Filming Log 6

In this sequence we filmed with the green screen to get performance shots of George on his own lip syncing and the shots of Shannon and George together singing and interacting with each other. These shots worked better because there was more of a block colour in the background so we could change this to a light pastel colour which looked more cohesive and the white doesn't blend into the background. The two artists had to interact and create the idea that they are flirting with each other. We used the green screen with three point lighting to give us high key lighting and so that there was minimal shadowing behind the artists. We weighed down the green screen so it had no creases in it, the shadowing was difficult to neutralize but after positioning the screen and lights to make them go away. The decision to use to green screen was made when we realized that George's part didn't work very well and the white of George's shirt blended into the white background. The pastel colours in the background will work better because it shows more of a youthful atmosphere in the video.

Editing Log 1

We edited our video on adobe and we did a large chunk of the video to add the base footage with cut aways and effects to give it a more professional finished look. The problems that occured whilst we were editing was that we noticed there was areas with our male artist that caused more of the white to be blended into the background. There was more editing put into this but we feel there needs to be a reshooting of the lip sync areas with a green screen so we can edit the background areas to give more of a block colour against our artist because it will show more definition rather than George fading into the background. 

Filming Log 5

In this shoot we filmed the lip syncing shots. We used a white background and highly lit room to create a professional looking shot, we used this area to do George's lip sync shots. We might improve on this by using a green screen as in some areas the white background blended in with George's white shirt. This made the shot look somewhat rushed so I feel this is an area which we could improve on. We wanted to also edit the shot so that as George approaches the camera he doesn't have to bend down, he goes out of frame slightly which looks slightly unproffesional, we can edit around this but we wanted to have one continuous shot so we might reshoot this part.

Practice Photoshoot

Here we took some test photos of Shannon, as our artist Ava to see what would be attractive to our target audience. I dressed Shannon in a ballerina style dress to give her a more innocent look, with a bold necklace that made the outfit look more modern. We also used heels so that she appeared taller and more model-esque as this is what is most attractive in the pop culture, the image of our artist needs to be very prominent, recognisable and consistent. The hair and makeup remained relatively natural because I thought that overloading the face with lots of makeup would make our artist look really mature, we wanted to keep her youthful look and give a sense of natural beauty. We used a white background because we thought it would contrast with what the artist is wearing and cause her to stand out, giving the connotation that she is the most important person, this reflects her confident attitude.

Construction Post

This is a construction post presenting the dance rehearsals and the construction of our dance sequence. The dancers we selected were specifically chosen, two male and two female dancers; to foreshadow the events that unfold in the rest of the music video because we thought the two pairs could represent the romantic relationship between the george and shannon and the other female artist. The dance will be edited very quickly, we also plan to use quite a few separate shots and put them together so it looks like the lights are changing very quickly. We decided that using balloons to decorate the floor space would have been impractical because the dancers might not want to break the unison of the dance if they come into contact with one of the balloons; we decided they would be too much of an obstacle to use in this portion of the video. We thought that Shannon would participate in some of the dance moves too to add some unity to the sequence rather than her just performing, this might have appeared somewhat disjointed.

Filming Log - 3

Filming Log

In this session we filmed in Kingston, near the river because we thought that this would be a conventional location as it looks like a friendly and central area. As a group, we thought that this area looked vintage with all the leaves fallen on the floor, we had planned to film here but thought the fallen leaves and the sun setting had an even better effect because it showed more of a classical image and we thought the lighting worked really well to foreshadow the artist's romantic memories. We encountered some problems with members of the public because we were filming in quite a busy area so people were stopping to watch us film which didn't look realistic so we had to ask people to walk around the area we filmed in.

