Storyboard

Rough Cut

Shooting Schedule

UPDATED Planning Costumes

To represent the emotions of the music video we chose to use dark clothing that conveyed how each individual felt, for example Caitlin, who plays our main character, is shown to be wearing mostly grey or black clothing. The symbolism of this tells the audience that she is feeling low and sad after the break up of her former relationship. Although her clothes are dull colours, we have still chosen to dress her in what would be a stereotypical feminine outfit; a skater skirt and a striped top. The black jacket goes as long with this outfit to highlight further her feelings, we added a rose pink backpack to show how our character is feminine but also to highlight that her life is not completely consumed by this break-up despite how it might seem.

To represent the inter-texuality of media texts in our music video we have made our costume for our female main character similar to those of 'Skins'. Most of the female characters were shown to have unstable relationships in the TV program, they often wore dark clothing in the time of feeling alone and sad about their relationship breakdown. It is a common genre convention when portraying heartbreak through a female character to show this through their costume. However, we did not want elaborate costume that our target audience of 17-20 would find difficult to relate to, therefore the costumes are mundane and everyday characters for teens this age.

 For our male character we wanted to emphasise that although his emotions are shown through anger he is feeling similar, therefore a like to Caitlin's character we have dressed him in black and grey too. This highlights their not so indifference of sad and low feelings about their relationship shown through the motif of costume. In the flashback shots, both characters are shown to be wearing brighter and clearly more happier colours, the most obvious is Caitlin's hair, it is bright pink in the flashbacks but in the present of the music video it is a dull blonde colour, this further heightens her feelings at this time.

Selecting Actors

In our music videos we will only be having two actors, including our artist performing (Finn Doherty).

Our female Protagonist 

We have choosen a fellow student, Caitlin Mapes, she has experience in acting having studied GCSE drama receiving an A grade and she also featured as the femme fatale character in our AS Media Thriller. We were confident in Caitlin's abilities and as she is the same age as us we know she will look right for the part as our music video will feature a lovers spat between two young adults. This is important as we needed someone around the around the age of 17-20 for both roles as that is our target audience, therefore we need actors of a similar age to appeal to this audience and for our music video to be relateable. 

Our male actor

Again, we have chosen a fellow student to play the role of our only other character, Pippin Casbourne, with acting experience within a school production of 'King Lear' we know Pippin has the ability to play a very dramatic role as he will be cast into the position of the 'angry ex boyfriend' that will be having an argument with Caitlin's character. 

Mood Board for our music video

Dynamics

Test Footage

Explanation of Planning

Whilst planning our music video we were given a list of all the blog posts to be completed, with this we divided the group posts equally, dependant on each other skills, to make it fair. This ensured no member of our group was left out or that no one was left with a larger work load than others.

The pictures below showcase how we fairly divided the work in our group, we placed initials under the tasks give to certain people. Izzy was given the task of producing the mood board and deciding the location and mine-en-scene, Lucy was give the task of annotating lyrics, planning costumes, Shanelle decided to do the edit the test piece and create the shooting schedule and my tasks were to work on a detailed mind map encompassing all aspects of the planning and to create a story board shot by shot.

Music Video Mood Board

Permission Request

I contacted Finn Doherty request permission to use his own music in our music video and whether he would like to be involved in acting in our music video.

This was the response we received later that evening,

Initial Mind Map

Pitch of our music video

A young man is feeling troubled and isolated in social situations after experiencing heartbreak in a sad break up, after this he struggles to find his way again in life. 

Annotated lyrics of 'Where do we go?'

Choosing a song for our music video

The four songs we evaluated;

  

The first song we evaluated is ‘Take it or Leave it’ by The Montagues and Capulets, a local band from Norwich; although we do not know them personally we would be able to get in touch with them. The song is four minutes and 16 seconds long which ultimately is slightly too long for a music video as this would be much more footage that would need to be filmed and the audience may lose interest by this point, by this I mean that we would need to hold an audience interest for a lot longer than intended. The optimum length of a song that we are looking out for is from 2 minutes and 30 seconds to 3 minutes.

