Production Diary

Mo nday 21st September

Today we had our first group meeting and pitched our various idea to one another. First i pitched my ideas followed by Liv and Sophie. However we then came across the problem that all the videos we had pitched via one already had music videos,
So we then had the task of researching some more music videos in the same style we were looking for but without music videos. We found this challenging as the best songs almost always had a video,

We did eventually find a few songs, that we all liked and could imagine a music video to that didn't already have a video.







Tuesday 22nd September


Today we pitched our idea to the class and listened to their ideas. Overall each group had three very interesting, different ideas so no one's was even remotely similar.

Max, Marcus and Katie- they are going for a edgier, unique video. I think the first idea they pitched is much more creative than the second however the long instrumental period at the beginning of the song will be hard to keep the audience interested.

Soraya, Issy and Lucy- I really like the idea of it being in the concept of a one night stand and having lots of pastel colours to go with the pop genre of the first song. However i think if they go for the second song they should go for a slightly darker story line, i think the props they listed like flares and glitter will fit well and look really good.


Wednesday 23rd September


Today we had our third meeting as a group. In this time we began to brainstorm more ideas on costumes, make-up, shots, locations, the narrative and when and who would sing what part of the song.

The result:
We came to the decision that our main location is Miya Nightclub, and the majority of the performance in the video will be shot here. There is a light wall that we will use to film various shots of all three of us singing and performing together. I have researched some videos that use light walls and club scenes, I found a video that used a light wall by; 'Louder' by Neon Jungle, Calvin Harris's latest video 'How deep is your life' has scenes set in a club with neon lights which fits very well with what we want to achieve in our video.






We also began to think about a narrative as we thought a video solely based on performance would be harder to pull off as they have to have lots of visuals to keep the audience interested. At first we thought about having the narrative story including the band, however we then thought the audience may get confused when we keep switching between us being in the story and then performing. So we then decided it would be better to have the band members included within in the narrative.


Thursday 24th September

Today I wasn't in the lesson but Liv and Sophie continued to plan our music video and began completing the lip syncing task.

Friday 25th September
As i was back in the class today we began to really think about our video in depth, we even decided on some names and then asked the rest of the class what they thought about them. We consider this as audience research. From this research we got down to four different names: Halcyon, Trinity, Divinity and Illuminate. None of them we were particularly excited about so we didn't make any final decisions.
I also did some image research into what our band image could be. I looked into bands like Little Mix, M.O and fifth harmony as they are all girl bands with very different styles.

Monday 28th September
Today we sat down as a group and really thought about the image we want the band to have. We decided that we would all have different identity's, me being edgy, Liv being a the diva and Sophie being the girly member. We would each have different styles of make-up, hair and clothing so we have our own individual identity as well as the band, we think this will make us more relatable.
We also continued to think of band names, we decided that the four we had previously narrowed it down to, didn't really sound like band names so we continued to brain storm. After a while we came up with new name, 'Sweet Nothings' we asked our teachers and various students what they thought and they really liked it, so we decided that would be our band name.

Tuesday 29th September
I continues to research into identity and found images that represented each identity that we could take inspiration from and put them into a blog post. Sophie began to make our steal-o-matic whilst Liv began to try out different logo's and styles that we could write our band name in. Overall i think this was one of our most successful lessons as we achieved so much in a short space of time.

Thursday 1st October
Today i began to choreograph a dance routine to the chorus of our song. I took my friend Megan who i dance out of school with to help me and we managed to put together a sequence for the chorus. Sophie continued to put together our steal-o-matic however Liv wasn't in the lesson today.

Monday 5th October 
Today we began our photoshoot for promotional material, we will use the photos in our digipack, on all our social media pages, on posters and on our website. Overall i think we were very successful for our first time using the greenroom and the lighting, we managed to take 800 different shots in under two hours. We are going to do a few more photo shoots with different outfits and location so we have a variety of shots.





Tuesday 6th October
Today we went through all the photos from the photoshoot and picked our favourite ones. We narrowed it down to around 30 of the best photos, we then each began to edit one of our choice! We also set up social media accounts on facebook, Twitter and instagram.


