Polydor

Today we had a lady (Emily) come and talk to us about Polydor. I wrote down some of the things that she said to us and have put her exact words in quotations. She recieves a lot of treatments everyday. The process they go through is she gets given a track from an artist - 'A lot of the time now they get reaction from Radio 1 and if it gets a bad reaction this can affect whats decided' - the band are already signed by management, they talk about the budget which depends on how many records they think they will sell. 'It's important that the singles right before they invest the money into it'. They then get together with the artist, management and the label and talk about the video. When they talk about the video they decide whether it will be narrative or performance based etc.. or they would just say any ideas that they had thought of. They would then put what they talked about as a brief and send it out to video directors who were given about a week to make a video. 'The process is quite quick'. They would then meet with the band and see what the band thinks and a joint deicison will be made (by the label, management and artist). There is a week inbetween making the video so that they can prep for it and then the production company put together the shoot and edit it and deliver it back to the label. This will all get approved by the band. We had a look at three original treatments (ones that were used to make the music videos) for Take That 'The Flood', Lana Del Ray 'Born to Die' and Cheryl Cole 'Parachute'. They were all very visual and she said that it was important that the idea was written simply so that it was understandable from the offset (this was especially important in the first sentence about the summary of the video - it should be clear straight away).

Lana Del Ray is just one of the artists that has used the label. She works on her own videos and worked with Yoann Lemoine (Katy Perrys Teenage Dream video) to talk through ideas for the song 'Born to Die' and he created the treatment for the idea. It was quite a brief treatment but because of the fact tha the artist (Lana) was involved in this idea and had talked to him before about it, it got used. There was two tigers in the video which was actually one that they mirrored - this was all shot seperately from the shots of Lana. She however wanted a white tiger but this wasn't possible - many artists are sometimes awkward so this is an obstacle that you have to get through. Below is a screen shot of this shot of her next to the tigers which were added during editing. By having tigers it shows that you shouldn't limit your ideas - 'Anything is possible'. The label put £40,000 into this 3 day shoot. By them investing this much money into a video they must make sure that they get it just right so that the artist uses it because sometimes they can turn around after for example a 3 day shoot and decide to refuse to use the video. This would obviously be very annoying after spending so much time and money into getting it just right.

 

 

 

Cheryl Coles 'Parachute' had a budget of £80,000 and this was a one day shoot. There was no 'double' used in her video which I found surprsing, but she actually did all of the dancing therefore this required rehearsals which is something that the artist must agree to do when deciding what the video will consist of. In her video she used product placement. There were a few close-up shots of this watch (below is a print screen of it), this is different to the artist Lana Del Ray who refuses to do this in any of her videos. This shows how different artists really vary in whats important to them and what they want to show. Also you can see in this print screen how it is using VEVO (instead of YouTube). This is because VEVO has advertisement so every time it gets viewed there is some money from it.

 

 

The treatment that they used for the track 'The Flood' was very detailed, it had pictures of the kind of tone that wanted to be created, it was very specific - said about what shots exactly and about lighting. The treatment included a mood video - this video reference really makes a difference as it makes the ideas come to life and you can really get a feel for it. By looking at the mood video and the original video for Take That you could see just how similar they were and this showed just how specific and spot on the mood video was. 'The Flood' had a budget of £150,000 and was a 3 day shoot. They shot first thing in the morning so that there were no crowds. And the scenes which had crowds in them were shut off shoot locations. The band actually had the idea of rowing so it was partly there idea. They also had rowing lessons in order to make it look believable - this is similar to Cheryl Cole having her dance rehearsals - you must make sure they are willing to do this and also talk to them about possibly getting them to do something physical before saying no to that idea because they might surprise you and be up for it. It was very interesting having Emily come in and talk to us as we got to understand the links between the label, the band and the production company. Also hearing about all of the people that use Polydor - Ellie Goulding, Jessie J, The Saturdays and more. She also emphasised the importance of having a good work relationships with the artists/bands.

 

 

 

 

Our Timeline

Here is a picture of the timeline that we made in class. This has the elements of the underwater world, the lip sync above water and also the idea about the corridors - this means that this idea only has two elements instead of three which is something we are discussing at the moment. If we decide to change this then the places where we have about the corridors will change to the other element. We did this timeline whilst listening to the music so that we knew exactly what part of the song we were talking about, this means that the video matches the song. There is a clear structure to the video which fits to the music - this is important so that the video and song fit together to create one product. 

Although this isn't our final timeline it really helped us to understand just how long the video will be, and what kind of shots we want with which part of the music (e.g what works with the bridge etc..). When making this we decided not to have the bedroom part of the video therefore this part of the timeline would need to be changed - and we would need something that fits the first part of the song. This will help us to create the storyboard so that we know exactly what shots we want and where. This was a good thing for our group to do so that we could really see what our video will consist of, and it made us think about the underwater section more and how we need to develop that so that there isn't a dull moment where the audience will switch off. 

The corridor idea

Speaking to the group we decided that the whole corridor idea in this timeline did not fit into our idea. Firstly it might not look too great and it doesn't add anything to our video. One of our group members was really keen on this idea whereas the other members of the group did not like the idea with the corridors as it was over complicating it, means we have another location to add, and it could of looked a bit naff. So as a group we decided that we should scrap that idea and just have a lip sync of the girl imagining herself underwater.

Costumes

Here is two print screens of shots from the underwater dance video. It shows the sort of costume that we would like for our video. It has different parts of material coming off the dress (left) - this by itself can create the underwater feel by using fans, we will get the material going in lots of different directions to show that it is getting floated about. When thinking about costumes we want something that will have the same effect - this also makes the shots more interesting as its not just the hair going up and down etc..but also the dress that she is wearing. It looks quite magical and there is a dance feel to the dress having its own dance.  In the image on the right it shows that when the girl goes down the material goes up, this uses different levels and adds more layers to the underwater sequence. Also by having the light reflecting off the dress this creates interesting shadows and brightness, and there are also textures. In these print screens the dress looks very thin and white, this makes it look almost jelly-fish like. We want the water to almost be able to be seen behind the material.

We talked about having two sides to the girls personality the innocence vs a bad side. We decided that it wouldn't be good vs evil because the girl underwater is not 'bad' and we want the audience to find the underwater shots beautiful and we also want the audience to want the girl above to go in with the other girl.

In terms of costume we thought that the girl underwater could wear something red and the girl above could wear something white - this would be a clear symbolism as to what they show without showing the two bad side and good side. We want the girl underwater to have a floaty dress so that in the water it goes everywhere, and this will create interesting shots - using fans we will create the movement.

However looking at the 'underwater dance' video on youtube the costume being white underwater has a beauty about it itself. It looks a lot more magical which is something we want in our video so we might have to re-think the colour choices. We would also need a very floaty dress that would float up and down when a fan was put on it. We might sew other bits of material onto it so that the material goes everywhere. Here below you can see a similar image to the one above in the red dress but by this being white there is a purity about it so we need to decide what colours we want each of the worlds to be and what both of them represent.

Light Graffiti

Here is a collage I made of images from the internet and also print screens from videos on Youtube. All of thse involve experimentation with light. In our group we all like the idea of using light graffiti for the thing that the girl underwater is chasing. There is something mystical about this that would really work with our video. At first I just looked on google for light graffiti and focused on the blue ones but actually by adding colour to the light graffiti (like the picture top right) it might add something - or we may decide to keep it all blue so that it all works with the underwater feel. We would have to do some test samples to see if this could work and we were able to do it. It's challenging but the end result looks so good and impressive that its defitiely worth a try. The light graffiti underwater will add to the dream effect that we are really trying to create throughout our video. This is an area we all really want to experiment with to see if it could work. I have made light graffiti photographs before and they have worked - we might have to tint them so then they turn from a yellowy colour (bottom right) to something like the blue ones in this collage. In the shots the girl underwater could be surrounded by them (image with the girl on the left) not only does this fit our video but it looks really cool and adds more interest than just looking at the girl underwater.

