Cast List and Rehearsal

We conducted a rehearsal with our band a day before the shoot day. It went very well, our cast members were very easy to work with and contributed new ideas, which was very helpful of them. The rehearsal helped us to identify some problems, which we could fix immediately. Overall, I think we are prepared for the shoot and ready to go.

Here is our cast list:

Harry Lawtey - Front man

Tom Saville - Drummer

Dimitry Lesnevskiy - Guitar Player

Gabriel Lindsay - Bass Player

New Costume List

Costume List

BAND:

• Black jeans x4
   
• Dark blue shirt
   
• Light blue shirt
   
• Grey t-shirt
   
• White t-shirt
   
• Denim jacket
   
• Trainers x4

ACTORS:

- Have two of each, in case they get muddy

BOY:

• Grey jeans

• White t-shirt

• Grey jumper

• Trainers

GIRL:

• Black bodycon dress
   
• Tights
   
• Red jumper

• Converses  

New Prop List: Location

Prop List: Location

• X2 pistols

• X2 machine guns

• shot gun

• smoke grenades - white

New Prop List: for the Studio

Prop List: The Studio

• Slashed mattress

• Broken picture frames – pictures of the couple

• Bed frame on its side/ broken

• Duvet and pillows on the floor/slashed – feathers spilling out

• Broken lamp

• Single lamp bulb hanging from ceiling

• Fairy lights

• Bullet holes in the wall

• Clothes spilling out of a chest of drawers

• Wall paper ripped

• Light bulb from ceiling

Website and Artwork Inspiration

Website and Artwork Inspirations:

In order to begin planning our album artwork and website for our artist, we looked into the work of similar artists to get some inspiration for our own. We looked mainly at prominent female artists today, who have a similar star image to our artist; Leah. In our album artwork, we want to create an intrigue for or artist by having a vibrant and enticing image of her as the main feature. We also want to have her name in a clear font, that allows the audience to recognize the artist whilst also engaging potential consumers.  For our website, we wanted it to represent and reflect her girlishness as well as the 60s theme were are incorporating. However, we want it to have a current edge, thus to have various pictures of her that show she documents every moment of her life. This will create an intimate link between her and her fans, thus coincide with Dyers paradox of being simultaneously present and absent. 

Our main influence was Ariana Grande, whose image strongly reflects her girlishness but that through her fashion choices, portrays her to be slightly edgy as well. Moreover, her outfits often have a 60s twist that coincide with her  'naughty cute girl' star image. This is reflected in her website and artwork. 

Both images used convey her star image, and the use of black and white adds an old fashioned twist to the images. The album artwork focuses entirely on her, and this is what we want to reflect in our artist as it immediately captures the consumers attention. Moreover, the use of album artwork as the opening image of the website is a useful marketing tool, as it promotes her music as well as her star image. The combination of black, white, pink, and purple is interesting as it depicts a soft tone that is not always reflected in her music. Therefore, we want to use more vibrant colours in our website and artwork as it reflects are artist more. 

Another inspiration for us, is Ellie Goulding, who also has a girlishness about her that is combined with a more rocky side. However, Ellie uses more energetic colours that entice the audience as they are more exciting. 

 

The exotic colours on the album artwork immediately attract the consumer, and as we are focusing on colour in our video this is something we want to portray in our artwork. Additionally, the use of photos from different moments of her day to day life is something we want to incorporate, as it creates that necessary link between artist and fan. This is combined with promotional images thus is marketing her as an artist as well as adding another dimension to the website. This is something we want to use in our website as we do not just want to focus on her music, but her entire life. 

Additionally, we looked at Taylor Swift, because although she focuses on her country style, the girlishness she depicts through album artwork and on her website, is something we would like to create. 

The album artwork and website seem to contrast here, and this is because Speak Now was a far earlier album than the 1989. The pure outburst of colour on the album cover is something we would like to achieve, but instead to focus more on her face. Also, we want to use more block lettering that is shown on the website, as it seems more edgy and accessible to the consumer. The website has a completely different tone to the artwork, as it uses softer colours and focuses entirely on the face. However, again the idea of promoting the latest album and what she has been doing is something we want to re-create as it establishes an intrigue for the consumer. 

Another artist we looked at was Selena Gomez, as her album artwork is similar to Ariana Grande's, thus uses the mixture of black and white and pink to combine girlishness with edginess. 

The focus on her face is something we want to re-create as the idea of having her looking direct at the camera is striking. Moreover, the balance between the image and the text is something we want to use as it promotes both star image and the music. The use of interesting features on her face is also intriguing as it creates another dimension that adds to the star image.

Furthermore, we took inspiration from Demi Lovato as she has altered her extremely girly image into an edgier more mature image. We want to convey both sides in our artist, therefore we want to find a middle ground between it.

The album artwork here is something we want to create, as the contrast between skin and colour is extremely poignant. We want to use more primary colours, but the idea of it coating it on her skin is similar. As well as this, the idea of having smaller print compared to the image is something that influenced us. We liked the idea of having a clean white background for our website, but we want the font to be in brighter colours and there to be more images. Overall, we want the image on the artwork to be striking, and convey an explosion of colour. 

