Choosing A Song

After starting with the song 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl' by Jet and having no luck in the process of making this video, we decided that it was for the best that we change our song and start afresh. As a group we came up with many ideas that we could do for our song for our music video. He is a small brainstorm of the ideas we came up with:

We decided that the best idea for the song choice would probably be 'Ignorance' by Paramore. It has sutble yet effective lyrics and as a group I think we can develop the song into a very effective video.

Locations

When choosing locations, we had to ensure the following things:

-It is easily accessible

-It is allowed to be used by us

-Spacious so we have enough room for all of us

Locations we used:

-Ellie's house

-Eynsford Castle

-Sarah's house

-Hextable

-Sutton-at-Hone

Location 1: Ellie's House

Ellie's house will be used mainly for all the scenes in which Elle is getting ready to leave the house. This was the best house to use for this as it was easiest to get to for all of us and there was more than enough room for us to set up lighting and camera without any problems.

Location 2: Sarah's House

Sarah's house is used for the scenes when Ellie confronts Harry (which we will pretend is his own house). Again, we used Sarah's house because it is one of the easiest houses to get to out of all of ours and we liked the idea of Elle having to walk up a long pathway to get to the house.

Location 3: Eynsford Castle



We have decided to use parts of Eynsford castle in our video for the parts that Elle is drinking and smoking. It is usually quite vacant so this will be useful for us when filming our video so we will not be disturbed by any dogwalkers, etc. It is a beautiful location and we wanted to film here as it is very spacious and wanted to show how secluded Elle is when she is at Eynsford Castle.

Location 4: Hextable

We have chosen to start the video on this street by the blank white wall as it is not right on the high street and we will not be in anyones way. As well as showing Elle in Eynsford Castle to represent her lonliness, we want to also show her in public as a contrast to Eynsford castle.

Magazine Advert Research

Magazine Advert Research

The photos that I have found on the internet are artists that have a similar style to our actress, Ellie. The bottom three are more relevant because they are all blonde but the top example of Katy Perry, in my opinion is a fantastic example of a magazine advertisment. The writing that says 'Katy Perry' is consecutive with other adverts of Katy Perry, she always uses the same font to advertise herself. The advert is effective because it shows the CD cover on it, and the picture is consecutive with the photo in the background of the advert.

The picture on the far right is of Kesha, who is what we are basing the character of our female protagonist on. We want to go for a more chaotic look for our character rather than calm and reserved like the other two blonde girls in these pictures. The layout of the middle picture is probably the one I am most likely to base my advertisement on. It is good how her name is displayed big underneath the picture and with smaller writing concerning dates and the name of the new song.

THE SONG

IGNORANCE

BY PARAMORE

If I'm a bad person

You don't like me

Well I guess I'll make my own way

It's a circle

A mean cycle

I can't excite you anymore

Where's your gavel? Your jury?

What's my offence this time?

You're not a judge

But if you're gonna judge me

Well sentance me to another life

Don't wanna hear your sad songs

I dont want to feel your pain

Well I know it's all my fault

But I know we're not the same

(NO!)

We're not the same

(NO!)

Oh, we're not the same

Yeah we're friends we stick together

We write our names in blood

But I guess you can't accept that

The change is good

(HEY!)

It's good

(HEY!)

It's good

Well you treat me just like

Another stranger

Well it's nice to meet you, sir

I guess I'll go

I'll best be on my way out

You treat me just like

Another stranger

Well it's nice to meet you, sir

I guess I'll go

I best be on my way out

Ignorance is your new best friend

Ignorance is your new best friend

This is the best thing

That could've happened

Any longer and I wouldn't have made it

It's not a war, no

It's not a rapture

I'm just a person but you can't take it

The same tricks that

They once fooled me

They won't get you anywhere

I'm not the same kid

From your memory

Well now I can fend for myself



Don't wanna hear your sad songs

I dont want to feel your pain

Well I know it's all my fault

But I know we're not the same

(NO!)

We're not the same

(NO!)

Oh, we're not the same

Yeah we're friends we stick together

We write our names in blood

But I guess you can't accept that

The change is good

(HEY!)

It's good

(HEY!)

