R + P Post 33: Reflections on my role and contribution during research and planning

We worked well together as a group through the research and planning process by dividing the workload equally between each member and having regular group meetings to feed back all our individual research and work.
Personally I spent time on creating the shoot boards for our narrative shots which were helpful for us to use when we went shooting on location.

R + P Post 32: Test shoot and rough edit

A schedule for our test shoot was created to accommodate the three projects in our media departments, allocating each group slots in the studio for us to test out our music video shots. My group is group 1 and the table below shows when we practised our shots:

The first thing we tested during our studio time was our lighting set-ups, which took longer than we had expected. We learnt how to use the lighting desk and created three lighting set-ups; pink blue and white.

We then tested our shots and our props in front of the camera.

What went well:

• Props looked really good
• Lighting was nice and vibrant

What we want to improve after our test shoot in the studio:

• more energy from the performers
• more camera movement

We planned to test our narrative shots on the first Monday of half term when our whole group and our actor Jack were free. Our test shoot ran smoothly with everything going to plan and on time. 

After we had gathered all our shots we created a rough edit of our test shots:

We then showed this rough cut to our teachers to get feedback on how we can improve our ideas prior to the real shoot. This is the feedback we received:

- Make the studio shots more elaborate and exciting

- Tighter framing

- Could use a split screen for the narrative to make the storyline clearer

- Fast pace editing to engage audience more

Testing our shots and creating a rough edit was such an important stage for us as it made clear that we needed to improve some things about our video. We plan to improve the beginning of our narrative, use more split screens, more movement in our studio shots and more energy in the acting. 

R + P Post 31: My call sheet

We created call shoots for each of our shooting days holding important information for both our cast and crew on call times, dates and locations:

Call Sheet for our Test Shoot

Call Sheet for Real Shoot

Call Sheet for our Narrative Shoot

The call sheets were extremely helpful during our shooting period, especially for Jack, one of our actors as he said it made it easy for him to know when and where to be and so he could be on time. They meant no one was late and we could proceed with our shooting on time.

R+P Post 30: My shoot-board

The next stage for our group was to create shoot boards in preparation for the upcoming test shoot and main shoots. We decided to create separate shoot boards for the narrative location shooting and the studio shooting.

Page One of our Studio Shoot Board

Page One of our Narrative Shoot Board

Our Shoot boards were extremely useful during shoots as they made the whole process much quicker. It meant that we got all the shots we had planned done in good time and in a logical order for minimal changing of location and set-up. 

R + P Post 29: Rehearsals

We have one week allocated to rehearsing and testing our studio shots. We created a timetable dividing up the available studio time between the three media groups:

R + P Post 28: My kit list

For both the location shoots and the studio shoots we will need a lot of kit, we have created two kit lists:

Location Shoot Kit List:

R + P Post 27: Casting

When casting the actors in our music video the main thing we were looking for were people who would be reliable and wouldn't let our project down by being late or not turning up to shoots. We therefore wanted to utilise members of the group as much as possible and so the two female roles will be played by Ella and Eleanor, the other two members of my group. For the male role in our music video we selected from our group of close friends as we knew they would be reliable.

We made a casting list with reasons for our choices:

R + P Post 26: Set design, locations and props

Studio Shots
For our studio shots, which are all filmed in the Seward Studio at our school, we have planned five different set ups:

• pink themed
• blue themed
• white themed
• Mira tied up
• Mira as a princess

We planned out the props would need for each set up to match the colour scheme. We decided to have something to decorate the floor of the studio with for each of the three colour set ups:

Blue Petals for the blue set up

Pink Lollipops for the pink set up

 We chose blue petals as flower petals signify beauty and are pretty and we want the fact that Mira is walking over the petals to signify her breaking free from ideal expectations and the expectation for her to be beautiful.

We chose Pink Lollipops for the Pink set up to be a visual representation of the lyrics 'You say I'm not sweet enough, but I still got sugar'. This reflects the fact that the singer does not care what others think and her own confidence to think she 'still got sugar'.

Silver balloons for the white set up

Balloons are normally associated with celebration and so we chose this to reflect the upbeat feel of the song and the fact that the artists are having fun. 

As well as these floor decorations for the coloured set-ups we will also light the studio with the correct coloured lights for each set up and use light-up boxes which the artists can use to sit on and move around in the shots:

Narrative Shots

We chose to film in London Locations; Finsbury Park and Alexandra Palace. We chose Finsbury Park as it is a busy urban area that gives across the London vibe with a lot of public transport, we chose Alexandra palace due to the famously picturesque views of London. 

Finsbury Park station

Alexandra Palace View

When we were deciding on locations for our narrative we were influenced by two videos in particular; Chase and Status- Blk&Blu and Mount Kimbe- Carbonated.

