Prop List

We created a prop list for each scene in order to be organised and prepared for the shoot 

Bath scene:

• Bath tub
• Cigarette
• Bandaged swimsuit
• (Minimum makeup)
• Grey tiled floor
• White background

Mirror scene:

•  Mirror (preferably one with light bulbs round the edge)
• Chair to sit on
• Make up on the make up table
• Glass and bottle of champagne

Black and red scene:

• Black floor
• Black brick wall
• Christian Louboutin heels
• Red lips
• Red nails
• Seductive costume with sexy tights

White background scene:

• Individual outfit ie an all-in-one suit
• Picture frame that she holds to face
• Heavy make up with bright eye shadow and lipstick and heavy jewellery
• Maybe no shoes
• Big tacky diamante ring
• Glossy black balloons

Looking at the 1991 Azealia Banks video

I looked at the original 1991 music video and screenshot and noted down when a new scene or something interesting was introduced into the video.

Story Board

After we created our first time line which will probably change slightly I started roughly sketching some images of each shot to visualize the video. I found starting the story board quite challenging as I had to make our detailed descriptive words into rough drawings, however after creating the first three pages I realise this is a key exercise in order to be prepared and detailed during creating the video, using it as a guide line of shots we want and need, instead of just 'winging it' and filming whatever. This way I was conscious of how many shots we had in each scene, making sure we didn't leave out one of the four scenes more than the others etc. I will finish off the story board throughout the next week however I realise that it will be a long process as we have to draw every shot, so therefore maybe we will split a section for each group member to draw so it takes a third of the time.

Time Line

In our lessons this week one useful thing we have created is a time line second by second of each shot in our music video. This was a really useful exercise as it made us visualise each shot at what angle and which set and for how long etc.

We decided to introduce each of the 4 strands throughout the video, making sure we build the energy and keep it interesting throughout by incorporating something new within the strands. Eg her being in a different position, different shots, and incorporating various props to the original strand/scene to keep it different and interesting, making sure we were keeping a cohesive collective feel throughout.

It was quiet challenging as it took a long time and was very precise; we decided to split 1 minute per person so we did three minutes faster which was very effective.
In order to do this; we were listening to the track (not concentrating much on the lyrics) and trying to link the “feel” of the track back to our ideas that we have.

We then came together to create a final one, adjusting a few things and made sure it all flowed, this is what we came up with:
 

