The Storm - Witchcraft Pitch

The Storm - Witchcraft

This is new electronic / drum and bass band 'The Storm'.

They are a band which encapsulate supernatural elements through the way that they dress, their music style and their overall branding.

We have taken inspiration from supernatural
Christian mythology, Satanism and Paganism.



The band will often be portrayed in ceremonial style dress, almost always in dark colours. Throughout the branding references to ritualism will be made; this will be shown through their logo, the sets and stages in which they perform, the way they are dressed- and the image of the band.

They will have tattoos, reminiscient of the band's logo. Lots of the brand will be symbol based; seen all over the album covers and websites. In this respect we took some inspiration from the famous Led Zep symbols.  

While heavily supernatural based; we are aware of how easy it is to fall in to the typical death metal image of hardcore satanism- blood and horns and black eyes on stage - this image above is more what we are going for, a sense of enigma and the supernatural without going overboard on the theatrics. The music is still the focus of the band; this is not glam-rock, based on make up and fire.

The band will be famous for their incredible live shows; lights galore and crazy fans being the staple of their many world tours.



The Audience

Here is a mood board which helps encapsulate our target audience. We can see a large mosh pit, a stage at Reading music festival, a guitar, young adults with headphones on, a selection of narcotics and alchohol, some amazing lights at a gig and a glowing pentagram.

Our core target audience is 15 - 25 year old males.

Our secondary target audience is 15 - 25 year old females.

Our remaining audience streches the age range; potentially 5 years younger and up to 20 years older.

Our band appeals strongly to fans of the electronic and drum and bass genre's; predominantly young men. The music is energetic and very loud, frantic; similar to the people who would listen to it. Their brooding, rebellious and overall image of darkness would be appealing to young men. We would do a University exclusive British tour, requiring students of each University to interact with the band (maybe send in designs or covers of the single), which would result in a visit to that University.

A typical fan of 'The Storm'

Name: Max Gray

Age: 19

Recent gigs attended: Reading Festival, Outlook Festival, a multitude of smaller raves and club nights

 Current employment: Sheffield University, second year of Media Studies.

Hobbies: Plays guitar in band with his flatmates, makes drum and bass music on his computer, spends all his money on gigs, skateboards, drug taking, getting drunk

Perfect friday night: A drum and bass secret gig, a bottle of vodka, some spliff and some ecstasy. Aims to pick up girls; loves the cathartic release of live performances.

Favourite bands: Pendulum, The Prodigy, Chase and Status, Daft Punk, Sub Focus, Flux Pavilion

Favourite Films: Taken, Fight Club, Inception, Donnie Darko

TV Shows: Supernatural, Family Guy, Spooks

Other traits: single, loud, underachiever, unorganized, rebellious, messy, friendly

The Concept

The video opens with a boy moving about on a road, looking disorientated. He is clutching a scrunched up piece of paper; it clearly holds some importance to him. At 0:45, as the song gets louder, we begin the dual narrative which makes up most of the video. The boy begins to move with more purpose in 'the present', and we see the boy and a girl (his girlfriend) in a somewhat abusive relationship in the past. Colour grading clearly distinguishes between the two times; and the suggestion at this point is that the boy has lost the girlfriend in the present. In the past they fight over some lipstick on the guys collar.


He stumbles into a shop at 1:00, and reemerges with a large bottle of spirit. This is intercut with the boy moving towards his girlfriend in the middle of the road; she is facing away from him with her head down and looks beaten and dirty.


From 1:05 to 1:07, he puts his hand on her shoulder and turns her round; we cut away just before her face is visible.


Just as the drop hits (1:07), he begins to down the spirit / we see him hit her in the past / he begins to jump around like a maniac around the road.


As the verse begins at 1:29, the pace slows down; we see the girl outside smoking a cigarette and the guy goes out to console her. They slightly make up for the fight. The boy in the present sits down in an alleyway somewhere and looks at the piece of paper. He cries into his hands.


At the change at 1:51, we see the boy smoke some drugs, maybe sniff a line of something off of a credit card. He stumbles about in a daze, revelling in his self destruction. In the past we see the relationship intensify again.


