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.

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.