Deciding costume

We had many options for costume which meant it took us longer to decide who was wearing what.

Casey: Option 1



Option 2



Decided on:


+


Robin: Option 1



Decided on:



Dean: Option 1



Decided on:



Overall I think we chose the best costume to fit with the theme of our quirky style video.

Prop List

We made sure we included the following props in our video as there were key items to indicate the theme of our video.

Pocket watch:


Candle holder + Ballons:


Jug + cups


Picture frame

Plan for the weekend

Saturday:

Location: Garages

12:00-1:30pm: Set up props, equipment, make-up, costumes and setting.

1:30-2:00pm: Practice run of the shots we want, and practice the song.

2:00-3:00pm: Film boy scene with casey and 'other girl'

3:00-3:30: Change location to shed

3:30-4:00: Set up props, equipment, make-up, costumes and setting

4:00-5:30: Begin filming the shot of Casey in the shed

5:30-6:00: Pack up

We realise things will not go to plan but we wanted to have a rough idea of what we must achieve in the day.

Weather Forecast

Before we start filming we must check the weather forecast as we will be outside. As we are coming up to winter, it is harder to find days that will not be raining. I looked on BBC weather website and checked the forecast for this weekend:



Luckily the weather is 'Sunny' on saturday but we realise it is not 100% accurate. The weather for sunday is 'Light Rain' so we will work hard to finish any outside scenes on saturday.

Just to clear up

We discovered that making a video is very hard. It took us many goes at trying to make the story board as we wanted it to include ideas that we both feel will work.

While trying to document these ideas on our blog it has made the overall blog look unclear as to what the video will show.

We began with a "vintage" style video but thought this was not enough to achieve an interesting music video so we decided to embed the vintage style and turn it into a quirky style with a hint of the "Cinderella" story. This allows us to have a main focus which we can concentrate on showing the audience.

Animatic

We made this animatic to show our storyboard in an interesting way. This animatic shows a simple version of what we hope our video will look like. Some of the shots last a long time, within these long shots we will show other interesting shots but we just wanted to highlight the locations and a rough idea of our video.

Our storyboard has taken the concept of "Cinderella" but with a twist. The changing of the shoes at the start of the video hints at the idea of Cinderella's "glass slipper" which is an important part of the story. The video will then go on to show the pocket watch which is at 12 o’clock, this turns everything dreadful for Casey as her hair and makeup begin to get ruined. Instead of the happy ending in Cinderella we have chosen to take a more sinister ending by having Casey watch her "ex-boyfriend" walk away and move on with his new girlfriend. She sadly turns off the light of the lamp which ends the video.

I am aware that our finished video will not look exactly like this as we might change ideas when we are shooting due to not being able to reach the shot we hoped, or we both decide that some parts of the video simply did not work. Hopefully things will go our way and we produce something similar to our original plan.

Florence + The Machine - Cosmic Love

We were inspired by this video of "cosmic love" and we liked the idea of being surrouded in lights, we will think about using this idea in our video.

Inspiration

We researched more photos that fit in with our concept and style. We found these photos from a friend on Facebook who was doing an art project. She kindly let us use her photos to show different location shots we was thinking to use, also to stimulate more ideas.

We used this photo as we wanted to create a similar flash back shot of Casey remembering "the good times" with her "ex-boyfriend".

We liked the location of this shot and we want to use it in our video as it will create an interesting shot.

In the same armchair we will have the "ex-boyfriend" and his new girlfriend to highlight he has moved on.

We used this photo as we would like to find a similar location.

Health and Safety Risk Assessment

1) No filming in inappropriate locations.
2) Check safety of locations e.g. roads.
3) Minimise risk of theft of equipment
4) When filming on location ensure teacher or responsible adult know where you are and have telephone number and when you will return.
5) Check all equipment is working before your leave.
6) Ensure you have permission for filming if necessary.
7) Always film with at least one other person.
8) Ensure you have the permission of those you are filming.

