Pitch

Our concept for the music video is based on the narrative of the song; a couple in which the female is fed up of the relationship and has gone past caring. This links to the main lyrics of the song 'I got this feeling on a summer day when you were gone...' by representing a clear image of the referred to couple. Our video will be performance based with a fragmented narrative, this is because although we want to keep the video visually interesting and fast paced, we feel there must be some sort of narrative behind it in order to provide sufficient meaning to the song.

The video will roughly consist of 3 parts, an opening in which we see the character in the kitchen styled as a 1950s housewife serving tea, the character will then begin smashing plates and ripping her apron off. This is to hint at the relationship between her and her boyfriend, in that she is fed up. We chose to do an opening as this is a common feature in pop videos today and we wanted to stick with the conventions of the genre. Furthermore, in the opening we are trying to play with themes which are big topics at the moment like the idea of patriarchy and voyeurism which show the woman being objectified and seen to serve men, our idea could further be interpreted not just as the female being fed up of the relationship but how society is trying to push back against the dominating male figure.

The second main part to the video will be the powder paint idea which has been a key feature in all of our planning from the very beginning. We plan to have the powder paint come in around the first chorus of 'I don't care...' as we think this will be very eye catching to the viewer and emphasise how the character doesn't care anymore, in that she's getting messy and having fun and couldn't care less, which links in with the lyrics. We had a few specific ideas for shots to be used in this section, for example, the artist would flip her hair forward and then the camera would do a 360 around her before loads of people come into shot and throw paint at her. We also thought of playing with fast forward and slow motion in editing at these parts to create a contrast and captivate the audiences attention (e.g. speed up the footage as a character is about to throw the paint and then slow it down as the paint is mid air). Furthermore we thought it may also look good to use reverse in the section by making it look as if the paint is being taken off the characters (this may be a good way to end the video; with the character being clean again). The overall idea for this section is to create some interest and to just make it look like the character is having a fun time - which is in contrast to the opening.

The final main theme in the video focuses mainly around glow in the dark body paint and glow sticks. This section of the video would come in around the first bridge of the song 'I'm in the Milky Way...'. We wanted this part of the video to look quite futuristic as to link to the obvious imagery of space used in the lyrics. We also thought this part of the video could be used as more glamour shots in which to fully capture the artists creative nature and show off her appearance. Overall we just think that this section will add another dimension to the video and keep the audiences attention.
More recently we were thinking of including dance in this section, as dance is heavily featured in pop music videos, and this would be an appropriate time in the video to add a small choreographed section of dance - however this is still being discussed.    

Makeup trial: 1

Today I practiced doing one of the makeup looks we are thinking of using in our music video. The look is an black eyeliner with pink eyeliner layered above it. The skin would probably be fairly basic, just foundation and concealer. In this test I used a bright pink lipstick although I think it might be too girly for our video.

Colour is very important in the pop genre and we want to make sure our clothes and makeup match this. The style of our artist is going to be soft/pastel grunge.  Originally I was thinking we could do a dark lip, however, after taking to the group we thought that the makeup might the whole look to gothy.

Lyric Deconstruction

Planning

Questionnaire

This is the questionnaire we will be using on a group of people from our year to find out the music tastes and consumption and what they think of music videos.

Location.

For location we are looking at using a number of different places. We are looking at a mix of indoors and outdoors places.


Derelict Hospital

I noticed that in a lot of music videos and pop specifically there is often use of derelict places, this provides a nice balance between the glamor of the artist and the location, it also adds character to the artist, as young and free and as a "rule breaker". This theme of isolated buildings/areas can be seen in many videos such as "Take It Off" by Kesha for example which has a similar idea as ours- using paint etc. Another example is "I Found You". Because of this I suggested to the group that we look at an deserted hospital near were we live, however, we would have to get permission which could be difficult. The building may not also be safe. If we plan on using it then we would have to do a location recce and ask for permissions to go inside and film.

Painshill Park
One of the other locations we have been looking at is Painshill Park, this is a really nice location as it has lots of different areas that we could use. We need to look into getting permission to perform there, and I have been drafting the email to them. We have also been planning to go and see the location one weekend, if we haven't had a reply to our email by then, we will also see if we can talk to someone and negotiate a couple of ours or so, obviously no budget limits where we can go. 
Here is a short video of some pictures from Painshill Park.



Richmond Park
 If we are declined filming in Painshill we can always use our local park, although we were hoping not to as many of the other videos we have seen from previous years have.