Whilst listening to the song we felt there was something missing, the song did not seem to entice us or seem at all catchy. Perhaps this was because of the similar pace throughout the entirety of the song, ‘Take it or leave it’ does not have clear sections like chorus or a bridge. These seem to blur into one another making them unnoticeable to the listener. This ultimately leaves the song creating a weak impression as it does not have that familiar catchy feel to it. Going back to the slow pace of the song, this is a particularly weak prospect as to be able to create a good edit we need a song that uses pace effectively. There needs to be a distinct rise and fall, which this song does not have, therefore there cannot be different speeds to the edit which would ultimately create a more successful edit.

Personally, I do not like this song very much which creates a problem, the lyrics to me do not feel inspiring to make a music video because of this I have found it difficult to think of ideas to shoot. Overall, we agreed that due to mostly the slow pace and uninspiring this was the right song for us.

Next, we looked at ‘Choose’ by Finn Doherty, a local solo artist that I know personally from high school. This song features on Finn’s latest release, his EP album; ‘Heritage and parenting’. This song starts with a very clear beat and a crescendo, these are strong points for a possible music video to be made. Quickly there is beat introduced by a sound of strong drums and guitars this continues throughout the entirety of the song. Another clear strong point of Finn Doherty’s ‘Choose’ is the definitive sections, compared to The Montagues and Capulets ‘Take it or leave it’, ‘Choose’ has a much clear structure to the song. For example, the chorus in ‘choose’ compared to ‘Take it or leave it’ is much more coherent. ‘Choose’ has strong dynamics created by the different instruments used like drums, guitar and piano at the beginning.

The lyrics of ‘choose’ have already started to create ideas of possible narratives for a music video, the narrative could become more intense in time with the crescendo of the song which I feel would be a very effective technique to have a successful music video. Overall ‘choose’ could be a possible contender for a music video.

Thirdly, we evaluated ‘Process’, another song from Finn Doherty’s Heritage and Parenting album, like his song ‘Choose’ this song also begins with a strong rhythm created by the beat of a piano, guitar and drums. Although this song does not feature a crescendo like ‘Choose’ the fast pace works in its favor as ‘Choose’ is slower compared to ‘Process’. The fast pace the climax to the chorus and the chorus. This would allow us to change pace in the edit, which in turn would give us a more successful video. This is because keeping the same pace throughout the whole entire video would be considered boring and would not show case our skills particularly well. Personally, these lyrics spark more ideas for a potential music video than ‘Choose’ because I believe ‘Process’ to be about a romantic relationship which is easier to create a narrative for. I feel that ‘Process’ is a stronger contender than ‘Choose’, this is down to the pace of the song, dynamics and the lyrics.

Finally, the last song we evaluated was ‘Text Me’ by The Visitors. It is just under four minutes long which immediately causes a concern as this song would require a lot of footage to be shot. This song begins with a soft guitar instrumental, this is does not create a strong beat, it is also has quite a slow pace. Compared to Finn Doherty’s this song seems softer and gentler because of the lack of a beat, this pivots us more towards ‘process’ as a good beat is a strong selling point. However, the pace does increase towards the end of the song as more instruments become introduced like drums, which does strengthen the beat, the pace only seems to change once unlike ‘Process’ which weakens the song as we are looking for several pace changes so that the edit can also change pace to. Personally, as I do not like this song because alternative rock is not my own music taste, the lyrics do not ignite any ideas for a potential music ideas.

We choose Finn Doherty’s ‘Process’ as the song for our music video, this song came out as the top contender while evaluating the suitability for all four songs. Using this diagram

, we could compare of the songs accurately. As shown ‘Process’ out as the four songs hit the suitability points that were looking for most, therefore I feel that it is a sensible and the best choice for our music video.

First Post

Hello, this is my A2 Media Blog for year 13 coursework to uploaded upon.