Change of the Idea

Unfortunately, we did another smoke test but with a few smoke bombs at the same time, and the result was that our school kitchen was filled with smoke. As a result, we will not be able to use the smoke bombs as it would be a hazard to us and those around us. Having discussed our options as a group, we have decided to start afresh, and pick a whole new song and idea.

We firstly began by narrowing the genre of music down. We decided to have a ‘rock type band’, as if the worst comes to the worst we can always rely on having a good performance element for our video. Having contemplated numerous songs, we finally decided on Elbow’s song, ‘Grounds for Divorce’. The song has a good solid beat, and numerous instrumental interludes which will enable us to have a good performance element and a narrative element.

As we did not have a lot of time to come up with an idea, we immediately fixated upon the idea of ‘divorce’, and heightening it into something dramatic and visually exciting. Therefore, we decided to use a couple in our narrative section who are having a gunfight. By having the couple running through a woods, we will be able to use a variety of shots, especially fast paced hand-held ones, thus will add an edgier side to the video. We do not want the video to be realistic, but instead we want it to be an exaggerated form of a love fight, so that it portrays the link between passion and violence. In keeping with this idea, we decided to place the band in a torn apart bedroom, in order to convey to the impression that the couple had just had a fight in the bedroom and then had taken it outside. We decided that the lead singer of the band should also play the boy’s part in the narrative, as it will create an intimate link between the actors and the song.

We are focusing on the stereotypical image of a rock band, but using inspirations from bands like Kodaline and The 1975 to make the band more current and ‘indie’. Therefore, our star image is one that is slightly absent from audiences, but provides a cool edgy look that many of the audience members will aspire to. We want the band to infer a ‘bad-boy’ type look, thus we picked the members of the band who had a different style and look but were also attractive.

Here are some images that can give a hint on what kind of image we are pursuing.

Animatic Evaluation

This is our animatic, which we are going to base our music video on.

 Animatic is one of the crucial parts of music video preproduction process. It finalizes the sequence we are going to put the images in. We also get an idea of the pace of editing, what we are going to cut to etc. So it gives a pretty good overall idea of what the music video will be. This is one of the final stages of planning, and from now on what we have to do is to find props, costumes, locations. But all of these will be based on the storyboard and animatic that we have created. So the most creative stage in planning is done (not saying that choosing props and locations is not creative, it's just more technical).

Our concept is going from black and white world to the world of colour. Colour will be represented through the coloured smoke and powder. So we try to follow this "narrative" as video progresses gradually introducing more and more colour. There are some key shots that reflect our concept.

We also want to gradually increase the amount of colourful smoke and stress that it has influence on everything around.
That's why looking back, it seems pretty obvious that we should have drawn our storyboard using various colours so that it looked more eloquent. Also the editing of the animatic itself wasn't really good since many cuts were not to the bit, and that's why they seemed random. We didn't have too many images drawn to work with, that's why it looked repetitive. Some of the images weren't particularly great, and so we cannot understand what we mean by this shot.
However, during the lesson we didn't really talk a lot about animatic itself. Our focus was on which parts we want to cut out and which parts are going to be included in the final version. To be fair, we decided to cut about half of the shots we had in the animatic and substitute by the better ones. For example, we want to put this swirly black and white bit in the beginning of the video.

We also want to add completely new set up, which will include exploding balloons with powder inside. There is also a new ending, hopefully, more interesting and, in case we pull it off properly, much more beautiful. It will be based on Harrods advert.

The reason why we cut so much is that we were not sure if it was going to look good or if we are able to simply shoot it, meaning if we have enough resources.
However, I think we were pretty successful in constructing the star image. We reflect the theme with colour, music and 60s style pretty effectively. Our target audience is quite young and I'm explosions and colour will appeal to them. Moreover, our image will never stay the same, the set up will be constantly changing, which may also appeal to young people.

Overall, making this animatic was very useful step in planning our final product since it outlined what we clearly need to work on. I've learnt that music video requires to think meticulously through every single even extremely small detail, otherwise, mistakes will be very obvious. And we definately need to do a lot more preparation for our music video. But it's slowly coming...

Costumes List

• White Knee High Boots

http://www.amazon.co.uk/BOLAND-BV-46213--/dp/B00BKXIABC/ref=sr_1_13?s=kids&ie=UTF8&qid=1412676318&sr=1-13&keywords=knee+high+white+boots

• Black and White print dress

 






















http://www.motelrocks.com/products/Motel-Sarah-Bodycon-Dress-in-Black-and-White-Huge-Check.html

• Silver Skirt and Top (co-ord)

 

http://www.motelrocks.com/products/Motel-Cetus-Bodycon-Mini-Skirt-in-Silver-Foil.html

http://www.motelrocks.com/products/Motel-Ursa-Turtle-Neck-Crop-Top-in-Silver-Foil.html

• White t shirt x3

• Black jeans 

• Leather Jacket/ Sports Jacket 
  
  



Props List

We have several principle items on our list:
1. Paint powder - various colors 
2. Smoke bombs - various colours
3. Transparent tubes
4. Organ
5. Cigarettes - tobacco/rizzlers/filters
6. 60s styled microphone, however, we want it to hang from the ceiling