Friday 21 November 2014

Finished Brief

This is the new updated brief for the narrative part of our music video:

We want it to make it over the top to match with the comical theme. The story will consist of two main characters, one will be a stereotypical 'nerd' and the other will be a bully. We will show clips of the conflict between both characters, some parts may be humorous. The 'nerd' is a huge fan of comics and takes inspiration from them, we are shown this by clips of him reading comics and having comic posters in his locker, etc. After getting more inspiration from his comics, he starts thinking of what it would be like if he was a superhero.

We are shown clips of him designing his superhero persona and designing the bully as a villain. The drawings he created will take up the frame and change from a  drawing to real life film- showing his imagination in action. We will switch between reality and his imagination (what we see in the drawings- the hero defeating the villain). We will use some sort of filter so you can tell that the imagination parts aren't actually happening and can tell the difference between them both.

Eventually the 'nerd' really likes the idea of being a superhero and standing up for himself so he tries dressing up and making his imagination a reality. However, (we will make sure he dresses deliberately bad/ridiculous)  it does not compare to his fantasy and the reality of it, he looks very strange. For comical purposes, we will have many clips of him looking stupid, (for example, having his cape blowing in the wind- its getting blown by a visible fan and the cape blows over his face)
Others around him keep giving him confused expressions and laughing at him but he ignores it.
Eventually he goes over and stands up to the bully but the bully eventually walks away because of how stupid the whole situation is, making the 'nerd' think its a victory and he has stood up for himself.

Throughout this, there will also be clips of the performance part of the music video with the singer singing parts of the song, which is a common element in music videos. He will not be part of the storyline, he will be filmed in a separate location.


Afterwards we will create a storyboard to show all of this narrative in more detail.

Casting

Another difficult part of the planning is finding people to actually play the roles. We've asked quite a few people already and still no positive response. We are going to properly write up our brief soon so that we can actually see how many people we will need and the exact roles of them as we have an overall idea but we want it to be as accurate as possible. Apart from the actual narrative characters, we'll need a male singer for the singing parts, we are going to ask a few people that do performance/music in school to see if anyone would be interested. Over the weekend, we have a huge list of people to ask if they'll be in our video, we'll give them a description of our music video to see if they are interested. We want to start filming straight away after the weekend so hopefully this goes well. Once we find people we will take pictures of them and put them in a post alongside a description of the role they'll be playing in the video. We may also need pictures of them for our ancillary task later on where we will be making a digipak and a  music video/cd poster.

Thursday 20 November 2014

Chosen Song!

Eventually we found a song we could use, we feel like creating the music video will be much easier now as we can get extra ideas from the song and can actually feel motivated to start filming.
We could've started filming without the song but it would've been rather tough because we wouldn't know whether we would be changing parts of the storyline to fit the chosen song or not. We will be changing a few minor things just to keep it to the comical aspect and to fit this song better, I will talk about the changes in a separate post.
I like the lyrics of this song as although they don't exactly fit, if you look at them differently, most of the lines could fit as its about changing someone. The song is very catchy and I can imagine lots of fun shots from it.


Costume

Whether we change the storyline or not, we will be keeping the superhero aspect of it at least. We have ordered capes and masks etc. and since it's going to be comical we're not sure if the rest of the superhero outfit will be deliberately bad/funny or not. I will draw an overall comic styled costume design later, as its what the character in the video will be drawing when he/she's imagining themselves as a superhero.

Possible location shots









Wednesday 19 November 2014

Choosing a song

We have been trying to find a new song as quick as we can and although it seems like such an easy task, it's actually really hard to find a song to fit an already created storyline. It would've been easier to choose a song first and then create a storyline from it but we like the general idea of our storyline so are going to try and find a catchy upbeat song that can match it.
A few we have been looking at are:


We like them because they are catchy and fit the atmosphere but we don't think they are completely right so we have to keep looking.

Friday 7 November 2014

First Brief

Me and Emily have come up with brief idea for the narrative part of our music video:

We wanted an interesting story line to the video so that it'll be fun to film so we came up with 'Superheroes and Villains'.

