Planning Meeting

During this meeting we dicusses locations, costumes and casting for the music video. We have all had ideas and have decided to use the stage at our school to recreate the performance sections of the band. As well as this we have had ideas about using a messy room full of empty alcohol cans/bottles and substances representing drugs, for the intro- this will be a room at Arran's house. We have also discussed using a local park so we can produce memory shots and contrast them with the main characters life to the day. The next thing to do with locations is to produce a recce.

For casting of the main roles, Connor will be representing the main character/singer and taking on this role for the band. This is due to the fact that the members of the band are not possible to film. This is because one is in China, another is travelling and the third is in the Navy based on a ship. Connor will play the main character in two ways; His more innocent, 'pure', uncorrupted past-self and then again as a neglected soul, addicted to drugs and struggling with the effects that they have pursued on his life. 
I will be playing  the role of Connor's girlfriend when they were together and also as Connor's hallucination of her. This will have the effect of  looking how Connor sees her, like himself (addicted to drugs, depressed, negative, etc.). It could also be seen as a vision of how she would have become if she had stayed with him.

In terms of costumes, we have decided to have two sets of outfits which reflect the two roles of the actors; Connor will be wearing one costume of bright or white colours to reflect the 'good' past version of himself and also one to reflect him when he has become addicted to drugs. Similarly I will wear a more relaxed lounge wear of bright colours, to reflect the positive relationship for one role. For the second role I will be in negative, dark colours, with running mascara and looking scruffy.

The next thing to do with our planning is to produce a recce and start on filming concept shots. This will allow us to get visual ideas of the whole music video so that when we come to constructing we can get the filming done quickly; leaving more time for editing. 

Story Board Shots for Filming

Here is a story board I have made briefly by creating these shots through images on Google and editing them on Photoshop:

First shot appears in the left hand corner of a black screen.

Appears on first chord sound.

In black and white as shown

Screen quartered.

This will emphasis his solitude and where he is in his life at the moment (depressed)

 







This second shot will look at his isolation from a side view and become closer to him.

This will come in on the second chord being strummed and again is in black and white to convey the darkness of his like at this time.




The third shot will appear on the left bottom corner of the screen.

It is a close up of a hand clearly participating in drug use.

Again its in black and white and will come in on the third chord being strummed.

Again this will allow us to show how he is dealing with this depression through the use of drugs.

This shot will come in on the fourth chord being strummed.

It will appear in the right bottom corner of the screen.

It is to show his emotion of depression and desperation as well as his use of drugs.

During this shot we will get the pupil dilating and then shrinking back again as light is let into it.


In shot five this will appear over the top of the last four shots as they slowly fade out.

He will sing the first two lines of the song.

Will be fairly close to the camera to bring his sad emotion across.

Still in black and white.




In the 6th shot he will be singing the next two lines: "Bring me back into your arms. Your sweet embrace."

This shot will act as a flashback to his happy life before with his woman.

This will be in over the top bright colours to show the clear contrast.




In the seventh shot we see the same mirror image but of him now.

Back in black and white.

And the girl has gone from the sofa to show his loneliness and reminiscing.

This is the storyboard so far, for the intro and first verse of our chosen song. I will now take the images and the ones that we will create for the rest of the song and make an anamatic. This will allow us to view our music video ideas as still images and where they fit in the song. This will also make it a lot quicker and easier to film as we will already have the times and shots set up.

Storyboard (Rough)

Here are the first pictures for our storyboard in rough. We discussed the intro and first verse and came up with the first few shots. In me next post I will be reconstructing these images on Photoshop and show each shot and how we want
to convey them.

Type of Music

In today's lessons we discussed what type of music video we will be creating. Based on the chart information we have from our target audience, we have decided to create a narrative based music video with a hint of performance. This is what our target audience wanted and so we will be suiting their needs.

We then went on to start to discus some locations for our recce; which is the next stage of our planning. This will allow us to link places and images to form the narrative as a whole picture.

Annotating Lyrics

Here is a recording/ film of our group discussion we had whilst annotating the lyrics to "Elevator". We all had some great ideas about the meaning behind certain lyrics and discussed how these would fit with certain shots and locations.