It's good

Well you treat me just like

Another stranger

Well it's nice to meet you, sir

I guess I'll go

I'll best be on my way out

You treat me just like

Another stranger

Well it's nice to meet you, sir

I guess I'll go

I best be on my way out

Ignorance is your new best friend

Ignorance is your new best friend

Ignorance is your new best friend

Ignorance is your new best friend

Well you treat me just like

Another stranger

Well it's nice to meet you, sir

I guess I'll go

I'll best be on my way out

You treat me just like

Another stranger

Well it's nice to meet you, sir

I guess I'll go

I best be on my way out

THE NARRATIVE

Originally, the song represents a break up in a relationship, which is then turned to bitterness and subconciously, ignorance, which is what the song is all about. As it is sung by a woman, we can assume that the man in the relationship has turned into 'Another stranger', for he now ignores her after they have finished their relationship. The song has a bitter tone and as a consumer of it, we understand the anger behind the lyrics and the resentment.

As a group, we decided to twist the lyrics a little. The song is upbeat and rocky and we decided to have a female singer still, just like the original. Our storyline is as follows:

Our protagonist female will wake up in bed after a night of drinking. She has been drinking because she has previously been dumped by her boyfriend for reasons of her being 'crazy'. The boyfriend breaks up with her because he can't deal with her jealousy. After the break up, the boyfriend acts like he doesn't know her, fitting in perfectly with the idea of 'ignorance' and 'another stranger'. The video follows Ellie as she leaves the house having made her make up all okay again. The camera will follow Ellie's journey to Harry (the boyfriends house) and once she get there, there will be another girl at Harry's house, causing Ellie to become angrier and consequently being thrown out of the house at the end of the video. 

Filming!

Photographs

We started by taking photographs of Ellie before we did her make up to make her look as though she had just woken up. The photographs were very successful and we hope to use some of them in our ancillary tasks. Taking photos of each step is a very important process in designing and processing of our products, for we are able to show every aspect of our practical filming and also our making of storyboards and timelines.

We used a variety of angles and places to photograph Ellie, giving ourselves a wider range of photos that could be potential CD covers, posters, etc.

Lights, Camera and... Make up!

The clump of photos below show the process we went through in order to attain a good set of film. We prepared Ellie's make up to the appropriate state (which was waking up, consequently making her make up look smudged). We also set the lights accordingly in order to get the right lighting in the room, making sure our actor's face is not masked in shadow, etc.

Filming

Filming proved to take longer than we expected. This was merely because we did not realise how long it would take to set the lights up, get the shot right, get the set and props right, etc. However, after already filming one set of shots for our initial video idea, we have had some experience already. We found that after starting to film, it became easier to know where the lights should be in order to gain the best outcome in our film. When filming, some shots took longer because we had to get the lighting absolutely correct for the angle and distance we were shooting away from Ellie. Below are the scenes in the bedroom, which will be seen at the beginning of the video.

The bathroom scenes below were probably the hardest scenes to shoot. This was because the spacing in the bathroom was incredibly tight, making it hard to get the right lighting and also making it difficult to film because of the small spacing. We will have to re film a few of these shots in the bathroom because we realised when we played the scenes back that the camerawoman can be seen in the mirror. This is a minor mistake that we can easily rectify by filming again and learning from our mistakes.

Although we were very well equipped with lighting as you can see below in the bedroom scene just before Ellie leaves the room, we did have some problems with the sunlight coming in through the window. We had to cover it with a big white sheet to stop the sunlight from reflecting on the wall as Ellie walks past it. We wanted to follow Ellie down the hallway  with the camera and this was successful, but it took us a few tries to get the right shot, which, evidently is to be expected.

With Ellie leaving the house in the video, we wanted to make it look as though Ellie had gone to the bathroom to sort her make up, put her hair up and put her shoes on. Obviously, we had to take off her smudged makeup and make her hair look a little more tamed than it was when she first woke up. As she leaves the house she also has a coat on, making it evident that she is leaving the house. We have one shot where Ellie walks out the house and comes closer to the camera, looking ahead and consequently walking past the camera, which can be shown in the bottom picture below.