Views of Alexandra Palace in the Blk&Blu video.


   
The gritty London locations in this video inspired us to chose Finsbury Park

R+P Post 25: Costumes, props and make-up

Costumes, props and make-up play a huge role in a music video to connote the artists image and the genre of the music. They can also be used to appeal to the target audience of the music video and so it is important to make decisions with the TA in mind.

We first created a costume list which we broke down into different set-ups and for both members of the group:




















We decided to create three different set-ups in the studio based around three different colors; pink, blue and white. In these set-ups the costumes for both Mira and Jack and the makeup for Mira would be made of clothes and makeup entirely the color of the set-up. We got inspiration for this from the costumes in the Destiny's Child Say My Name video which also uses this idea:

Here are some examples of the outifts we planned:

Mira Blue Set-up Outfit:

Mira White Set-Up:

We researched a lot into different eye make-up looks as we knew we wanted the makeup Mira wears in the video to be extremely eye catching and bold. We were inspired a lot by 'sunset' eye makeup:

We spent a bit of time practicing recreating these looks and although they were not initially successful after more practice we will hopefully be able to recreate these looks for our shoot:

R+P Post 24: Planning my digipak panels

Before planning our digipak we were given a template to plan our digipak onto, with the correct measurements:

From our research into existing album covers we knew we wanted our album cover to feature a lot of bright colours to reflect our genre of music. We also knew we wanted to include extreme close ups of our artist on the front cover as it was their debut album it is essential to showcase the artist on the front cover. We first created a rough flat plan of our front and back cover:

Creating this flat plan was useful as it helped us to visualise our ideas. After creating the flat plan and showing it to our teachers we all agreed that the positioning of the two faces might look strange and we knew we would have to play around with this idea when it came to editing our digipak.

For out inside panels we knew we wanted to include neon lights and lots of colour. We went on a visit to the exhibition 'God's own Junkyard' in Walthamstow to see if we wanted to get the shots for our inside panels there.

After this visit we decided we would take shots of our artists here to use for our inside panels.

R+P Post 23: Planning my web pages

As a group, we had a good idea of what we wanted our website to look like based on the research we had done into existing websites.

For the main layout of our website we plan to have one long scroll page with a navigator at the bottom that you can use to easily access each page, which was inspired by the Rae Sremmurd's website. We sketched out a rough design of our website including all the pages we want to include:

Pages we plan to include:

• Landing page
• Videos
• Photos
• Tour
• Store
• News

For our landing page we plan to have a slideshow of photos of our artist, this was inspired by the landing page of AlunaGeorge's website (seen below). We liked this idea as it immediately gives the user a sense of the artists style as soon as they enter the site, and is interactive as they can scroll through the slides.

We plan to include interactive content on our website to engage the user such as the opportunity to win tickets to our artist concert and to sign up to the artists news letter.

R+P Post 22: Planning my promo shots

Promo shots are extremely important elements on both the album cover and the website, they portray the artists style to the audience and they entertain them, convincing them to buy the artists music. It is important to have a variety of shots, especially on the website to keep it exciting, and so we planned lots of different outfits and set ups to use for our shots.

These are some promo shots that inspired us.

It is important to have a clear style through our shots while still having some variety. To make sure we have synergy between our album cover and website we will have a consistent colour scheme through our promo shots.  

R + P Post 21: My key shots storyboard

The next stage in the planning process was to create a key shots storyboard showing a visual representation of the main shots we planned to include in our video. This was made easier by the timeline we created earlier as we already had a clear structure for our video planned out already. We created it using post-it-notes as these are easy to move around. We also used different colored post-it-colored notes for different shot types; yellow (long shot), green (mid shot), orange (close-up).

The storyboard includes a shot from each of the different set-ups we have planned in the studio. For example this shot of the set-up where the female singer is tied up in the studio.

The storyboard process will be extremely useful for when we move on to make our shoot board for the shoot days. 

R + P Post 20: My Music Video Timeline

We created a timeline in our group meetings to help plan out the structure of our video:

We broke the song up into 9 sections, verses, pre-choruses and choruses and wrote what we wanted to happen in each of these sections. This process was helpful when moving on to making a key shots storyboard as we had a clear structure and a list of everything we wanted to include. 

R + P Post 19: My influences and vision for the project

We created a steal-o-matic in our group to visually represent our ideas and our key influences:

Creating this video was very useful as it helped us see if our ideas came across how we had planned them. It helped us to figure out a basic structure for our video and how much of the video we wanted to be narrative based and how much we wanted to be studio based. It also gives us an idea of whether our genre and image comes across well enough through our ideas.

