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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Primary Audience Research

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

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

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. 

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. 

The website is: http://nfgsyasminknott.wix.com/yaswynproductions

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.

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.

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.

The Killers-Mr. Brightside

This video is good to look at for camera use and lyrics & narrative, as it is an indie video but with elements of rock and pop genre. There are a lot of close ups and tracking in to the lead singers face, whilst lip syncing the lyrics that are being described in the narrative. The narrative is lead by the lyrics of the song and is literal to what is happening in the video. 

There is a lot of performance with the characters, this makes the video seem very more general. When the audience in the video integrates with the band, the video becomes more real and suggests he is actually singing to people and not being ignored.

There is a lot of cross cutting from the narrative (dancers) to performance (band) this emphasises the fact the whole scene is in one room and they are all together in the video.

Meghan Trainor-All About That Bass (Theories)

Meghan Trainor is our chosen artist so I thought it would be a good idea to look at her other work. She has recently had a very successful song 'All About That Bass'.

Theory

Applying Goodwins theory to this music video it is a very amplified video. It exaggerates the key theme and meaning to the video so much, which is the fact you should be comfortable with yourself an have confidence no matter what anyone says. This could also link to Levi-Strauss' theory that there are binary oppositions within the video. There are clear opposites in this, the main one being thin and curvy but also elements of young and old, and men and women. 

The artist herself is subjective in the video as it is her telling the story and performing rather than watching over the performance. 

Visuals

The video consists of a lot of colour, particularly pastel colours which is very girl-y. This is what a pop video should have, she has kept to the conventions here. Another convention applied in this music video is the performance, there is a lot of dancing which projects a very lively feel to draw the audience in. It often cuts to different scenes of different people dancing and different outfits and different orders, this appeals to the audience as they get to see the artist in many ways and at different angles.

Lyrics
The lyrics are very repetitive in this song, the artist looks at the camera and we see her sing to the important lyrics that she means and the phrases she wants to get out to the audience and her beliefs she wants to portray. These lyrics include one about herself, and the audience, 'every inch of you is perfect', 'I'm no stick thin barbie doll'. You could consider Steve Archer's theory for the use of lyrics in this music video. The artist in this video is the centre of attention (also typical of pop in general) there is lots of close-ups of her lip syncing and dancing, being in the heart of the video, suggesting that the feeling and moods about the song and video are more genuine.

Music Copyright News

This morning on the news it was mentions that changes have been made to the copyright licensing laws about music videos.

This is important to bare in mind in case we break any licensing laws whilst creating our music video.

Monday Morning Update 29/09/14

As we have not yet got a reply from Meghan Trainor or her PR team we are assuming that it is okay to use the song for our music video. If we get a rejection reply we still have a couple of back up songs, one that is copyright free and one we have permission for.

By the end of last week Bronwyn and I had collected a lot of primary research including two individual interview and two focus groups, giving us some insight into what we can include in our music video.

News Update

Whilst looking at the entertainment & arts news site I came across some news about our artist. It was the first article on the page. Meghan Trainer has become the first artist that had entered the charts purely through the number of streams to her song. The rule on this changed three months ago on how the chart is updated included streams as well as downloads. Meghan Trainor's first single is not even out yet, it was only released this morning and was in the charts at number 33 yesterday.

Since choosing our song and artist Meghan Trainor has become much more famous and well known, with her song 'All about that bass'. We now know that her style of music and persona is loved and is very popular with the mass audience, so we can be confident now when creating our music video.

Initial Primary Target Audience Research

I created a Survey Monkey survey to get some initial research on music video genre and focusing into pop genre. I posted the link to my survey on Facebook so I could get a range of age and genders to answer it due to the fact I have friends aged 13 to 66 on Facebook. This was very effective as I got 20 answers straight away, which was a big enough sample for the initial research.

First of all I asked age and gender as I would be able to get a rough idea of who are answering the questions and our potential target audience. 

I have a varied age range, this would be could as the taste in music changes a lot with age and would be interesting to see what they though about pop videos and music videos in general.

This question, asking about the genre choices is again to get a rough idea of who this research group is and whether the answers to the other questions would be viable.

This is quite lucky that the majority of my research sample like listening to pop and R&B music as these are the genres we considered an pop is our chosen genre for our music video.

I gave my audience many feature of a typical pop video to choose and see how important they are to the music video. This would give me an indication as to what the audience like to see in music videos on a whole and what we could include in ours.

It seems that the artists performance and singing is a very important factor and also a connection with between the artist and audience. We will be sure to get a good performance from the artist, I believe this is vital for a pop music video.

In my research I also found that the camera and editing is also important to the audience so we need to ensure we take extra care when filming and editing our music video.

I worded question 5 as 'out of choice' to be more accurate with my results as most people probably listen to pop music every day, either on the radio or TV. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the audience enjoys or chooses to listen to pop music.