As I said before, the outside scenes were very significant to the story, for Ellie spends half her time in this video outside. We set the camera up on the other side of the road and filmed Ellie for about five minutes sitting on the wall watching cars, people and bikes go past. We wanted it to look as though time was passing, so when it comes to putting this scene in the video, we will speed it up to make it look as though she has been sitting on the wall for a long time. Sitting on the wall, Ellie looks like the type of person who does not care what people think of her, which is the exact characteristics to go for in this character.

Overall, filming went very well, for our first time properly filming our new idea. We have a variety of shots to put into the video, even though we need to refilm a few of them in order to attain a better quality and flawless film!

OUR ACTORS

Protagonist Female

ELLIE BLANCKE

Our chosen main female character is one of our close friends, Ellie Blancke. Ellie helped last year with Sarah's AS Media coursework, so is familiar with camera work and also confident with it. She has the same sort of look/appearance as Kesha, who I had previously decided would be a good model for Ellie to base her character on.

We know that Ellie will be reliable when it comes to filming, taking into consideration the fact that she lives close to all of us. The photo below is a comparison between Ellie and the famous singer Kesha to show the type of style that we want our protagonsit female to look like. We believe Ellie has the exact look that we initially thought of.

The photo above is just an example of our actress in the video. This shot is where some of the filming will be taking place. The carpet and walls are a neutral colour, which is significant as it does not take the focus away from Ellie.

The shot below is a print screen of one of the shots from our video. It shows a troubled young girl on the streets, which is what our music video is based on. We hadn't planned to film her by a road sign but when we saw it, we thought it would be in fitting to film her next to the road sign to blatently show our audience that she is on the street drinking.

 The shot to the left is a picure of Ellie outside the house, where more filming will take place. The clothing she has on are quite outstanding, showing her to be rather rebellious. There is a shot in the video in which Ellie stands against the wall. The photo below shows this.

Protagonist Male

HARRY PAINTER

Timeline

Timeline of events

Having already designed and planned a timeline for our initial idea, I think the practice really helped with this timeline the second time round. The timeline will help us greatly when it comes to filming our music video as it will give us some guidance and something to go by and stick to when filming. We have listened to the song over and over again in order to get each shot perfect with the song and the timing.



Storyboard

Storyboard Planning

To even begin contemplating filming our video, we shall need to create a big storyboard that is in fitting with our timeline. We each took a piece of the timeline to create into a storyboard, making the process of making it much faster and also much mroe efficient. The storyboard shows every aspect of what we expect to happen in our video, from the very beginning to the end. We have also included what sort of shots we would like to use in each frame.

The Storyboard below is our finished product. The frames show how far away we should film our actress and any significant shots of feet, etc.

Analysing the Lyrics

Before we can even begin to contemplate some sort of story to go with the music, we need to understand the meaning behind the lyrics. Zoe offered to do this and annotated a print out of the lyrics so that we can begin to come up with some kind of story to match the song.

We came up with one idea of having a girl who is clearly troubled after the break up with her ex boyfriend. We want the video to show her growing obsession with him and the annotations below show this rather well:

Filming

 PRACTICE FILMING

We began practice filming our media in the half term. We have had to do some serious thinking about what we are going to do with our music video. Here's a few shots of how we got on doing our first shoot for the music video.

 We had an incident in which the cameraman tripped over one of the wires. In order to save time and stop accidents like this happening, we taped the wire to the floor temporarily to proceed with our filming and get as much done as possible.

LIGHTING

We were very grateful for the lighting equipment that was lended to us, but it did cause a few problems with filming. This was merely because we kept catching the lights in the film and sometimes the lights did not fit with the type of shots that we wanted to do. Having said that, the lights were a lifesaver considering it was a very dull and dreary day! They really helped with the lighting for all of our filming.

Target Audience

Our targeted audience is people around our own age. I do not think that the target audience should be much younger than eighteen years old, as there are explicit scenes of smoking and drinking in our video that we would not want to encourage teenagers to do.

The genre of our music video is indie rock, and taking this on board we are targeting our video at indie rock fans. The real artist of the song is a band called paramore which is an alternative/indie rock band:

As you can see from the style of clothes that this band are wearing, we aim to target fans of this type of culture.

Definition of Indie Rock: Indie Rock is a genre of alternative rock. Indie Rock is a slightly softer type of rock music, targeting all fans of rock with it's extreme diversity.

