as the Illuminati carrying top secret operations without any of the general public being aware.



In 1990, around the start of the gulf war, George bush publically announced the new world order. weather the context of this was twisted or not is constantly debated by believers and sceptics, even though he clearly says the words "new world order".









The new world order is a plan by the Illuminati for a small group of leaders to rule the world, the details of which are vague and irrelevant but may come into play at some point in our video if necessary. several other ideas which come back to the Illuminati are listed and briefly described below:




9/11 conspiracy:


the falling of the twin towers was ten years to the day after George bush publicly said "a new world order" which theorists have obviously picked up on and claimed that is more than just a coincidence. the idea that the towers were actually blown up by the government (controlled by the Illuminati) has many different pieces of evidence, such as the pillars at the bottom of the towers: they were cut at a perfect angle which is usually used in controlled demolition. Another piece of evidence is that supposedly British television announced the falling of one of the buildings 7 minutes before it fell. some people even go as far to say that no plane ever hit the pentagon, and that it disappeared. this because there was only actually one shot that captured the very tip of the plane hitting the pentagon despite it being the most protected building in the entire world. when some plane experts were consulted on the conditions of the crash into the pentagon they said that it would have been impossible for reasons such as: the plane was moving too fast at the time of the crash for it to have come close enough to the ground to hit the building, and because the terrorists who hijacked the plane had been training in a very basic bi plane, and it would be incredibly difficult to fly a Boeing with such accuracy having only trained in a small bi plane, stating that not only would the controls be completely different and massively complex in comparison, and one pilot that was interviewed said that after all his experience flying the Boeing he would not be able to be so accurate. the 9/11 conspiracy also links in with modern day Illuminati signs in commercial areas below.

Illuminati symbols in everyday culture:
despite the Illuminati supposedly being extremely intelligent, there are claimed to be symbols left by them in almost any place you look. a good example to start with is the American dollar bill: the bill has the all seeing eye atop a pyramid, the Illuminati symbol. the dollar bill is also supposed to represent "the order of new ages", alarmingly close to Bushes publicly announced "new world order", obviously setting conspiracy theorists up with a link. also on the 20 dollar bill even more alarmingly and less likely to be a coincidence are pictures of the twin towers on fire, the pentagon on fire. at first this is rejected by almost everyone, but you don't have to look hard to see these pictures, and if the 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 dollar bill are all folded in the seems to be like some sort of prediction or prophecy, since the notes were produced in 1996.





There are other references to the Illuminati in public culture, particularly the media and it's productions. below are just a few examples of Illuminati reference in Hollywood:



obviously the biggest question amongst this is, why would such a clever organisation give themselves away like this? that question does not seemed to have been addressed yet, but its almost certain that if they were responsible for the fall of the twin towers or such an event they would not openly admit or even hint that they were behind it. however, before starting this post i was very sceptical about the possibility of this secret organisation like Aiden, but i have now come to see that Harley did have a point when he mentioned the amount of evidence suggesting this and i firmly believe, mainly due to the dollar bills that there is something going on and there is far to much evidence for it to be a coincidence.
This post has allowed me to carry out my own research to establish and gain deeper understanding on the foundations behind our video, which will be important for me to help in it's production. my knowledge of the subject has now become intensely clearer and it should help with getting a real feel for our video. this post can also help the team for reference to any needed knowledge of the history of the Illuminati. Last minute plot changes could be made in reference to this post, e.g. small references to Illuminati events such as assassinations, disappearances etc.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

In the video there is going to be a brief introduction before the music actually starts, to break the ice and introduce the narrative of the video. I've posted some videos below to show the way in which this is done professionally:


I inserted the entire video instead of tube chopping it because this way you can see how it works and relates to the rest of the video.

CCTV shot

i was thinkg about the possible idea of having a shot that looks like its being filmed from a cctv camera which amplifies the whole idea of 'big brother' is watching you. i think it would be a nice shot that would add to the idea of being followed and cant escape, similar idea to 1984.

this clip is from the movie red road which is also a similar concept of being watched.

narrative theories

Aswell as goodwin's music video narative theory(previously mentionedd in another post) there are other narrative theories taht can be applied within our music video

vladimr propp's character roles;- Propp sugested that there where 8 main character roles within a story:-


many aspects from different narrative theories can be used with our music video.

1.The villain — struggles against the hero.
2.The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
3.The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.
4.The princess or prize — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. the hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
5.her father — gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, marries the hero, often sought for during the narrative. Propp noted that functionally, the princess and the father can not be clearly distinguished.
6.The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
7.The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
8.False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess

some of these character roles can be applied within my music video.

The villain:- The main vilains in our video are the agents and the illuminati organization. they are trying to defeat the hero by following him and eraseing his memory so he cant achieve his goal.

