Monday 27 October 2014

Storyboard

This is our storyboard for the music video. We have only done a storyboard for the the narrative as it would be too hard to draw a storyboard for the performance side of the video because we ideally want many different shots to cut at the same rate as the song.
We decided to use a whiteboard as we could change things easily as we go along if needed. We did this because while we knew who we wanted in the scene we wanted to think about the different ways we could shoot them to give a subtext to the video. For example, perhaps we would want to focus on the costume of the husband and focus in on the ring box at the end. To help us with the filming we have also put the timings so we should be able to get it exact.
00.25-00.46
00.46-00.56

00.58-01.08
01.10-01.20


01.23-01.34
01.34-01.44

02.11-02.23

02.47-02.57

02.58-3.03










Thursday 23 October 2014

Locations

Whilst creating our treatment and storyboard we have been discussing our locations for the music video. We have two main locations: Dean's Diner (mostly performance) and Hannah's (our artist) kitchen (mostly narrative).

Our other locations include a fireworks display, autumn pathway with surrounding trees, train platform and a restaurant. (Photos to follow)

Camera Angles and Shots

I looked as Psycho's famous shower scene for the camera work as it is filmed in a very unique way.

This scene is filmed with one continuous shot, but to get the continuity perfect there is approximately 6 cameras used. As we will be having many different camera angles in such a short time it may be hard to get the continuity correct, we may need to use more than one camera to film the different angles of the music video.

After the superimpose form the plughole to the eye, we see the camera move in an unexpected way. As the camera tracks out we expect it to come upwards to the left side of the bathroom but it actually tracks out towards the door way and into the bedroom. We may use a technique like this when the man in a suit is in the shot, this will vary the number and type of shots we use in the music video. We took a test shot on our actor with the suit on to see how it looked and whether it will work.

Costume Idea


For our male character we will have him dressed in a suit for most of the video as he is a 'classy guy' who works so this would fit in well with the lyrics. This is our male actor dressed in an outfit similar to what we imagine to be in our music video.



The artist will be wearing a 50's inspired outfit for the performance, mostly set in the diner as this fits with the location and mis-en-scene, as well as the song as it has a 50's feel to it. This is an example of what we will dress the artist in.



For the narrative, the costume will be less dressy and more modern, but still with a slight 50's theme. 


Red was a popular colour wit 50's outfits so we will include things like a red tie and red bandanna, so the couple in the video are matching.

Friday 17 October 2014

Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass



I have decided to look at this video again purely for the camera shots.
There are lots of shots in this video, almost every second, This is very effective and typical of a pop video and we would like to also create this affect with our music video. There are also a lot of filler shots in the video, which are quick, short shots that add to the story. For example in this video you have Meghan sitting on the floor with a barbie doll, then returns to the performance and then quickly cuts back to this filler shot. It has a fairly comical feel to it which we would like to portray in our 'Dear Future Husband' video. Having filler shots is also a good idea to get a good range in. We're going to have a lot of scenes, so it is important for us to film a lot of extra footage to use as filler shots so we can get that fast cutting rate in time with the song.

We highlighted all the words we see her sing and it is quite a lot but it is the most important words that are trying to send out a message. We are going to try and get this same convention in our video, but not have as much lip syncing as our video will be mostly narrative. 
We also drew a line on the lyrics to represent a cut in the video. This was very hard as there was so many. However it made us realise how many different shots are in music videos, and the volume of shots we need in ours.

Wednesday 15 October 2014

1st Draft Treatment for 'Dear Future Husband' Music Video

All the narrative will be a dream or fantasy in the artists view.

Before the song starts (approx. 4 secs) we will have diegetic sound in the diner. The artist (main character) will put money into the jukebox and selecting a song to play, this will start in black and white filter. As the first stanza of the song is being played as diegetic sound the artist will go back to the table with her girlfriends as part of the narrative. This will be up to 19 seconds into the song. From 19-22 secs we will have a mid shot of about 3 men harmonising the 'aahhhhh' just before the song kicks in, we will fade the filter into enhanced colour, this is a performance part of the video.


In the diner as the song starts the first lyrics are 'Take me on a date' so we will have the artist watching the 'future husband' come through the entrance of the diner as she sits in a booth with her friends, it will be filmed in the mirror with both the artist and husband in the shot. This will be from 22-25 secs. 