Taking this on board, the genre of music we have chosen specifically targets young aged people, as they are more inclined to listen to alternative/indie rock.

Practice Filming

On Thursday the 14th October we planned to do some filming for our research. We took the camers to our location and began filming some mock shots of what we would expect when actually filming the video. We also made some real shots of the numbers '1 2 3' in which we experimented with different, creative ways of showing these numbers. We came up with two final ideas. We used a guitar lead as a way of making the numbers '1 2 3' and '4 5 6' and tried out different ways of filming it. We did this also by using a collection of stones to create those numbers again.We have put together some short clips of our shots of '1 2 3' and '4 5 6' to help us decide what shots to use in our actual video:

The next video displays another way that we tried to film the '1 2 3':

The next videos are our shots of '4 5 6' in the same format and style as the '1 2 3' shots:

Preliminary Music Video Research

Considering that we will be using a band in our video, I thought it necessary to do a bit of research on the filming of bands (boy bands specifically). We want to get as  much variation of bands as possible, so that we can use a variety of interesting shots. 

Below is a shot of the band You Me At Six in their video 'Stay With Me'. The way that they are filmed through the crops gives some distance between the band and the audience. It is effective because after this shot, we seem to be bought closer and closer to the band through the camera, making us feel more involved in the song. I liked the setting in this video and chose it because we will be using fields in our video, although the band won't be in the field, the girl will, we can still use this sunset effect lighting as well as the different shots used. 

NATURALISTIC COLOURS

NON-NATURALISTIC COLOURS

These few shots above are from the video 'Weightless' by All Time Low. I have chosen these shots and this video specifically because the lighting is a little less naturalistic than the video before, which I think we will use for our band shots in the bedroom. I think having the shots darker in the room will create a contrast to the natural sunset outside where the girl will be filmed just before she enters the house.  

These three different shots are brilliant in showing the band whilst they are playing. The second shot is effective because it shows all three guitarists in a row, as though they are united when playing music. The last shot is a good close up, and we intend to use a lot of these of the lead singer when making our video. 

Although I believe we are veering away from using colours as vibrant as these, it is always good to see what will work and what won't work. We could always try different things when we film and figure out what looks best and what reflects the song the most successfully. 

BLACK AND WHITE

We are planning on filming the band in black and white, and these next few shots from the video 'It Girl' by Jason Derulo, should show the effect of the black and white in the video. In my opinion, I think it gives the characters a classy appearance. You could also say that it gives a sense of the atmosphere lacking excitement, which is why we would like to use black and white for the band and colour when filming the girl, to show the excitement that she brings to their lives (especially the lead singer's). 

The shot of the girl in the mirror is exactly the kind of thing we want when we film our girl looking in the mirror. It is quite flirtacious but also striking, which is exactly what we want our girl to look like. 

STYLE

I will begin this post by focusing on the sort of style that the girl in our video will wear. We will shortly be having a photoshoot of Ellie, who is the girl we intend to use in our video and we will focus on putting her in this kind of style. We want her to wear a dress, which will highlight her femininity. The colour of this dress to the left would be a suitable colour because it reflects the flirtaciouness of her (because of the dark colours) and giving her a mysterious edge to her personality.

this is slightly more floral and feminine than the dress before, but it is also the kind of style we would like to follow when stylising ellie. The big printed flowers on the dress give the dress an interesting look to it, again creating an intriguing and mysterious style.

The labels below are the sort of clothing labels that we would like to stick with when styling our actors costumes. They are trendy, and have quite an urban/indie style to themm which is exactly what we are looking for both the girl and the band.

Using Premiere

In today's lesson we started to learn how to use Adobe Premiere for when we come to creating our movies. At first, it seemed like just a lot of buttons that I had no idea how to use. But after experimenting with various video clips, adding effects to them and learning how to connect one video to the other, I found that it was not as hard as it had seemed at the beginning! Just like when we first started to use photoshop for our AS coursework. I feel already that Premiere will be quick and easy to use when we begin to shoot for our video and need to edit in order to make our music video the best it can be. I used a variety of effects on my video clips, basically just trying to learn the basics of the program.