Frankie's A2 Media Blog: October 2015

Opening sequence inspiration

For our opening we wanted to introduce each member of the band as it will be out first music video, so it is almost a though we are revealing ourselves. We did some research into the beginning of girl bands music videos, first of all we found this Neon Jungle one, this was also one of their first videos so they wanted to identify themselves. We also felt it would fit as it involves light and that is our main theme.

We recreated this light scene in the drama studio using a moveable studio light and a black backdrop, we were successful until the bulb blew in the light so we had to make do with the shots we had. However when it came to putting together the opening sequence we found that the shots were blurry as the camera took a long time to focus as it had to change to the light. Liv's and Sophie's were especially blurry whilst mine wasn't as bad so we may still use it as some point.But we still wanted to introduce each person separately and in a creative way so we continued to research and found these:

Make-up outcome

As we didn't have access to UV light before we got to the club we were skeptical of how it might come out. However we were so pleased when we got there and saw how good the makeup did look both on and off film, it looks exactly how we want it to and especially fits without theme of lights and neon.

Inspiration from personal experience

For my 18th Birthday I was brought tickets to a festival called- HOlI Fest which mean festival of colours. The day involved hundreds of packs of powder paint being thrown in and over the crowd, for me this inspired the some of the ideas in our music video, especially the design of my UV paint as I wanted it to look splattered which was how I looked at the end of the day at the festival.

Club Filming

In order to make our club scene look effective and actually work well, we needed to get more people than just us three to come. To do this we asked our teacher send out an email to every class asking if they could come and help us.

Yesterday I sent another email to persuade more people to come and remind them to wear clothing that is suitable for a club scene. W e are hoping for at least 10 people as we aren't planning on shooting long shots but mainly close ups and cut away shots which we need only small amount of people for.

Make Up

Today we printed our some templates try out and plan our make up that we are to have in the club scene. We each decided our colourscheme after getting feedback we decided the original colours weren't right so we changed them:
Me- Orange and Green
Sophie- Pink and Yellow
Liv- Blue and Purple

We will all have bits of white within these colours so we all have a unifying colour.

Edited Photos

Today i have been trying our some different things with the photos from our photo shoot, this was the outcome.

The last three photos are most likely going to be used in a poster or album cover as they visually represent our different personalities through our colours.
Sophie is pink as she is the girly member and pink has connotations of this.
Liv is purple as it has connotations of regality and she is the diva of the group.
My colour is still undecided between green and blue as they are both different colours that not many people like or wear and i am the edgy member of the group.

Props

These are our props that we are going to use for the close up shots of us singing various parts of the song. The background is going to be black and this make-up is luminous so it will glow against the background.

What would we change?

Although our outcome from the footage shot in the drama studio is mostly usable, there are a few videos which are very lengthy and don't actually show anything, therefore if we were to film again we wouldn't keep the camera running whilst we were performing, this will save a lot of time when we are going through the footage and during filming.
We would also plan the shots more so we knew the order we were going to film them in as when we got the dance studio it took us a while to set up and decide which shots to do first.

Drama Studio Filming

Today we shot our performance footage in the drama studio. We set up four different cameras on tripods and then asked Izzy to move around finding different angles with another camera.
Overall we were very succesful and shot a lot of footage that we can use within our video.

Director Study

This is my director Study on Jake Nava, I chose him as I found he had directed a lot of the music videos I am interested in and I watch so i found researching him interesting.

Drama Studio Usage

We asked the drama teacher at school if we could use the room on Tuesday 13th October for some of the performance shots in our video:

Video Inpsiration

Sophie found this video that uses after effects to add colour and off effects to video which without them would be very boring. We took this as inspiration for our first filming, we shot each of us individually singing the whole song. We will then edit this with similar effects as this video using:
-Cloning
-Colour
-Slow motion
-Layering

Album Covers

We have experimented with images we took in the style of a Little Mix shoot we looked into.

Our cover probably wouldn't be black as bright, bold colours would appeal to our audience much more. Our images would also be more casual and silly as opposed to posed like these ones. However they would be in the same box style with each of us in our own box, the fourth box would have our logo in as we only have three members.

We arranged our photos in a similar style but as there is only three of us we have used the fourth box to place our band logo, so our fans can identify us even more.

Band Logo

These are our first ideas for our logo, we got some feedback on the what people thought:

Max: He didn't feel like the bottom one was enough.

