Dresses..

We decided that after looking around for the type of dress that we want it is very hard to find. So we have decided to buy two of the Amazon dresses for underwater - and then we will need to find a dress for above the water. The dress for underwater is pretty good because it is lightweight and we might be able to sew some material onto the sleeves so that we get the floaty affect of the material even in close ups. Also we might be able to cut up the skirt so that it will float in different directions - the length helps us do this aswell.

Finding the above water dress: Here (left and right) are two possiblitites. However the length of these are a concern. The one underneath both of these is my favourite one that I have found. The reason being is the sleeves make it elegant and they are lightweight which adds a floaty feel. The length isn't too short - which is something that we might want to look into if we are making some underwater shots with the singer in them. 

 

The price is more than we had hoped to pay but the fact that it does fit quite a bit of our criteria makes it a dress that could possibly be used. I like the material of the dress the most and I think that the way that it looks on this model is something that we want - we want it to be a dress that girls watching want to have but for it also to not show too much of the girl (be classy) which are both things that I think this dress has.

Cast meeting

Today we had the meeting with the girls that we had arranged. In this we got the mobile numbers from each of them and their dress sizes so that I'm able to order their costumes. One of the girls couldn't make todays meeting (Sasha) - the ones that did turn up happen to be our main actors in our video so the fact that Sasha didn't turn up showed us that we had made the right decision in not making her the singer (in the nicest possible way) as we need to make sure that our cast are reliable. Here is a picture of Sasha (group member), Annabel (a girl underwater), Georgie (singer) and I at our meeting. 

The meeting that we had was arranged in the studio - we were able to get hold of a camera so that we could shoot some shots. We also had fans in the studio so could do some test shots seeing what the fans will look like and whether they will work. Even when the fans were on slightly it created an effect that was very girly and looked really cool. It had a mystical feel to it which is something we want in our video. Although we were unable to have the costumes with us for this test we did have the girls hair which made us able to see what the fans will look like when they are blowing up onto the girls. The longer the hair the better - which is good because Georgie (the singer) has the shortest hair out of the three and she will be the one who is least shot with the fan. (left) is a photo I took of the camera of Georgie when she was doing a lip-sync. I made it blue to give an underwatery effect. She has the fans blowing on her quite faintly but you can see that this blowing effect has made a huge impact and really makes a beautiful image. To the right is a picture of her looking into the camera singing with the fan underneath her - this time the fan was a lot closer to her face. 

Heres a picture that I took whilst the two girls were doing a shot together whilst we were experimenting with the fans. I like this picture as it shows the hair movement. Also during this test Georgies skirt was blowing up which actually shows that the material on the dress should do the same but more as it is more lightweight too. 

 We did some shots with Georgie really singing to the track, and other mouthing the words and it was very clear that the shots looked way better when she was actually singing. When the fan was lightly fanning Georgie when she was lip-syncing this created really nice shots as it showed there was a light breeze yet her hair wasn't going all over her face. Both Georgie and Annabel were really easy to work with as they had a happy attitude and were up for trying anything which is essential with our music video as it is quite experimental. Here is a picture I took of the girls dancing about going up and down - this was to see if the fans would blow their hair up even more - it worked but for a shot like this we would want to make it slow motion and this would look affective.

The camera that we used actually has a slow motion effect on it so we are planning to do another meeting - possibly tomorrow - trying this out as we think that this would look really effective with the hair going slow motion and their movements and costume. After doing this test I am actually really looking forward to shooting our real video as the cast are great and hopefully our video will look beautiful. Heres a picture I took of Georgie and Annabel looking into the camera whilst the fan was blowing up their hair gently - I tinted it blue just to give an idea of the sort of thing we want our video to look like. I love this picture as its very elegant of both of them. :)

Production Schedule

Here is the production schedule that my group and I made. This makes it clear to us exactly what needs to be done and when. It also allows us to tell the actors when and where they will be needed. It makes sure that we don't forget to film any aspects of the video so is pretty important. We will give our cast a copy of the times that we need them and if we need them to bring anything. But the only thing that we have asked them to bring is warm clothes (for the location shoot as this will be shot in the evening) so we have asked them to bring hoodies. We will provide towels at the location - as we need to make sure that none of the girls are too cold at any point whether they are being shot at the time or not.