Fairytale- Cinderella

We researched some editorial Cinderella themed photographs so we had an idea of how we can interpret our vintage concept to a Cinderella themed video storyline.
This is what we found:

Research: Nina l'Elixir Advertising

We came across this advert about the new Nina Ricci perfume. I thought this was a great video as it shows a fairytale theme that we would like to include in our video. The costume is very princess like but with a modern twist, also the scene in the wood and the mirrors add to the fantasy fairytale like theme. We hope to embed this idea for our music video.
The advert is below:

Wordle 2- Lyrics

We put in the lyrics of 'Come on over' in Wordle and this is what it created:

Wordle

I created this illustration using www.wordle.net which includes the most popular words from my blog.

GHD TV ad- CINDERELLA

We came across this TV advert for GHD straightener that really takes on the Cinderella story with a twist of vintage style. This inspired us to apply this similar concept to our video. This allows us to have a strong base which we can then build on as we create our story board.

More ideas

-For our locations, we have thought about old london streets which give a sense of old culture.



-We also thought about Casey being on a swing and holding the camera to give a point of view shot. She will show the sky and once she has brought the lens back down it will be a different location.

-Also we want to get a shot of a mirror getting smashed and merge this shot with another shot of Casey's leg stepping out to indicate her breaking free.



-Once we played around with the editing software we came across a split screen effect. We wanted to show Casey and "The Boyfriend" in different locations but as they reach their hands out it will look like they are touching.

Analysis

While researching, I came across this video made by other media students last year. I enjoyed this video and thought it was one to learn from. Overall I liked the 'old movie' effect it had throughout; also I enjoyed how the quick snapshots were used to show a continued action, "pulling up of tights". The transitions are very interesting and we cannot wait to get to the editing process to create some of our own interesting effects.

Q3-50 MUSIC VIDEO 2009 from SATMEDIA on Vimeo.

Replied

Below is the email of Maxine's reply, although she did not answer our question she still seemed eager to see our finished video and liked the ideas we have come up with so far. We thanked her again for letting us use her song and are sure we will have a great result.

My Montage

This is a montage I created to display all of our ideas we have come up with so far.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Emailing

During planning for our storyboard we had a problem in trying to find a main concept for our video. We then decided to email Maxine to see if she had any ideas she would like to imput, by having the artists own ideas it would help us for inspiration. Here is the email below:

Experimenting 2

This is another shot we tried, this consisted of Megan walking really slowly and me and Casey walking in normal time. When it came to editing we sped up the footage so it looked like Megan is walking in normal time and me and Casey are walking super fast. This is an interesting shot that could imply that Megan's world is moving very fast around her. We achieved this effect by pressing "cmd and J" on the mac computers and changing the speed level to 300. One mistake that we made when editing was; we did not remove the sound so the sound does not fit with the video.

Experimenting

We wanted to try out some of our ideas so when it came to doing it for our music video, we knew how it would look on camera. We chose to shoot the extreme close up of Casey’s eyelid with the title of the song written on with liquid eyeliner.

This is me filming the shot of Casey's eye blinking in normal time:



Once we had uploaded this footage on the Mac computers, we wanted to experiment and make an interesting shot. We chose to make the eye blink in slow motion in order to let the audience read what is written on her eye and also to make it look more interesting. We achieved a slow motion effect by pressing "cmd and J".

We then decided to add a black and white effect on the video. As we are still learning how to use Final cut express, we searched how to do this effect on Google. This lead us onto the following website; 'http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/video/articles/2961.aspx' which gave us a step-by-step description that helped us create this effect:


Below is our finished shot:

Research into similar artists

Once we did research on Maxine we thought about artists in the industry that are similar to her. We came up with Norah Jones, her songs are very slow placed much like Maxine's 'come on over' track. When looking at Norah we researched what she has in common with Maxine also what we can take from Norah's videos and style.