Filming Log - 2

 Filming Log

On our second filming session my group encountered some issues to do with weather, it was too rainy to film for a while and we decided that after the rainfall the area looked too grey to suit the lively aesthetic of our video. To troubleshoot this in future we plan to film mainly inside on rainy days and try to check carefully that the weather will be substantial enough for filming, we thought that it would be a good idea to test our performance shots which introduce the start of the video. We chose to do this in the location of Wimbledon because it looks like a very cosmopolitan area and the architecture and bustling roads reminded us of central London, which is something that is important for our video because we want the shots in the streets to be very obviously London based and not too modern because the theme for our video is very vintagey, 1950's British style.

Test Shots

These were the shots that we produced from this session which helped us to decide what we should do next time we film here, this was very successful because we managed to experiment with some shots that we didn't think would work originally.

• Shot 1 - This shot would be used to show the artists shoes, which in the video will be high heels. We thought that this would make the audience recognise that they are going to watch a female in the video but we don't want to give away their identity straight away. We thought that if we could use the fig reel smoothly that this shot would have been perfect for the video to introduce the artist and give a symbol of their glamorous image.
• Shot 2 - We tested this similar shot but from the middle because we wanted to show the transition from the feet to the outfit of the artist, we think that a flowing dress blowing in the wind would look very glamorous and would suit the image of our artist. We will put these shots together in our final video and slow them down to create tension as the audience wonders who the artist will be. We wanted to create a smooth transition from these to shots to make them look as though.
• Shot 3 - This shot is the first shot where our audience will get a glimpse of our artist from the back of their head, this shot still won't show the artist's face to increase the excitement of the audience as they wonder when they will first see the artist fully, this clip will also be in slow motion to increase this tension.
• Shot 4/5 - These close up shots will appear later in the video but we think that using these as cut aways would be effective because its a very glamorous beauty shot of the artist looking happy and with their makeup done really sophisticated and this will draw the audience in and make them feel like they are in the actual video and talking to the artist.
• Shot 6 - A slow tracking shot would work well to show the artist lip-syncing and we can shift focus here from the artist to foreshadow that she is talking about something she can't quite grasp.
• Shot 7 - This shot will be more speedy in terms of walking and the artist will be lip syncing to the camera, we thought that the building in the background worked for a location because its very clear and the main focus is our artist.
• Shot 8 - This was a shot that we thought could work really well and we will plan to tracking the artist and then pan around as she walks past the camera and we can watch her walking down the street. This can be a very dynamic shot and it will help to make the scene fllow through to the other shot, we might also do a scene which involves George and another girl to show tension.

Filming Log - 1

Locations Presentation

Locations presentation from 13bms2013

Photo Shoot Plan

This is the plan for our photo shoot with our artists. For our photoshoot, we are looking to get shots that are very sophisticated so we need to plan these out because they couldn't be naturally taken shots. Our artist will have a very posed style in these photos so we have to work carefully to give the idea that lots of thought has gone into this. We are looking to take pictures with a blank white background or we might use the green screen and make the background white so that the main focus is our artist because conventionally in popular culture, the artist is the main focus and image is very important. We also wanted to use the prop of an old fashioned phone because this gives us the chance to show the artist in deep thought and we want her to look concerned but hopeful, as though she is genuinely wishing for something to happen. We want to use a shot that is clearly outside, so we want to take photos with the background of a brick wall, this shot would be the back of the case because we think that using the artist's flowing dress would be a good surface area to list the names of songs. Upon reflection, my group thought that using the dance studio at school would be good for shots which we want a plain background as we have used it prior to this to film our costume post so we think that the white background would be very substantial to show the artist in a focussed setting. We want to use the drama rooms to try and film the photos that we will use balloons in because the contrast of the black rooms alongside the bright balloons will make them look very bright and colourful.