The next shot will be an over the shoulder shot of the husband at the front door holding a bunch of flowers. This shot is from 25-30 secs it will show the door opening, the husband coming through the door and the hallway. This is also a narrative part of the video. At 30-34 secs we will then see the artist singing 'I'll be the perfect wife' in the kitchen with 'world's best wife' apron on. In the background there will be vintage shopping bags with groceries in, we will do a sweeping shot round to focus on their relationship and the shopping bags.




At 34 secs we will have a second long shot of peoples feet at a train station - commuting to work. This will be a real-life narrative. Then, we will cut to the artist at work in an office, she will comically playing a game on the computer or her phone, whilst we see her sing 'but, baby, so do I'. This will be a performance shot until 38 secs

From 38-43 secs we'll cut to the artist in the kitchen with a recipe book out with apple pie recipe page, flour and other cooking ingredients out on the surface. She will then get a burnt apple pie out of the oven, and then a ready made one out of the fridge on the line 'but i can find a hook'.
At the line 'sing along with me' we see the artist singing to the camera, this is at 43-46 secs



From 46-56 secs we will see the narrative involving them shopping in a clothes store and the 'husband' will hold up an expensive dress to her front, this will be a side/over shoulder shot, we see the artist sing 'treat me like a lady'. They will also be messing around.

From 58 secs-1.08 mins we will see the performance side of her singing in the diner to her girlfriends sitting down opposite her.

At 1.10-1.20 mins we will show the narrative of the artist with the 'future husband' of them walking through the town/streets at night time.




After we see them walking through the streets we will see the artist crying from a fight they've had, we will see the 'husband' then say sorry to the artist then hug her and kiss her head. This scene will be from 1.23-1.28 mins.

When she sings casually 'you know i'm never wrong' we will see an over the shoulder shot from the husbands point of view of her singing it to him as part of the narrative 1.28-1.30 mins.

At 1.30-1.34 mins we will see the artist singing directly to the camera as if the artist is getting sympathy with the audience, (who will mostly be girls).


Our next scene will be at a fireworks display. We will include a lot of handheld camera shots and amateur filming to create the effect that they're together and he's treating her well. We will have shots that include them standing together, fireworks in the background etc. This will be from 1.34-1.44 mins.



At 1.47 mins there is a key change. We will have further performance-the artist and her friends will be dancing. We will also see the artists lip syncing to the chorus-the 'live singing' part we can hear in the background.

This will be continued till 1.59mins, then it will go back to the narrative side till 2.08 mins, where we will see the artist being surrounded by the future husband's family in a home environment. 


2.11-2.23mins The artist will be in bed on her own (left side) and we see her go to sleep and into a dream. In the dream narrative they go to a posh restaurant and he opens the door for her, in a suit, as she walks through the door he gives her a kiss. We have a shot of the husband in a suit an pan down to see him get a ring box out of his pocket.

At 2.23 -2.32 mins The narrative side of the story will insist montages of the previous shots that included both artist and the future husband, this will be outtakes style.

2.35-2.44mins The artist will be performing to the camera, using a close up shot. This then applies to Goodwin's theory with the close up shot of the lip syncing and visuals amplifying the lyrics. We will also be using flashbacks of the previous shots and scenes we have used in the video.

2.47-2.57mins We will see the narrative side of the artist putting her arms round the future husband's neck, pan round with a long shot of him pinching her bottom. On the line "Tell me I'm beautiful", we will once again get a close up shot this time of the husband lip syncing 'You're beautiful' to her.
2.58-3.02mins towards to the end, we see him preparing to propose as part of the dream narrative. We will then after the music stops, we will change to diegetic/no sound as he goes down on one knee to propose and holding the open box with a ring. 

Tuesday 14 October 2014

Production Meeting 2-Lyrics and Video Planning

We have printed off the lyrics to Dear Future Husband and started annotating them to get a basic idea of where to start with our music video planning. With this we are thinking of locations, different types of shots, colour filters, costume, characters, props etc. as these are very important components of a music video.

The first idea we had was taken from our audience research and that is to start the video in black and white and transform into colour from 18 seconds into the song. Another set idea we have had is to start the video before the song and include the first 18 seconds as diegetic sound in the diner.

