Story boards

From my previous blog of rough ideas about how I believe our music video will unfold I have created story boards for us to work from.
They show what types of shots we will be using, who will be singing and when and some of the narrative we plan of filming.

Planning

Today i decided to print off the song lyrics for our chosen song V.V. Brown's Shark in the Water.

I created a rough idea of how i believed our music video should unfold:

• Who would be singing when
• When do certain parts of the narrative need to be shown etc.

I thought this was needed as it would not work to just go out to film before planning, as no one would know when or what they would be doing.

Even though it probably will not go exactly to plan as after filming we may have better shots of say Mad singing where we thought Lucy would etc. you still need a rough base to work around. This is why we have chosen to have each person sing the entire song from all different angles rather than just the verses and chorus' we have chosen for each person therefore we will have plenty of different shots to use and switch between. We also plan to go up to London on more than one occasion as we do not expect to get everything filmed in one day, we do not want to rush this and end up with lots of messy shots we can't use.

We also know that things may not go to plan first time and we need to go up there again anyway.

The images above are a far more detailed version of the song lyrics at the top. It just states how I believe our music video will look and what should go where.

Conventions of our music video

Some of the conventions we plan on involving in our music video are:

• the artist singing 
• narrative behind the song
• montage of fast, quick edits
• high, low, wide angle shots, close ups
• realistic mise-en-scene and costume etc.

Our storyline...

Group: Danielle, Lucie, Maddie, Jack

Record Label: JMDL

Genre Choice: Indie

Artist Choice: VV Brown

Song Chosen: Shark in the water

Story Line...

Having listened to our chosen song numerous times we have gathered our ideas on the lyrics, the main theme and message of VV Browns version. We decided  that our story line will follow the relationship between a boy and his girlfriend, along with the females he has an affair with. This is very close to the story behind the original version. As this was a personal story from V.V Brown we decided to keep close to it. The song 'Shark in the Water' is a metaphorical record about anxiety and Brown's own experience in life.

Star Image

Ellie Goulding is a solo artist who grew up in a small town near Hereford, England. She has been writing her own songs since she was 14 and rose to fame after winning the Critics' Choice award at the 2010 BRIT Awards. She released her first extended play An Introduction to Ellie Goulding, followed by her debut full-length studio album, Lights, in 2010 and has recently signed with Polydor Records. 


Ellie reaches out to her audience via intimate gigs, updates via her own official website, facebook and twitter this allows her to have a more personal relationship with her fans which gains loyalty and encourages the build up of a bigger fan base. From her website fans are able to view her videos, news, gallery, tour dates and stores and she encourages her fan base to download current singles for free. Her singles and albums are also available to buy in stores and online such as HMV and amazon and are available to download on Itunes & Spotify. 

Official website: www.elliegoulding.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/elliegoulding
Facebook: www.facebook.com/elliegoulding
YouTube channel: elliegoulding
Twitter: www.twitter.com/elliegoulding

Music Video mood board

During our planning we thought it would be a good idea to watch several music videos within a similar genre as the song we have chosen to recreate. When we done this we decided to create a mood board gathering a selection of our favourite shots  and images that other artists have used.
When doing this we found that the majority of the artists within this genre adopt the convention of home videos as a major concept of the video, they also tend to stick to strict colour scheme of blacks, whites and greens with a lot of natural daylight.
By using hand held video cameras it personalizes the video creating a connection between the artist and the audience.

We have been influenced in our ideas hugely through watching these and have decided to adopt the convention of hand held cameras and 'natural' shots opposed to completely structured images throughout the video.  We feel this will be more enjoyable and just as effective as it is already well established within the genre we are interested in.

Overall by doing this mood board we have gained a wider knowledge of what is expected for a typical indie genre and have began thinking of how to portray this genre within our music video.

How we are communicating as a group

Communicating as a group can be very hard especially when some members of the group live quite large distances from the others, to overcome this we all exchanged phone numbers to make sure we could speak quickly and effectively if anything was urgent or just involving one other person. For things that involved the entire group we created a facebook message in which we could reply to and all see what the others were saying. We are using this for things that aren't so important or do not need sorting urgently.