Concepts continued - Idea test

 As a group we created an experimental planning video which helped us to test out some ideas that we could use for our final video. We thought of the idea that George; our main male protagonist, could pose in pictures, possibly pictures from a polaroid camera, with a female that isn't our main artist to give the idea that he is a very sought after and popular person. We thought that this would create a conflict for the main female and cause her to become jealous of this person who is posing with the boy she wishes she was with, which will add to the concept of 'Spying' as she wishes she was with the boy but she has to watch him from afar because he is interested in other girls. We tested a tracking shot that we might use but in a different location which consists of the main character and a friend spying on the boy she likes, we used the fig rig to get a smooth shot of the two characters walking together and we turn to see the boy in the playground. The shot smoothly changes into an over the shoulder shot which shows the boy playing basketball and the main artist goes to join in. We thought that we could use a similar shot in our actual video which could consist of similar events but instead of this happening in a playground we could use a bowling alley or a restaurant. This fits in with our concept of spying because most of narrative parts the video will centre around the artist spying on the male character and trying to get his attention. Although we want to avoid concentrating too much on a narrative storyling and more on the image or performance of the artist. We thought about using backing dancers and we created a short sample of a dance performance that helped us to test out what sort of dance would be conventional for a pop music video and then we used performers that might possibly perform in our final video. This helped us because we got a chance to see how well the dancers could perform to the music and if they had the correct charisma to have fun in our final video.

Advert Planning

These were the sample advertisements that my group created to show the initial ideas we had for the advertisement for our digipak, we thought about how we could create a vintage style cover that shows our artist in an old fashioned dress looking appealing. We thought that the style of the album had to be shown through use of mise-en-scene in the advertisement and the image we thought worked best would be a very quintessentially 1950's style poster, we looked at some samples of old vintage posters and took inspiration from them but we thought about how we could modernise these to create a very statement advertisement.

We want to make the advertisement conventional so the artist will still appear in the forefront of the advertisement and the image of the artist is still the most important thing; which is the same for most pop artists. We thought that using a seperate costume to those in the music video but
The name of the artist and album name will be very bold on our cover but we want to have this in an old style font, possibly in a gold colour to give the artist more of a glamorous image, we also had noticed that lots of female pop artists often used gold in their advertisements such as 'Jessie j' and 'Ellie Goulding' which gave them more of a youthful type of advertisement but also made it look very expensive. The name will appear biggest in more of a bold font to represent the bold nature of our artist. The name of the album will be in a more cursive style font to look more 1950's as we noticed that this instantly made the advert more conventionally 1950's. There will also be the date of release and any tracks that will garner more interest in the CD which in this case will be 'I Wish' because this is the track that we have supposedly released beforehand as a single.

Whilst being conventional we would also like to give this a distinctive style so the album will have the small details such as the gold and cursive old style font to give it more of a 1950's style but of course we still want a very up to date sort of look for our album advertisement. Our artist Ava will be wearing a 1950's style dress but her makeup will be more modernised as we will use pink lipstick and false eyelashes to show more of a glamorous look.

The background of the advertisement will be white to bring all the focus to Ava and we want to use photoshop to edit the advertisement to make the background fade away to pull even more of a focus into the foreground onto Ava. We could use green screen for this so that we get a clear differentiation between our artist and the background and we can edit the background to be white and it will all look really defined. We also want to edit in some light areas that look like sparkles to give more of an expensive aesthetic to the advert. Our artist will pose sitting down and will smile at the camera to make the advert look more inviting and evoke the friendly image we have tried to create.

Location Permissions

These are our letters for our permission's to film, we thought that these locations would be good in terms of mise-en-scence.
The dance studio will be used for our performance cut aways, we thought that this would be a perfect location for the shots of the dancers and the main artist because we will have enough space to allow us to use the fig reel for dynamic group dance shots, we can do a tracking shot of the main artist lip syncing and walking towards the camera with the dancers behind her and we were also thinking of doing a panning shot across the room which will show the entire dance performance in one slick shot. This is conventional for a pop video because there is always a a dance performance in pop music videos. We also wanted quite a bright room to shoot this scene in and the lights in the dance studio alongside the white walls makes it feel like a very open environment and the white walls and mirrors reflect the light well so this makes the whole room very bright and airy which will evoke a friendly atmosphere for our video. We will dress the set very simplistically by using white and pink balloons that the dancers can interact with which will give the video more of a fun and spontaneous vibe.