Casting

We talked about how many people should create the underwater world - the water fairies. We thought about having some girls and some boys but actually decided it would look better no boys and just girls or to have one boy and girl. Thinking about that idea we realised that by having a boy and girl people would start to question their relationship which is something we didn't want to include in our video. By adding romance it takes away from the magical element of the video as we just want her looking at this other world she wants to be part of not a complete world that she might not fit into. We decided that we would have one girl underwater and one girl above. The girl above would be the singer and thinking about casting we decided to cast Sasha Bradley (below)

The reasons for casting Sasha is because we think that she is quite striking looking as she is so pretty. There is a girly aspect of what she looks like which is definietly something we want our artist to have. We also wanted a girl with dark hair to be the artist - especially for this video because so many female artists are blondes yet we wanted to have a stunning brunette. Also having spoken to her about the idea she was really interested and wanted to get involved straight away so this is another reason because we know that she will be up for doing any of the shots we want and be reliable as she is quite passionate about doing it.

We talked about the underwater world and thought about having the underwater girl being a complete comparison to Sasha (above) for example having blonde hair etc.. But we decided we wanted there to be similarities between these two so then Sasha really could see herself being like this girl. Also it might create a little more confusion to the audience which is something we want to create. These two girls that we have chosen are both very naturally pretty which is something we wanted when casting for our video. We didn't want 'fake' looking girls who plaster on the make up because there is something beautiful and natural about the video even if there are sureal elements to it too. This is one of the reasons we chose Georgie Hewitt (below). She was also really enthusiastic as soon as we spoke to her about the video. This is something we wanted in our actors so that we know that they won't loose interest and drop out of the video. Also the look that she has is perfect for the underwater scenes as we wanted a girl with dark hair again and of similar age to Sasha (the artist).

The underwater world

Here is the video that I found of the making of the 'Underwater Dance' which is one of our inspirations for our music video. It was interesting to see how they made their video so that we got an idea of how to create ours. However, they used a green screen underwater which is something we are not capable of doing. By doing this they were able to get the floaty affect from the actual water - they also were able to get the water bubbles out of her mouth etc.. This also meant that they could have full body shots - however looking at the video itself I think that the full body shots weren't actually very pretty. This is good because it means that we could create ours with just the beautiful shots of her without showing the full body of her. I think it would be better to use the greenscreen so then we can artifically create the colour of the water that we want.

The dream..

We thought about not including the bedroom bit in the music video. Below is an image of the set design we thought of for the bedroom. The reason for not having it would make the audience a bit more confused and it would allow them to do some thinking about what the video was about instead of saying 'this is a dream'. We all liked the idea of having a reflection onto the bedroom part of the video - this would make this shot have an element of water about it. However by not having it the video might become more arty as it is all surreal instead of having some reality shots and other dream like shots. By getting rid of the girl dream would however leave us with only two elements. By having two elements its hard not to make it repetitive and boring. Also by making the underwater aspect of the video being able to be watched for that long and still being interesting might be hard to achieve. We came to the conclusion that we should get rid of the dream part of the video for many reasons: the shots don't really add anything as they aren't interesting or impressive, it also makes the video make sense and shots of a girl dreaming isn't very interesting to watch in itself. 

To overcome the problem of having only two elements we have two options:
1) The first option is leaving it as two parts to the video but just really trying to make them have a variation so that they aren't repetitive. One of our group had the idea of having a corridor in which the girl who does the lip sync walks into to find the underwater world - and this shot can be brought back so that she goes in different doors - this uses the idea that we had of a girl slow motion running to open a door which takes her into the underwater world. However there are limitations with this - firstly the fact that that would mean we have two locations as well as the school, these being the pool for the last shot of the girl jumping in which is 30 minutes away and then also Leith Hill Place (picture below) which would be for the big corridors which is 20 minutes away but not in the direction of where the swimming pool is. Also does this aspect of the video add interest? And would the different doors lead to a different world? If so we need to come up with another world - and this may be a bit too much to do in the time that we have to make this music video. 

