Timeline

Preparing an efficient timeline is part of the pre-production proces of our music video. Nina and I were responsible for it and we devided the task between us. So, during the last week we have been working on finishing it on time for our shooting day on 10th November. The timeline is a guide-line for us, as it is the storyboard. Nevetheless, the timeline makes clear when exactly we shoot each shot, which will make it easier for us later on when we are actually shooting and when editing.

Permission Letter to Universal Music Group

In order to be allowed to use the track, we had to write a letter to Universal Music Group in order to ask for permission.

To Universal Music Group,

We are a group of A Level students working on an A level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as a part of this project:

I’m Not Like Everybody Else by The Kinks.

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely,

Charlotte Morgan, Nina Jakobsen, Edward Nightingale, Teodora Nguyen

Hurtwood House School.

Feedback

This is excellent work - there are evident clear accounts of your planning and research for your music video production day after half term.  Your efforts are sustained and 1st class!
I like the way in which decision making is evident along with reflection and revisions. 
Your cast list has been agreed and you need to be working on the set design and organisation of production. 
There are one or two ways to develop the blog:

First to begin using a wider range of blogging tools - there are lots of well presented images, but use of Flickr or powerpoint will increase the creativity that is shown on your blog. 
Second, and you do this already to an extent,  the valid, detailed and reflective comments that you make need to be developed further.  Do this with  with  key media concepts and theoretical ideas;  for example, link the planning to star image,  or how set design and lighting link to mise en scene and/ or what model's of lighting you are using in relation to your set - key, fill, directional, discuss the intensity and colour and what you are trying to represent about your artist.

 This will help make a more thorough evaluation of your work. 
Well done.

The importance of Research and Planning

Last week was a very essential one for our overall planning and progress on our music video. We took some very important decisions which will affect greatly our project. I think that the planning will make our it easier for us once it comes to the shooting of the music video after half term. In my opinion that we had done research and looked for influences and even theorists who are behind the concept we are after, such as Richard Dyer, our  understanding is deepened in that way and we are enabled to develop a greater comprehension of the product we are about to create.

So, I think that this week was a quite productive one in terms of where we are standing and what we still need to do in terms of planning and research.

Cast List

In my opinion, the cast list is quite an essential part of the preparation process. Therefore we needed to think throughly who we would like to have in our music video. We had to take the decision as a group and that is why each of us came up with suggestions and argumentation. It was of a great importance to choose the people that not only have the right look for our mod/indie image, but also playing musicians/singers. The problem was that most of the A2 students in our year have a limited number of videos to take part in, which makes it harder for us because our options are narrowed down. Therefore we thought of asking AS students whose teachers would be more willing to let them miss classes on the shooting day. At the end we decided that we will have two A2 and two AS students.

The look we were looking for was relaxed, easy-going, modern and good-looking because taking the fact that our theme is mod, the people in the video had to appeal to our target audience. On the other hand, we wanted them not to look too young, which made it harder for us to choose. Taking the experience from last year with the thrillers, I realized that it will be better if the people we choose are actors and musicians as well. However, the number of people in the school that have the right look, act and are musicians is not very high. Thus we thought that we obviously cannot have everything and we had to make a compromise. We agreed on four boys:

Phillip von Drechsel - Lead Singer

      Merlin Talard - Bassist

Tom Evans - Guitarist    

                             

                          

           



                                                               Will Bodnar-Horvath - Drummer

Will and Tom are A2, which makes it more complicated because they are busier, but he compromise is that Tom can play the guitar, so we are relying on the fact that he will learn the chords and the live performance will look real and believable as possible. Will has taken part in two music videos last year, also playing the drums, which means that he already has experience. Philip who is the lead singer, is given the song to learn and Merlin as well.

Feedback from our teacher:

We needed to discuss the cast list with our teacher Jason who gave us the green light under under the condition that Will would be allowed by his teachers to take part in our music video:

Research Digipak

Research digipak

View more presentations from hurtwoodhousemedia5.

