1950s Inspirations

Costume from Test

Costume from test shoot.

The costume from the test shoot was based around the 1950s. We wanted the image of a 1950s housewife but with a modern twist. I wore a red spotted dress, apron, cardigan, and Doc Martens. The Doc Martens add a rebellious side to the artist. The Doc Martens also contrast against the formal tone and suggest that the artist is young and the housewife suggests she is traditional and more grown up. Linking this to the song, the lyrics "Your from the 70s I am a 90s bitch" suggest that the man is older than the artist, and we wanted to link this into the song somehow. When researching costume and housewives from the 1950s I found that many of the housewives had half aprons, we decided to recreate this, and I think it looks effective.

The makeup and hair we researched and decided to do a down hair style with winged eyeliner and lipstick. If we do this again I think it would look better to curl my hair and put it up, as this would look more traditional and make a bigger impact if later my hair is down in the video. I liked the slight quiff at the front of my hair, and would like to recreate that. I also added a beauty spot as it makes it more convincing. 

1950s Shoot.

Here are the videos from the 1950s shoot we did a few weeks ago. There were a few issues with uploading, so they have had to be split up.

Meeting 16/12/13

                                                                                Today we tried to get dates down to film over christmas time as by now our plans for the holidays are more clear. Although we have an online events calender which we fill in when we have plans, it has been hard to keep up with when everyone is free.

We have decided for this reason that we will film after our mocks which will finish mid January. We decided that Kirsten will be doing the filming and me and Nicola will be helping with the editing as well as directing with the filming.

Opening Inspirations.

From our research we have found that a lot of music videos have an opening before the video. In planning and story boarding we have been coming up with ideas for the opening. I suggested to the group that we do a silent opening with the artist being a 1950s housewife. For many of our meetings we have been thinking about the aspects of Voyeurism within music video and how we might include that in our video. A student music video that was shown to us started the idea of playing with voyeurism for me.

As well as there being much controversy over women in music video and how they are exploited currently. "Blurred Lines" created a huge debate due to the objectification of the women.

Similarly Lilly Allen's "Hard Out Here" has been dealing with this issue, parodying Thickes video, and showing a strong female character. This has been a particular inspiration because like Lilly Allen we want our artist to be a strong female, drawing from the rebellious themes in the song, "I don't care, I love it".

I had the idea of the opening being the artist dressed like a 1950s housewife. This inspiration for this came from Lady Gaga's "Telephone". This opening allows us to play with voyeurism as we are showing the female in a stereotypical way. We then show her in power, showing her as a strong female, who is independent of traditional values. This links in to our song as she is tired of her partner.

Inspirations

Battles Ice Cream

 

This music video is inspirational and useful in helping us with our own video as there are many elements to it that can be used in out own. Especially the use of fast pace editing, we thought this was very attractive as it made it more interesting and filled the screen with detailed original pieces of film. Although it is fast paces there only a few locations, we like the fact that the shots are not repetitive as they continue in a chronological transitioned form. We hope to use this in our own video as the beat to our song is also fast paced so it would match the mood of the video, also the song does not have a deep sad feel to it, so up beat positive shots will be very effective in the overall look of the video.


Paint Speakers

 

We watched this and though it would be a great idea to incorporate this into out own video. Although we wanted to avoid too much narrative we felt we where making it to serious and wanted to involves something more spontaneous and creative. This looks really cool and if we where to do it we would have to consider the possibility of it looking slightly ammature. We would have to find  an effective background and consider the cost of paint.

We have been looking at sites such as Ebay and Amazon to find paint. The normal art paint that generally comes in bigger quantities and is also more expensive. The art paint is cheaper however surprisingly still expensive. This is worrying as it may limit the amount of test shooting we can do.



Image

As a style icon and 'character' Effy from skins is the image we want to replicate in some elements for our main singer. Effy has a very mysterious and rebellious attitude which perfectly matches our song lyrics of 'I don't care'. Like our chosen singer she is very photogenic so draws in the audience. Her clothing is very casual, slightly short cut but represents the costume idea that we have which is slightly grungy.

Health and Safety

Risks we need to consider:

Paint: Although we are just going to use art paint, we have to make sure that when we do scenes that involves 'play fighting' that we are careful and keep it away from eyes etc.

Table flipping: In the opening scene of our music video we will be flipping a table or smashing plates, both of these can be dangerous so we are going to make sure the target areas are completely clear, as well as doing test runs to make sure it will not be dangerous.

Cake throwing: If we choose to do cake throwing we have to be careful that we don't get cake in anyone eye.

Meeting 12/12/13

Today we discussed the dates that we would be free to film over the next week and the Christmas holidays. We realised it would be very difficult to film next week as we have coursework deadlines, as well as this we are all going to see family around Christmas time. Another issue we have come across is the upcoming mocks.  These are being held in January, so due to revision and the rush to edit means it will be hard.

Group Planning: Test Run of Powder

Today we did a test run of the flour. We discovered:

• It is a very difficult substance to work with- the particles made in difficult to focus, we will need to stop and check that the shot isn't blurry in the real thing. Also finding a way of covering the camera and equipment.
• If we shot the powder we would need to think about dedicating an entire day due to clothes getting covered. Also we need to make sure we have a shooting schedule so that no shots get missed as we will be changing clothes often, making sure we are organised and locations have areas to change etc, is also important. 
• We also need to make sure the powder shots are close ups so that we can see them well enough.  

Powder Paint Filming - test (flour)

Photos of flour testing

Today we tested using flour as a basis for our paint dust. The actual paint dust will be made with either cornflour or normal flour we need to look at the consistency of the powder and how well it works with the colour in it.

The colour will be put in using food colouring and we will then enhance colouring during editing.  Doing a test shot gave us the opportunity to see if this would work as well as if we used poster paint. Also we needed to see how much of a mess it would make, considering the locations we plan to use.

Also as we plan to use the song title throughout we looked writing it in the flour we think this would look good when we actually have coloured powder and would also add another shot to our music video.

Rough Storyboarding

Meeting 10/12/13

We wanted to finish Storyboard that we had started, the process of planning has been a struggle as we all very different ideas of what we want in out video and how we will go about it. While we where story boarding we decided that our intro would be best silent, with as comedic feel to it which will break out into the music.

We came up with a visual schedule of the next week and agreed that if we had a clear view of what we wanted to do, we could attempt to do it in lesson time, but this is quite unrealistic as our individual thoughts are strong but collectively vague.

Group Meeting

Today we have been developing our storyboard and have come across some issues with development. We are certain on how much narrative we want to use and we only really want a narrative at the very beginning of the song. Our biggest issue is the fact that we want to make our video very much like the original. We want to have it disjoined and not really any narrative to the actual core of the video.

Our biggest problems are

• Agreeing on the amount of narrative we want to use
• Trying to figure out what order we want the shots in
• Completing a storyboard that we all agree on

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.

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