2) Our other option is to have another lip sync. This would be the girl imagining herself in the water with the water fairies. This would add another element to the video so that it is now 3 elements. But this may cause a bit too much confusion. The shots would consist of the singer being in shots with the waterfairy. However a problem with this idea is that now we have decided to only have one girl underwater it may not be that clear that she is imagining herself in that world that it would be if she joined all of the other water fairies. I don't know whether this would be confusing the video too much that maybe people won't understand why she is lip syncing in the water when she is out of the water. It would be her imagination but how could we convey that?

Green screen Vs Underwater

By changing our underwater idea to having more than one person underwater we decided that we should film it infront of a green screen. Afterwards we can edit the shots that we get - but by just using real underwater it is quite limiting. The movement will be more dancy than swimming movements which will go with the idea of our music video.

Here are two photos which show the two types of shots we could do one is actually underwater and the other is in-front of the green screen - we would create the world a bit better than the photograph but this just shows the questions we've got to answer. 

There are limitations of both but the green screen allows us to not worry about the weather conditions on the shooting day. It will also look more surreal which is something we want. By actually filming it underwater it will be very challenging - because by using GoPro cameras underwater you cannot see what you are filming which may become very frustrating when we want to see the shots that we have shot. Also because we will be filming in November we cannot guarentee that our actors will be up for doing it.

Taking all of this into account we have decided to shoot the underwater sections in a green screen but have the one shot of her going into the water to join the other girl possibly filmed in the swimming pool to show her actually entering the water. (this shot is just an idea so we might decide that we don't actually need the pool part of the video to make this part of the video believable - we may be able to do it in a more arty way.)

We talked again about our three elements of the video and came up with:

1) The girl by the wayers edge (lip sync) her reflection on the water which we would create through a fish tank.

 2) Her imagining herself underwater with the fairies - this would be a lip sync too.

 3) The fairies on their own - no lip sync

The lip sync idea

Having talked about the idea of having the bedroom and the set. We thought that maybe it would be better to go down the root of not telling the audience that it is a dream as we don't need it to be all narrative. It might be more magical without having the bedroom element of the video. We could start the video with the singer lip syncing by the water - which we have decided will be a pond.

We also thought that the element underwater doesn't have to necessarily have to be the singer and that it might actually look better if its not. We also thought that by having not only one underwater girl that this would create a real world underwater of water fairies. This could be boys and girls - probably an equal amount. There could be a shot where she is looking at her reflection and she sees it but then the camera moves to show that there are others under there who are trying to lurer her in.

Although this image is VERY fairytale we don't want this amount of it but just elements of the underwater world being fairy like. At the end of the video the girl would get lured in and the end shot would be her in there with them. It's a very magical and dreamlike concept without saying to people at the beginning and end 'That was a dream'.

Thinking about the set.

The set for our bedroom would be similar to this picture which is from a music video created at this school. We would however want it to be completely white - the wall paper, the sheets etc.. We would also like a bedside table which had a lamp on it. It would be very simple which would contast to the magical world underwater.

We also talked about the idea of having a the girls ghost walking out of the sleeping girls body - this would create the lip sync section. This is a similar idea to the shots shown underneath in this video. This would show a difference between her dreaming and whats happening in her dream. It would happen at the beginning of the song and her ghost would be in the exact same position as the girl sleeping but when the singing starts the ghost (like girl) would lip sync to this and then walk out of the girls whos sleeping body. 






We would use a corridor for one of the shots - this would be the shot after the girl (ghost) has risen from the sleeping girl. We would shot this slow motion so that her hair was all over the place and it would also make this shot seem slightly distorted which is something that dreams are like.. She would then open a door which would be at the end of the corridor and this would take her to the underwater world. - This transition is very surreal which goes with the dreamlike feel to the video.

 

The images above (left and right) is a location that we could use. It's an old house called Leith Hill that we are able to get to quite easily. It would be quite dark which might make it more eery that we would want it to be but it could work. The picture of the girl is the kind of thing we want - the hair and what she is wearing, obviously not the setting. But by joining these shots up and by having this girl running in a corridor it could make a interesting looking shot especially if we edit it using slow motion.