Here is the timetable that we will give to the actors telling them what times we will need them from and til.  

Georgie 9:00 - 11:00; 13:30 -TILL THE END

Sasha 9:00 - 13:30; 15:30 -TILL THE END

Annabel 9:00 - 13:00; 15:30 - TILL THE END

In between the 3.30 and 'till the end' we will be moving to the location so we might want to grab a bit to eat before we go to location because we need to make sure that our cast is properly looked after and feel confident and happy at all times so this allows us to get the best shots possible.



We each have jobs that we have to do before shoot day - most of these are sourcing costumes. We have bought the singers dress so now the most important on the list is getting the dresses for the two underwater girls.

Sasha – chiffon ( material )

Hannah – 2 underwater dresses

Evie- towels (6), blankets (4), warm coat

Costume

We realised that the dress that we were thinking of for above water had no floaty material therefore it wouldn't work when the girl would have shots underwater with the other girls as you wouldn't be able to see the material floating as it was too heavy. On Amazon I found this dress:

The reason this dress would work so well is because it is very lightweight - almost seethrough - and has length which is something that we want. We have ordered this on Amazon so therefore we know that this dress is guarteened for us. If however there are problems with it we will be able to figure this out before the shoot day so might have to go on a shop - but hopefully it will work. We will do a test shot with our singer to test out the dress with the fans on her just to see whether it will be able to be floated up by the fans. It is feminine which is something that we wanted too. Hopefully this will look quite good in the shots by the pond too as it isn't as slim fitted as the one we were originally going to get. Also it is a longer length, nipped her in in the waist but not with a belt - like the other one. I just hope that it will look good on our singer and work in the shots.

Here is the dress that we are thinking of for the underwater dresses:

Although there is a slight print on this dress it might actually go with the underwater sequence. Its also quite subtle so I think its nothing to worry about. We are buying some Chiffon material for the sleeves - so that some material floats off of it - this creates a flowing underwater effect. It is very different to the one above water but not completely different (i.e the colours) therefore they do not clash! But they might compliment eachother. It has been very hard to find a dress which has got material coming off of it and is floaty and lightweight material!

Prezi

Here is a prezi that our group made looking at music videos, album covers and websites of artists/bands similar to our artist. This gives us the kind of idea of what artists in our genres products are like and this will help us when we are creating our artwork and website as we have an idea of what fans of this genre like and what appeals to them.

Animatic

Here is our animatic. This gives us an idea of what our video will look like - and made it clear to us about what shots we definitely want, and which ones we might not use. Having made the animatic the video really goes with the music - which is very important as this makes there be a good link between the video and music. They do not contradict eachother but actually work well together to create one final product. It shows us how magical and surreal our video is - and this goes well with the surreal sound of the song. We will show the girls in our video our storyboard to give them an idea of the sort of thing that they will be doing/being a part of. We are very happy with how the animatic looks and the light graffiti and stars really give it a magical effect. The whole underwater element to the video is mystical and by adding the layers and effects onto it afterwards it will really add to this effect. Looking at the images it looked like there were red petals on the water which is something that we might think about and add to the video.

Email

Here is an email that I composed to the girls in our video planning a meeting with them tomorrow. In this meeting we will shoot the girl lip syncing just to get the idea of what it will look like. Also we will have a skirt which is like the one that we are possibly going to use and this will give us an idea of whether this kind of skirt will work or not.

Here is the reply that I got from Georgie (our singer). I'm really glad that she is so enthusiastic because whenever I see Georgie she is always talking about how excited she is about being in my video. This ensures that she will not back out of the video hopefully, and also by having a good relationship with our cast is good :)



Looking at our audience

An artist that is similar to our artist is 'Delilah'. Delilah is a singer/songwriter who has collaberated with 'Chase and Status' who are electronic music production. Our artist is a singer/songwriter so by looking at how Delilah appeals to her audience and who this audience is it will help us with our products for this fanbase too. By collaborating with Chase and Status this helped both of the artists widen their appeal as they are from different genres. Delilahs websites homepage looks like this:

By looking at her statistics on YouTube at her song 'Shades of Grey'. We can see that she appeals most to 13-17 girls - you can see that her appeal is a lot more to females than males. By looking at this it shows that her appeal isn't just for teenagers but actually is broader. This is something we want too as our artists music is more mature and sophisticated than just a girl singing pop tunes.