Norah Jones- Don't Know Why


The video has been stripped away from any dramatic graphics and locations; it is simply Norah singing to the camera in a seaside location. We then see her playing the piano, this is similar to Maxine as she is also playing an instrument. In our video we will have simple settings and Casey playing the guitar while singing to the camera.

Target audience- more research

To help establish who the target audience is and to focus some of our ideas, I played the music to a range of people in my class and my teachers and I asked them to write down who would like this type of music. Out of the 14 people I asked,

- 14 people said girls

- 13 said girls of any age

- 1 would say it would be more appropriate when your are having your first romance ages between 16-20

Doing this research has helped us to see what this age group would like to see in our video, so we have come up with some new ideas.

Research: Channel 4- The 100 Greatest Music Videos

I did some research into music videos to see what makes a successful video but also learn from their accomplishment. I watched the Channel 4 show “100 Greatest Music Videos” which gave a countdown of the best music videos of our time.

No. 96- So Solid Crew “21 seconds”

This song allows the band member “21 seconds” to perform their rap. Each member raps about their escapism. They tell their story about their life and how they got there in different ways. This group were seen as a danger to the public for the wild and without concern actions.



No. 90- The Pet Shop Boys “Go west”

This song was released in 1993 and was a huge success; the song highlights the “camp” nature and shows the audience that times are changing. It was seen as “commercial art” and a way of glorifying a search for freedom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNFwQmZvnuw

No. 88- Elton John “I want love”

Elton john avoided starring in his own videos when possible; in this video he has hired Robert Downy Junior. During this time RDJ was in rehab for drug addiction and was taken out to shoot this video. Although we cannot afford to hire artists for our music video it shows that the artist does not have to star in their own video. Elton has recently used artists like Justin Timberlake and Scarlet Johansson in his videos.



No. 76- Godley and Crème “Cry”

This video includes faces of ordinary people mining to the song. They use a great fade effect to change the face of the person singing. This allowed them to even create faces as the fade effect would slowly change which lead them to having half of the pervious person singing combined with the next person singing.

Basic Ideas

Target Audience
Teenage Girls- They can relate to Maxine's song lyrics

We are currently working on our storyboard, in the mean time these are some of the ideas we would like to include in our music video as we feel they will be interesting to watch.

Outline ideas:
-During the introduction of the song, we will show Casey walking and after every step, her shoes will change.

-Once the words of the song begin, Casey will be leaning on wall, while singing and playing the guitar.

-Ripped up pictures will fall in slow motion while Casey is looking up at the camera.

-We took inspiration from the eye makeup photo in our collage photo, we would like to use this but write 'come on over' on Casey’s eyelid.


-We were inspired by her original style and want to give the whole video a vintage style so vintage clothing and items are needed.

-Spelling words out with objects, we took this idea from Bruno Mar's video "Just the way you are", he spells out words with tape from a casset.


-Casey will draw a line on the wall with chalk as she walks by. We are thinking to use a graphic match of the line she has draw and turn it into a telephone cord.

Maxine Vauzell

Initial Research:
To get familiar with our chosen song and artist we decided to find out some information about her. We discovered she is from Melbourne, Australia and sings in a band called ‘We are fans’. The style of music her band plays are blues, soul, and acoustic and her music is targeted to a teenage audience as they are more likely to relate to the lyrics.

Inspiration:
We found some of her MySpace pictures which we really liked and decided to use her style in our music videos. I developed this research by creating a collage of pictures which includes some of the ideas and costumes we would like to use: Here it is!

Target Audience

In order for our music video to be successful we must consider our target audience (teenagers) preferred genre of music. I showed my fellow friends a range of music videos and genres of music and asked them to fill out a questionnaire which I made on "surveymonkey.com" which included a tick-box survey of music genres. I gathered their answers and saw which style of music was most popular. The most popular category was "soul/acoustic". As I new what my target audience preferred I made sure I found a "soul/acoustic" style song on "unsigned.com".