White and Black Studio
We have also been thinking of using a white studio as we have seen those in a number of music videos, and especially in ones that use paint etc, for example Colour Bandits. This looks really clean and professional, and we think we look great on camera.

 We have also been toying with using the drama studios at school which are black inside, this is where we would do some glow in the dark paint scenes, we can play with lighting in here too.

Group Mood Board

Here is our group mood board that we created together with a combination of all our ideas. The key themes we have gone with is:

• Bright Colours
• Paint Dust
• Soft Grunge Fashion 
• Neon Colours 
• Locations 
• Opening/Initial Ideas (Housewife) 

Location Spotting

While out in Kingston we spotted a location which might be good to film at as it shows bright and colorful images of well know, popular themes (e.g. my little pony, lego etc) and therefore would link into our video by keeping it bright and vibrant and appealing to the pop audience who would recognize and identify with the images. 

Cast Photos - Lead Singer

We chose to cast Katy Williamson as the main artist as she has the typical pop artist look (slim, beautiful, fashionable etc.). Katy has also had previous experience with photo shoots and being on camera and therefore we think she would be a charismatic, photogenic and cooperative character to shoot, which is ideal.

Powder

Ive been watching how to make the powder for our music video, as buying it can be quite expensive.
Although some of the colors in the video don't show up very brightly and it looks very time consuming to make large batches as we would need. So a mixture of buying and making is probably our best plan.

Makeup

 

Here are some moodboards I created for possible makeup that we could use. I created a few different looks for the different scenes in our video. The first is a soft grungey look, with dark reds and purples. We would keep the skin simple and use a dark eye and neutral lip/ or a dark lip with smudgy winged liner for the eyes. The hair would probably be backcombed and messy. The nail colour would be a metallic, or deep purple. 

The second look is neons, this would be the look when we are using the paint. The eyes would hopefully be a winged liner with a pop of color on the lid. The lips would also be a bright shade, orange or pink. The hair for this could be messy or tied up.

Planning

Today in class we continued work on the storyboard. We decided to get down all of our ideas for shots or sequences that we think would be effective and then try to order them and merge them together, rather than doing one linear storyboard for the whole thing as it allows us to be more creative and stop thinking in a narrative based mind set in that one shot must follow another logically. Therefore allowing us to properly brainstorm each section and how they would link together in a creative fun music video.

Influences to our video

Kesha - Take it Off

This video uses powder paint - When analysing this video; the use of powder paint is really effective and mesmerising. The colours brighten up the whole scene and makes it feel magical. It shows that something so simple to make and produce can make a video seen so much more innovative and creates a happy mood, it is perfect for our target audience; Young girls. As you can tell Kesha also has paint all over her face and it shows that she is not afraid to get messy and in essence this fun and careless feel defines pop videos. Also the play fighting is also very effective as long as we do not make it look cliche   and cheesy.

O Conqueror - Fake Love

This music video involves toy cars. We also wish to incorporate this in our video because it will create variety alongside realist performance. This music videos obviously uses a lot of editing which although looks very effective, we would struggle with editing our own video to this extent, as it is quite time consuming. We could display a scene using our hands to drive them however we don't want it to look too unprofessional so maybe a simple transitions and the burning of the car in the finale can be done with still image or less human control.

Katy Perry - Last Friday Night 

Katy Perry uses mise en scene to dress up, exaggerate and incorporate humour of 'Teenage Dream'. She dresses as a geeky school girl which is a play on time, just like we wish to do in our own music video. The clothes she chooses to wear are over the top but it gets the message across. It makes the video that bit more interesting and pulls the audience into watching more as they see there idol in a different light.

Audience Summary

Ideal target audience:

Age: 13-25

Gender: Female

Class Background: C1 - E1

Interests: Like upbeat music, regularly listen to music, follow there favorite bands and are very girly.They should enjoy mainstream music.

Copyright message to Record Company CEO

Lyric Deconstruction

As a group we came up with a rough guide of what we will be doing in our music video.

Group Meeting

In Friday's lesson we discussed our deadlines and created a schedule. We also created a list of things that we need to do as a group.

Our calendar- Cozi

In order to help us create a more detailed schedule we are using an online calendar "Cozi" which can be used as an app and on computers meaning it is very useful. We are each going to enter in our events, so that it is easy to see who is busy when etc.

We also have a Facebook group chat that we can use to post ideas and chat about work when we are not in lesson.