But we can see the difference in the audience of Chase and Status as theirs is prodominately a male audience. This shows that by them collaborating these males will be listening to Delilah, and visa versa.

Another artist that has a similar target audience to ours and the same sort of music is Ellie Goulding. She is also a British singer/songwriter. She has similar statistics to Delilah yet more male appeal. This might be because Ellie Goulding is seen as an attractive girl that men want to date.

Ellie Gouldings artwork is similar to something that we want ours to look like. It's magical and a lot about lights - this would not only go with our music video but also the type of music that is on our artists album. Here are two I particularly like because of them being very feminine and about the artist - by her looking into the camera or it just being her it shows how it is all about her and her music.

And like Delilah her website has many photographs of her which have been taken by herself or friends (usually instagram) - which shows how ordinary she is and how girls can relate to them, which works with her image of being a down to earth girl.  (Top Delilah, and bottom Ellie Goulding). This is something I feel that we should include on our websites for our artist as their audiences are around their age - so this should be something that girls their age aspire to be like. It shows their actual lives being quite similar to their fans which is something that the fans like as it shows that they aren't at all that different to them. It shows them as real people who have friends and have a sense of humour which people might not always see - by fans liking seeing this it shows that its not all about their music for them but actually the personality of these artists which is why they appeal.

Looking at these two artists who have the same music and are part of the same genre to ours we have decided that our target audience will be 18-30 year olds.

I had a look at their facebooks. You can see that they both are promoting themselves on their cover photos (the big band - photo - at the top of the screen). Delilah is promoting her tour so that any fans that come onto her page will see this immediately. Ellie Goulding is promoting her new album as her cover photo is a picture of her album cover. This is so that any fans that come onto her page are reminded that she has an album and this may trigger them to buy it.

 

Here you can see the posts that their pages have got on them - obviously they don't do them themselves but they have someone who updates them so that the fans keep getting updated. By adding the pictures and posts it gets the fans feeling that they are more connected to the artists and shows them as being normal down to earth people. It's a way of keeping their relationship with fans - and is something that we should definitely rememeber. There are pictures and videos of live performances and meeting people - which is what any person would normally do on facebook (upload pictures and statuses), and this appeals to the audience of 18-30 as a lot people this age are on social networks.
Heres a few statistics to back this up (Facebook):

11% of the world population has a Facebook account

50% log on to Facebook everyday

30 billion pieces of content are shared a month.

And it definitely is used by not only teenagers as this graph shows that social media use is becoming more even across the age gaps:

Heres a print screen of Ellie Gouldings statistics of who likes her page. You can see the most popular age for people liking her Facebook page is 18-24 year olds which goes with our target audience. A lot of my friends are around this age - and you can see that quite a few (40) of them have liked her page - this shows how these ages are who she appeals to.

      

I looked at both of their photo albums and they both seemed to have an album called 'Instagram' - left Ellie Goulding, right Delilah. There are 50 million users of Instagram and 22% of most photos taken online are taken on a mobile phone. By the artists also having these it updates the fans with more personal information - instead of just artwork (album covers). It appeals to this audience because they probably have the app too and upload photos themselves. Its another way of just showing the fans more about them as real people. This shows that the fans aren't just interested in their music or image but actually in what kind of people they are - this is something I think we should definitely think about for our website as this obviously appeals to the audience that we are also targeting. (They also have both got Twitter accounts - this is another way of connecting with their fans).

Costumes

We are thinking about using a chiffon skirt for the bottom half of the costume. To go with this we want a top which has sleeves so that it shows the effect of water on the clothing. One way that we could do this was buying a top that we can sew chiffon material onto it. I was talking to Georgie (our singer) who is good at textiles about the costume and she offered to sew the material onto a top. This would mean we would have to buy some Chiffon material from a haberdashery aswell as a top and a skirt (X2 for the two actors underwater). Below is a picture of a possibility for the top. The reason why this could possibly work is because firstly it is very girly, but also it has a seem which Georgie would be able to open up and attach strips of chiffon so that underwater they can flow up. 

