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.

Creating the pond..

Thinking about how we would create the pond in the studio. If we did it in the studio the pond would have to be quite small which is a limitation we wouldn't have if we did it on location. If we are creating a pond in the studio we have to make it abstract otherwise it could look really badly unrealisitc but trying to look realistic. The problem we have is how do we do this? Here is a video (below) of an abstract video that has the feel of it being real yet we see that clearly they are not trying to represent the real world. This is something we want - but we still want there to be a magical element to it.

In this video it is at night and they are seen to be in the clouds - obviously we see that this isn't actually real but thats the almost beauty of the video that it is not trying to look really real. This even looks quite magical as its an artificial way of making them look like they are in the clouds. We liked the fact that this was at night and the background is something we want in our video - starry night. This would be our back drop to the shots of the girl by the pond. The stars give a mygetstic feel to the shots, this is shown in this video even when its not trying to look magical. Below is a picture of a starry night and this is the kind of thing we want the background of this part of the video to be. It has a dreamlike feel to it, and there is something beautiful about it. We wouldn't have this done by green screen we don't think, but actually get material that represents a starry night - it wouldn't look this realisitc.

Thinking about the water and grass we had the idea of using material. We could use green felt for the grass. It could even be something as basic as cutting them up into the shape of grass like a zig zag line - this would be quite stylised. Or we could just have the green felt over bags of things so that this creates a sort of river bank. Its weather we want to go overboard with the 'arty not real' feel or more in the middle. This is just an idea of how we could get over the fact that going to a real location has many problems. For the water we thought about the idea of having dark blue cloth around a big rectangular tray which is filled with water. We could also just use a mirror at the bottom of a tray full of water and if the water doesnt show up we could dye it blue. Another way that we could create water would be by using blue shimmerin material that is crumpled up (like quality street rappers) over a mirror. This would create a riplling effect of water which won't look real at all, but it would look stylistic and people would understand the concept. We also discussed the idea of having a tree next to the pond - this could be a fake tree which we thought maybe fairylights could be hanging in the tree as this would be dreamlike. Another way to do it would be like in Cheryl Coles video for 'Parachute'. Below is a print screen of what she did. This would be quite easy to do, all we would need would be a blue material and fans to blow it up.



The pond?

We spoke about set design today and where we were going to shoot. One thing that came up in our conversation was about the pond element of the video. There are many limitations of doing this in a real location - one main problem with doing it on location is the weather. It is weather permitting - yet by making a set this gets rid of this problem. By doing it in the studip and by making a set it is a lot easier to shoot, there is no transport time and mostly it is way more reliable. We don't need to worry about the weather as we are controlling everything in the studio - whereas in location it brings uncontrollable factors, however it isn't impossible if we do decide to do it in real life. The main thing that we want to create is the fact that it is magical - the sun would help this, however we cannot guarentee it will be sunny. At night it might look magical too - so this is a possibility. If we did it at night in the studio this would be better as you wouldn't be able to see the set really really clearly so this might be able to hide the fact that its not real. This is a problem about doing it in the studio - we might have to consider an abstract pond and not aim to create a pond indoors as this may look really unrealisitc and ruin the video. By doing it abstract it will make it more dream-like (as a whole video) and it is merely symbolising the pond, rather than it actually being shot by one. Whatever we do - whether we do it on location or in studio, night or day we must make sure that the shots above water match the shots underneath the water. They must work together, otherwise this will make it unbelievable that she is seeing what she is seeing from above water of underwater. Here is an image (below) of the kind of thing we want it to look like. This is the magical feel we want in our video.

Getting the song

Here is a print screen shot of our email to H320 asking them for the original rexix of 'Numb'. Because the quality of the song isn't good on YouTube we need to get the original file so then we can use it in our music video. It's not available to download in iTunes so this is a reason that we need to ask for them to send it to us. We want the sound of the song to be of best quality as possible because this enables people to not be distracted by the bad quality of it and it really makes it look and sound like a proffesional video which is something we really want.