It will feature 4 different people, 3 that are dressed up as superheroes and 1 as a villain. We will show scenes of them not dressed up, doing ordinary things but then they will pick up their superhero attire to show that they have another identity. It will switch between their two different identities to show the difference in them both. The 3 superheroes will go against the villain in various fast paced clips. Also, there will be extreme close up clips of the singers mouth but the rest of her face will be kept a secret till the end where the shot turns into a regular close up showing the whole face, revealing that the singer is the villain.

Although we do not have a complete specific idea about scenes and editing yet, we think that adding some slow motion and black and white parts to the parts we film,specifically the fight, will make it look more dramatic which is what we want it to look. That kind of editing fits with the song too as the song we want to use sounds very slow and dramatic.

Thursday 6 November 2014

Digipak analysis















The front cover shows 2 models covered in blood with a dark background. The album name is called 'Life on the murder scene' so the album matches the name. The band name is huge on the top so people know who the artist is. This is a special edition cd so a box is included on the front showing all the extra tracks and footage that are included on the discs.
A DVD logo has been added at the bottom left to show it also plays videos, not just soundtracks.
A parental advisory logo has also been added.

It opens up twice to show two discs, the models are covered in blood again to the keep to the theme of the album.

The back of the cd case shows all of the soundtracks and footage that are on the discs so people can figure out what song is on at what time.
Barcode at the bottom left.
There is text at the bottom showing all the production names and such.

Instead of a dark background for the inside parts, a white background has been used to contrast well with the red blood.








From Yesterday- 30stm




A video like this has a very strong narrative that even goes on without the song playing to show a specific story. These are usually very expensive videos to make that  are made for featured/popular soundtracks.

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Song Lyrics

"I'd Love To Change The World"

Everywhere is freaks and hairies 
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor 
'Til there are no rich no more 

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money, No none for me

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

Oh yeah!

World pollution, there's no solution
Institution, electrocution
Just black and white, rich or poor
Senators stop the war

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

Chosen song



We decided that we like this song the best especially because of the part at 1:59 as it gives us lots of ideas on the types of shots we could have. We have came up with a brief storyline for the video which I will post later.
This song makes me think that the narrative would be very dramatic.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

Possible song choices

I have found these two songs that I quite like the sound of. They both sound similar with both the actual music and the lyrics and both give me ideas and inspiration for what to put in a music video for them.
Me and Emily have decided we definitely want a music video with a narrative to it, but we are not sure what yet.




Questionnaire Results



I'm going to take these results into consideration when filming the music video as I want the target audience to be pleased with it.

Questionnaire


We decided to create questionnaires so that we could get a general idea on peoples preferences. I gave mine out to 16 people.


Music Video Questionnaire


 
What is your gender?

Male (_)
Female (_)
Other (_)
What is your age?

Under 16 (_)
17 – 21 (_)
22- 30 (_)
30+ (_)

Do you enjoy watching music videos?

Yes (_)
No (_)
Where do you view these music videos?
Tv (_)
Internet (_)
Other (please state) __________________      
I do not watch music videos (_)
If a music video has a story to it do you find it more interesting to watch?

Yes (_)
No (_)
Not sure (_)
Do you prefer it when the artist features in the video?
Yes (_)
No (_)
Not sure (_)
Do you prefer music videos that include special effects/animations etc?

Yes (_)
No (_)
depends on the song/video (_)
 




   

Katy Perry- Thinking Of You -music video analysis.


Thinking of You - Katy Perry




Lana Del Rey- Young and Beautiful- music video analysis


Young and Beautiful- Lana Del Rey



Preliminary Chase Sequence



A group of us decided to film a comical chase sequence, we each took turns doing different things so that we could get practice with each role. However, after editing we found some minor mistakes such as a smudge on the lens and the reflection of us through the glass of the door. We will avoid repeating these mistakes when we start to do our  own real filming.

Since there wasn't an actual storyline to this, we decided to add a song and add tiny extra clips to make it a bit comical to watch.

Andrew Goodwin- Music Video Theory