Advertising

As we are making a music video for our recently signed band 'Canute', we need to think of ways of advertising to the public. We need to think of our target audience, who would buy their music, listen to it and watch their video. We believe the main target audience would be both males and females aged 16-21, very interested in fashion and music.
We would create t.v adverts advertising our debut album which would be played on music channels such as MTV, VH1, The Box, VIVA, 4music and Kiss etc. They would be played at certain times throughout the day, not so much early in the morning, but late at night from about 8pm onwards and also around lunchtime. This is because the majority of our audience would probably be students so would be around to hear the adverts at these times. We would also have them aired on the radio (similar stations as just mentioned) all throughout the day. I would create posters that could be shown in train station across London, stations such as Elephant and Castle, Oxford Circus, Camden Town, Shepherd's Bush etc and bus stops all across these areas and more as these are some of the places our audience would be interested in.
Our band would also have their own website, MySpace page and Facebook page etc where fans would be able to view their music videos for free, download tracks for free, view band photos, band blogs and talk to other fans via message boards and chats. Fans would also be able to sign up to the band's mailing list where they would receive information on tour dates, CD signings etc.
We will be allowing fans to download Canute's debute single 'Shark in the Water' for free directly from their website. This will encourage people to not only listen to their music and pass it onto friends but to also remember that Canute think of their fans. They are very important to the group and want to relate to them in every way they can.

History and Target Audience

As a company we would like our artists to reach out to a wide, mainstream audience. The genre of indie allows us as managers, and the artist to branch out. Indie, rock originating from the U.K and the States in the 1980s inspires and interests people of generations since then. Many see the genre with a specific artistic aesthetic and would have originally been produced by bands working alone, with independent record labels for example Oasis and Creation Records but throughout the noughties this has become far more relaxed and led to further distorted meaning of the term 'indie rock'. In other words there has been far more genre boundary crossing and hybridity.


We aim for our target audience to be teenagers between 16 years and 21 years, both male and female. They are more than likely students, with a very low income. They are fascinated by fashion and music, which causes which and combining the two. They will enjoy 'hanging' out with friends, shopping and going to places such as Shoreditch, Brick Lane and Soho. 


We intend to use current fashion, trends and images inspired by the 80s to represent the band, fashion is a major influence in how our band is perceived. With fashion bringing back styles from an era of experimentalists and the increasing importance of designer brands, we aim to encode this edgy, retro look within us. 

Preliminary Task

We decided to chose 'Reach For The Stars' for our prelim by S Club 7 which was released in 2000. The song is upbeat and fun which made it easier for us to practice our lip-syncing and editing skills. We filmed in school but ranged in settings and shots as we would be doing this for our real music video.

We filmed one minute as this was the required amount of time however we still experienced problems in editing as we hadn't used the programme before. However we picked the skills up quickly and was able to edit.

I feel we achieved our aims as we experimented with our camera angles and different positions. We also did well in the timings of the lip-sync which was a challenge as we hadn't done anything like this before but after a few attempts we improved.

PRELIM AIMS:

When we decided to create our music video we thought it would be a good idea to practice and gather all our knowledge into a small project to improve our ability to produce a moving image. When filming our real video we have to ensure we complete a video of high standards, in order to do this we have to identify what makes a good music video and what makes a bad video. We hope to have achieved the ability to do this by creating a prelim.
A main concept that needs to be practiced before we do any filming is lip syncing, in order to  have a piece of work that is of a high standard timing is crucial.  We done this by choosing a song and practicing random shots, long, mid and close up. doing this we enhance the professionalism of the video which will in turn improve our grades .
As well as ensuring timing in synchronised we have to make sure that edits fit within the tune and story of the video. We practised this throughout our prelim experimenting with different types of edits and as a group we feel strong enough in this area to produce a successful product