We have also gained permissions to film in the dessert restaurant 'Creams' in Croydon because we thought that the 1950's diner style of this restaurant would be good for our theme as it would fit in well with the narrative storyline which will be a small sector of the video, we thought that shooting parts here where the main artists are eating together will be good for quick cuts between the artist singing to the camera. We also thought that shooting parts here where the artist is lip syncing in a mid shot whilst sitting at the booth will look appealing because the furnishings are all pink and this will give the hint that our video is more aimed at females. We thought that using the desserts from the restaurant as props because this would look more authentic and as if the artists are actually genuinely enjoying themselves and eating food at the restaurant rather than just sitting on a table with nothing on it. We thought that the booth would also give us a chance to film intimate close ups where the artists give us a better idea of the chemistry between them using an eyeline match.

Our third location permission is to film at our director's house and more specifically in her bedroom because we thought that the look of the bedroom would suit the artist and it would also give the audience some familiarity as the girls might see this room and feel like it's similar to their own bedrooms. The wallpaper in this room is a pink patterned wallpaper which looks very art deco and we thought that this background suit the all round girly image of the video because if we used this location to shoot some lip syncing parts where Ava is in the bedroom lip syncing to the camera it could be as if she is speaking to one of her friends about this boy she likes and wishes she was with and this will draw the audience in and give a sense of familiarity with the artist. We want to put up some posters here which have a 1950's image and also some old style college flags which will help to make the room look even more old fashioned. We thought that this setting might be good to use for quick cuts to show a fun side of getting ready to go out.

Record label Permission

I emailed our Record label to gain permission for the use of their song as my group agreed that a big label such as this needs to be notified about the use of their songs. We also thought it would be prudent that it would be a good opportunity to gain contact with the company incase we wanted any feedback on our video in the future. We stated why we would want to use the track as it is important that the company knows why we are interested in using it. We need to ask for permission so that all legal actions which are necessary have been completed.

CD Cover Plans

My group drew up some plans for our personal images for the CD cover. We looked at all of our ideas and decided what would work best for our digipak. We all thought that the front cover of the CD should feature the artist because this is the most important feature on the cover, and for a pop artist it is important in establishing their image and style. We thought that it would be necessary to establish what the artist looks like because our artist is relatively new, so we aren't established enough to have a cover that doesn't feature the artist.
Two of our plans incorporated a red rose and we discussed that this would be very representational of the 1950's English rose sort of style, we want our artist to be very quintessentially British so this imagery would symbolise the sort of pin up style we want the artist to have. We thought that the repetitive close-ups wouldn't work well because it just looks like there has been a lack of effort put into the planning and editing of the cover. Close-up shots are necessary but too many can just look like there has been no thought put into the cover, also this restricts the amount of editing we can do to the photos.

This was the final plan that we decided to base our Cd cover on (image above) with some small changes. We thought that the front cover would look sophisticated with our artist Ava on the phone, which would be the same phone used in the music video because this will link them together showing the vintage theme throughout the digipak and music video. We want to merge the picture of the legs walking with the dress flowing out to make it look like the dress is flowing from someone who is walking away and then this would give a more dynamic feeling if we blurred the dress and added light behind the artist. We want to edit the lyrics on top of this which will display the  lyrics in a contrasting colour. We thought that the balloons would add to the sense of fun that we portray in the music video, if we use mainly pink and white balloons this would really link. We might also do this shot with our artist holding the balloon to show them in a youthful light. We thought that showing a second close up in a different costume would also vary the cover and show a different style.