Heres a picture of a skirt that we have found which is good for the underwater as it has layers and is also mostly lightweight and also see-through. One problem however is that it has the white skirt underneath which is block colour - but the reason for getting it is so that the dress isn't too floaty everywhere. 

Our genre

We have been very indecisive and unsure about what genre are artist is part of. We first discussed the idea of her being a dubstep artist but realised this doesn't really work as this wouldn't really work as an album of one artist. This is because Dubstep take songs from different artists - not making an album with just one of these artists.We talked about the idea of it being a remix track and all quite liked this idea. It would be the Track 13 on the album which would be the remixed song on the album. We all are keen on this idea and we have decided on this. This would mean that she would be an artist who is a singer/songwriter, possibly in the genre Trip Hop. One artist that we have looked at that is similar to this sort of artist is Delilah. She is a singer/songwriter who has collaborated with Chase and Status who are a electronic music production who have worked with associated acts like Plan B, Rihanna. This collaboration  featuring Delilah brings together two different genres - which is like our track.



One thing that I have noticed when looking at music video of these kind of artists (Delilah) is that in their videos another girl is playing the main part in the narrative story and they are often in that location but looking onto it instead of being in on the action - this kind of goes with the convention of what we are doing in our video as she is overlooking the event - but then becomes apart of it. There isn't so much of a 'performance' element in the video (i.e them singing on a stage), and this is something we are not including in ours so we are fitting the template for the videos of this genre of music.  

Casting

We decided that we are going to have two girls underwater. The reason behind this is to make the shots a bit more interesting. And to show that there is a world underwater that the above water girl really wants to be a part of. After a lot of searching and discussion we found Annabel Hales and instantly thought that she would be perfect for the role. The reasons for this is because she looks very similar to the other girls in our video, dark hair, same figure, really pretty smile. Me and Evie chatted to her about it to see if she would be willing to be involved in it and she sounded very keen. I composed an email after talking to Annabel which had a friendly tone to it just to clarify that she is wanting to be in it as we want her to be comfortable and see us as friendly and approachable. Here's a picture of what she looks like and the email that we sent her.

We have also changed round the singer and girl underwater. So it is now Georgie who is the singer, and Sasha and Annabel who are the dancers. The reason being is because Sasha is more of a dancer and this is good as we need somebody who can move! Also her look will fit the underwater magical world. And Georgie has this natural beauty that will go really well with the singers voice. Also because Georgie does sing she will be more confident with it, which we need especially when filming her shots as she won't have another girl to work with - like Sasha has Annabel now. Overall we are very happy with the casting and so are the girls :)

Getting copyright for the song

Here is the email that we composed to the copyright holders of our track to ask for permission to use the song 'Numb by H320' in our music video. We got an email back from the label saying that they had received the email. This means that we are able to use it in our video and can legally post the video onto YouTube. 

Costumes

Here are two images of dresses that I found which are two possibilities of the dresses we could use for the girl outside of the water - the singer. They are feminine, they are white to show the innocence and to also show the similarities between the girls (underwater wearing white dresses too).  Both of these dresses are the same length which is above knee - the reason for this is to be pretty but it shows the young naiveness of the singer. The prices for both of these are good as they are not above £10, this is within our budget. One problem is the fact that we will be buying them online so we will have to order them soon to make sure that all of the dresses fit all of the girls featuring in our video. We also need to get their sizes, and maybe do some test shots in the dresses. 

The dress for above water is a lot easier to buy because there isn't much criteria that we have for it, whereas the underwater one needs to have material thats able to float up, it needs to have floaty sleeves, be girly, lightweight and white. Finding this dress is very tricky. We have found a skirt which we could possibly use instead of a 'dress' and just find a top that is like what we want. The only problem with this is the fact that we want it to look like one dress instead of a top and skirt - as this goes with the girl above water. And we would have to make sure that they work really well together. Heres a picture of the sort of thing that we are thinking above if we go with the skirt idea - below - we would obviously get this is white, but this is a possibility if the dress is not possible for us to find. These are available in so many shops and will be easy for us to source, its just up to us to decide whether this is what we want and whether we can work with this. 