We believe by annotating these lyrics will make our ideas come through quicker and when writing our treatment it will flow nicely. 

Taylor Swift-Love Story



I am choosing to look at this music video as it has a range of narrative story lines-3; the college, the ball and in the castle. These are three very distinct narratives with the performance being in the castle where we see her in her fantasy, singing about the fantasy. This works well with the lyrics of the song as it is a very fantastical song. She dreams about being with a 'Romeo' who is just a made up character. It could be said that this convention is broken at the end with the suggestion that they are together in the end in real life, in the college narrative story.

Our production will be very similar with the form of the video. We plan to have a 'real life' performance/narrative with her singing about him (in the diner location) and wanting to be with the 'future husband', a narrative story where she's trying to be with him and also another 'dream' narrative were she actually is with him and they are together.

Carly Rae Jepson-Call Me Maybe



I decided to look at this music video as it has very similar themes that we want to create in our music video. It's about a girl crushing on a guy and imagines herself with him. She has a dream in the middle of the song of them two together, we want to portray that story as well. 

Firths music theory can be applied to this as there is performance an narrative to this video. We see the artist singing the song to the audience (and the male character) but we also see a narrative where she is imagining herself with him, and also a story throughout, living everyday life ending up with the male character handing his number to part of the band. The narrative and performance also overlap a lot in the video as we see her singing as we see the story progressing.

We want to apply this to our video, a mixture of performance and narrative, with overlaps, as this is very typical of a pop music video.

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Primary Audience Research

On our wix website we have uploaded our audience research through soundcloud.

http://nfgsyasminknott.wix.com/yaswynproductions#!production-meetings/c1p9k

Monday 6 October 2014

Production Meeting 1

Today we had a production meeting to discuss our chosen song and any ideas we have had. We found this very useful as we get our first, initial ideas about our song choice so they can grow from there.

We made brief notes of what we discussed to get  starting point to planning the content of our video as well as some audience research.






Monday Morning Update 08/10/2014

Last night Meghan Trainor went to number 1 in the UK with her debut single 'All about that Bass'. This shows that her music style and her music video is very popular with almost 125 million views on YouTube. This means that we could take some typical conventions of her video and use them in ours, or (on the other hand) we could contrast with her and challenge the conventions she has used. 


Friday 3 October 2014

Group Website

SCREENSHOT OF WEBSITE CREATION.Today we created a website. We thought this would be a good idea to post group audio's, video's and any other work we do together as well as putting it on our individual blogs. 


We also created a SoundCloud account as well, this was so we could upload our audio tracks without a video. Using SoundCloud also makes it extremely easy for us to upload the audio's to the wix website we have.

The SoundCloud username is: YasWyn Productions.

We came up with a company name as it is a group project. From this we could use the name for a company ident, website and usernames. The name came from a mixture of both our names, at first as a joke, but once we said it, it sounded like a professional music/film production name.

Thursday 2 October 2014

Possible Location for our Music Video

Today we visited Dean's diner in Braintree to take some photos and get an idea of the setting we ,at use in the video. We decided a diner would be a good place to look at as it has that 50's Rock and Roll feel that our song reminds us of. It is also a classic setting for a first date in romance, American films, and as our song is about a 'future husband' it fits nicely with the theme.

We did manage to take some photos of the diner to get a feel for the place and how we could film ad we believe it is the perfect place to film part of our video in. Although there are a lot of mirrors in the place which could cause a problem filming, we have found some angles that would be effective without being able to see the camera. The mirrors could also help us with the narrative for example our actress could be looking around the corner at her 'future husband'.

We got permission of the manager Mario to film in the diner as long as we do not get any customers in the background as they not want to be in it.











Wednesday 1 October 2014

New Copyright Laws


Today a law came into place about parody music videos so the artist is not discriminated against or made fun of. This will not affect us as our chosen song doen't currently have a video.


Another law about adding age restrictions to music videos was also announced, for UK labels. This will not affect our song choice or artist as she is with an American label, however it will affect our chosen genre. Pop videos have a very wide range of explicit-y. Some pop videos contain nudity to a certain extent, also swearing, sexual images and smoking/drinking could be a factor that would need to be considered in pop videos. This law means that video producers will be much more careful as if they had a higher age restriction it could reduce the number of views, especially for pop as a lot of pop views are under 15 or 18.