Planning - Storyboards

Planning - Long Term Weather Forecast

When planning the days we wanted to film, we needed to research what the long term weather forecast was for each day, Wednesday is the colder of the two days with some rain and this is the day we were going to shoot internal shots. Thursday is going to rain also but later on and we will hopefully have finished all of our external shots by this time.

Research - Music Video Analysis 9 - Hello by Adele

Planning - Group Post Organisation of Shoot

Date's we are shooting

• Wednesday the 26th of October
• Thursday the 27th of October 

Call Time & Wrap Time 

On Wednesday the 26th the call time is 9 AM to make the best use of day light with a lunch break and the estimated wrap time for the day will be around 5 to 6 pm depending on the shot's we get and light level's.

On Thursday the 27th the call time will be 9 AM with a mid-day lunch break with the aim to finish around half 5 or 6 PM  with the goal of being finished shooting footage. 

Wednesday the 26th

 On wednesday we plan to  meet at my house and get all the interior shot's possible such as the bedroom scene for example, and then with the remaining time try and get as many other shot's as possible e.g. the phone text's and shots for the montage.

Thursday the 27th 

On thursday we plan to meet at my house and then move down to the park and get all the outside shots we need to complete the video.

ON BOTH DAY'S WE WILL BE USING MY OWN CAMERA TO TAKE PRINCIPLE PHOTOGRAPHY.

Planning - Risk Assessment - Injured Actor

Risk Assessment

One of our actors, Luke has a bone marrow infection, which had led to him having to wear a boot. This could create problems for us if we need him for long shots, we need to ensure that he is well enough to perform both days for our music videos but we also need to ensure that we have an emergency contact on our call sheets for him in case he needs medical attention or someone to come pick him up.

Planning - Script Breakdown

Planning - Call Sheet

Planning - Risk Assessment

After completing this risk assessment we printed two copies and each signed and dated both copies.

Research - Existing Digipak 1 - Catfish and The Bottlemen

This digipak is so simple. The black and white colour scheme shows binary opposition, creating irony because not everything is complete opposites in life. The way the people are drawn are shown to look quite like bottles, with bottle necks which relate to the band name 'Catfish and The Bottlemen.' The logo of the bands name n the top corner of the digipak is used on everything related to the band, this has led to it being widely recognised and the font is now often related to the band. Also, the picture of the two headless figures with their hands down each others pants is commonly related to the band so even if the logo was shown on a poster without the bands name on it then people would know who the poster was advertising. The digipak is very clearly of an indie genre.

The simplicity of the digipak is continued onto the back. There is just the track-list in white to contrast with the black background. At the bottom there is the logo of Island Records which is the record label that Catfish and The Bottlemen are signed to, this is pictured above the extremely small font at the bottom of the back pane which describes the institutional details which have to be included on a digipak. There is also a barcode which is obviously needed for purchase purposes. These things are centred to keep with the theme. The san serif font is kept the same throughout the bands merchandise and all albums, this has become a conventional font for the band and it is very simple yet effective. By keeping the text on the front pane in the corner, it allows the main attention of an audience to be focused on the logo of the band.

Planning - Group Post on How duet's work in music video's

Joe Shepherd
Since our music consists of a duo I thought it might be a good to research into how duo's are presented in music video's. What I understand is that duo's in music videos are presented in two way's the "Ft " at the end of the video or they are presented as a duo or a  group with a universal name they are known as e.g. catfish and the bottle men. It also depends on the genre with the how the duo or group dynamic works as in certain genre's like pop a group or duo is presented as having separate personalities like sporty spice in the spice girls for example.

That is not a thing in indie rock, a group is represented  as just caring about their music and wanting to release the best song or music video they can, This is something I intended to show through the digipack and our promotional products by not having any "Gimicky" Photos like what was done with the spice girls.

< = Not what we plan to do

                                                  What we plan to do =>

Planning - Call Sheet

Planning - Creating Our Documents

Today I created our call sheet to help organise our music video shooting and make it easier for our actors to know where they have to be and when. to do this I searched the sunrise and sunset times for our shooting dates, this allows us to know when there will be enough lighting to get the shots that we need in the natural daylight. I also had to make a timetable of the times, location, day or night, interior or exterior shots and actors to ensure we have enough time to get everything filmed in time and that everyone knows exactly what is happening and when.

I also made our locations risk assessment, this is to allow any potential dangers to be planned for and prevented as best we can, the only risks we really have are shooting in the dark, and shooting in public places.