0:00	Tracking shot from her breasts to her lips on the black background
0:03	Tracking close up of her arm on the black background
0:05	Glimpse of the black background without her
0:06	Close up of her the side of her face with emphasis on her eyes on the black background
0:08	Tracking of her legs (from feet to waist) on the back background
0:10	Wide shot Shot of her in the bath tub (She wolf style)
0:11	Flash the wide shot without her in the bath
0:12	Close up of  her feet (in heels) moving to the beat.
0:14	Flash of the white background (without her
0:15	Wide shot of her back from behind on the black background.
0:17	Introduction to her full body; starts singing in the bath tub scene; present her with a wide shot
0:19	Close up of her body in the bath tub tracking along her
0:21	Close up of her face in the bath tub while lip-syncing
0:22	Distorted flash her of sitting on the bath tub in the black swim suit while smoking
0:23	Slow motion of her licking / getting water on her face (sexual ways) of the tap
0:25	Close up her winking
0:27	Back to her lipsyncing in the bath tub with a cigarette in her hand
0:30	‘Rata-tat-tat-tat’ big close up her of her lips
0:32	Sitting on chair and zoom close and out and ‘pat-pat-pat
0:33	Her dancing to the beat; white scene to show her full body thus presenting her.
0:37	Close up of her face then edit it so the image is split into 4 sections (like the photobooth edit on macs) ; from the bath / water scene.
0:41	Black and red scene, her walking away from camera in her louboutins Maybe standing ? 5 close ups of her body (legs; thighs; waist; boobs; above neck) A jump from Boobs to face (very quick cut)
0:47	Her looking in mirror leaning forward to apply lipstick (or just her body her head with her hand to the rhythm of the “eh eh ehe ehh”)
0:50	Shot of her legs wriggling in bath
0:52	Then every time she says ‘progress’ the camera tilts 45 degrees clockwise but se see just her face ; tilting not in in a circular movement; going from chin facing left and chin face face the right. Then flashing her holding with a photoframe in the white scene; or her doing seductive faces in the bath; with 1 second jolts in between going back the titled face part.
0:58	Flash of a full length shot of her completely natural looking to same shot of her materialised twice; while natural glimpse of her smoking a cigarette
1:03	Mid shot of her in bath; we see her with her legs out and/or her cigarette down the side.
1:06	Back on chair and when she says ‘jewel’ she grabs some bling she’s wearing and the camera zooms close up and maybe have an edit effect to emphasise the blingness then zoom back out to her on chair ARROGANTLY like she is the best in the world.
1:10	Black and red scene- only one side of her body is in the camera shot and she’s facing the back and puts out leg to side then have a mirror effect of her leg. Then back to her dancing in front of black wall Cut her body into two and see her leg out (seductive pose) cutting her (either alone or together) onto the screen 8 or 16 times.
1:18	When filming we’ll slow the track down and she can be applying make up then when we edit the clip we’ll put the speed back to normal so it looks like she did it really quick
1:23	See her dancing in one third of screen (the scene where we’ll see her in another third of the screen later on)
1:26	In bath she runs water through her hair
1:30-3:	: extreme close up of her lip synching  against black brick
1.34-7	mid close up of her hips and arms dancing against w hite background
1.38-41	her drinking champagne on sofa
1.41-5	extreme close up of her lips singing – black and white red lips
1.46-9	exactly same as above but flipped upside-down
1.50-3:	over the shoulder shot of her lying in bath singing
1.54-6	: her in white background dancing in 1/3 of screen on left while other 2/3 screen is black
1.56-8	her in white background dancing in 1/3 of screen on right while other 2/3 screen is black
1.59-2.04:	Looking in mirror singing and being vain
2.05-07	: close up of her hair waving around in the bath water
2.08-12:	Black, white and red shot of her lip synching
2.13-16	lying on sofa bird’s eye view emphasising body
2.17-20:	white dance panning shot from her feet up to her face
2.20-22:	: birds eye shot in bath looking innocent: ‘NY rose me’
2.22-4:	mirror shot acting vain ‘most high chose me’ singing to herself
2.25-28:	really fast cut of 4 shots à ‘let me know what I can’ in bath scene, ‘can’ in red scene, ‘can’ in mirror sofa scene, and last ‘can do for you’ in white dance background
2.28-30	shot of her dancing against white wall sliding down it
2:30	slow feel to it; show her gentle sexuality through a wide shot of her.
2:33	"man man man" close up of her face with flash of her in the bath tub.
2:37	Wide shot of her viewing from behind infront of the mirrror then wide shot showing the other way
2:41	Her touching her body showing her sexual confidence; mid shot of her on the brick scene
2:43	Mirror scene jumping to dancing scene showing her vanity at the end; close up and wide shot
2:46	Her lipsyncing in the bath, tracking forward to her until the end of lyrics
2:52	Flashing her in the white background alone
	Introducing her in a different moving positions  The screen will be cut into sections of 3 2 of these sections will be carefully but also randomly selected Changing them every 2 out of three every second
3:07	Smooth transition to ending scene where we see her infront of the mirror rolling her head; wide shot of her face.

Casting

We casted Bela Walter for the role of the main girl because she suits the vibe of the track and she could defiantly play up to the role of the confident artist. She is sexy and can act sexual in the video, she is cool, fashionable, bubbly, confident, chic, glamorous, silly and of all rebellious. Her whole attitude and confidence will really help us keep the energy and vibe up throughout all four performance strands and fit the star image we are trying to create.
She is really eager to be in the video and will bring enthusiasm to the whole image, video and creativity.
She loves fashion and is very creative so can also have clothes for the costume.
Simon in my group is also in the same boarding house as her, this is useful because they can practice and rehearse back at house.

Further Development

We decided to go with the Azelia Banks song 1991 as its very upbeat and quirky, with the tone and vibe we were looking for. We wanted to have a performance video with four different scenes of her in the studio that we can cut together making it look visually pleasing and exciting.
Here are the performances we came up with to begin with:

We googled some images that were relevant and pitched the idea to Luke and noted down the idea in detailed stages thinking realistically if it would work and we decided that we could do it. Here are the notes we took down in our pitch with Luke:

After finalising the idea I created a powerpoint of images and GIFs of each performance scene to create a vibe and show the idea and feel we are going for in each bit to get inspiration and keep us on track.

