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.