Conclusion of Research - Codes and Conventions

Camera shots, angles and movement

I know that this song is a very similar style to the song that I am using to create my own music video, so I feel like this will be a really great inspiration for my planning. I love the lighting and think the red and black lights were a really effective and genius way to represent the love and danger themes in the video so I will hopefully be able to incorporate something similar into my video. I also felt like the montage shots were a really exciting part of the video and the way the image linked to the lyric was really intriguing so I want to take some inspiration and apply it to my own video.

I really like the jump cuts from one emotion to another, I really hope we can find a way to use this in our music video as I think it is really effective for the story line and to the audience.

I also really liked the way the background blurred to make her the focus of the shot and to highlight her drunken state.

This kind of voyeuristic and sexualised artist is very post modern, as effective as it is, it is not suitable for the type of indie music we have chosen to make a video for. The shots in this video are really effective, especially in the close ups and extreme close ups as they are conventions of pretty much every type of music videos.

I now see what kind of shots are usual for indie music videos and its really helpful to see what should be included in my own music video. I hope we can incorporate all of these shots in our video as they were so effective here. We definitely need to include extreme close ups of our artists, zoom shots and long shots. Performance shots are common convention for indie music videos but we do not have a band that are playing so we can't do this.

This has shown me how effective even simple shots can be with the right location and framing, I feel like the use of very neutral and white colours with bursts of brightness is really interesting and may be something we could use.

Mise en scene

I feel like in our music video, we should use various locations which can portray a vary of different experiences but that also work together.

A list of possible locations we could use is...

• The old train tunnel in Brigg
• Woodlands
• Pebble Beach ft abandoned fishing hut
• the Humber Bridge
• Thornton Abbey
• Graveyard

This research has really opened my eyes to just how important costumes are in a music video, this has helped me decide that the costumes really need to represent the genre of our chosen song, but also make sense to the story line while creating a star image for our actors and telling the story. We don't want overly extravagant costumes so nothing like these shown above but just simple jeans and vintage shirts etc. 

After researching this, I would like to use quite bold vintage shirts in the happier scenes to represent the indie genre, the sadder scenes would be all dressed in black, so black jeans and a black t-shirt and a black leather jacket or suit jacket. The make-up will start really natural but will acquire eyeliner and then lipstick as the video progresses.

This has really helped me see which aspects of existing stars would be good to use for our star to try and make them successful, we need the female lead to be independent and strong who is able to attract both a male and female audience through her looks, music and fashion. Our male lead needs to be strong, stylish and have that suave look which will appeal to both target audience.

Now I am less worried about finding lots of bold, in your face patterned clothes and more focused on just simple clothes that support our narrative, which is helpful.

Editing

The editing in this video has really inspired me, as there is some disorganisation and distress in our music video so the canted angles and rotation of shots could come in really handy and make the music video look really effective and professional, hopefully we could include something like this because it works so well.

This is a well edited but over the top music video, we could use some inspiration from this video but not a lot as it is too different to what we are trying to achieve, this being said the editing does look really effective and it is such a modern and inventive music video and it does really work with this song and the bands image.

The lighting in my music video has not been thoroughly planned yet and so this was really helpful to be able to acknowledge what is going to be effective and work well for the particular style of video we are doing, I think, from this research that natural light is going to be the best bet, in the night time shots we will need artificial lighting but we mainly need natural light.

Research - Target Audience Feedback

This is the voice recording we took while we were conducting our focus group research, this has helped us to realise what it is we need to change to suit the younger adult/teen section of our audience, we still need to conduct target audience research for an older audience.

Things we are going to change...
We need to ensure that we do not portray males in a way that could be considered offensive.
We should consider the idea of obsession and intensity as suggested by someone in the focus group.
We should consider some more outside locations.

Research - Older Target Audience Feedback and Results

Seen as though the original song Dreams by Fleetwood Mac was released in 1977l, we have a separate target audience in people who were fans of this and may also like this cover. To help us gain their insight I created a questionnaire to ask similar questions to our older target audience which we asked to our first TA group, I didn't make the questions exactly the same as we couldn't play the song for them through the questionnaire.

Participant 1 (Female age 51)

Participant 2 (Female age 54)
Participant 3 (Male age 47)
Participant 4 (Female 67)
Participant 5 (Female age 49)
Participant 6 (Male age 64)

Ta results (older) from caityduggan

Research - Music Video Analysis 8 - All The Pretty Girls by Kaleo

Lighting

This opening shot is amazing, the pink lighting creates such a romantic and feminine atmosphere, linking to the song name 'All The Pretty Girls'. This kind of effect would be perfect for the feel we are trying to achieve in our own video, maybe not pink particularly but the overall effect is desirable.

