Research Into Conventions and Potential Target Audience

For the past three lesson my group and I have gone through looking at three different artist which seem to produce the same sort of products as what we would look to manufacture as our final piece.

Our research was done on Prezi and was completed by all three of us in the group (Jonty Harrison, David Heal and I).

Our new idea

For this new idea we have changed our whole idea. First of all, the song is now Nightcall (Club Refix) by KANT, shown below:

With this idea there is now a narrative to follow throughout the video to give the audience something to think about. This narrative is to have a male character who goes to a rooftop with a group of 25-30 people to have a gathering together. As the gathering is going on the main, male, character will shine a red light on the 'victim' and then a red sticker will be on them by another character who will be more important then the rest of those at the 'gathering' as he will be part of some sort of hidden group within. After they have been marked the next night they won't be back on the next night. The rooftop will be lit, at night, with a harsh blue light so that the red laser pointer (target) can stand out on the cast. For the final part of the music video there is a girl who will be on the screen for around 30 seconds to the audience get to know the girl and the laser will be pointed at her causing a shock. Along with this, our idea is going to have a second strand of tutting. Tutting is a type of dance that involves intricate movements of the fingers. The word "tutting" is a street dance style based on angular movements which are supposed to stylise the poses seen on reliefs in the art of ancient Egypt, and refers to "King Tut". The tutting will be done in the studio which is fully blacked out so that the only thing that is visible are the hands with the blue, LED, gloves or UV painted hands. Images of these are shown below.

Another strand is to have a drum pad. And, finally, we have the lip syncing. The lip syncing will be a male character also who will be shining the light on who the next 'suspect' will be. He will be in on a room on his own with minimal but blue light on his face (close up).

Group chat about timelines

Yesterday evening my group and I had a meeting on a timeline as I wasn't sure on how our product would last the full song and what ideas we can use.

This was David's timeline:

This was Jonty's timeline:

After talking about these ideas for about an hour it started to feel as if there is enough to take us over the song timings with many different ideas which we can now include in the video. These two ideas a very similar but different at the dame time. This is a positive as we could mix and match meaning that there are even more ideas which can make our product even more fun and interesting to watch. 

Overall it seems as if our idea won't have much of a narrative to follow but this definitely doesn't mean that the will be nothing to look forward to until the end as after looking at the timelines which Jonty and David have created it shows that there is an idea to finish with (even two).

Presentation from Polydor Records

Last week my classmates and I received a talk from Polydor Records about the pre-production, production and post-production stages of making a music video along with some advice with making ours. We received the talk from a two woman named Hanan Cher and Emily Tedrake (who was the video commissioner for Polydor Records). Below is some of the information they gave to us: 

• When thinking on what directors to use in the video they go to about 5-10 different directors to compare and chose the best for that video.
• The director will then create and they will put together a weeks worth of documents in vision for the music video.
• Compared to our videos with the minimal budget we have to create our product Polydor Records' videos aren't not studio set up and they are able to travel to different locations for the best possible video.
• Throughout the presentation/interview the term treatment was used a lot. The term treatment means script/idea for the video and it is made as visual as possible to make them as realistic as possible (vivid) for the artist and everyone involved with the production.
• Due to Polydor Records and how large of a company they are they have many options and directors to chose from as they come from companies which they work with.
• New directors which are used (directors which Polydor hadn't worked with before) are looked at through many different places (on and offline).
• Due to the rage of budgets which Polydor can do, a small budgeted one uses around 10 people in a production team but can be as small as 3.
• There is no point depending on a specific storyboard and that we should be flexible because not all videos go exactly like the storyboard (things may look different. However having one or a good idea of what we want would be very helpful.
• If there isn't then you can lose track of timings and spending too long on one scene rather than the others which may be longer, messing up the shoot day.
• Finally one main piece of information is that we must have a clear treatment.

All of this information can be used effectively by my group and I if we use this knowledge given to us from Polydor in our own shoots to make sure things run smoothly and productively on our day.

What do Hanan and Emily do at the shoots?

Their main aim is to just to help, in any way they can, on the shoot. They also give advice to the directors if anything is needed.

Make sure that the artist's are okay and to check is the director is on track. They also, overall, give communication across the set, for example, there are always things and liabilities which just need to be smoothed out on the set. They make sure there is no panic as that can cause a large disruptions and finally the artist, sometimes, doesn't like it and reshoots do happen.

Our feedback from Luke

After listening to this feedback with my group we created key points and what we are going to do about them below:

Initial feedback for our first idea

• First Luke said that we didn't have enough ideas with the foam to show a clear picture.
• Foam is a lot easier to do than water (cleaning up wise), but harder with continuity if not full developed.
• If the performers are dry and they then get wet because foam is being chucked at them, they will have to dry off and re do their make up, hair and so on, it takes a lot of time and effort (the difficulty with foam).
• Foam is harder to shoot than water, with water you get loads of ripples in the water and looks really nice, but with foam it doesn't really move, does but really slowly, so it can get very boring
• Foam seems to be related to the pop genre, our song choice isn't very pop, it's quite chilled out with a bit of pop involved but not enough to make the whole music video be about foam.