Scott: The bottom one is too little and the top is too much, i like the crisp outline of the second one as it looks casual but proffessional

Bessie; I like the first one as it stands out and will attract attention

Connor: I like the first because it fits best with your theme- its girly, casual and pop.

Ellie: I like the first one because it will attract attention on an album cover, so people will instantly know who it is. It also looks like an eclipse which is cool. The last one looks to plain but i like the heart as it gives a pop of colour.

Shooting Schedule

At the moment we are planning when and where we are going to film the various sections of the music video. We are having trouble finiding time where we can all film as we all have various commitments and unfortunately don't have the same free periods at school.

We have each agreed that wednesday or tuesdays are the best days to film in the club as they aren't nights where the club is in high use, we have printed out a scheduele and crossed off days that each of us can't make it.

Photo Shoot Outcome

Overall our photo shoot was extremely successful, we took over 700 photos which seems a lot however we didn't have much experience using either greenroom or being infront of a camera modelling, so it took us a while to feel comfortable and really get the best pictures.

After narrowing them down, we found the ones that we really liked and felt portrayed each member in a the way we wanted.

As Sophie is the girly one, we wanted her to appear sweet and approachable which i think is definitely portrayed in these photos. The way she is dressed also portrayed this as she isn't wearing anything that sexualises her image.

Liv is the Diva so we made her pictures looked more posed and took inspiration from various divas in the music industry. She was dressed in slightly more revealing clothing than Sophie but we still kept it reserved to appeal to our target audience.

I am the edgy member of the group so a in a few of my pictures i look as tough i don't really care. My outfit was different to the others as this is exactly the image we want my member to have. So i appear approachable and appeal to our audience a few of my images ave a must softer approach.

Photoshoot preview

Here are the a few photos from our photoshoot on monday:

We are going to go through all the pictures we took and pick our favourites and the best ones, we will then use photoshop to edit and refine them.

Goodness Gracious

This video is done in a similar style that we would like ours to be, the song is also of the same genre. Ellie Goulding uses lots of UV lighting and neon colours which are some of the main themes within our video. Some of the shots and locations are also similar, we are going to have shots in a club and a car like there are in this video.

Social media

Today we set our our twitter and instagram accounts, we will each have accsess to both and be able to post what we want-

Twitter- @sweet_nothing_3

Instagram- _sweet_nothing_

Facebook- Sweet Nothing

Choreography

As i have a dance background I have choreographed a section of dance the chorus of our song, we are still undecided as to who will be doing the dance and whether we will be in it or if we will get others to perform it behind us. However we know we will shoot it in the club, most likely on the dance floor.

Below is a video of me just marking the choreography:

Props List

For our video there are a number of props we will need:

Glitter

This will come from ebay- £1-£1.99

UV body paint

These will also come from ebay- pack of 6- £5.00

Glow sticks

We have a school but we may need to buy more for the large scale project we are planning

Microphone

There are two microphones at school, however we will need to buy a third

Make- up

We each have our own make-up, if we want different clours we may need to buy more

Personalized love heart sweet

This is something we might have as an extra thing, we thought they would look cool with our band name on.

Inspiration

As we were doing our photo shoot we needed inspiration for new poses so we researched some more pictures, we found these and took some ideas:

Photoshoot day 1

Today we shot our first photo shoot for promotional material. We did this is a green room and we will then edit the background to make it look how we want which is likely to be a very simple white background. For this photoshoot we all wore black clothes that suited our own style.
We planned to also shoot outside in front of a brick wall however the weather and light prevented us from doing this.

So we are planning to shoot another photoshoot on Thursday when the weather is supposed to be much brighter. For this photo shoot we will all be wearing similar clothing but it will still represent our individual style, edgy, girly and diva.

Locations

Our main location is Miya nightclub, however lots of different parts of the nightclub will be used:

Outside the club:
Our video will begin here with shots of a taxi or car pulling up followed by us getting out and walking into the club. This will set the scene of the club for the audience, we want them to feel as though they are with us so they are following us from the taxi, into the club and so on.

We would aim for something like this, from Rihanna's 'please don't stop the music' video.

Inside the club:
The rest of the video with mainly be shot in the club, here we will appear as sassy and powerful females being dominant compared to the males. Prevalence and a little of male gaze will be used to make us the stars, however too much could be unsuitable for the audience we are aiming at.

