I used PowerPoint to produce a treatment of this music video idea, influenced by the advert. This was really useful as it gave a visual concept of what we wanted, as well as verbal that enabled our audience to have a clearer understanding of what we were proposing and thus be able to offer us useful advice. An example of this were screenshots of the silhouette used in the advert as this presented how we wanted to show our silhouette in our music video the most.
During a screen test, we tried out our silhouette idea with Emma and decided that it was an idea that we definitely wanted to use in our music video:
We developed this idea further and used a white board in our music video so the image of Emma's body was clear:
During the planning of our music video, a technology we used was the Sony NX5 digital camera. The first thing we used this for was for our screen test, to choose our singer. This piece of technology was very easy and quick to use and allowed us to film as much as we wanted. The quality of the film was also very professional.
We filmed three different girls and asked them to pose and dance in front of the camera using three different props. This was very significant as it allowed our group to see what girl looked best on camera and who suited our music video the most.
I used the 'iMovie' programme on my Macbook Pro to edit all these auditions together along with our song, which facilitated us even more to decide who was best suited as we got to see which performance, dance and look fitted best with the track. The significance of doing this what that we were able to compare the girls using each prop on camera very easily by watching the clip and after watching this, our group made a mutual decision that Emma was the best for our music video. We also used the NX5 camera to film Emma dancing behind a white sheet. This was important for us as this made us realise that our silhouette idea would look really good in our music video and that we wanted to use it.
Another technology used during the screen testing was a mobile phone to take 3 pictures of each girl. We asked them to choose 3 poses that they thought suited the singer of our music video the most. Again, this helped us decide which girl looked best on camera and would be the most confident and co-operative on our shoot day. Furthermore, it was clear that Emma had the most sex-appeal infront of the camera, which is what we wanted for our artist.
Technology was key for our screen test but it also came with problems. We thought that we could use the wifi to play the song on YouTube on one of our laptops / phones but it let us down and caused us to start the screen test later than we wanted. Although, in the end, technologies were an amazing powerful tool to help solve our problems as we recorded on Sarah's mobile phone, the song from Youtube from a computer and then were able to play this in the Studio connected to a speaker.
Technology was also key for our rehearsal with our complete cast before the shoot day. The camera proved really useful for testing our choreography: we realised that our original choreography for the boys made them look awkward on camera and therefore we could play around trying different things in the rehearsal to see what worked and what didn't. We then edited this all together using 'Final Cut Pro' and decided our final choreography through this.
Researching adverts on YouTube was a significant in the construction of our research and planning. We wrote down all the locations used in the Dior Advert to help us realise that our group needed to ensure that Emma was doing lots of various actions in more than one set, otherwise it wouldn't be appealing to our audience. We also used this list as a basis for producing our storyboard.
Once we completed our storyboard, we were able to make a animatic of this using the NX5 camera to shoot our drawings and 'Final Cut Pro' to cut it together and to add the track. By doing this, we could see how our music video would look more accurately, how long we would need for each shot and if our track fit with the shots we had chosen. From this, we learnt that the shots of the photographer didn't work and that we needed lots more cutaway shots to keep up with the fast beat of the song.
After writing our storyboard, we began researching on the internet to see if any ideas for our photoshoot set came up as we wanted to use pictures to represent our storyboard and not our own drawings. The website 'photo shoot ideas', (http://pinterest.com/bapjap05/photo-shoot-ideas/) we found really useful and we used some images from this to represent shots in our storyboard. From this research, our group decided that we loved the idea of using one of the photoshoots as something very girly, including things such as flowers and mirrors and then use the other shoot for something very glamourous and possibly a 60's style.
Around this time, our group began to realise that being creative wasn't about doing something individual and that this research was really useful to give us inspiration. Our teacher introduced a definition of creativity to our group, which helped us realise this idea, "The making of the new and the rearranging of the old" (Bentley 1997). These images were particularly inspirational for our sets, especially the image of the flowers and fairy lights on the wall. (shown above)
The internet was significant for our research and planning because it allowed us to look at a wide range of choices for our costumes and sets. It also was very quick and easy so we didn't spend too much time, particularly on costume to decide what we wanted. To find the dress for Emma's first girly photoshoot, we looked at websites like 'www.polyvore.com' after typing on google image 'twiggy style dresses'.
As a result, Emma found a similar dress that she had and wore it for the first photo-shoot in our music video:
A key technology that we used during our shoot day was using the 18mm lens on our camera that enabled us to shoot the super-wide shot, shown at the beginning and end of our music video. This shot was significant for our music video as it explained our storyline line: it showed that Emma was on a set. This shot also looked great of camera, and very professional and without the lens, we wouldn't have been able to film all three sets and one time.
After our shoot day, we began editing our music video almost immediately using the program Final Cut Pro. We began editing by looking through all our footage, which we were really pleased with. We then chose our favourite clip for each shot we did and synced it in order. We did this with all of our establishing shots, which included all the wides and also our super-wides of the three sets.
Example of super-wide shot:
This wasn't too much of a challenge to sync most of the clips as we began many of our shots with the beginning of the song. However, some clips we had to sync later on in the track, which was a bit harder. We did this by listening to a certain lyric in the clip and then synced it with the lyric in the track we were using in Final Cut Pro. This was really useful because it enabled us to begin our rough cut of the wide shots in order more quickly and more easily. Once we had done this, it was also easier for us to see where the midshots and closeups needed to be inserted.
We also used editing as a language with which to communicate with and position the audience in quite advanced ways. For example, we slowed down the editing pace, to bring the audience towards a high point of the video where a close-up of the artist was used singing the key words, “ain’t gunna love you”. The outcome of this was that our editing meant the close-up provided the audience with something to commit to memory: this line was the crucial line of the song. In other places, we cut to the beat of the song and therefore our editing could draw the audience to the general contours of the songs phase structure. This ensured that the audience would remember the song itself, and not just the video as this is what was being sold.
While we did this, we also worked on our Digipak and Website. For the Digipak, we began by researching on the Internet other artist's digipak like Lily Allen's as she relates to out artist. From this we decided that we needed a colourful digipak as it represents our artist's fun personality that is appealing to our audience. We ultimately research artist's digipaks using the Internet to get a better knowledge of the layout so we could fully understand what we were making. Our research into Rihanna and her digipak for 'LOUD' was also particularly useful.
This was really useful as our audience feedback had mentioned previously that it would be more appealing if all the backgrounds were the same colour.
To make the merchandise products for our website, we used a website called 'makeyourownclothes.com'. We first tried to do make our merchandise on paint but it didn't provide us as useful tools than this website did. This website enabled us to choose: the colour, size, writing, position of writing and much more tools that meant our brand looked more professional.