Wednesday 7th October
Today we took a break from our music video planning and research to edit and put together the footage from the Robbie Williams 'Let Me Entertain You' afternoon. 

Thursday 8th October
Today we decided we needed to sit down and really organise and plan when we would film the differnent parts of the video. We made a shooting schedule for when each of us would and wouldn't be able to film due to prior commitments. This really helped us visually see when we could film and we made the decision that a Tuesday or Wednesday is the best day. Sophie just now needs to ask her auntie which day we can use the club. 

Friday 9th October
This is our first day of shooting, we are using the green room to shoot each of us singing and dancing to the whole song. We wanted to film the whole thing so that if we ever run out of time or footage we had some that we could use. We also want to use some footage like the ones below, we will complete these affects usng after effects or preimier. 

Monday 12th October
Today we all completed different tasks, I continued to edit the footage we shoot on friday afternoon, Liv bean to draw and write a storyboard of our shots, timings and locations and Sophie continued to edit our steel-o-matic. We also made a group decision that tomorrow after school we are going to book the drama studio to film some performance and dance footage. 

Tuesday 13th October
Today we continued to go through the footage from Friday, i also began to edit some of the photos fom the photo shoot so we can use them to create our album cover and use for various other promotional features. After school we also went to the drama studio to film a big bulk of our music video. We set up various lights behind where we would be standing so we would get a silhouette effect. We filmed dancing scene and close ups of each of use, we used five different cameras so we could get shots from different angles. 

Thursday 15th October
I continued to blog and edit the photos whilst Sophie finished our steel-o-matic and liv looked over the footage from tuesday in the drama studio. Together we organised the footage into various folders of what was on the footage and weather we could use it or not. 

Friday 16th October
We thought it would be a good idea to plan out our make up for our filming at Miya nightclub so we printed out three different pictures of a face outline and each of us designed our Neon face paint according to our characteristics and band identity. This will save us lots of time as we can just get straight to it rather than figuring out what we want to look like at the club when we really should be filming as we have a limited amount of time. 

Monday 19th October
As we have a limited amount of time to film at Miya, we wrote out a shot list so we could tick them off as we go along and not waste time repeating the same shots if we didn't need to. I also sent out an email to both the year below and our year group asking for people to come and help the club look like there was lots of people involved. 

Tuesday 20th October
Overall out filming afternoon at Miya was extremely successful even though very few people showed up due to issues with the schools permission. But we did the best with what we had and got a wide variety of what we think are very good shots that will really help our music video look the best it can be. 

Wednesday 21st Ocotber
Today we sat down and went through all the footage from the four cameras we took filming, we separated the usable footage and the unusable footage from each camera and then exported them to premier where will we edit them together to form out music. 

Thursday 22nd October
As we had so much footage we needed another lesson to sort through it, but towards the end we began to put some scenes together, for example we now have a few seconds of the instrumental seconds of the instrumental section. 

Friday 23rd October
As this was our final lesson before half term we really got along with putting together the first few sections of the music video, after a while and asking people's opinions we finally put the first few seconds of the song together and began to try out some of the dance scenes in the chorus.

Monday 2nd November
Today we had a group meeting about what we needed to do now most of our filming was done. We decided I would begin the Digipak and Sophie would begin the website whilst Liv continued to edit the footage together as we thought that if we all sat around one computer editing we wouldn't get everything done in time, so we will take it in turns and ask each other what the other members think.

Tuesday 3rd November
Today we found out that we would be presenting our halfway evaluations at the end of the week. For this we needed a website and starter of our digipak. So I began to edit together a presentation of everything we have achieved so far, whilst Sophie continued with the website and Liv exported a preview of our music video that we could include in our presentation.

Thursday 5th November
We thought it would be a good idea if we filmed an interview with MTV to help introduce our band to the world and let our fans get to know us a bit better. Today we filmed and edited this together before uploading it onto our final hallway evaluation presentation.

Friday 6th November
Today we presented our halfway evaluation to the rest of the class, overall we got good feedback and people seemed to like what we had so far. As I was creating the presentation I rushed to put together the started of our digipak so people thought it needed more work which we all agreed with. The preview of our presentation got very good feedback and made people excited about our final video.