The pond

Here are some shots of the pond that we are using. This is 25 minutes away from school and we are able to use it on our shoot day. We will be able to do shots without having houses in the background- one way that we will get away from doing this is by doing this at night. Also we will make sure that the angles we get are right. The fact that there is a river bank makes her able to sit down by the waters edge and this will enable us to see her reflection in the water.

Here is a picture of another pond however this one is on a hill so the others might be easier for us to film on. It is also slightly smaller which is something we have to consider. By having the lilly pads it might restrict us from being able to see the whole reflection so we might have to move the lilly pads on the shooting day. But after seeing the ponds we are very happy with using a location for our video instead of recreating it.

Email to our singer

Here is a print screen of the email my group and I composed to the singer in our group. This was making sure that she has the lyrics and gets learning them asap. This enables her to be able to sing it on the day instead of not knowing the words and us having to prompt us. It will make sure that the day will go smoothly and look realistic with her actually singing it. Hopefully she will listen to the song quite a bit and really know it well for the shoot day. When I told her this she was very keen at doing it so hopefully we should have her full involvement and enthusiasm.

Dress

We have all had a look on ASOS and Topshop for white dresses. The problem with the dresses on all of these websites is that the material used to make them is too thick and heavy. Which is something we don't want. The material we need needs to be as lightweight as possible - this might mean that its quite see-through. But we can overcome that by putting her in something underneath (thin aswell). 
Here is a picture of the sort of material we want for our dress. It's thin, nearly see-through and very lightweight. However sadly this dress is yellow and only comes in this colour and its not white - also it doesn't have sleeves which is something that we do want so that the sleeves blow up with the fans. 

Thinking about the colour white know I had a look at ASOS and found these two dresses. (one above and the one below). This dress (above) has a good bottom to it as it has many ruffels. This would work well for the underwater bit as the dress would go out to different directions and it has a good texture. However it may be a bit too thick and the top half isn't what we are looking for as it does not have sleeves. And sleeves is something that looked really good in the 'underwater dance' so we are thinking that by having lightweight material as the sleeves will look good especially for close up shots of her face as you will still see in some of the shots the material.

Here is a dress that I found which has the blue tie around it which is something we initially wanted. Although this is a maternity dress it might actually work for the outside world because of its floatyness. Also it doesn't look like very thick material. It is girly which is definitely something that we wanted. The dress outside of the water is a lot more easy to decide on as it doesn't need to be blown up using fans, but it just needs to be white, pretty and quite floaty.

The idea of using contact lens

Our group talked about the idea of using colourful contact lens in this video. This would make her eyes look mesmerising and would really make her the focus of the video. We would probably use the colour blue - but one that is very blue. This would be because it goes with the colours in the video and we want all of it to fit together nicely and this would really fit with it. I spoke to Georgie about the idea of doing this and she told me about a picture on her Facebook which looked like she was wearing contacts (even though she just picture edited it). Below is the print screen of the image. If we do not use this in the video we thought of possibly using it for the album cover or in a photoshoot - this may mean we might not have to get contacts but just edit it like this picture below. Georgie is very much up for using contact lenses if we decide to go with this idea. I think it would look great because it really makes the audience connect with her - because looking into someones eyes is quite captivating. This also goes with the idea of it being a dream and fairylike as it isn't realistic but just another arty idea that we think might add something to do the video.  Also because of Georgie being very pretty it makes her even more gorgeous and makes girls wanna look like that - its not a 'fake' look its natural but theres something magical about her.

Final set design decisions

Today we had a meeting to decide what our set is going to look like and what EXACTLY we are going to shoot.

Heres a picture of us having a chat with the set builder.

We decided that we are going to shoot the underwater shots infront of the green screen. We will use lots of fans to create the illusion of her hair and dress floating up with the movement of the water. The idea of shooting it underwater in a pool has some problems - firstly it demands a lot of the actors as they have to be in a pool in November for a long time, secondly the cameras underwater might not show the image very clearly, the camera may be hard to shoot with and thirdly it would be obvious that the shots are shot in a pool which is something we wanted to steer away from. The use of fans, maybe conditioning the hair so that it goes all over the place, the floaty dress - we feel we can get some really beautiful shots. This really puts the emphasis on how important the dress is. We have to make sure firstly the colour goes with the theme throughout the video with the colours black white and a bit of blue. This would therefore be a white dress underwater but we must make sure that the material is really light weight.