A2 Media Studies

Name of track: Come on Over

Artis(s): Maxine Vauzelle

Name(s) of student(s) in group:
Rosela Doda
Casey Barnard

Critical analysis of our video

Mistakes:
We chose to only use a medium shot in our preliminary as we wanted to concentrate on the lip syncing. We realise how having one frame shot throughout the video is tedious and boring so this has taught us to include exciting shots in our music video to keep the audience wanting to watch more.

Another mistake we had was halfway though our video we did not have enough footage to use so we resulted in using a black screen to fix the problem. We learnt that for every different location we used or for every different person singing we must get them to perform the entire song to make sure we have enough footage so we do not make the same mistake again!

Learning Process

From this task I have learnt many things such as Bluetooth: I now know how to transfer a file from my mobile to the computer (and vice versa). Also it has allowed me to use final cut express in depth and I now feel confident that when it comes to editing my music video, I can do so easily.

When beginning our preliminary task I was oblivious to the fact that the lip syncing would be so difficult. Both Casey and Megan learnt the song before filming, which made the video look better as they did not need the lyrics in there hands. We also had to time when to start the song, when I should begin recording and when Casey should start singing. We played the song out loud on our mobile, this made editing easier as we could match the song we imputted to the lyp syning we recorded.

Overall, I think our video has good lip syncing but I feel we can still improve in that area.

Preliminary Task- 'Sorry mate'

This was a quick task to help us practice for our main music video and to insure the lip syncing looks convincing.



Enjoy!

Using Bluetooth!

Once we had finished editing our footage, we needed to transfer the song from our mobile (blackberry) to the computer so we could input it in our video, we did this transaction using ‘Bluetooth'. Once both the computer and blackberry Bluetooth’s were on, the next step was to pair up the devices and begin to send over the song.



Below is Casey and myself using the Bluetooth system:

Final Cut Express

Our school was privileged enough to have the latest editing software- Final Cut express. This is more advanced than iMovie and includes more editing styles which is an advantage for us as we can do much more to our music videos. However, this also means we must learn how to use the new software very quickly, the preliminary task helped us familiarise ourselves with what the software has to offer and allowed us to try out different things that we could later on include in our videos.

Below is Casey and myself using the Final cut express software:

An Answer + Lyrics

Great news, we just received an answer from Maxine letting us know we have permission to use her song for our music video, also a copy of the lyrics and a link to download the song:

Our next step is to begin planning and creating a basic outline for our video!

Analysis- 'Baby' by Justin Bieber

Mise-en-scene

The video begins with 'Justin' in a leisure park to set the scene of the video. The mise-on-scene is used to relate to the target audience (10+). He is dressed casual to highlight a relaxed and social mood. The location is moved to a bowling alley and the young girl is introduced. She is carrying a bowling ball and her friends are either on their mobiles or talking to one another. Justin is then joined with his group of friends in the bowling alley, this automatically shows the typical relationship of the boy (Justin) interested in the girl which makes it relatable to teens.

Cinematography

The video starts by showing a medium shot of 'Justin', then the camera does a 360 degree track around him. We then see a medium shot of Justin as he begins to sing which indicates he is the lead singer. The video is made up of quick shots to show the different events that are occurring.

Background research

His name is known by everyone around the globe but 'Justin bieber' began by posting videos of himself singing on ‘Youtube’. He shone into stardom when ‘Usher’ saw these videos and realised the talent Justin had. From then Usher became his manager and Justin has become a huge success worldwide. He’s video ‘Baby’ has currently got 339,610,521 views on Youtube and still counting! His image and music appeals to teenage girls and is now known as a 'teen sensation'.

Finding our SONG

When searching for our song we used the site 'wwww.unsigned.com', Here we found a song both me and Casey liked: 'Come on over' by Maxine Vauzelle. Keeping in mind the Copyright laws, our next step was to ask for permission, we did this by sending her an email, which stated:

Hopefully we hear from her soon!