Set/Lighting Designs

In order to be more prepared for the actual day of shooting and have the opportunity to portray what we wanted in the music video, it was important to have our minds set on set/lighting design, which we developed first on paper then discussed with Dan will be helping us with the lighting. We thought that it would be nice to re-present the scrap yard and therefore we decided on using natural lighting. We will have a key light in order to make the light more theatrical and strong. We want to have high light as well, lighting straight on the band playing. Back lighting will not be harsh but gentle in order to avoid creating any unwanted shadows, but the band members stand out against the background because we are concentrating on their image as indie/mod artists. Fill lighting will be used again to avoid sharp areas of contrast. The natural lighting will create a normal atmosphere, close to the audience rather than artificial (as most mainstream producers use), In terms of colours we wanted to use grey/metal, dark blue. We would like to have a smashed car, which will be lit in bright colours, smashed metal, junk and wires in order to re-create the junk yard.

 

We presented our ideas to Dan and had some feedback. He agreed with that that it would be better if we actually recreate the scrap yard rather than simply performance lit it. Dan thought that natural lighting will reinforce the day light we will have in the scrap yard. Nevertheless, we will still use back and key lighting. He liked the colours we suggested which will be metal, grey-blue and he thought effective if using a bright light on the vehicle in order to stand out from the rest of the set.

Here is a short video-diary I shot of Dan's feedback.

Shooting Schedule

In order to be more organized and be able to save time on the day, we prepared a shooting schedule. It will help us to be focused and know how much time we have left on every location.

8:30 – Meeting at the studio with crew and cast



8:45 – Costumes and make-up


9:00 – Set up the props


9:30 – Set up cameras and lighting


10:00 – Shoot starts – live performance shots
Wide Shot of band
Close-up on lead all the different band members
High-angle shot of the band/lead singer
Low angle shot on drummer
Shot of drummer from behind
Mid shot on bassist and guitarist
Tracking shot around lead singer


13:00 – Lunch Time


13:30 – Depart from school to scrap yard


13:45- Arrive at scrap yard


14:00 – Shots of scooter driving outside scrap yard and arriving there
Tracking shot on scooter
Mid Shot on driver
Shot from behind and the side of the scooter
Shot from above of scooter
Close-up on mirror
Close-up on driver's face
Mid shot of him arriving

15:00 – Scooter in the scrap yard
Tracking shot of him driving
Shots of different perspectives of him driving
Close up on driver
Close-up on pedal, he goes off scooter15:30 – Narrative shots – playing cards, shots in car, playing around
Close-up on table with cards
Mid-shot of band members
Pan - them playing
Reaction shots of scooter arriving

17:30 – Girls screaming
Point of view seeing girls approaching
Close-up on girls - excited
Mid shot of girls starting to run
Reaction of boys


18:00 – Back at school

These are two pictures of the actual scrap yard we would like to shoot in.

Costume List

As we are going down the mod route, we clearly had an image for the artist we wanted to create in order to fulfill the mise-en-scene.

           


We wanted the main artists to wear bowler hats, not all the time, but sometimes in order to have shots with a different perspective. We were influences by "Orange Clockwork" as you can see in the picture where he is looking up, but the hat gives the look a slightly mysterious look.

We wanted the artist to look smart and elegant, even neat because that is how people were dressed when the mod style was in trend. Therefore we decided that we would like them to wear black Chino trousers, collared shirts, black ties and Chelsea boots. We put the emphasis on the fact that the artists need to feel comfortable in their skin, but still be elegant. Mod fashion required people to look good, take of their appearance. So, we thought it will be a nice contrast and irony if have the artists looking neat etc. with the idea of the scrab yard.

  

For the girls, we looked through some of the female mod fashion and we thought it suitable if they will be wearing mini dresses with white boots or sandels.

 

     



Props List

In order to make the mise-en-scene believable for the audience we had to think through the props because it is quite important to plan what we are going to need in order to create the right atmosphere in the junk yard. I started from the beginning of the storyboard, so I would not miss anything. Therefore the scooter was the most important prop we would need in the opening. Then we thought about what they are going to be doing in the scrab yard and what they are going to need. So, a metal table with a set of cards, poker chips on top, empty beer bottles lying on the floor. We thought that it would be good if we have four black stools as well. The instruments obviously were to be included as well -  a mic on a stand, a guitar, drum kit and a bass. When I was thinking through the props list, I thought that we will need to re-create the look of the scrab in the studio as we will be filming the performance, using a green screen, in the studio. So, we thought that we will need a smashed car and trash in order to make it seem as real as possible.

