Blog Reflections: Week 8

This week we have focused on all of our last few parts for the pre-production stage. This included several things.

Our flatplans had to be our initial hand drawn designs of what we want our magazine advert and digipak to look like. In our job roles we split up this work evenly, it was my job to create the magazine advertisement and my partners job to come up with a digipak. We worked together when brainstorming our ideas so that we could both go away and create two items that still had synergy and had a clear link between each media text. 

It was also my job to make up a production schedule which would help us plan when we would go out and film, where we would go and what scenes we would film. By doing this it will help us meet our deadlines set by our teachers and the ones we have set for ourselves, which will help us keep on top of the work. 

The shot list was the final piece of work that we completed for the pre-production stage. We had initially decided that Tara would work on this by herself, but we decided to work together when completing this so we both had an visual idea of what would be going on when we actually go out and film.  We had to consider:

shot types,movements,angles,duration of each shot,locations,props,equipment,what will be seen in each,shot(what the actors will do), and the lyrics 

Now that we have completed all of our pre - production work we could go on to begin all of our production. We have planned to go out over the half term and visit our two locations to film the narrative side of the music video. These will be Brick Lane and Camden Lock, we will get to these locations by train and hope to find somewhere suited which isnt too over crowded and too busy to film in. 

DigiPak Flatplan

For our digipak we wanted to create something that would have synergy with the music video and magazine advertisement. We had to come up with something that would help brand our artist through the images used, the track list, the album name and the typography. My partner Tara come up with the digipak after we had discussed our overall idea for each media text that we would go on and create. 

This is what we want our digipak to look like, we wanted to keep colours consistent and keep the image of a rose consistent through all three products. We conformed to the conventional digipak as we had 6 sides. We looked at digipaks online and the majority had 6 sides. We used red, black and white because we felt the colours are modern and our target audience can use these colours to identify with as these three colours are currently in. We wanted to show the genre of our artist on the digipak hence the studio and guitar. We also wanted to use a range of shots so the digipak didn't look boring, we want all the sides to be different. We also decided to have the title and the name of the artist on the front because its a convention of digipak, we used the passengers album cover as inspiration as the band is in the same music genre. A big thing for us was that we wanted a simple digipak because the majority of indie artist don't tend to have overdone, amazing digipaks. So we didn't have to much on our back cover other than the track list, bar code and the record label. I picked a white background because it connotes purity, innocence and wholeness. White also connotes how simple the artist is we will also keep him simple in all other products. The name of the digipak appeared on the front cover once and the CD twice. It appeared on the cover once because we had it in a big bold font, meaning the title took up a big space on the cover. We placed it twice on the CD so people know the name when they have the CD by itself. 

Magazine Advertisment Flatplan

This is what we plan for our magazine advert to look like, we stuck with the same colour scheme and used the objects to help create synergy between all of the media texts. For our magazine advertisment we wanted to create something that created a clear brand for the artist. We wanted to make sure that the colours white, black and red are used in all of our media texts to create a brand for the artist. We ended up using the same cross and rose which we put in the digipak and we will include on the artists guitar as a sticker which will help create a strong synergy between all pieces of media. We wanted a close up shot of the artist in the middle of the X in the same costume that he will be wearing in the digipak and the music video. We will make sure the artist is wearing the same hat as we wanted to make this clear to the audience that this is how the artist will be recognised in the industry. We used the colour red as most of his songs will be associated with love and he will sing about his love life and heartbreaks. We stuck with the colours black and white as we felt as though even though it is quite simple it will make the main focus stand out to the audience and the artist is quite simplistic with his music so it works well together. We featured the song "Once in A lifetime" as this is the song that we will be using for our music video, we made the typography of the album title large and at the top so the focus will stay on that. We placed the artists name at the bottom in a smaller font as we felt as though this was conventionally seen in most magazine advertisments. The Interscope record label is placed in the bottom right hand corner as we don't think it is something as important as the artist himself.