The main ideas our steal-o-matic 

• Our idea for our narrative which follows a boy and girl having an argument as the boy is trying to stop the girl going out. She then leaves the house and he follows her and tries to find her. They eventually make up by the end of the video.
• Our ideas for the studio shots of our boy and girl artist performing the song together- the girl lip syncing and the boy dj-ing.
• Our ideas for costume and makeup using extremely bright and shocking colours creating an overall vibrant and out-there look.
• The location for our narrative- London

Some specific shots we included in our steal-o-matic that we plan to include in our video:

This is a shot from the music video for 'Habits' by Tove Love. We liked how they kept the same framing around the character but the background changes. We want to use this idea in our video.

After creating our steal-o-matic we showed in to our teacher and received some feedback before we proceeded with the planning process:

• need to cut to the music much more
• be clearer that the start of your music video (the argument) will be without music
• use the opening lyrics ("na na na na na") to create a fast-paced montage sequence to open the music video
• we need to go back and analyse the percentage of time we want to be taken up by narrative and by performance-reccomended that we don't go narrative-heavy
• think about WHERE the cuts can be made-away from performance/into performance
• use beauty shots for the opening "na na na na" sequence
• don't under-estimate the use of big close-ups; vital for a  music video
• main performer (girl) could gradually throw away physical items which are restricting her to symbolise the things in life that hold her back
• make strong connections with the performer and actor-use of make-up?

R+P Post 18: Analysis of my track's lyrics and instrumentation

As a group we felt it was a good idea to analyse our tracks lyrics in order to understand the meaning behind the song. This would help us come up with ideas for our video that link to the music and connote the lyrics making the music video more enjoyable to watch. Below is an analysis of our tracks lyrics and how they influenced our ideas:

R + P Post 17: My chosen track

Our chosen track is:
AlunaGeorge- Best Be Believing 

Released: 2013

Album: Body Music

Label: Island Records

There are many positives about the track that lead us to chose it as our track:

• It is upbeat and catchy and memorable for the target audience
• There is a clear message behind the lyrics about breaking rules and not sticking to boundaries
• Fits with the synth-pop genre with a female singer and male producer

However there are also some negative aspects to the song:

• The song is longer than three minutes which means we will have to cut some of the song from our video

So as not to break any copyright laws, we emailed then record label, Island Records, to ask permission to use the song in our music video:

R + P Post 16: My band or artist

Our artist is a boy and girl duo made up of Mira (female 21) and Jack (male 23). Together the artist's name is MiraJax. We took inspiration from the artist name AlunaGeorge and how they combined a boys and girls first name to create the group name.

Mira
We took inspiration from Rihanna when coming up with the idea for our female artist. We want her to have Rihanna's care-free attitude and individual style.
Below is a collage to represent the style and image we had in mind for the female half of our duo:

Jack
We took inspiration from the artist ASAP Rocky when coming up with our male artist. We want our artist to have his laid-back attitude and trendy style. Below is a collage to represent the style and image of the male half of our duo:

Richard Dyer's Star Theory suggests that stars are constructed artificial images that represent cultural values and attitudes that audiences are interested in. This helped us when deciding on our artist's persona and background. We decided our artists had been brought up in North London and had both led hard lives which shapes how they are today and what their music is about. This makes them good role models for their target audience.

R + P Post 15: My record label

We decided as a group to use an existing record label to produce our artist's debut album. We researched into record labels for similar artists such as AlunaGeorge and Disclosure and quickly came to a decision of which record label most suits our artist:

Island Records

Island Records is a record label and is a division of the Universal Music Group. It was found in Jamaica and has been based in the UK since 1962. The label focuses on the progressive UK music scene. Island also have branches in the US and Australia.

Here are some of the artists that are currently signed to Island records. Disclosure are a British Electronic music duo with a similar genre and target audience to our artist. The fact that they are signed to Island Records encouraged us to chose this record label as it shows they have experience and knowledge in how to promote our genre.

R+P Post 14: My target audience

It was important for us to have a clear idea of who our target audience for this project is from the beginning, as every decision we make has to link back and appeal to our chose audience. We discussed as a group the target audience that we feel we can reach and appeal to most successfully and will like our artist and genre the most, and we came up with:

Primary Audience: 16-25 Year old, British, skewed towards females.

We chose this audience as our primary audience as our artists are aged 21 and 23 and so they will be relatable for the higher end of this age group and aspirational for the younger end of the target audience.

This audience group will also be quite cool and trendy and up-to-date with the current trends in both fashion and music. This is reflected in our artist who is also current and trendy.

To the left is Emily an example of a member of our target audience. She is 17 years old, British and keeps up with current trends in music and fashion. When we told her our chosen track and idea for our music video she liked both.















Secondary Audience- Fans of the Synth Pop genre

Our secondary audience will be fans of the Synth Pop genre as our track and our artists debut album are from the Synth Pop genre and so will automatically appeal to this audience group.