Development of idea 1 after Luke's feedback

• We can get rid of the foam and replace it with the balls you get in children's ball pits
• For the first scene we can have her running a bath, so water and we can get loads of shots of the water and how it moves and then she adds fairy liquid into the bath to make bubbles/foam 
• We are going to change the song to a more pop vibe so the foam doesn't seem strange. 
• With the foam we can get her to slowly blow the foam out of her hands to have more shots. 

Initial feedback for our first idea 2

• The idea of the two dancers split screen is brilliant, very different.
• However the idea is very hard to do. a lot of planning needed, have to make sure the camera is the same height for both dancers.
• You can't have a location in one side but have a studio built idea on another side (boy cleaning in the kitchen, girl eating dinner at a restaurant)

Development of idea 2 after Luke's feedback

• change the narrative and have it solely a dance number, it will look interesting because they are dancing together but separate locations.
• we will keep it just in the studio, or have them going out of the studio at the same time and dance out in an location like down a street or something.

Our First Idea

This is the first music video idea which is going to pitched to Luke based on the song Intoxicated.


Below are the pictures from the link for the mood board of this idea.

Our Second Idea

This is out second music video idea which is going to be presented to Luke on the 15th.

Enjoy!

 

First lesson as a group

Today was the first time my group and I worked together and discussed what we were going to do and what our two concepts will be by the end of this week and presenting to Matt and Luke. We organised all nine of our ideas in order and looked over them as a group and each of us picked the best of our own to see what we all kind of wanted:

• Shine — Boy and girl dancing in different locations.
• Save The Night — Creepy ex boyfriend, same idea as 500 days of summer.
• Hero — Charity ‘WaterAid’ with a band.
• White Tiger — Singer and dancers flash mob.
• Breathe — Visuals like Justin Bieber’s I’ll Show You or Let Me Love You.
• Arabella — Pre gig (band).
• Coming Over — Opposite apartments, different lives.
• Mystyfari or Recess (Skrillex) — Food fight, girl group take over school.
• Dungeon — Guy in a cage, old man in uniform, piano in wood.

After we have listed all of our ideas we all chose one of our own ideas to narrow down and see each of our favourites. I chose my White Tiger idea, Jonty chose his Recess (Skrillex) idea and David chose his idea of Shine and the boy and the girl dancing in different locations with the split screen.

Presenting my three ideas and the feedback I gained

Last week I presented my three ideas and I gained around 5 minutes of information that I can use once working in my group for our final idea. The recording of my feedback has been embedded below.

Key Comments:

Initial Idea 1

This idea was seen as a bit weaker compared to my third idea (Arabella). 

It was seen as it would work as the song and the description with it gave off a similar idea as Justin Bieber's I'll Show You.

It was also said that the location of my shoot would make a big difference.

There were a few questions that cropped up that it could be really easy to burn my shots really quick. In other words I need to have many different shots which would easily last me 3 minutes (as long as the song is).

To help this I could use short clip (videos) are it would show more and could get me more footage.

Initial Idea 2

This idea is based on Izzy Bizu's White Tiger.

This idea and the element I picture within this idea was some of my class mates favourite.

It also was seen that this idea (of a singer and dancers) will probably be the most used therefore I need to make it more different.

Initial Idea 3

This idea of the gig practice and entrance to gig was the most vivid of the ideas and it was seen that it could work, but would again need a good location.
It was also stated that with this idea there would have to be a lot of focus on the instruments as that is what the fan base is into.

Conclusion
It was finally stated that all of the ideas all have some sort of good aspect to them and that if I mix them up correctly I could use all of them to help each other in creating a solid/strong idea.

The Do's and Don't's of making a music video

Before presenting my three initial ideas my class and I received a talk from one of the media staff, named Luke, who told us what were good ideas for our music video and what we shouldn't do if we are to make a successful piece of work.

First of all, Luke said that we should, when talking about a narrative, always do it on the music and not make it up by our selves. For example if the song is about a party then he, basically, said to not do something like a dance performance in the forest. In other words he told us not to just film what we thought was cool and what we liked and found fun. Secondly he told us to not choose an actor/actress which is good looking and would be a good person to work with as they may not fit the part (to make the singer believable). Finally, he told us to make sure the song links to the music, but differently to the first two points. he stated that if the song was a slow and not upbeat we should show that in our video but if there was a fast paced song then we should make sure it is shown through the video (even without the audio).

We then spoke to Phil (my A2 Media studies teacher) and he said that it is always a good idea to do a narrative. He said to do this because the viewer will never know the outcome of the narrative (storyline of the video) until the end, gripping them to watch the whole video and keeping them interested throughout.

Developing my three ideas for digipaks and homepages to go alongside them (to create the overall campaign) (2)

Izzy Bizu - White Tiger (digipak) from EdwardParadise

Izzy Bizu - White Tiger (website) from EdwardParadise