Recci Images

Recci

These are some of the locations which we will use in our music video, we picked these locations because we liked the look it gave and we believe these are common locations used in music videos. We don't want to have too many locations in the video because we don't want to confuse the audience.

Back-up location

We then picked Ella's house for the bedroom scene that we need because we have access when ever we like and its very close to school meaning we don't have to travel too much. The locations we will use is her bedroom because its a typical bedroom making the scene look more realistic to the audience. We don't want a bedroom which is expensive like you see in RnB videos we want simple because our genre is indie. This will be a back up location for us to film at incase we don't like any other shots we take.

We will also use brick lane to film the scenes when the couple are all loved up, Brick Lane has the look we want to create for our locations, it has a typical hipster look and fill making the genre more clear to the audience.  We will film the couple around the brick lane market because we like the mise-en-scene. However we may have trouble getting there as we have to get on trains and the cast may not be able to travel when we need them, also if we have to re film it may be hard to get continuity. If this location fails we have a back up of the skate park in Mawney park, because this is typical location which people said they would expect. We also think it has a typical young relationship feel as well as a indie feel. We will film the stuff which will be on the projector at these locations. This location is easier to get too for the actors in the video. These locations both have the feel of a indie music video and will help portray our narrative of a homeless guy. 

We also want to film in Camden because we feel that the miss-en-scene will portray our narrative perfectly. Our narrative is about a homeless guy trying to get a rich girl to notice him, we will have him sitting on street corners and walking around Camden. We also want to film the artist performing to the camera against a wall with graffiti on it. However this location may be hard to get all the cast to because its fairly far from school. If this location fails we will try and use different place in Brick Lane. 

Our final location for our music video is the school music studio, we will have to get permission and book it out but we believe this location would be good for the performance and show the emotion of the artist. This will also strongly show the audience our genre and allow us to have a performance aspect to our video without having the artist against a plain back drop. Our artist will be in this location for more than half of the video so its important we get enough time at this location.

Inspiration and Casting

When looking at who we wanted to cast as our artist and our character who will play the love interest we had to think about who would fit the role best in terms of look, acting ability and how well they can lip sync. We carried out a small casting where we went around and asked people to lip sync a song of their choice to the camera. By doing this we feel as though we have made the right choice in who we have casted as they can lip sync well and have a strong acting ability. When looking for the girl we had to base this more upon looks and how available she will be for us when we need her to film. I feel more confident now we have chosen who will play what role, and we feel that we have made good choices with our two characters as they look how we expect and they are dedicated and reliable.

We also found some inspiration through some pictures which we then went onto make a pinterest board. By doing this its helped us put all our creative ideas together and make something that has inspired as we have gone through the course so far. We put the images together to help us get a overall idea of our inspiration and how this could shape our ideas

Production Schedule

This is the production schedule we will follow throughout the half term and when we return to school. By following this schedule of when we will film certain shots it will help us keep on top of our work and meet all of the deadlines set by our teachers. We have given our self time to film over the half term, and as we wont have access to the schools music studio we have planned to film them shots when we come back. We have also left it so we have more time before our final deadline for the filming so that we can go back and make any changes to shots we are not happy with. 

Blog Reflections: Week 7

Last week we carried out a focus group where we asked several people about our idea, what they would expect to see and how they thought we could develop this idea. From this we felt as though we could get some more answers from a wider population of people. We did this by carrying out a vox pop, this helped us as we asked more males as our focus group only included one and we got their opinion our two narrative ideas.

From this we have shaped our idea and changed it to fit with our feedback and this helped us know which was good and should be included and what we should not use. 

This week we made our treatment, we first used prezi to create it on and this is our initial idea. However we then went on to get more feedback by carrying out a vox pop and this meant our idea changed. Our final treatment included our exact idea that we have finally chosen, however this may change if we feel as though some things arent going to work or be realistic.

This week we also started to design our flat plans for our magazine advert and digipak.