Location Scouting 1

This is the first location for my shoot, this is my living room and will be used for the flashback scenes between Elleah and Ben. I wanted to create the feeling of a regular home that the couple would be realistically living in together and by using my own house I wont have any problems with getting permission to shoot their. If you try to imagine the dinning room table to be clear, I will be using this for later in the video when the couple are breaking up. 

Storyboard

Linking my music video ideas to existing products

The foundations for my music video have been inspired by many different existing products. I have looked at elements of other pop artists work and used them to inspire some of my own ideas. For the performance element of my video I have looked closely at Ed Sheeran's video 'One' and Sam Smith's' music video for 'I'm not the only one'. Both of these videos contain elements of performance within them- Ed's more than Sam's. However, they are both shot very differently. The video for 'One' shot entirely on stage with the focus being on Ed and his guitar, whereas the video for not the only one has a narrative combined with the performance element which shows Sam shot against a red curtains with an old fashioned microphone. I think I may try to mix and match the two styles from the videos and take the guitar element and style of shots from Ed's and combine it with the simple curtain background of Sam's. I will shoot the whole thing in colour and perhaps play about with a black and white filter over the top afterwards. 


As for the narrative of my video I have taken inspiration from 3 existing music videos: James Bay's 'Let it go', Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding's 'Outside' and Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris' 'We found love'. James Bay's 'Let it go' has inspired me with the way that it isolates the protagonist of the story. I want to be able to isolate my main character to represent the personal challenges that he is going through and the use of close up shots and focus on the protagonists emotions in this video really captures that well. Rather than influencing the storyline of my video this video has influenced how I want to shoot certain sections and the cinematographic style that I am aiming for. 
The video for 'Outside' on the other hand has much more inspiration for the narrative of my video. It shows a lot of shots of the two different couples fighting and arguing and I want to use this to inspire my moments of flash back where the protagonist is reminiscing on the moments leading up to his break up with his girlfriend. I like how this video cuts between the shots of the couples and Ellie's performance. This is done smoothly ans is something I will be aiming to do myself in the post production period.  
The video for 'We found love' is perfect for demonstrating how I am wanting to incorporate drugs and alcohol into my video. This video doesn't represent drugs in a glamourised manner in my opinion but instead shows its destructive nature and that's something that I want to put across. I want to show how the protagonists addiction has worsened and is starting to ruin his life and show the audience the dangers of drug and alcohol abusive both physically and emotionally. I also am inspired by some of the editing effects used in this video. They've done a lot to speed up some of the shots, particularly after the pair have taken drugs and I like the effect that this gives. The only problem I may have with this is trying to fit the editing with the overall tempo of the song. But it may still be achievable. 

Annotating Lyrics

Here I have annotated the lyrics to my song with my ideas of what to shoot in each section. By doing this I am able to think about the relationship between the visuals and the lyrics of the song. Also from this I have a clearer idea of how to start my storyboard. I have decided to include a performance element within my music video and decided that this would be best to include in the chorus of the song to break up the narrative.

Mindmap of ideas

I have created a mindmap of ideas linked to my chosen song 'I'm a Mess'. Most of these ideas revolve around the protagonist either going through a personal struggle, or the protagonist trying to help a friend or partner get through a hard time. I think I am going to use the idea of the protagonist going through an addiction that is causing him to lose the people that mean the most to him and the video will follow his struggle to over come his addiction. As an initial thought I think I am going to end the video with the protagonist dying from an overdose as he uses the drugs/alcohol to deal with the loss of his lover. He wouldnt die in a hospital though I would want him to die in quite a grimey and dirty place. I'm also thinking of experimenting with performance elements within the video to break up the narrative, however I might lose this if it proves to difficult to match the lip syncing with the music.



Retrospective post

My advanced portfolio is beginning to take shape as I work towards getting all of my planning together for my final piece. As a whole compared to my foundation portfolio, I think that I have gone into a lot more detail in my research leading up to my final products.

I started by exploring the genre, history and theory behind pop music and their videos in detail and tried to  deconstruct existing music videos to discover what conventions and patterns were common.  I would say that my deconstructions of my music videos are more detailed and in depth than my deconstructions of my opening titles were. I found that there was more to explore in terms of linking the visuals of the videos to their lyrics and liking the content to theorists that I had researched. However, I think that I could have gone into a lot more detail linking the videos to the theorists but the research that I did do was very helpful in explaining and helping me understand why some content is featured in music videos and how this can link to the audience and their interaction with the video.