Azelia Banks // Van Vogue

We then looked for a more upbeat song which had oomph and sounding out of the ordinary. We looked at Azelia Banks as she is a powerful singer/rapper who's songs are interesting and have many layers which would be good for a music video as we could cut to lots of different things in a fast pace. However her song such as 212 is extremely well known and when ever you hear it you associate it with her and her video, this is when we started looking at her less famous songs and came across her one 'Van Vogue' which is a year old and only has half a million views.


When listening to the song our group imagined what would go well with this kind of song and mind mapped lots of visual ideas. Here is our mind map:

As the song is very quirky and individual we thought of a crazy kind of circus inspired theme for our video. It would all be in the studio which would illuminate our previous problems about lighting and weather, and would only need a small cast instead of our other ideas which were big casts.
We thought of having a very minimalistic backdrop behind the performance of just black and lights.



I really liked our idea of one of the scenes creating a life size picture frame and having around three dancers completely still and have another scene where they are crazily dancing and cut really fast between the two so you have flashes of movements. They could be dressed in for example black and white or red to fit the theme.






Another scene we imagined was the girl in water lip synching and dancing, and then her against a plain black background, but then in post production edit some of the clips so she is mirrored or upside down for example.

Jose Gonzalez // Heartbeats

After deciding to not go through with our previous ideas, we decided to mind map some new ideas. We started with a song in the middle and then branched out in more detail about our ideas for it like what the band looked like, the different stands and locations and how we would edit it.
I chose the song Heartbeats by Jose Gonzales which was in the Sony bouncing balls advert and is now seven years old. When I showed my class the advert they all loved the song so I thought this would be a good choice as it is popular but not associated massively with an artist as it has no music video.


Here is our mind map for this idea:

We quickly pitched this idea to our teacher to see if he thought it was any good and could be done. They liked the song and the cold wintery mood and tone of the video as it matched the song well; however were not sure about some elements of the video. They felt that something was missing to make it engaging and have more watchability, in order for us to do this we needed to take the video to another visual level and go out of the norm. They also were not sure about the girl element as it may look a bit cheesy and soft and therefore we should ditch the romance.
As the whole video could get a bit repetitive and was lacking in depth in order for the audience to watch it again and again, we decided to rethink our ideas and take on board the advise of not being so literal and to make our video more surreal and intriguing.

A talk on music video company Polydor

Today in our media lesson we had a woman Emily come in to talk about her job, she creates and plans music videos for the record label Pollydore and has worked with the delights of Lana Del Ray, Ellie Golding and many more amazing professional artists.
She emphasised the importance of the music track fitting the idea, she always is given a song and tries to get a feel for the tone and the artist in order to capture a video that relates to the artist and the song, instead of horseshoeing an idea into a video.
She said that using video references, images and influences is a good way to get your idea across, instead of having a very dense wordy brief.
She showed us a variety of music videos she had done and told us about them.

Ellie Goulding - Burn's budget was £60,000 with 100+ extras and shot for the whole day till 3am. I liked how they shot bits in 50 frames as it gave it a different speed and look which gave a stylistic element to the video.


First Time Caller by White lies was a lower budget at £15,000 as it was a lower key video which was simple but still very effective. I really like mixture of the performance of the band and the cuts of the narrative as they flow well together and give the video a creative uniqueness.

Overgrown by James Blake was created by NABIL, the budget was £30,000, they shot the video in LA over three days so it was a big production, but the end result looks amazing and fits the song perfectly. There are lots of elements in this video that are intreeging and catch your interest which makes you want to watch it over and over again.

The 1975 Sex video was my favourite; it was interesting as the band originally had a video for the song before it became very famous, it was just a performance video of the band. However they decided to recreate the video when the song became more popular, suggesting that a mixture of performance with other strands such as narrative and stylistic elements make a better, more successful video as it is more visually engaging and popular instead of just performance. Their budget for their new video was £55,000 which is fairly high compared to most of the others, however there is a lot going on throughout the video which makes it understandable as the final outcome looks so interesting and professional.


She gave us some really good advise which I will take into account when creating our video. The performance and the band should be cohesive; the continuity needs to remain the same and fit everything together as a whole body of work. The video needs to fit the tone and feel of the artist and the song. The pace of the editing should be interesting and not repetitive, cutting to the beat to make the look polished, fitting the song and the image together. Adding new locations/scenes in throughout the video makes it less repetitive and more visually exciting as a lot is going on so it makes you want to watch it again and again.