Here are the notes we wrote throughout the discussion on the lyrics:

These are the notes Arran and Harry made throughout the discussion.

These are the notes Connor and I made throughout the discussion.

Both are very similar with the same basic ideas about what the lyrics could be. Connor and I however have also included concepts we could use in the actual video and where we could really make a story line come to life.

The next task then is to discuss the type of music video we will be making...

Planning Spider Diagram

Here are my groups and my original thoughts for our planning stage and how to go about planning are presented here in the spider diagram we created. As you can see there is a lot to consider and get done as well as always focusing on the needs of our target audience. We then went on to creating a To Do List and order our work so that we can go through the process of planning successfully.

This is the To Do List, from looking at this you can see that our first task is to allocate roles to the group within the planning and filming stages. My role is to be responsible for locations and props which I feel I'll be good at because of my knowledge of the song (as it's my brothers) and the area they were thinking of when creating the lyrics; I am also creative so can link lyrics to places and images I feel will be effective. Harry another member of my group is responsible for casting and costume; this is ideal for him because he is extremely educated in current fashion and can spot talent from a mile. Arran will be in charge of editing however we will all help and put ideas in for this; he is perfect for this as he has a lot of experience in this area. Finally Connor is the Camera man as he also has lots of experience in this area due to studying film and he enjoys it so will put in a lot of effort in creating each shot.

Our next task is to annote the lyrics...

Creating our Production Company Logo and Name

Whilst researching and planning for our music video production we decided to create our own name and logo for our new production company. This way we can make all our work more professional and actually email the chosen band to use their song for our A-level work. Asking them if we can create there music video, magazine poster and digipak for their album; as well as promoting them through social media sites such as Facebook by improving their own page. This will allow us to establish and full blown marketing project for the unsigned band BOCA.

Here is the final piece of our logo for our production company. I created this on Photoshop from all the ideas we came up with and looked at. The paint relates to what happens when paint touches speakers (bass); this is the musical element. We chose the name Wight Spark because we are the production company on the Isle Of Wight and the word Spark is the beginning of a fire and therefore the beginning of something great (a bands career). Finally it is bright and colourful to stand out just like music.

We can now make our project a lot more formal by representing BOCA officially.

Digipak Template

Templates:

Here are some templates of digipaks that Arran found form a website. As you can see there are many different designs for a digipak; these pictures show 4, 6 and 8 panel designs but we will focus on the 6 panel ones for our bands digipak. All of these designs are very similar in layout except for where the disc is held.

These are some things we need to consider when creating our digipak: How many panels?

Where the disc should be? What images should we include? What our main image should be? The album name? How to link it with the poster? How to feature the conventions of the genre Indie Rock and there digipaks/posters?


For our group finding these templates have been very useful as we don't have a budget to spend when creating our digipak and so having free templates at our use is very fortunate.

Digipak Research

Here is a Prezi presentation on Digipaks done by Arran and Connor. As you can see first they have defined what a Digipak is and shown this with examples such as Rihanna's Loud Digipak album. They have then  analysed their examples further highlighting key areas that would be effective to an audience appeal. They have featured different genres of music and their Digipak so that we can pick up on key conventions and what we would need to include for our chosen band B O C A. Finally their last slide of information about what we should consider will be very useful through the production of the Digipak as we can gather a rough idea of what needs to be featured.

Indie Rock Poster Analysis

After going into detail of two Indie Rock Band posters, harry and I also looked at these posters to see if we can spot any conventions for the genre.

Some conventions that can be see throughout all or most of these posters are:
-The band name is always the biggest text and the highest up the poster.
-The image takes up the whole background and is also the main image of the album/digipak.
-The image is not necessarily of the band itself.
-Promotes the music more than the band image.
-Album name comes second to the band.
-Some have themes.



Overall we can take into account these conventions so that our poster will be similar to those in it's genre "Indie Rock". This will then help us to draw in our target audience.

Magazine Poster Research

Poster Analysis: