Social media research....

Whilst brainstorming ideas for our music video I thought it would be useful to see if any of the social media sites could help us with some inspiration. I searched twitter with the hashtag Indie Rock and I came across this album cover, the colours and tones to the front of the cover really caught my eye and the simplicity of just having a head on shot of the retro car coming towards the camera is extremely effective and creates a very relaxed mood. I thought that this could help me when I begin to research for my digi-pak.

New song...

We have decided to use 'Pvris - White Noise' as our new song. We felt that this song allowed us to use a performance style video as well as being able to use the creative shots and black and white effect we wanted. We also liked the fact that this song does not yet have a music video, with our previous song choices we felt that once we had seen the actual music video it made it harder to think of our own original ideas, this made it a lot simpler to plan our current choice as we didn't have a video already in our minds.

New Idea...

This post may seem a little too familiar but we have decided to change our idea and our song, again. Although we liked our Nina Nesbitt - Stay Out concept after we began filming we realised that our idea and the footage itself was just not at the standard we had hoped. As a group we are capable of doing a lot better than the footage we came back with and we felt that it was because we lacked enthusiasm for that concept and where therefore not producing our best work.

So, we have decided to go down the performance video path and use some of our original ideas but in a different way. We have always liked the idea of using quite abstract, creative shots and using different fun locations which will stand out to our audience, we also liked the idea of having a black and white video however we felt that for our previous song choices the song was too upbeat for a black and white effect. 

By creating a performance video we are able to include some cuts to some abstract shots and it has given us the chance be a lot more open and creative with our filming which we have found works best for our particular group. 

Filming day one...

Today we began our first session of filming. We planned to film the shot for the lines "He's got a rolling stones tee, but he only know's one song", for this part we have decided to use stop animation and have a Rolling Stones t-shirt unravel from a scrunched up ball.

It took longer than expected because we had to slowly move small parts without making an obvious difference so that later on when we edit it, it should flow better, but apart from that we are really happy with our results so far.

British Film Institution...

As a media group we took a trip to the BFI (British Film Institution). We attended a lecture about Music Videos which would help us with the making and planning of our own and would provide us with some insight into how professional music videos are created.  The timetable below shows how our day was planned out. 

      

During the lecture I took notes on some tips and advice for making our music video which we will defiantly use.

                        

   

The session ended with a Q&A with music video director Jake Wynne, I found this extremely exciting because we were able to hear what directing professional music videos is like and any tips Jake had to offer us. Jake Wynne also showed us one of the videos called 'Autophilia' by The Bluestones - he directed and he spoke us through how he came up with the ideas and how he put them together.

Voyeurism...

In our music video we want to incorporate some form of voyeurism which will promote our star and our single even more. The opening to our video includes a record being put onto the record player, we have decided to use this opportunity to illustrate voyeurism by having the track and artists name on the actual  record.

As well as this we want to include some shots of the protagonist on their phone, when we do show this we can get some shots of pictures of themselves, the track and the album on their phone. 

Storyboard verse 3...

In our lesson today we have planned our footage and shot types for the third verse in our music video. The lyrics to the third verse mention different outfits such as "Checkered shirts and chino trousers, we know we want to show different outfit changes however we want to try out a different technique rather than just showing them in still shots. This led us to think of the opening titles to 'Ugly Betty' and the split screen effect they have used. 

We have decided to take inspiration from this intro and use it to show our different outfits however we will use a different transition to mix up our outfits.

Storyboard verse 1...

Richard Dyer's Star theory...

Dyer proposes that...


"A star is an image, rather than a real person, that is constructed out of a range of materials

(e.g advertising, magazines, films etc)."

• Dyer says that someone becomes a pop star once they/ their persona is delivered to the public through reasons other than just their individual talent (music, acting etc.). 
• The stages from being a pop performer to becoming a pop star can be extremely beneficial to the artist. Once they are known by the public for more than just their music talent, it is harder for the public and the media to forget the individual.
• Dyer argues that stars are constructed to be seen as “real people” by displaying particular emotions and beliefs, when in reality they have been constructed by their institution.
• Stars are made to serve a financial purpose to their industry. He argues that “stardom” is created purely for financial reasons and that the stars finance situation is created through their fans and the mass media.

Rhianna

                       

• Rihanna is known for her music career which began when she met record producer Evan Rogers through mutual friends in late 2003.
• She was original a ‘pop performer’ as she had no other connections to fame other than her music career.
• She soon became a ‘pop star’ once she started to date Chris Brown.
• Album cover for 'Unapologetic' illustrates an example of the male gaze theory. The image above (unapologetic album) displays Rihanna naked in a sexualised position with the words 'Unapologetic' just covering up her breasts, this is very different from her first album cover (image below). Her first album 'Move into the sun' expresses a lot more innocence, by using a close up shot of her face it highlights the softness of her face, there is no use of hash make up and they have used very natural colours, this all ties in to portray a undertone of innocence.

• Rihanna released her album  album ‘Good girl gone bad’ when she first began dating Chris Brown. 
• She was signed to Def Jam Records when she released the album ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ and Def Jam Records had transformed her image to a ‘sexy, week-smoking, pop star’. Along with her new image came a new range of fan base.
• She was seen in most magazine’s attending premiers and celebrity parties all along with Chris Brown.
• Rihanna has now appeared in many films such as ‘Battlefield’ and ‘This Is The End’ which again gained her more fans.

Mood board...

Below is a mood board of some initial ideas we have for our music video.

Contacting the record company...

The next step for us was to contact the record company who manage Nina Nesbitt and ask for their permission to use the song in our music video. We looked on the official Nina Nesbitt website to find a contact email and we found her PR email on her twitter account so we emailed them both the email shown below. 

For copy right reasons we needed to explain to them that we are only using the song for our video and we will not be making any profit from the song, we are now waiting on a reply. 

Lyrics...

Below are the lyrics to our chosen song, Nina Nesbitt - Stay Out. Some of the lyrics that particularly stood out to me were "They think they're from the sxity's, But they were born in 1991" this line correlates well with our theme of youth and will be good for us to highlight in our music video. I also liked the lines "He's got a Rolling Stones tee" and "She's got a tattoo of a peace sign on her thumb" for these lines we can include images of what the lyrics are saying.

Developing ideas...

Now that we have our new idea we decided to create a spider diagram of our ideas when we first heard the song.

We also printed off a copy of our lyrics and started making notes on the type of shots we would want. We all instantly pictured a video filmed late in the evening and we wanted to illustrate the youth feel in the song by having shots of us enjoying being young and going out.

New Idea...

After coming together to start storyboarding our idea we soon realised that we were no longer passionate about our idea and we felt that the choice of song would not work with the time of year. The song 'Riptide' by Vance Joy has the feel of a summer song and the majority of the shots and visions we had were shots in the sun and in the summer which we now realise would not be possible in October/ November.

In response to this we have chosen a new idea which we are all very excited about. We have decided to use the song 'Stay Out' by Nina Nesbitt, when we first heard this song we knew that it would work with the locations we have to offer and the time of year as we felt that it is a cold winters song.

Coca-Cola Advert...

When I was recently on youtube an advert for Coca-cola  advert came up just before the video I had clicked on,  the video showed everything from the mans perspective which is exactly like we plan to do for our music video. I particularly liked their idea of having both black and white filter and colour, we could use this in our video to show the two different personalities to the young girl and to symbolise how she's feeling. 

Codes and Conventions...

The genre of music for our chosen song - Riptide By Vance Joy - is Indie Pop/ Indie Folk. Below is a spider diagram of the codes and conventions of a Indie Pop/ Indie Folk song for us to refer back to when we begin to story board our music video.

Idea 3 continued...

We have come to the conclusion hat the idea we like the best is idea 3, we love the concept and we feel that the perfect song would be 'Riptide By Vance Joy'.

Whilst brainstorming our idea we all felt that the song that would work best for our video is 'Riptide - By Vance Joy'. The beat to the song will be perfect when it comes to editing as it has a distinctive beat which would be good to work with. Also the lyrics of the song express our concept perfectly. The lyrics illustrate how the boy loves the girl and he just wants to be her "left hand man", also the lines "I just wanna, I just wanna know, If you're gonna, if you're gonna stay" can show how due to the girls mental illness he never knows if she loves him or not.

Idea 3...

Our third idea for our music video was inspired by the video Duke Dumont - 'I Got U'. The plan is to base our narrative on a young teenage girl with a mental illness and to show the ups and downs in her relationship with her boyfriend. We would show this by having the whole video from the boyfriend's point of view - similar to the Duke Dumont - 'I Got U' video - so that we can see his relationship with his girlfriend and the problems he faces from his perspective. 

Whilst brainstorming our idea we wrote it all down on a mind map (below) which illustrates our idea better. 

Lyrics...

Below are the lyrics to Idea 2, Sigma ft Paloma Faith, the lyrics have been a strong influence for our narrative particularly the line "I won't live my life through you".

Hell down, heaven down
Living in the same town
Tryna find something new
Broken picture frame
I've been frozen in
Tryna find a better view

This ain't real, this ain't cool
This ain't what I signed up too
This ain't right, it's no good
No good, oh

Everything is changing
And I've been here for too long
Going through the same things
I've been hurting too long, got to move on
Say I
I can't do this anymore
If everything is changing
And I know, you'll find it

I don't understand playing by the same hand
How you find something new
I can't work it out, what it's all about
I won't live my life through you

This ain't real, this ain't cool
This ain't what I signed up too
This ain't right, it's no good
No good, oh

Everything is changing
And I've been here for too long
Going through the same things
I've been hurting too long, got to move on
Say I
I can't do this anymore
If everything is changing
And I know, you'll find it

Got to let go
Got to let go

I've been here for too long
I've been here for too long
I've been here for too long
I've been here for too long
I've been here for too long
I've been here for too long
I've been here for too long
Everything is changing

Treatment pitch...

Once we had came up with an idea for our music video we needed to present it as a treatment pitch to our media class as if we were a real band. This not only helped us practicing our presenting skills but also allowed us to gather feedback from our class and ask their opinion on any changes we should make.

Idea 2...

Another idea we have for our music video was inspired by the video for 'Afterglow' by Wilkinson which we all loved, we liked the idea of having lots of quick fast shots and we especially liked the writing on each shot. In the video (below) it shares the experiences the couple have gone through in the past 5 years, this heavily inspired us for our music video.

We have decided to show all the experiences of two very different teenage girls at the most exciting and interesting parts of their lives. The idea is to have one girl who is not used to going out much and hasn't tried many new things such as drinking, smoking ect. and the other who is used to everything and becomes bored of it all to show the extreme opposites. We wanted the video to reflect the lyrics in the song so we needed to think of a song which would be suitable for our story, we knew we wanted the type of House/Pop music similar to 'Afterglow' however the lyrics in Afterglow did not work with the concept of our video. So after discussing it with our group we came across 'Changing' by Sigma ft. Paloma Faith, this song is exactly what we were looking for, the lyrics say that "everything is changing" which relates to our plot of how the two young girls start to change as they try new things and have new experiences. 

Prelim...

Below is our Prelim video, we decided to go for Bruno Mars' 'Lazy Song' as it was all one take and one still shot it was quite simple for us to film in comparison to our original choice of 'Black Velvet'.

Photography gallery...

I recently visited the Photographers Gallery in London and I came across a few photos which have given me some inspiration for our music video. I instantly loved the black and white effect of the photos below and it is something which I would like to incorporate into our music video. As well as being black and white I was particularly drawn to the middle photo, the close up of the two people hugging conveys a lot of emotion which could be useful for our video.

I also noticed this display which illustrated an illusion. The artist took one photograph and multiplied it many times which creates a pattern from afar but when looking at it close up you can see it is actually one photograph.

                                                                               

Idea 1...

As a group we decided that we wanted our music video to have some narrative but also some meaning and a message behind it, we started to think of songs which could have a message which we could covey in our film and we came across Lana Del Ray. Ciara and Tara knew quite a few of her songs already where as I had never listened to her so we listened to a selection of her songs and we came across 'Young and Beautiful'. We knew that this song was clearly telling a message about how youth and beauty fades and how those things are not important, this was perfect for us as we liked the idea of sending a message to girls as it was something we all could relate to.

However, we realised that the song is very slow and doesn't have much of a beat, this would become a problem with editing because we wanted a solid beat which we could make cuts and edits to. We then looked into some remix's of the song which would give us our beat, we was lucky that many people had remixed the song so we now have a lot to chose from such as the videos below.

  

Fish Tank- Case Study...

In our class we have been looking at the film Fish Tank as a case study for our A2 course. The film was made by BBC Films, UK Film Council and Kasander Film Council, it was a low budget production which had a budget of $3m. The film made $2,357,853 in box office sales and was a huge successes. Fish Tank won the Jury Prize in 2009 and won a BAFTA for Best British Film in 2010.

The film was directed by female director and actress Andrea Arnold and starred Katie Jarvis, Kierston Wareing, Michael Fassbender. It was released on 14th May 2009 in Cannes and again on the 11th of September. Fish Tank was given 5 stars by The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, he says that   "Andrea Arnold has demonstrated her mastery and fluency in the social-realist idiom, and simply makes it fizz with life. Having now watched Fish Tank a second time, I am more exhilarated than ever by Arnold's idealism, and in a movie marketplace where so much is vapidly cynical, this is a mistral of fresh air"

AS film evaluation...

