Searching for props

The other day my group looked around school  for any props we could borrow, this would be easier then finding people to bring theirs in or for us to buy them.

We found this chair which we thought would be good for the dressing room scene. We asked Bela to sit in the chair to see what it looked like and she was sniping around and practising in it well. 

We also found this chair we liked for the dressing room scene and we thought this one might be better as its a lot lower so would fit under a table easily, however is more restricting for her to move in.

We then opened up the storage container which had loads of things packed in, at the back we spotted the bath that we will be using. It was good to see it in person as we got a rough idea of the size and depth of it. We plan to paint this bath matte black which we will need to do way before shoot day as it will properly need a few coats and dry.

We also spotted these Grecian white pillars at the back of the storage; we loved them and thought they would fit so well in the bath scene along with the black bath and white floor and walls, adding texture to the scene instead of just having a plain white background. 

Our animatic

After we finished drawing the story board we then filmed each shot for 5 seconds in the correct order with the camera we will use in the real thing, in order to cut each shot to the actual beat in editing creating an animatic and get an idea of our ides mixed with the song. It was helpful to use this camera as it reminded us of how it works and was like a test run of using it before the actual shoot day; this will save time on the day as now we don't need to remind our selves of how to use it while shooting. This process really emphasised how many shots we actually have, coming to a total of 57, these will need to be very fast paced and will be quite difficult to edit but will go with the pace of the song well.





After filming each shot which took a long time, we then went to the editing suit and uploaded all the shots to Adobe Final Cut Pro.
We then uploaded the Azealia Banks song 1991 from ITunes onto the project and cut the song to the appropriate length of 3:08 as we decided it went on a bit too long and we didn't need the ending instrumental section. We then went through each clip one by one putting them in the right order and making the length we had planned them to be before hand.

It was really useful to use the program again since my last AS project as I had forgotten quite a lot!

When we had everything in the correct order we exported the project and uploaded it to YouTube.




Here is our final animatic that we can refer to on the shoot day, this has been really useful planning as we now know what shots we want and in what order.

Coppyright request

In order to use the Azealia Banks song 1991 for our music video we researched what company owned the rights to the song in order to email them asking for permission to use it. We wrote a formal email to Interscope who own the rights of the song, explaining what we wanted to do and asking for permission to have the rights to use the song. As they are a big company we doubt they will email back with a response however we still thought it necessary to ask instead of just using the song without requesting the rights. This is the email we have sent them:

 





 

More Stylistic Shots

We reflected after finishing our story board that we needed to break up the four scenes of her with other stylistic shots.
We thought about adding in these things:

• A big perfume bottle

• Champaign/ice bucket/glass - reverse the shot to go backwards

• organza

• red lights - we looked at an old music video and saw these lights in the background we could flash

• photography lighting flashing like a strobe - could flash to lighting and then her and then back to lighting

• tattoo - the girl we are using has a small tattoo on her wrist that we can use as a logo for her throughout her branding and also show close ups of it in the video

• paint chucking onto her and onto the scene and balloons in a stylistic way so we can slow motion and reverse the shots. 

Props research

After writing down what props we needed we researched where we could buy them easily and cheaply.
We had a new idea of having glossy black balloons floating in the white dance scene; as we want them floating we need them to be filled with helium. Luckily the media department have a helium tank so all we need to buy are the balloons, we found cheap ones on ebay:


A difficult prop we researched was a bath tub, these are very expensive and also big so a hassle to collect/delivered. We think the media department might still have a bath from last years media shoots so we will look more into this as if we could just borrow that one it would be a lot easier. In case we cant borrow one we have looked into buying one:


Another difficult prop to get it a chaise lounge which is also big and expensive; looking on eBay we found many different colours and styles:
 
However we found this one which we thought was perfect for what we wanted:
But sadly this one was collect only and we googled how far away it was and it would take over two hours to drive there and collect it and then the journey back, therefore we decided to rethink this prop if a chaise lounge proves too difficult.

An easier prop we researched was a mirror for the sofa/mirror scene. We looked at mirrors with light bulbs around them however these were all too expensive and therefore we decided to go for a more simple cheaper option and buy one from Ikea:

As this one is only £12 we thought we could buy four of them and make one big mirror to make it look more impressive.

Rehearsals

In order for us to prepare for shoot day we decided we needed to do rehearsals with Bela to get her used to the song and what to do while on camera. We made a time table of when we would practise with her to keep on track of it:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
30th-4th		Enigma (5-5:30)		Prep time (7-7:30)
7th- 11th			Activities (3:30-4)		Enigma (1:50-3)
14th-18th	Activities (4-4:25)		Activities (3:30-4)

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