Feedback on our ideas

As a group there were a few disagreements when coming up with the idea for our music video. Half of the group wanted to do the underwater dream idea and the other half wanted to do the pool party idea. Obviously this created a bit of a divide in the group which really needed to be sorted out so that we could develop our ideas as one. We decided that we would ask teen girls (in our boarding houses) what they thought of each idea and to get their feedback on it.

For our underwater idea we thought about the idea of having her going through doors underwater to different parts of the dream - this goes with the idea of her searching for something. First we would have her (possibly slow motion) running through a corridor to a door at the end of the corridor. When she opens this she is in the underwater world. We then thought she could be in the underwater world for a bit (like teh underwater dance video) then she reaches her hand up to the top of the water, and the other her would be looking into the water - this is experimenting with reflections. We would then have teh underwater girl continue her journey and she would possibly go through another door which could be a dark place with stars around her. The fan could still be on (if we were doing it in the green screen) so there was still an aspect of her being underwater but just the background being different. etc..
We talked to some teen girls about two ideas. Our first one being the dream idea with the underwater dance:

And the second being the pool party idea (our initial idea). We told them what the storyline would be - the couple arrive together, you see shots of them being with eachother for example holding hands when they arrive and dancing together to the band who would be at the party, then possibly the girl has a bit too much to drink so kisses anotehr boy and the boy and boyfriend have a fight which everyone watches (everyone circles the boys) and whilst this is happening the girlfriend is trying to get into the circle but somehow gets pushed into the pool. When she gets into the pool the video becomes quite surreal as theres a different world under there which contrasts with the world above water. There would be shots of the band, and shots of the boys. Then a girl would turn around (we'd make this bit slow motion) and scream, then people would jump in to try and resuce her. We havent completely decided whether this would be the storyline but we like the idea of having a teenage pool party with a couple who have an argument and it results in the girl having this dream-like surreal experience world underwater. We wouldn't want it to be really depressing. Here is a collage I made of the kind of feel we would want at the pool party- obviously we would be filming this when its wintery weather but we want to do it in the evening so you wouldn't be able to see the weather:

We had a group discussion about what we were going to do. We talked about the pros and cons of each idea, we also talked about locations and how the pool party idea was a) weather permitting b) would have to be filmed at night so we would have to sort out visability c) there was a bit too much going on even after we cut down the story and d) getting that many people would be a challenge espeically for a shoot at night. We then thought about the dream-like video and how it had potential. Half of our group was really set on the dream-like video and the other half were undecided. We all came to the decision that we would develop the dream video as it would look very arty by still having the elements, in some ways its more challenging and also it is probably a more reliable idea as we don't have to really depend on weather.

After talking to the girls they definitely prefered the pool party idea. However thinking about our target audience it is actually more 18-25 year olds who would listen to this music. By making it a teenage pool party this isn't creating a video for that target audience - this shows that the product as one might not work. Taking this on board we decided to develop the dream-like idea, so that everyone would be passionate about it. After we decided to do the dream-like idea everyone in the group now is really getting ideas down and liking this idea. Its important that each of the members like what they are doing so that we put in as much effort as possible as its all about the end result. I feel that under these pressures and disagreements it was important that we made this decision sooner rather than later so that we all agreed and could move forward with one clear idea.

The idea so far..

Thinking about our idea and shots that show what we want to capture in the video. This shows the three different parts of the video and what each of them are - for example if they have a lip sync. By looking at this it makes it clear to us what costume/props, set design we need to sort out to create these locations and shots.
1) The girl in bed daydreaming. There would be no lip sync to this part of the video. However we are contemplating the idea of having a projection of water over this shot so that brings together the water elements with each of the elements in our music video.

2) The girl by the water looking into water. There would be a lip sync. This brings together the two worlds. We could do an interesting thing with reflections to show the two worlds coming together. One thing that we need to decide is what is the water going to be - beach, pool, pond?

3) The underwater world which will be quite sureal. This would be the stylistic element of the video. We would obviously want all of the colours and tones to not clash and there not to be a big contrast so we would edit the tones and colours. However we do want there to be a difference between the dream world (underwater) and the real world (her in bed).