The lighting here perfectly shows every detail on the little branch, this soft yet natural lighting would be really useful for the more romantic scenes in our music video.

The subtle lighting in this shot just highlights the highpoints of the legs and feet, this looks so soft and gentle, it's so effective and pretty, I hope we can achieve this. The way the shot is framed is very unusual as a shot of feet on their own is odd unless it matches the lyrics.

The way the lighting is used here is my favourite thing, it is so effective and beautiful as the light makes everything else look really dark and quite shadowy, giving a nice pink effect but it is so soft yet dark, I really want to be able to do this in my own music video but I am not sure when it would be suitable. The group shot in this sequence looks really effective, we have no plans to use group shots in our video so far but this has made me consider adding one as there is many different ways we could frame it.

The lighting here, under the water highlights the people, one in particular, this is something I haven't seen used in music videos before and I think it is so effective and different, it is really alternative and indie.

How this research has influenced my planning

The lighting in my music video has not been thoroughly planned yet and so this was really helpful to be able to acknowledge what is going to be effective and work well for the particular style of video we are doing, I think, from this research that natural light is going to be the best bet, in the night time shots we will need artificial lighting but we mainly need natural light.

Planning - Establishing and closing shots

Establishing Shot
Location: Bedroom
Actor/s: Katie
Time: Morning (Natural Light through window)
Shot Type: Close up, zoom
Mise En Scene: Katie in pyjamas, very basic and natural make up, Katie laid on bed waking up.


Closing Shot
Location: Barton, near Joe's house
Actor/s: Katie and Luke
Time: Night time (lighting coming from single streetlight)
Shot Type: Pan shot, going up to the sky
Mise En Scene: Luke in black, Katie dressed in black ripped jeans, leather jacket, bright top etc.

Planning - Beat Script

We had to create a beat script in order to have an idea of what we are doing in each shot, even if we didn't have entirely all of the details secured yet, this is going to be really helpful to finalise any details and it will help us to actually finalise a full script with all the details, locations and times etc.

Research - Target Audience Focus Group 1

Today in class we conducted some target audience research. We formed focus groups to answer the questions we had planned to ask our target audience. This focus group was made up of 17/18 year olds and we had both males and females answer our questions.
The questions we planned were...

1.  What images come to your mind when you hear this song? (We played the first minute of the song)
2. We gave feedback on our initial concepts and asked if it offended any one or if there was anything they could suggest to change.
3. We described our establishing shot and asked for suggestions
4. What do you feel about covers/rereleases of old songs?
5. Do you enjoy a narrative based music video?
6. Do you prefer modern or traditional representations of women?
7. What locations come to mind when listening to the song?

This focus group has given us a wide range of answers and we now have a lot to think about and changes to make to our initial plans.

This is only one part of our target audience research as it is a rerelease of a Fleetwood Mac single so there will also be an older existing audience which we will have to do research for.

Research - Existing Costume (Female Artists)

The first outfit shown is a simple yet feminine and classy white dress. The lace detail gives a vintage and indie twist to an otherwise modern look. this would work well for our music video.

 The next look is just a simple white shirt but the vintage patterned cardigan again just adds that indie edge in a really simple way.

The outfits for mainly narrative based music videos are kept really simple, as seen here where the singer is just wearing jeans and a green sweater, this is really helpful for us and our limited budget as our video is narrative based too. There is few costume changes in this video but they are all very simple and subtle yet effective, something we can surely do ourselves.

How this has influenced my planning

Now I am less worried about finding lots of bold, in your face patterned clothes and more focused on just simple clothes that support our narrative which is helpful. I feel like these clothes are the kind of thing that would suit our music video as they are of similar genres and the videos are both a relationship breakdown based narrative.

Research - Music Video Analysis 7 - Heart and Soul by Twin Atlantic

The Editing Techniques used in this music video are...
-Using a green screen background to allow various different back drops during the video, for example...

• falling roses
• various virtual versions of the same band members playing behind the actual bands

-There is some shots that have been edited to show singular body parts alone, e.g. the head singing, the foot on the pedal.

-Making the screen appear as though it is moving sideways to look like a constant stream of action

-Enlarging and shrinking images and shots

How this research has influenced my planning
This is a well edited but over the top music video, we could use some inspiration from this video but not a lot as it is too different to what we are trying to achieve, this being said the editing does look really effective and it is such a modern and inventive music video and it does really work with this song and the bands image.