Props

We thought that decorating the bedroom scene with posters would add more of a vintage feel to the bedroom scene. We chose posters that were simple but if you looked at them you would notice the women are very pin-up style which is what we want our artist to look like. We chose to frame them with black paper to make it look like they are very well made and as if they suit the wallpaper which is pink and floral. We thought that using these would help to also evoke the 1950's vintage image, if it wasn't already obvious enough for our audience we really wanted to evoke the vintage atmosphere. We might tea stain these image so they look like they are genuine posters from that era which have been worn and just look like they have been through many years.

We are also going to use make-up on the vanity table which we can film shannon reflected in and we will also use them as close ups, we thought that quick cuts showing the makeup would set the scene before we see the full bedroom shot. We can use this as an establishing shot and gradually show more of the room. These items will be used in the performance shot which will give our artist something to use to do some naturalistic acting while lip syncing into the camera. We thought that using perfume and branded makeup items will give a gesture to product placement which is something that appears in lots of pop music videos. The 'Love' photo frame was specifically chosen for this video because we are dealing with issues to do with love and we thought that this would foreshadow what the artist is singing about in her lyrics. The casual scattering of these items will make it look like a normal girls room because its not all obsessively organised and not too much thought has gone into it.

Costume Ideas

 This is my group's costume catwalk, we used this to display the costumes that we will use in our video. We thought about using a colour scheme that was very youthful which matches the theme of our music video as the song and both artists are very young and we want to reflect this through use of costumes that evoke their inner persona which we thought would be a good representation of the audiences feelings in their own lives. We chose styles that were quite up to date but with inflections of youth and colour, we thought that an addition of more colour might help the colour scheme to become more vibrant because after reflecting upon our catwalk and doing some research into popular culture as well as the 1950's we thought that the addition of some more pastel colours to the female artist's style because this comes across as more playful and friendlier than all black outfits. We also wanted to used a bow in the artist's hair to make her look more child like, this innocent image is something that we thought about and we knew that it would appeal more to a younger audience and it wouldn't cause any problems with parents thinking that she is a bad role model because she has such an innocent look.

Shooting Schedule

This is the shooting schedule for our music video filming for 'I Wish'. My group wanted to start off filming on location in our director Shannon Aberdeen's bedroom at her house in Litchfield Avenue. We want to film here because we think that the classy black and pink decoration will look sophisticated but also vintage because it has some inflections which are 1950's style and we like that it looks like a stereotypical girls room with the dressing table and accessories scattered around the room. We will be filming performance shots here of our artist 'Ava' lip syncing, using the dressing table as a prop we want to create a reflected image and film 'Ava' singing into the mirror doing her makeup. These shots can be used for cutaways to show the artist preparing herself to see the boy she is singing about.We will then do shots in the dance studio or the small common room, depending on which white wall looks best as we want to create projections that will foreshadow the events happening in the actual scene. We might create shots of our male artist with another girl and then the main scene can be with him alongside our artist, giving the idea that he isn't really interested in her or this is a dream sequence and the projections are showing the actual status of the relationship. We have also spoken to the owners of 'Creams' dessert restaurant and plan to film in the location because we want to do some shots which our artists will perform together in, we also want to film in the bowling alley to do the same sort of shots.

Animatic

As a group we created a storyboard and an animatic alongside the storyboard to sort the timings of the shots out. We drew shots to illustrate what we want to include in our video and eliminated shots which would not work as well as others. We timed our shots quickly and to the beat, we planned to have cut aways flash up very fast and transition quickly to keep the pace of the video very fast. When we first drew up our storyboard, we realised that the narrative parts dominated the music video and we thought that more performance shots would work much better than dragging out the narrative parts because telling too much of a story would look tacky. We thought that this exercise was important to tell us whether we have enough shots and if they would work well given the timings of the song. Most of our shots don't last much longer than one second and the reason for this is so the video moves along quickly, we can't have a shot lasting too long because this will become boring for the audience as they won't be able to get as much variation in what they are watching this way. After improving the storyboard we were much happier with the ratio of narrative to performance shots and we thought that using more shots in the dance studio would be a good way of creating lots more dynamic shots so this was a well calculated decision for my group to make. We used shots that were slightly slower at the beggining to introduce the artist slowly and show smaller details of her outfit.