Monday 9th November
Today we continued with our individual tasks, I finished the digipack research and then began to find some that were of a similar genre to what ours is. Sophie completed the biography pages of each of us on the website and Liv continued to edit the video.

Tuesday 10th November
Today we got some feedback on the footage we have edited so far, overall it was positive but we were also given constructive criticism on what to change.

Wednesday 11th November
Today i decided to edit some footage as i haven't yet done so, whilst Sophie and Liv continued with the steel-o-matic and digipack research.

Thursday 12th November
I continued to edit a piece on the video that we had talked about for a while but hadn't got round to quite yet so i decided to begin it today. We wanted to have silhouettes following our movements in the background. I did some online research into how to do this and figured it out. I then showed the rest of the group who had been continuing with digipack research.

Friday 13th November
I continued to edit the video and we got some feedback from the teachers and some of the people in our class to see what they thought so far.

Monday 16th November
Today Sophie emailed me and Liv some questions that we could answer for our website for the fans to get to know us better. We then answered them and Sophie added them into our individual pages.

Tuesday 17th November
Sophie exported the stel-o-matic today and then we all uploaded it onto our blog. I continued to edit the footage together.

Thursday 18th November
Today we sat down as a group and watched the footage we had to far and decided that we needed to film more shots with us three all in as well as some shots to portray our personalities more. We thought of different ways we could do this and decided that a white background would be best.

Friday 19th November
We continued to plan our filming which is going to take place no monday in the drama studio, we discussed costumes, make-up and shots. We decided we would use the boys that we had used in the night club scene to continue the narrative.

Monday 22nd November
In our lesson today we set up the drama studio ready for our filming after school, we put up the white sheets and got into our outfits so we were ready after school.

Tuesday 23rd November
Today we looked over the footage we shot yesterday and began to find the bits we liked and didn't like within it. We tried some bits out with the footage we already had to see how it worked.

Wednesday 24th November
Today Liv and Sophie began to edit in some of the footage from yesterday. I continued to put together the digipak.

Thursday 25th November
Today I researched  different magazines that could hold our first interview, I began to make a power point with this information. Sophie and liv continued to edit the footage we had ready for our first draft.

Friday 26th November
I continued to put together the magazine research, from this I also began to edit some images that could be in the magazine as part of our interview. Liv continued to edit whilst Sophie made some small changed to the website.

Monday 29th November
Today we  made the final changed to our music video ready for our first draft hand in, we also worked on the digipak and decided the images we wanted to use.

Tuesday 30th November
Today we looked through the feedback we received on our first draft and as a group made decisions on what needed to be changed.

Wednesday 1st December
Sophie and Liv began to make the changed to the music video from the suggestions we received in the feedback. I continued to edit some images for the digipak and work on the pages we hadn't yet completed.

Thursday 2nd December
Our digipak was nearly finished it just needed one more page and some small changes so we all worked on that as a group today.

Friday 3rd December
The final details were added to both our website and the digipak today as it was our final deadline for these.

Monday 6th December
Now our digipak and website were finished we focused on finishing our video and promoting it. I began to write our magazine article whilst Sophie and Liv worked on the video. Through looking at the images we had we decided we needed another photoshoot to take some more magazine appropriate images.

Tuesday 7th December
Today we set up for our photoshoot after school. We then took the images we needed for the magazine after school.

Wednesday 8th December
Today I edited some of the images  we took yesterday to prepare them to be in the article, Sophie and Liv continued to edit the video and do some work on the digipak

Thursday 9th December
Today I continued to put together the magazine article whilst Sophie and Liv continued to make final changes to the video

Friday 10th December
We sat down as a group and decided what we each liked and disliked about the music video at this point. This will help us edit the following week before our final music video is submitted.

Monday 13th December
As this is our final week to put everything together we decided to make a marketing campaign on social media. We thought up some ideas and decided we would do on a countdown on our Twitter page, getting our friends and classmates involved by posing with a piece of paper stating how many days until the video is released.

Tuesday 14th December
We decided to get some more feedback and opinions from a few people so we could make any final changes to our video.

Thursday 15th December
Today we finally finished our video and exported it onto youtube.

Friday 16th December
Today was our first screening of our video in front of various classmates and friends as well as the teachers.