This audience do often listen to pop music and enjoy it so will make this research more accurate and give us a realistic idea about pop videos. However some of the audience never listen to pop music so some answers could be going in the completely wrong direction.

I asked this question in my survey so I could get a better idea of what our music videos going to look like and start planning colour schemes etc.

The majority answer to this is multi colours so our music video will be quite bright and colourful with the audience research in mind.

I the asked about the favourite excising videos to see what stood out. However, there weren't a lot of responses to this. This could be because that there are so many to choose from or that pop videos aren't the type you would search and look up, but perhaps just watch on the TV or if shared on Facebook.

In order to understand why we are making this music video and the aim of it I asked what the audience feel the purpose of a music video is. 

It seems that there are many main purposes but mainly for entertainment so we will aim to make our music video entertaining to the viewers as well as promoting the artist and connecting the audience with them.

In-Depth Music Video Analysis-Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce

'Telephone'-Lady Gaga ft. Beyonce
I have created a Prezi presentation analysing certain feature of this pop video. I decided to analyse the camera and editing, lighting, costume and props, setting and sound. I did this because I thought this would be useful and appropriate for my research for the coursework.

Andrew Goodwin's Theory

This is Goodwin's theory of music genre, we learnt it in todays lesson.

• The visuals either illustrate, amplify or contradict the lyrics and music.
• Genres often have their own music style/iconography.
• Close-ups should always be included.
• The artist/band might want to develop their own star iconography, which becomes their star image.
• Voyeurism is a common theme within music videos.
• Intertextual references are also popular.
• Goodwin also argues that female performers are often objectified for display purposes, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star.

Genre Types

As we have been learning about Genre, I have learnt that there are three types of genre categories.

Cross-genre

A cross-genre is where there are two or more genres crossing and overlapping with each other to create a new sound or genre. An example of a cross-genre is Pop Rock.

Hybrid Genre

This is where there is one genre and can clearly only be identified as one genre and has clear conventions. 

Sub-Genre

A Sub-genre is where there is a different type of one particular genre. These are very popular and most genres have sub-genres. An example would be stadium rock.

Copyright Permission

Our favourite song choice for making a music video out of the four is 'Dear Future Husband' by Meghan Trainor. We like the overall tone of the song, it is definitely in the pop genre but is not a hybrid genre. I believe the genre crosses with a 50's/swing/rock & roll genre which gives it a very upbeat feel that we love. This music video will have a lot of high energy performance, possibly with a 50's style theme.

We have followed Meghan on Twitter and decided to seek permission to use her song through this.

We also emailed her PR team asking for permission to use the song. However we have yet to get a reply from either media.

Possible Song Choice

On our Twitter account we were followed by a couple from America called 'Brytt & Kev' who are a Indie-Pop band. We thought we would take the opportunity and listen to their music. We really like their song 'Best Friends and Lovers' and may consider it as a song choice for our music video. As they follow us we direct messaged them asking permission and they granted us with it.

We like the song because it is clearly a pop song which is quite catchy, the only problem is that we can't immediately imagine a music video for it, whereas our other song choices we can imagine an idea for a video straight away.

This is the link to the song:
http://bryttandkev.com/track/664357/best-friends-and-lovers?autostart=true

Conventions of Pop Music Videos

Pop music videos are created mainly to advertise the song and the artist tot the audience. The videos are usually quite lively, with bright colours, props, dancing etc. Many aspects on the videos can be analysed, such as:

Camera

There is usually a lot of different scenes, including many close up's of the artists face, often showing the emotion of the song and connecting the audience with the artist. 

There are often long shots or establishing shots, usually including dance choreography or telling a story.

Mise En Scene

There are often many colours in pop videos, these colours are also enhanced to make it look happier and brighter. 

Pop videos also tend to have a lot of dancers in the video along with the artist being centre of attention, the people in the video are often dressed in similar clothes with a similar colour pattern to make them all look the same.

Genre Conventions

In class we discussed how many different genres of music there is. This is a list of the different genres I wrote down:
Pop
R&B
Rock
Indie
Soul
Hip Hop
Dubstep
Drum and Bass
Rap
Punk
Electronic
House
Jazz
Pop Rock
Metal
Classical
Dance
Boy Band
Pop Princess
Reggae

Within all of these genres there are many sub-genres, for example for rock there's; pop rock, punk rock, stadium rock, psychedelic rock and many more.

These are the conventions of the music videos of my three favourite music genres. I have used a few brief words just to get a basic idea of the conventions.

Pop-Dance choreography, many enhanced colours, girls, fast cutting rate, close-ups, artist centre of attention.
R&B-Storyline, dancing, blue or golden colour filter, emphasis on clothes, street, house or party scene, close-ups.
Indie-Guitar, instruments, acoustic, not always showing the artist