The Flood

I was looking for videos that are based around water. One that I found was Cheryl Coles' 'The Flood'. When we were brainstorming about water, flooding was one thing that we spoke about - and this is why I decided to look up music videos that incorperate this idea. elements in her video all link together and are based around the flood. For example her house is by the seafront, and you can see this through shots out of the window, she sings by the sea, walks along the beach, there are hands which is the stylistic element of the video that is shot underwater so it is still incorperating the flood/water idea.



She didn't just show water she showed  three other elements - Earth Air and Fire. (classical elements). This is something that we could think about, instead of basing the whole video around one, we could show each of them - this is just an idea, if we decide to keep with the water theme it might look clearer and be easier to do in the space of time we have.

Here is a collage I made which shows of all the elements to her video. When there were shots of her in her bed there is a slight watery reflection which is reflected onto that shot which makes each of the shots link together.You can see the different tones of the shots, yet because they are all qutie dull coloured this makes it work as a video. It wouldn't work if in there was a shot like a Nicki Minaj video for example which is really really colourul.

The 3 elements to our video

There are going to be 3 elements to our video:

1st is the lipsync which I had the idea of having the girl singing either in a shower (keeping to the water idea) or having a reflection of water over the top of her whilst she is singing to the camera.

2nd element to the video is the stylistic part of the video which we have decided we want to look similar to this print screen shot from the video that has been one of our inspirations. We did talk about having balloons underwater etc.. but decided a more sureal one looks more magical which is something we would like to create.

We are having to think a lot about the 3rd element as it has to be linked to water too. We brainstormed about water:

• Fish
• Floods
• Rain
• Drains
• Baths
• Taps
• Thirst
• Washing
• Waterfall

Thinking about the idea of washing, thirst and waterfall we looked at the video 'Smoke City Underwater Love' as this video has a very clever use of slow motion. It slow motions whilst he splashes his face with water etc.. This looks very clever and goes with the arty aspects of our video. (video below image I took from an unofficial video for this song).The picture is very girly and elegant, which is something we want to capture in our video. This could be something we take inspiration for the 3rd aspect of our video.

 

Here is a print screen shot from the video. We thought of the idea of having a girl walking through a door where there is a wall of water - this is the kind of thing we want it to look like. This is an idea that we were brain storming about and it gve a sor of narrative element to the video - however we have to really think 'will it go with the other elements of our video to create one product? '

 

MOYA

Looking at the video by MOYA of Telling Tales it has two elements. Both of which are linked to the idea of water (like what we want to do however we want three elements to the video). It is important that each aspect of the music video - e.g lip-sync and stylistic element all link to eachother so then it comes together to make one product. There are many things that make this video what it is. It isn't just her swimming in a pool she has many props.I have made a list of hte things that are in MOYAs video:

• Her singing in the boat
• Books all over the water
• The water is in a tent
• Her swimming underwater
• Balloons
• Ribbons
• Other girls underwater
• Bubbles
• Door
• Man underwater
• Trees underwater
• Different lighting (seasons)
• Blue man 

We do not have the budget for all of these extras. However looking at this video we decided we prefer the idea of making it more sureal like the one that is computer generated (where the girl is looking for something and turning around)- not only will it be easier but we actually prefer the look of it too.

Numb

Here are the lyrics of our song. We are going to have a girl singer who sings this song as our artist. There is a dream-like feel to the track which we want to incorperate in our video.

NUMB H320 lyrics

I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless, lost under the surface
I don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes

(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)

I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

Can't you see that you're smothering me?
Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control
?Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you

(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
And every second I waste is more than I can take

I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

And I know I may end up failing too
But I know you were just like me
With someone disappointed in you

I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you

I've become so numb I can't feel you there
I'm tired of being what you want me to be
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
I'm tired of being what you want me to be

Thinking about how to create the underwater..