The bar:
We will have shots of drinks and us drinking to set the club scene and make it feel like a night out. The boys may spot the girls at the bar and then follow them there. Everyone will be laughing and having fun to set the 'pop' category of the video.

Light wall
Our performance shots will be in front of this wall, we will have close ups of each of us singing or just having fun as well as all three of us singing and dancing. We will be wearing day glow make up and glitter and dark clothing to contrast.
Bathroom:
These shots will be quick cuts of us putting on makeup, chatting, laughing all continuing to set the 'fun' 'club' scene.

These shots are from Little Mix's latest video, we can take inspiration for our bathroom scene from these.

Other places we will be filming include a garden scene:
We want this scene to be dark and then we will put fairy lights and glow sticks all around to we will see silhouettes of the people in the scene. We want to gather a large group of people to run around, have fun and dance in this scene. We will use lots of different shots here including, tracking, extreme close up and establishing

Dripping glow drops:
This is where our dance scene will take place, the room will be dark with glow in the dark drops hanging from the ceiling to set a low light. We are going to shoot this in our school dance studio as it is spacious and we can set our own lighting there.

Photo shoot inspiration

This week we are going to shoot our first photo shoot for our twitter feed and blogs, this will enable us to use them as promo material. We have decided to do a number of different styles and shots to make the photo shoot different and more exciting.

We are taking inspiration from this photoshoot from little mix.

We have decided to wear all black in our photo shoot and hopefully depending on the weather shoot outside in front of a brick wall to make it look more rustic. We are each going to have a close up of a different facial expression, we will then lay them out in this style, however the 4th box will have our band name in.

We also looked at these shots for inspiration

We really like the simplicity of the black and white clothing.

This one is in front a brickwall like we would like to do

Top Tips- Jake Wynne

Jake's top tips included:

-Emphasising the 'performance bed'- which means you have a layer of a few performances of the band/artist singing the whole dong so that you can then add all the other stuff on top but a least you're covered and get and idea of the whole structure

-Looking at the website where your can make music videos for people- http://www.radarmusicvideos.com/home/about-us

-Dynamism and not giving away all your tricks early on, build slowly and make everyone want to watch more.

Top Tips- Pete Fraser

On Friday the 2nd of October, Pete Fraser and Jake Wynne visited our school and gave a talk on his experience and tips in the music industry. Although i wasn't in school this day i asked the rest of my class to fill me in on what he said, they all said they found it extremely useful.
Pete Fraser's tips included:

Planning for everything-
-Storyboard (even if you shoot extra scenes after)
-Plan who, what, where, when and how
-Aim to shoot early so that you can always shoot more and its not up against the deadline.
-Make sure everyone had rehearsed eveything

Know Your Equipment
-Do test shots so that you van test the effects that you are going to use.
-Check any quirks of the camera
-Make sure that you have a tripod and shoe
-Make sure that you will have enough memory if not bring back up cards
-Experiment with editing before you do your final
-Make sure that you have an audible source of the song so that not only the performer can hear it but the camera as well.

The Shoot
-Shoot the performance at least 10 times with different set-ups
-Make sure that you have plenty of cutaways
-Experiment with extra angles and light changes
-Dont forget- lots of close ups!!
-Enthuse your performance- they must give it plenty
-Shoot more than you think you will need

The Edit
-Sync up the performance first
-Get the whole picture rather than tiny detail
-Cut cut and cut again
-Aim for a dramatic piece of work
-Do any effects work last
-Upload a rough cut to your blog and get feedback

The Blog
-Evidence of whole journey
-Research, planning, construction of all 3 products
-Evaluation
-Finished products

Good House Keeping
-Tidy desktop
-storage of footage
-labeling files
-Tidy blog

Evidence
-Real music videos (of your genre)
-Any visuals that have influenced you
-Steal-o-matic
-Costume photos, location photos, test shots
-Real album covers
-Real band websites
-Early exercises designing album covers
-Changes to your design=screen grabs
-Show how it is a 'package'
-Student music videos, digipacks and websites with comments
-Jake's videos and tips
-Photos and clips from today
-Storyboard and animatic of your video plan
-Feedback from your peers
-Rough cuts of your video
-Screen grabs of your edit in progress
-'behind the scenes'
-Regular commentary on what you are doing.

When to do a digipack
-In parallel, NOT at the end
-Taking photos for later use
-Having lots of extra ideas
-Can do more than one design within the group