Copyright law

Due to copyright laws, when looking for our song, we must only use unsigned artists who have given us permission to use their song. Below is direct quotes from 'The UK Copyright Service, Fact Sheet P-07: Music Copyright"

"Using the work of others
If you use samples of music by other authors in your work, ensure that you get permission to use the work before you attempt to publish or sell your work. Similarly, if you use loops or samples available via sample collections etc. ensure that these are licensed as free to use, or obtain permission first.

Obtaining permission
If you need to get permission to use a piece of music, normally the best place to start is with the last know publisher for the work. They will certainly know how to get permission to use the work, (as they must have permission themselves), so they will certainly know who you would need to contact."

This is the site I used to get the information:
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/p07_music_copyright

Purpose and Success Criteria

What is the Purpose of a Music Promo Video?



The first music video to be viewed on MTV was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. This led other artists to produce music videos for many reasons:

•Advertisement
•Draws attention to the music/song
•Illustrates the song
•Appeals to a visual audience
•Expresses an individual’s emotions
•Tells a Story
•Markets and image
•Promotes the artist/single/album
•Persuades audience to buy the CD or download
•Raises the audience awareness or profile of the artist/group
•To make an artistic statement e.g. “Once in a lifetime” by Talking Heads
•Product Placement e.g. Christina Aguillera advertised her new perfume in her video “not myself tonight”

How might we Measure the Success Criteria of a Music Promo Video?



Most viewing of music videos now appears to be online (YouTube) than TV channels like MTV. A way we can measure the success of a music video is through award shows e.g. VMA- Music Video Awards. Other ways we can do this is through:

•Sales of the song- downloads/ CDs sold
•Charts
•Word of mouth
•Newspaper articles/ TV reports
•How many times shown on TV- music channels
•Amount of Publicity

Analysis- 'Once in a lifetime' by Talking Heads

"Once in a lifetime" by Talking heads was a successful video as it used sophisticated technology in its time (80s). It is seen as a "piece of art" and is displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The purpose of the video is supposed to be confusing, it baffles the audience which helped create a "buzz" around the video and gets people talking. The video became a huge success through word of mouth. David Byrne's performance in the video is very peculiar, the crazy dance moves are very different which help make the video extraordinary. The context is about being alienated by life, he is putting into question "is life just about money, cars and houses?". The mise-en-scene of the video is that he is dressed in a suit and bow tie, so when he begins his dance it is very unexpected and creates a contrast.

Analysis- 'Praise you' by Fatboy Slim

Praise you by Fat boy slim is a very well known video; there are no special effects, or fancy editing it is simply the dance group showing off their dance routine. The video begins with the words “Torrance community dance group presents Fatboy slim” to introduce the video to the target audience (teens).

It is unexpected and filming is all done on hand held cameras. Through word of mouth it became successful as people wanted to see the video that everyone was talking about. The video simply shows a dance piece performed at a cinema ticket office, but as this is video is so unique and creative it had a positive effect on the song as more people were talking about the inventive video.

Analysis- 'All Falls Down' by Kanye West ft. Syleena Johnson

This music video 'All Falls Down' by Kanye West ft. Syleena Johnson, is shot entirely in point of view. It consists of Kanye following his girlfriend through the airport, until they depart. The video has been shot entirely in point of view shot- through Kanye's eyes. During the song, we see his reflection in the mirror, this has been very cleverly shot as we see Kanye singing.

This makes the target audience (15+) involved and interested to watch on as we can relate to the events occurring. The lighting used is very natural, not to take away attention from the events happening. From this video I can take away the 'point of view' shot and hopefully use it in my own music video.

Here is the link to the video 'All Falls Down'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kyWDhB_QeI&ob=av2e

The Brief

Hi, My Name is Rosela Doda; I made this blog as a record of my A2 media coursework. The brief for this is to make a music video to last a maximum of five minutes. I am most looking forward to choosing the song and working out a rough idea of what our video will include (I have already begun this process). I think I will find the editing tricky because we must match the lip-synching to the words of the music. Also I must familiarise myself with the different editing program (Final Cut express) as this is what I'll be using to create my music video.