We have been thinking about how we could create the underwater world. One idea is to film it inside of a pool. This would be acheievable as we have access to a swimming pool that isn't far away from school. We also have an underwater GoPro camera which makes it possible to film underwater. Here is a video which has been shot underwater in a swimming pool. One problem with this idea is that it will look very clearly like a swimming pool and it would be hard to make it look like for example the sea as you will need to start adding stuff into the pool and this may not be possible to do.



Here is a video that has quite pretty aspects to it. It shows a performance element, narrative. It is underwater and there is a theme in colours underwater that makes it look very girly. I have made a collage of the shots that are quite interesting and ones that we could possibly take some inspiration from. The performance element is a shot of the girls fact singing and she is in water - in our performance side we spoke about having a close up of the girl singing into the camera, but we want to make there be a similarity with the stylistic side (the underwater). However we do not like the shot of the girl in this particular video as we don't think its very attractive plus it is different to the style of our concept.

I found this image online and we thought that this is the kind of thing we want for one of the element of our video. Its girly, there is a watery effect about it and this is the kind of the girl that we are thinking we want to be in our video. Below I have very quickly edited the photograph to show what we would do to this image to make it fit with our video. Firstly I added a 'water effect' onto the original photo which made it have this interesting reflection onto it - something we definitely want to use for one of the parts of our music video. Although the image has bubbles by adding the reflection it really makes it a bit more obvious to the viewer and links the 'water' aspect of our video all together.

 I then changed the colour tint of the image to blue. We would have it a bit darker and less saturated to go with the underwater dance part of the music video that we have decided on but this was really an experiment to see if it could work and looking at these images which aren't even the finished product as they are just rough ideas of what we are thinking we can start to see our idea coming together nicely.

Here below I have changed the blue to a lighter one but it would maybe be darker than this image but I think there's something about this shot with a girl singing into the camera that would be magical and quite sureal - which is something we really want to capture. 



Development on Concept 2

We decided that the song 'The Pipers Song by Gypsy and the Cat' was too upbeat and didn't really go with our concept of having a bit of a dark side to the video. Looking around for music we all liked the track Numb which is originally by Linkin Park but it is a remix by H320 (remix Dubstep) . Here is the link to the song, there is no music video for this particular version which is immediately good because there will be no comparisons. However the original song does have a good music video - this is not the reason we chose a remix - the reason we chose the remix was because there was more of a surreal element to it which went with the concept that we thought of as we wanted it to be quite abstract.




We still like the idea of filming underwater as it is inivative, a bit different and we want some of the shots to look really beautiful. We looked on youtube for videos looking like the idea that we had. Here below is something along the lines of what we want it to look like. We watched this video (below) with the song above playing and it really worked well together therefore this shows us that the concept and song mix well together - unlike before when they were a bit contrasting.



We also thought that these shots (below) were really intersting as you could see her reflection. We want to experiment with reflections in the video and slow motion. We are steering away from doing just a narrative and wanting to make it a bit more arty and visual. We are liking the idea of having material around the girl in the water.



This picture (below) really goes with the idea of the video (two above) its the same colours and there is amagical feel to it. Also she is looking beautiful underwater which is something we want to capture.

Concept 1

Here is a powerpoint that our group made to present the concept we had for the song 'If You See Kay'. After the feedback session there are many things that we have changed and discussed about this idea. By making these presentations it made us really reflect on the video and what our message really was. We are all quite keen on making a narrative video rather than just a performance - we want it to be interesting and have a story behind it!

Feedback for concept 1

We did a presentation to the class talking about each one of our ideas for the music videos. This is some of the feedback we got back on concept 1 (the letter idea).

• The first question we wanted to know the answer to is has the song 'If You See Kay' got a music video? If so is it any good because you don't want there to be expectations or comparisons to a good music video if yours is not as good as the original. Luckily we did not find a music video for this song which is a great place to start as there will be no comparing it to its music video.

•  It's not a film so there is no development of characters.

We wanted the people in the video to know the person that they hand it to so that there is a storyline between each person. This would look very good because it is quite a clever concept however to pull it off in one day when we do not have a lot of locations to go to is quite tricky.

• The letter is 'amazing' it just needs developing.