My groups other ideas

Jane in my group also pitched an idea for a music video outdoors with a one man band performing.

She got very good feedback from this idea, however we decided to create a few more ideas and do very different styles to see which we preferred.

Simon in my group pitched a very different music video idea styled in the 1920's with a modern twist. This idea was also very good, however after pitching we decided it would be too difficult to get all the set and props to look classy and expensive without a high budget so decided to rethink our ideas.

We also had another idea for a punk/rock song which was very different to our other ideas. It is about little girls beauty pageants and would juxtapose the song, however then as the song picked up the girls would be screaming and have tantrums and the parents and judges would get angry. However we felt we did not have much depth to go on for this video and it would be difficult finding such a big cast and to find all the costumes, stage and children.

Pitching concepts to my class and feedback

I presented my prezi to the class, explaining my idea about a music video.

Afterwards I got some really good feedback from the class on things they thought were good and on things that were issues and could be improved.
Everyone really liked the stylistic idea of the UV paint on people in the dark, someone also suggested that we could film this section in the studio as that would illuminate difficulties filming outside in the dark. People also liked the idea of a big open field and having the whole video and atmosphere very chilled and casual with a group of people watching the band perform, they agreed that MGMT Time To Pretend was a good song to create this effect as it was upbeat and different. However most of all they loved the bouncing balls idea as it is a very visually exciting element to have in a music video. However we then discussed how I could tie in the bouncing balls with the field performance as they wouldn't bounce if we had them in a field as we would need a hard surface. I then thought perhaps we could have them rolling down the field or a hill, or if the band performed on a small stage we could have them bouncing on the stage to the beat of the song.
I also received some useful constructive criticism which has helped me understand the practicality of some of the aspects of the video. Most people loved the bouncing balls and UV paint, however decided it would be too much to have both ideas, picking just one would make it easier to link the video and make it flow. The issue of a field was also raised as a lot of music videos are set in a natural environment eg field, woods etc, so I should consider the originality of this and make sure it is unique and interesting. If I wanted to use old vintage cars, eg the combi, it would be difficult and expensive to find and hire for the day. Another big issue with filming outside would be the weather, as it will be Autumn time when filming the weather will be unpredictable and if it rains and is dark it will not have the summer festival chilled vibe to it and will look odd. Another suggestion was to film three different strands in order to interchange between them to make the video more exciting and not just people in a field.

Presentation of music video

Music Video Idea 2

Another idea for a music video I had was of an old woman looking at a scrap book of memories and photos in her living room. As she flicks through the pages there are objects stuck in the pages along side the photos. The camera then zooms into a photo of her when she was young with her boyfriend; this image then comes to life, like a flash back, and we see a short clip of this memory. They are around 16 and walking in a forest laughing and having fun, he picks up a feather and puts it in her hair. This feather is stuck in the scrap book next to the photo. It then cuts to her turning the page or maybe having an effect where the screen turns the page of the clip like she's visually turning to the next memory. The next photo that comes to life is of their wedding as they come out the church with family and friends throwing confetti at them and them driving away in a 'Just Married' car. The next of them holding their new born baby. These flashbacks could be edited in a vintage style to suggest it was some time ago in the late 30's/early 40's. World War II started in 1939 so the husband was sent to war when he turned 18, leaving her with their new born baby. In the scrap book there are letters he has written to her while at war, these could also become flash backs of her receiving them/him writing them.
I then thought of two different endings; one being that her husband then died in the war and she remembers this time, when she finishes the scrap book she shuts it and closes her eyes, the feather that was stuck in the book falls out onto the floor and floats away, symbolising she has past away.
However I thought this could be too depressing and heavy for a music video and thought of an alternative ending. When she finishes looking at the book she goes to buy some flowers and walks to a grave yard where she places them at a grave stone and stands for a while, the audience might imagine her husband died. However then she turns around to see him walking towards her, they embrace and visit the grave of their old friend together as a twist to the end of the story.  

Music Video Idea

An idea I had for a music video was to the song Time To Pretend by MGMT. They are an indie/pop boy band and the song is upbeat and easy going. My idea is set in the 60's; there is a group of roughly four/five guys in a VW Combie on a road trip on a sunny day. They arrive in a big field and set up a tent, there are lots of other groups who also arrive with tents and picnics. They all watch the sunset, paint body paint on each other, chilling and chatting. One of guys gets out the MGMT vinyl record and plays it while they watch the sun set and all dance.