Making a Musical Album a Film?

Beatlesfan1225

Beatlesfan1225

Hey Everyone!

So as of late, my work has been primarily music related - mostly for two reasons. First, I've spent the last five months recording my ninth album that comes out on Tuesday, and second, I'm in the awkward state of limbo between home and film school, to which I leave for mid-August, so solo-musical projects have been a much better use of my time.

So, I was talking with two of my filmmaking buddies, since they had listened to the new record early. As we talked about it, we thought that the record flowed really well as a whole, and could potentially be visualized in a unique way. Obviously, our first thoughts were to film some music videos, but then we thought we could tell more of a story by doing a little film.

The film would essentially be a daisy-chain of ten songs, one after another, with narrative music videos of sorts connecting them all together. The album is 40 minutes long, I can't imagine the film breaking an hour.

Has anyone tackled a project like this before? I can only think of two examples - the last Queens of the Stone Age album had 5 songs connect with their music videos to be a short film, and Bruce Springsteen recently released a film for one of songs that spanned about twice as long to tell a narrative. (I posted it over in the Lobby earlier)

I suppose you could also consider 'Trapped in the Closet' - R Kelly's thirty episode run of one song, basically.

We'd probably shoot it guerrilla, and hammer it out in two or three weeks.

One idea was to take a couple of the songs and do new, stripped down renditions for the film - like, take one of the folkier tracks on the record, find a beautiful back drop and film/record it solo acoustic instead of having the backing band. Stuff like that.
 
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The first example that comes to mind is The Residents. They've done films, dvds, cd-rom games, internet short series all based on albums. Lana del Rey has been doing some long-form videos lately, similar to your Springsteen example (for that matter, Michael Jackson's Thriller is the classic example of the long-form video!) Kate Bush put out "The Line, the Cross and the Curve" in the 90s...it wasn't the entire Red Shoes album, but it was most of it. And going back in time, progressive folk rock band Strawbs released a film of their album "Grave New World" back in the early 70s! (great album, but the video is certainly dated!)

So it's definitely a viable idea that lots of folks have played with over the years! You should definitely go for it! I'm actually doing the same sort of thing right, though from an abstract/artfilm perspective (because the music is pretty abstract).

Keep us in the loop as you develop the idea further!
 
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Thanks for the great examples Josh! I didn't even think of things like Thriller!

As we toy with the idea more, we considered making a point of the film to do some of the songs stripped down. It's a really intense album with a full band - so to take it to interesting places guerrilla style and record tracks more barebones could be an interesting angle - just acoustic guitar and harmonica. (For example, going into the woods, or in a field, etc)

At the same time, though, that would be better if balanced with tracks from the actual album as well, because one of the reasons the album is more interesting than my previous efforts, and one of the reasons it lends itself to film so well, is because of the grandiose of some of the recordings.
 
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Yeah, you could definitely blend the two. Have some stripped down minimal versions of the songs to break up the main recording, depending on how the narration flows. For example, if track 3 hints at some of the themes explored in track 6, have an acoustic version of a couple bars of track 6 played before track 3 in the film. Lots of things you could do, depending on how the narrative of the album plays out.

Oh, jeez, how did I not mention The Wall!??!
 
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Sounds like a neat idea - something I've wanted to do with a musician at some point.

I don't have any real feedback, but I'll throw a few examples out there:
Pink Floyd's The Wall (film) is enjoyable (as far as I recall, there's no real dialogue either) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084503/ [edit: it seems Josh beat me to it]
Kanye West's Runaway (long form video) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA
Romeo and Juliet: A Love Song was New Zealand film (a 'trash' opera) to come out last year based on a 38 song concept album. Very little budget to speak of, so gives you an idea of what can be done on a minimal budget (though I think they did get some government funding, so probably still more than you'd be working with) - http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/romeo-and-juliet-a-love-song-2013
 
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Since you are Beatles Fan:

c19.jpg


And you know there's more!

Also:

tommy-10.jpg


Quadrophenia.jpg


Pink-Floyd-The-Wall.jpg
 
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Beatlesfan1225 said:
a daisy-chain of ten songs, one after another, with narrative music videos of sorts connecting them all together. The album is 40 minutes long, I can't imagine the film breaking an hour.

Has anyone tackled a project like this before?
Click to expand...

Sure, I was G&E on this project. Filmed all at one time, but they decided to release it in three parts - prolly to milk an extended release on YouTube. Multiple characters telling an overlapping story. Quite well done, I thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wziWbluhz58
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pARpr2IpAFQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnuHhWkNOo

Not as grandiose as a rock-opera, but still a worthy endeavour. :)

Edit: There's even more episodes, but for reasons unknown they are not coming out.

I suppose you could also consider 'Trapped in the Closet' - R Kelly's thirty episode run of one song, basically.
Click to expand...

Classic stuff: linkage :bag:
 
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