Many people said this at our feedback session so it's important that we really think what could the letter be. It could be quite interestingto have a mystery behind the letter as this will lead to viewers have questions that they want answered.

• The love letter is too cliche.

This was our first idea however talking about it we realised a few things. Firstly the viewers don't know much about the characters in the video therefore they might not really care about the love letter. It isn't very interesting knowing that a love letter is gettting past one person to another- its more interesting watching a letter getting past but not knowing who its for or what it is. Also this idea of the 'love letter' might not go very well with our target audience being boys and girls (teenagers) as this really only targets girls whereas our band would want to reach out to young aspiring musicians as they are more about the 'music' instead of anything else.

• There should be mystery as to what the letter is.
• What happens to the letter? Maybe there is a journey (something is getting past on).
• The people passing it on should be linked in someway. Getting this feedback has shown us that maybe a change in song might be best.

• We are also thinking about the idea of having the process of a piece of paper - getting crumpled, getting posted, on an aeroplane etc.. instead of just past on person to person.

 This kind of clarified that this idea might not be our number 1 idea. Although we will take on board all of the feedback and develop it a bit more, we don't think that this idea is as strong as maybe our others.

Concept 2

Here is a prezi that our group created to show the idea for 'The Pipers Song'. At this stage this is probably our favourite idea and after the feedback we got we are willing to develop it further to appeal more to our target audience and to make it slightly abstract. We feel that the idea of an underwater feel is slightly different (alternative) -which goes with the star image.

Feedback Concept 2

We presented this idea to the class and wrote down the feedback that they gave us. The reason for us presenting our ideas to the class is because not only are they are target audience but they will give us ideas on how we can improve our idea and get rid of the limitations of the idea. For our pool party/underwater concept they said:

• Good idea but hard to do.

We all talk about the challenges that we would face with this music video however we really want to push ourselves. We think that we could definitely overcome the flaws with this idea. Using underwater GoPro cameras is an idea. Although the underwater bit is quite hard to film they said about location possibly being a problem but one of our group members has a pool in her garden which is only 20 minutes away from school. This is the kind of size of the pool that our group members owns. Because it is outside and by a house shows that it is a house/pool party which goes with the concept that we came up with.

• Cut the story down as it's like a long film.

We were going to have it about a couple who arrived together, had an argument, she cries and tries to get away from people but ends up gettting pushed into the pool etc.. But this storyline is quite long and there is much detail - although we were quite set on this idea we have liked the idea of it being more sereal so it doesn't have to all make complete sense. For example there could be another world underwater. Also we don't have to see her trying to get above the water and struggling it could be as soon as she falls in that the world changes and there are abstract shots etc.. As soon as she falls in the screen could turn white and she could be infront of a white background (like the Britney Spears video Everytime). We could do this if we decided to use a female singer too as it could be the singer acting as the girl.

• She could be thinking about memeories underwater (a different world)
• It sounds like quite a happy song.

We thought this at first (we could do the concept to another song) or if we wanted to work with the song we could do one of things : argue that we really wanted to contrast the happy tune to a darker message, make the video a little less heavy, or just take the deeper moments of the song and show that it isn't as happy as you first think. 'Where to run, are you there, are you there' - this shows that there is a bit of a darker message underneath the cheerful sound of the song at times.

• Make it a bit more abstract.

This piece of feedback was given to us by two people. We are now exploring this idea and the images on the collage show that the underwater part of the song could be quite sureal and completely contrast the party above water.

• Only got 3 minutes - 1 minute is promoting the band though.
• Make the performance a bit more interesting not just at the party (we wrote down many ideas for this such as - projections on water, wearing swimming stuff, blue screen with layers such as bubbles out of their mouth and hair wet - these are just rough ideas but we want to incorperate the underwater theme with the bands performance.)

 

 

• She could slip into unconsciousness underwater.

We really like this idea and after getting feedback we have realised that making the video a bit more abstract would add more interest and be less like a mini film and more like a music video. Also by it being quite weird it may appeal to this particular target audience for the song as they are bit alternative. However more to the point it will get more views as it will create some confusion and this means that people are likely to watch it again as they will want to understand it.