Concept Ideas

Concepts

My group thought that 'All Star Lanes' as a possible location for our music video would work well inkeeping with the youthful theme because this is somewhere that young people may want to go with their friends. Furthermore, it fits in with the mise-en-scene we trying to create because we are trying to evoke a more retro image and make it feel like its the 1950's so this locations is perfect for our video as it has an established style that sets it apart from modern bowling alleys to give it an old fashioned, higher-class sort of atmosphere.  My group wants to film on the bowling lane itself and also there is a cafe area near the bowling lane which we can use to give the idea that the characters are very familiar with the surroundings we might want to use a tracking shot of them walking from the alley to the cafe, giving the idea of comfortability with their surroundings which will help the audience to feel like they can relate more to the artists as they might act similar to them in this sort of setting. During this part of the music video, we thought we could use a range of different shots including over the shoulder shots and point of view shots (POV) because the singer will be looking at the male character within these shots, it should give a sense of romance and we should be able to see the chemistry between the two characters and how this unfolds. Also an idea we had is that she could put a message for the male character in one of the bowling balls, in an attempt to get his attention and  hopes that he will pick it up but in the end he doesn't, someone else does. This idea could lyrically match the feelings that the artist is trying to tell us about because it will show how she wishes she was with this person when she keeps making small mistakes to mess it up. This would be endearing and relatable for the audience because they might have gone through similar circumstances.

Dance Studio

This was an illustration that my group had thought about which shows how we might use the dance studio to perform in. We all agreed that this could be a good location for the performance because it's a wide open space that is relatively blank so we could dress it in such a way that suits our video. We was going to use high key lighting techniques to make this location look very inviting and friendly. Alongside this, we thought about using pink and white balloons to give a very fun and youthful atmosphere, this gives the dancers something to interact with as they are performing which could give them a more carefree aura. My whole group thought that the sense of fun would be very important in giving the video an appeal to the target audience because pop videos aimed at slightly younger audiences always tend to have a more playful style, this is something that would make our video more popular with the target audience.

Costume

This was the first costume idea (image above) which we had for the female in the video, we thought about using a short pink dress with grunge style black boots to give the artist a more edgy feeling and that gave our artist a more unique style. We want to dress her like this because we think that younger audiences would appreciate the unique style and they might look up to our artist as a role model so the style isn't too provocative to set a bad example, we thought that the pink dress and black shoes would contrast to give the image that our artist is feminine but with a more kooky style that looks very thrown together, as though she hasn't put ridiculous amounts of effort into choosing her outfit. This style is more appealing to younger girls than a more glamorous image for example Nicki Minaj because lots of girls find this sort of image too much.

The second costume we initially thought of was a bright orange playsuit that would be paired with high heels, we thought that alongside a floral hair band and curled hair that this would look very vintage and sophisticated. We also thought that the bright colour would appeal to the audiences eyes and it would allow people to see the friendly side of our artist. We thought that this sort of outfit would be worn when filming location shoots because this costume looks like something that girls would wear out shopping or to a nice restaurant. We thought this would fit in with the concept of the video because the style of the artist is supposed to be very flirty but not provocative so this figure hugging play suit is flirty but doesn't show an inappropriate amount of skin.

 

 I designed this third costume which is a black cocktail dress and black heels. We thought that the third costume would be the more glamorous of the three and we thought an all black outfit would contrast with the other two bright and colourful outfits and give the artist a secondary image which is slightly more provocative than the other two which could appeal more to a male audience. We wanted to keep the costumes all very minimal without any logos because we think that the artist should be more minimal and simplistic, wearing things that catch the eye but don't draw too much attention away from the face. We were also thinking about teaming this dress with black converses to give it a more playful style but we are still deciding between the two styles. I thought that using a black dress would contrast with all the brighter mise-en-scene and it would make the artist stand out more.