The princess or the prize:- The prize for our hero in the music video is that he regains his memory and that is what he is searching and he has to over come the villain to be able to reach this prize.

the hero/seeker:- this is the protagonist character. Although not a traditional hero whos goal is to save a princess, he is a hero in a sense that he is trying to over come evil to get to his goal of freedom/greater knowledge over the illuminati organization.

tzvetan todorov

todorov suggested that stories began in a state of equilibirum which is disrubted by an event or chain of events, the problems are then resolved which creates a new equilibrium. this idea can be added to the concept of our music video

original equilibrium:-
our protagonist is living his life trying to discover the truth about the illuminati conspiracy.

Disruption:-
our protagonist has his memory erased by the agents in the organization

New equilibrium:-
our proagonist is trying to find a way to recover his memory.

Levi-strauss

Levis-strauss looked at narratives in terms of binory oppositions. this can definatley be applied to our music video as the heroes and the 'villaios' goals are completley opposite.

Hero:
-good.
-our hero's goal is to find the truth aboutthe illuminati.
-his appearance is very scruffy, very casual clothing.

in contrast to our villains:
-evil.
-There goal is to erase his memory and stop him discovering the truth about the illuminati.
-they appear very smart and controlled in a uniform.

Roland barthes


barthes suggested that there were narrative codes; enigma codes, action codes and symbols and signs. i think this idea is very relavant to our music video the idea of mystery and symbolism is key to the whole conspracy idea.

Signs and symbolism; throughout my video there are numerous signs and symbols that will be represantative of the illuminati representation such as the pyramids with an eye on top.

Action codes; used to entertain the audience. my video will contain many action codes such as the memory erase scene

Enigma codes; probably the most relevant idea to my music video as its about mystery and conspiracy. enigma codes will be used when ever the bands are in the shot as you do not see their whole face clearly similar to that of other music videos from this genre. the actually stroyline of the video is enagmatic as we are unaware of who the protagonist is, why they erased his memory or why they are watching/ folowing him.

Monday, October 4, 2010

risk assement

the following scenes and events in our storyboard are ones that carry a risk and i have evaluated and created a soloution to:



Holding the proagnist's eye open: in this scene one of my agents will be holding the main character's eye open, which could cause damage to the eye or the skin around it. Soloution: feedback between the two actors should prevent overdoing the scene.

Strapping the protagnist down: in this scene the main character is tied to a bed/chair and forced to watch a clip. if the actor is tied to tightly he may struggle to breathe of suffer damage to his ribs. Soloution: feedback between the actor and the people setting the scene up should prevent this by not tieing the rope to tightly.

Police attack scene: There is a police officer shown beating a man with a batton (on the tv screne in the hypnotize room). i will need to film this myself otherwise i will lose marks for someone elses footage, which means i have to have someone pretending to hit someone else with a batton. Soloution: For this i found a technique called depth of feild, which, with cetain camera angles, will allow me to make a realistic looking beating without endangering anyone.





Black cat scene: the cat is going to walk across infront of the camera, and this may require several shots and a lot of persuasion. if the cat becomes violent it could attack someone, having serious impacts.





Bath scene: my protagnist wakes up in a bath after the memory erasing scene as an intertextual reference to inception. this could be dangerous for him if he was to hold his breath for to long and pass out before acting his waking up, causing extreme danger. Soloution: he could have his mouth and nose faced upwards not in the bath to prevent the need of holding breath.


the chase and underpass scenes: these scenes require running in the road , i will have to be extra careful here, using quiet roads and being extra vigilent by looking out for cars to ensure that noone is standing around on the road and the amount of time spent on the road is very little.
The Agents;
-Black suit jacket
-black trousers
-white shirts
-black tie
-sunglasses
-shoes
The agents are being represented as figures of authority to the organization they are part of. The smart appearnace of their uniform suggests that they are figures of authority whilst the black suits and sunglasses suggest mystery making them enigmatic figures to an enigmatic 'illuminati' society.

i am going for a matrix stlye agent

The Protagonist;
-dark t-shirt
-dark jeans
-scruffy appearance
The main protagonist is a binory oppostion of the agents, very scruffy appearnace and looks to be as if hes withdrawn from society.

The Band:
-black shirt
-converse style trainers (black)
-dark jeans
-black guitar(guitarist)
the band are going to be dressed very sterotypical to the genre of music and each of the band memebrs will be very similar in dress code to make them a unity, theyll be wearing dark and have whitened faces this will make them look drawn and enagmatic as we have already decided that the whole of the bands faces wont be shown so the white faces with black clothing makes them stand out.


this iamge shows the kind of dark drawn look we are going for.

Police officer(re-worked):
-dark sleeveless jacket
-black undershirt
-black cargo trousers
-dark boots
-helmet with illuminati symbol
-police baton
originally the police man was intended to be a traditional american style police man however i changed this to a more powerful/militant looking uniform, making the officer a more ominous figure. i researched further into one of the comments made about the nazi uniforms made by hugo boss and decided that a uniform similar to that of the nazi's (jackets, helmets covered in the organisations logos) would fit in with the idea of the world being run by a single power. the kind of image we are going for can be seen in this photo however there will be slight alterations

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

25 word pitch