Here is a moodboard I did on beeclip.

Animatic Storyboard

Why do we have to storyboard?

Storyboarding is an important part of a pre-production process in order to be possible for the crew to have a specific "outline" to which we all agree on. The storyboard is a graphical representation of the camera shots in the wanted order with details on them, such as location, camera angles/movement, lighting and action. It helps the crew to visualise the flow of the film sequence and work further from then by expanding or changing it. We also started with an initial storyboard and then had to change it, but still kept some of the shots. Nevertheless, we were enabled to see potential problems or add new ideas.

"In a production meeting, a picture really is worth a thousand words. You can script a sequence in words as clearly as you like, and there always be some misunderstanding. But if you use storyboards, it's so much easier to communicate your visual and dramatic ideas."

              Matthew Jones, Television Script Editor, Red Productions

This is me, working on our storyboard

I took two pictures of our completed storyboard, which is ready to be filmed and then edited into an animatic storyboard. We created the storyboard together - every member of the group would draw sketches and then at the end we used a big poster in order to find the right place for each shot. We did that as a group because it is important that everybody agrees on the flow of the video and has an idea of what we will be doing.

The next step was the actual filming of the storyboard. We had to put the storyboard on a white board and film each shot from then for 10sec. each.

There is a picture of me filming.




Editing

In terms of editing, we took some screengrabs in order to create a clearer presentation of our working process and development.

We thought that it will be useful to have a screengrab video, which will not only show a still image, but a little part of our editing process. The following one is of me editing. We learnt how to use the so called "markers". They are very helpful if you want to edit shots on the right drum beat. First of all, I listened to where exactly the drums are hit, and then I would put a marker on the spot. I found them extremely useful because they make the editing process easier. I realized that you do not have to cut every time when there is a new marker, but you use them as a guidance. Every time you think that there is a good place to cut, you can simply do it when there is a marker and make sure that the cut makes sense. Before this realisation, we had some problems because we were cutting every time there is a beat change and we ran out of shots. So, in the video as you can see I am extending some of the shots in order to make everything fit. We had to repeat some of the shots and therefore use more live performance. Due to the fact that our song is quite up beat, we wanted to use quick shots. We are planning on having a constant change of frames - the narrative to live performance.

 Evaluation

In our storyboard, we tried to portray the star image of the artists. The fact that he is driving a scooter first in town in order to reach the scrab yard signifies some of the key elements of the star image - the indie/mod star image. There are many close-ups of him, he is the lead singer and the focus is on him. As Richard Dyer says "The star must besimultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer". We tried to find activities for the band members in the scrab yard, which are close to the target audience and they can fulfill Dyer's star image concept. They are different because they hang out in the scrab yard, but at the same time they do the same as what young people do.

In terms of what we could improve was the graphics because some of the shots were not clear enough of what we wanted to portray, but this was partly due to the fact that neither of us could draw and therefore we struggled with the presentation of the shots. We also realized that we will need some more bike shots which could be quite effective, especially if we use a camera that will be attached to helmet in order to get a variety of perspectives, in this case the perspective of the driver of the scooter.

 

Thinking about how creative we were, we actually developed further analogue drawing into digital technology and then we uploaded it online. That is how we used digital technology and the advantage was that we could "see" the band performing. The "animation" helped to bring the concept we had alive.

 

Pondering over the planning of the rest of our production, the biggest challenge we had was the actual scrap yard because it is quite hard to get a permission from the manager of the scrap yard. The problem is that obviously it is a working one and we cannot be in the way. For the time being we are trying to find a compromise and try to persuade them and shoot on Sunday possibly, but we need to think of a possible solution if it does not work. So, our back-up plan is to shoot mods with scooters driving and then we just a new place for them to "hang out".

Here is our animatic storyboard.