	What Went Well	What Did Not Go Well
Digital Technology	Panasonic video recorder, used to achieve the different camera angles/ shots we wanted; pan, close up, long shot. Tripod, used to make sure the camera was steady and was also used in some of the pan shots we took that we did not include in the final cut.  Fish eye lens, we used a fish eye lens which attached onto an iPhone 5 to create different shots which we found from our audience feedback were very effective.	Footage taken with the Fish Eye lens attached to iPhone was slightly shaky because it was handheld.
Creativity	Fish Eye lens created a unique shot which stood out in comparison to the other shots.	- At the end of the opening we included an audio of a baby crying and a woman saying ‘Help’, we had mixed reviews on this as some people felt that it was too quiet and that the audio wasn’t long enough.
Research and Planning	We recorded some practice shots to get used to using the camera and to experiment with the different types of shots we could use.  Prelim film, this gave us some practice with editing and working with audio.  We watched films with the Psychological Thriller genre such as ‘Taken’, ‘The Bone Collector’ which gave us inspiration for our own film. Camera angles/shot list, props list and location information, all of these helped us to prepare before we went out and filmed.	- We changed the idea for our film multiple times before we settled on our final idea. This meant we created a lot of plans and had a lot of footage for past ideas which we never used  and reduced the time we spent on our final idea.
Post Production	Pull focus editing, used when text appears. Black and white edit of the production company shot at the start.  Fast cuts from the drivers mouth to a different shot and back. Audio, music playing throughout is muffled and quieter when the door shuts.	Shot of the Slow tilt up to the interior mirror is after the car has started driving however in the shot you can see the car isn't moving, in the editing we should have placed this shot before the car began to move.
Using Conventions from Real Media Texts	Title of the film has a link to a Children’s nursery rhyme, this is often used in psychological thrillers.  Close up shots, adds mystery and suspense.	- Romantic audio used, this is not common in psychological thrillers as they tend to use some suspense or thrilling music.

Song inspiration...

When considering what song genre we might want to chose for our music video I already had some ideas in my head of what type of music I think would be good for our group. I got my inspiration from the TV series Made In Chelsea, every time I watched an episode I loved the songs that were played in between scenes and they all had the same type of indie pop genre. I then when online and found a song list of all the songs which have been played in the episodes and started to listen to a few to see if any would appealed to us. 

Music video analysis...

When I first saw the video to 'Hideaway' by Kiesza I loved everything about it. What immediately stood out and amazed me was the fact that it was all done in one take and how well choreographed it was. From looking at Andrew Goodwin's theory there are a few elements which are represented in this music video; the choreographed danced routine matches the hip hop genre of music, which was Goodwin's first point. There is a tracking shot used throughout which follows the artist 'Kiesza' adding emphasis on her importance in the video and giving her 'star image'. And finally there is some representation of the artist being sexualised which links to the male gaze and the artist frequently looks directly into the camera. 

I also chose to analyse the music video 'Fancy' by Iggy Azalea because when I initially saw it I noticed that the video  showed more qualities of a film. The music video is suppose to be a remake of the film 'Clueless', this gives an obvious link to Andrew Goodwin's theory about the intertextual reference to other media forms, in this case film. The video also includes the 'star image' quality by making the artist the main focus of the majority of the shots, and by having her look directly into the camera which connects her to the audience. The visual elements of the video does reflect the music by having some choreographed dance routines and by creating a dancing/ party atmosphere which keeps in tone with the hip hop/ dance music genre. 

Andrew Goodwin Theory...

Andrew Goodwin illustrates 6 key aspects of a music video, which he said was the difference between a professional made music video and an amateur one: 

1. The music video has to demonstrate and match the characteristics for the genre e.g. choreographed dance routine for a Hip Hop video. 

2. Connection between the lyrics and the visuals. The video can be used to emphasize the lyrics.

3. Creating a clear link between the music and the visuals e.g. the tone of the video reflects the tone of the music. 

4. Record company demand a clear focus on the vocalists, this is done by using close up shots of vocalist and having them frequently seen in the video. The focus here is on start image. 

5. The 'male gaze' is used to present things to appeal and attract the male audience, this usually means a sexual or objectification view on women. This also may mean the artist looking directly into the camera, helping to connect with them. 

6. There is often an Intertextual reference to other media forms, commonly films but also TV programmes, other music videos and other media sources.