Also we would get the girls/girl to move round gracefully at normal speed but then we would change it to slow motion (6 second bursts). Although this would be great for the underwater idea with the hair going up slower and you really being able to see the movement in the costume there is also something quite fascinating and beautiful about slow motion.

We also decided that we don't want to just have one girl underwater but we will maybe have two girls underwater - the reason for this is because the shots can be more interesting as we can close up on one girl whilst the other one is further away etc.. This is something we need to decide on, and cast it as soon as possible. It also shows that this world isn't owned by the girl but she is just part of it, and this should intise the girl above water even more if she sees two underwater in this magical world. Either this or we can just make sure that the singer goes into the water earlier in the song (3 quarters of the way through) so that this gives us more to play with with the shots. We also briefly talked about having three people underwater - one boy and two girls because we thought that this could create beautiful imagery but the problem that we have is people might read into the relationships underwater, also the costume for it - we would need to make sure that the boy really fits in with all of the video. So this is something we must decide on ASAP but I think we are all steering towards the idea of just having two girls.

We are going to shoot on location at the pond above (picture). The reason for this is because creating a set in the studio to make it look like a pond isn't half as good as actually shooting at a pond after we had done some research into it and started to try and plan it. We can get some shots of her reflection on the water by using a real pond - or we may be able to edit this in. We will shoot this in the evening so that it is dark because this is good for the whole magical feel. And as you can see from the photograph the reflections on the water at night does really work. Another aspect to the pond part that we are thinking of having is light graffiti - this would obviously work at this time of the day as it is dark so it will be able to be seen. We are going on a recki next week to check out the location.

Also for the shot of the girl getting pulled in (willingly) we want to shoot this in a pool. However we might need to line the pool black so that it goes with the style of the underwater dance that we created using a green screen. There are obvious problems with putting a black lining down but it won't go with the whole video if we have the girl going into the blue pool. If we cannot get the black down into the pool we will have to think of another way that we can create this or another way to act it out. But if it can be achieved it should all link very nicely to create one whole video.

There is a lot of practical photography that we will add on top of eachother. This will help 3 dimensional it and the layers will make it look even more magical -this will be bubbles, particals in water which we will shoot on the day and stick on the top of the shots that we get. This will create a really surreal world but really paint the image of it being underwater.

We have definitely decided to loose the bed part of the video because we don't need it. Also it is a bit cliche and because of the sound of the song being surreal the video can be surreal without having to be explained.

Storyboard

In class we made our storyboard of exactly what we want to happen. We did this whilst listening to the song so we could hear when we want which shots to be in sync with which part of the music. This really gave us the idea of how the two main elements of our music video would come together and made us think about what close-up shots we want, and more about the underwater element. By creating this is showed how the idea as a whole actually works, and how the two parts of the video could work really well together. Our storyboard is quite visual, we added colour- the reason for this was to show that the two shots involve the colour blue so how they link, and also to show the beauty of the video. We want to make sure that we do take a lot of different angled shots, some tracking shots etc.. It also showed the importance of lighting as we must make sure that the two different worlds - underwater and above - really compliment eachother and not clash. By producing the storyboard to this standard it made us more confident on our idea as a whole - and as you can see we are all pretty happy with how are idea is developing! 

There is a shot that we want to use (which we put on the storyboard) which is a hand underneath water and a hand above water - the girl below is trying to temp the girl above water to come in with her. This isn't a forceful movement in anyway, but just shows the girls coming together and how one is coming into the others world. We shot a picture of me and another member of my group holding hands, and I decided to firstly edit it as if it was all in water (below left) and then another which shows the water and above water (right). Obviously these are very roughly edited but I just wanted to see what the actual concept would look like and which we prefer. We may decide that it is at first like the one on the left, but eventually it will all be in water. This is just an experiment - yet I feel that if we do it either using the green screen or water it could look be a shot that really brings everything in the video together.