At 2:13 when the second chorus drops; the relationship kicks off again, we see a visibly abusive fight with lots of shouting and screaming; the girl tries to leave but he holds her back. Once again this is intercut with him charging about the streets, jumping around wildly, off of buildings- we also begin to see the girlfriend standing with her head down, hair covering face, in the distance. He doesn't notice he is being watched.


At 2:58 we focus on the past relationship for a moment, and we see her throw the girl to the ground. She hits her head on a table and he feels blood coming from her head; he has accidentally killed her. He looks down at her body with utter disbelief and disgust at himself. In the build up to the last drop at 3:22, we return to the shot from 1:05 to 1:07; he approaches the girl and puts his hand on her shoulder to turn her round.


As it drops, we see the girl has some crazy eyes and is covered in blood; she is dead and is haunting him. For the final part of the song the cutting gets even quicker; she chases him down the road and he runs for his life. She looks insane and is all mangled up; he is totally terrified.


At 3:44, when the chorus repeats itself we intercut the chase scene with other moments from the video in a very quick montage. We see him downing the spirit, sniffing the line, dancing about; we also see the relationship- the moment she died and the general fighting. The video ends with her cornering him in a dead end of a road; he clutches the piece of paper to his chest. They face each other; then she charges at him.


We cut to a shot of the paper, revealed to be a photo of him and her together, now splattered with blood, falling to the floor. It ends with his hand crashing down into shot as well; then cut to black.

The Practicalities

When - the days assigned to shooting. Our video needs to take place in two time periods; the present time at night, outside, and the past takes place in the daytime inside. Keeping the daytime shoot indoors (mostly) allows us to control the lighting; and the outside shots are in the dark so should remain consistent.

Where - still undecided, but we have a multitude of locations at our disposal. For the interior scenes we have Robbie's house, Eoin's house, Eva's house and Olivia's house which we could use, it's simply a question of deciding which one would look best. As for the exterior scenes i had some ideas for where it could be shot (below), but again this will not take any kind of permission to arrange, we simply need to go out scouting and see which locations work well. Lighting outside will be our biggest issue. Robbie has agreed to use his basement as the setting for the band performance. This is good because it is a very enclosed space; meaning we can totally control all lighting and set dressing with ease.



A potential location for exterior shooting (Fox Lane, N13)



Who - Robbie and Eva (both group members) have agreed to act in the narrative section of our video. Eoin will be the lead singer and guitarist of our band. We need to find two other band members (drummer and bassist), and i have already begun negotiations with George Michael to be our drummer. This is our potential cast so far:

George Michael (unconfirmed)

Eva Calland-Waller

Eoin Brogan

Robbie Lardi

How - We have many guitars we can use, we have a bass guitar and several drum kits; all of which we can have in our video. The locations are all permission-free, so there is no problems there. Olivia Murphy is on hand for make up and costume design; initial sketches and designs are already in the works.


We have already begun searching for the coloured contact lenses which are crucial to our video. They are priced between ten and twenty pounds a pair, and we have agreed to split the cost. Here are some of our initial selections: 

The Blackout lenses


 

The 'Berzerker' lens

The 'Whiteout' lens

The Brand

We have some initial ideas for the creation of an album and branding possibilities. A very rough logo has been made by Eoin, and the finished product would carry across all areas of the marketing strategy; the logo would appear on the album cover, the website, the facebook page, the twitter account, and would be tattooed on the band members themselves. We also thought it would be cool to have the logo implanted throughout the video as well.

Here is a rough design:

For the logo we took inspiration from Satanic and Pagan symbols.

The marketing campaign would be heavily viral based; the symbol would appear throughout the campaign, hopefully sparking interest from people in a similar way to the 'Lost' marketing campaigns. We would want the audience to think the band was potentially true Satanists with real supernatural influences behind their work- tied in with our Halloween release for the first single and album, we think people will love the mystery behind 'The Storm'.

In public appearances they should appear as shady and withdrawn characters; we would spread rumours and cover the website in signifiers that the band actually involves themselves in ritualistic sacrifices and Satanic worship; stuff like this gets people talking and gets people interested.

We would have lots of Latin throughout our campaign; the name of the album (currently undecided) will probably be in Latin. Latin has strong links to ritualism, the supernatural, and Satanism.