After my initial research I completed a mini task where I created a trial music video. This is something which is significantly different from the work I did at AS as we didn't create a trial title sequence. I think that this trial has been really useful for me to start thinking about how I want to set up my final piece. It also got me back into the swing of how to plan my shoot, thinking carefully about every shot. I would say that I was a lot more methodical with my approach to planning this video compared to the videos I made at AS. I think that this could be to do with disaster I had with my title sequence shoot where I had to re-shoot twice. If my planning had been tighter then I wouldn't have had to go back and re-shoot so many times. The shoot therefore for my trial music video went very smoothly, as I'd taken more time to consider elements such as shots, location and the overall set up of the shoot. I aim to have the same level- if not even more detailed- of planning for my final music video shoot.

As for the rest of my research/planning I have done a lot of research into existing advertising products and digipaks from a range of genres, with the obvious main focus on pop music. I think what would be a big improvement on this research would be to take this research and link it to how it will influence and form the basis of my own promotional products. Whilst I have started to do this I think it certainly needs to be more detailed. I will do this through creating more of my own trial designs and surveying them with my target audience. This was definitely an area that lacked depth in my AS project and I intend to try to widen this area so that my ideas have more relevance and backing. I have then looked at branding and the specific branding of my chosen artist Ed Sheeran. I've found that his branding is quite quirky in it's style but I like its uniqueness. From this I have done some very brief design ideas and tested them on members of my target audience. To expand on this more I need to start taking more of my own photography and developing my designs to suit the needs of my target audience members. This was something that I could have done better in my AS work. Listening to the ideas and thoughts of target audience members to improve my work is vital, especially in this project when considering the existing identity of the artist.  

Compared to last year I think I have been stronger with my ideas and I haven't changed my mind as much as to what I'm doing. However I think I need to be quicker with my work so that I'm being more productive and managing my time better to get my work done. This is my main focus for improvement and I will need to maintain a high level of detail in my planning and research if I am wanting to make my work/blog better than it was in my foundation project. Whilst this is a personal challenge I am sure I rise to it to get my work to a high standard as I move into my planning stage for my shoot.

 

Branding Feedback

I recently received some feedback on my trials for my branding ideas. The feedback as a whole seemed to be positive and has given me a few ideas on how to improve my brand as a whole. I think I am going to stick with a black, green and white colour scheme and use a symbolic image for my magazine advert.

Here are a few comments that people made on my work:

"Both designs look really good with what you have put together so far, some ideas could be to add a painted black "X" on the white background on the ben design  and maybe putting a polaroid affect to the fire image on other one."  

"both pieces of work are good! the one with the fire is the better one in my opinion as it stands out and draws more attention to it. good use of the colour scheme on the black background. 

well done. (p.s. im no artist i only do sport haha)"  

"in the photo with ben you should define his jawline a bit more and make sure parts of his face dont blend in with the white background"

Target Audience Research

As part of my primary research into branding, I have decided to try to get some feedback from members of my target audience. I have taken the risk of email my trial pieces to all member of year 13 at my sixth form (17-18 year olds) in the hope that they will provide me with a range of comments on my work and perhaps some ideas of how I could improve the branding overall. Hopefully i will get some useful feedback that I will be able to analyse and use to help me develop a stronger brand. 

Trial advert and album cover

 

I have created some trial pieces for my promotional material to try to test out some branding ideas. Having completed research into the branding of pop musicians I found that many of these musicians use there face as there main branding imagery. They do this to make their personal image more appealing for their fans and so they become more familiar with the artists image. I also found that with the artist I am looking at- Ed Sheeran- that he uses a particular style of type face on his promotional work. Rather than using a bold typeface that stands out heavily on his packaging, he uses a thinner, quirkier typeface that looks less complete but fits quite well with his abstract style and image. I have experimented using two different styles of typeface on my experimental promotional items. Out of the two styles, I prefer the font used n the magazine poster, but to have a clearer idea I shall ask for some audience feedback from my target audience of 13-20 year olds. 

I also found that Ed uses simplistic, but symbolic imagery on his packaging and this why I have chosen to use the image of the campfire in my experiment. In my final advert cover I will link the imagery to the imagery found in my music video. For example, I have used a campfire here therefore my music video would heavily revolve around this image of a burning campfire to make the advert more symbolic and meaningful. This would then tie into the digipak cover as I would link the colour scheme to the colours and saturation used when editing the image of the artist. 

Moving forward I intend to now to some primary research with members of my target audience to get their opinions on my ideas for branding and see what they find most appealing. 

Requesting song permission

Here is proof that I have attempted to get permission to use Ed Sheeran's song 'I'm a mess'. I have tried to contact the president of Atlantic records, which is the record company that Ed is signed too, hopefully there will be no problems with being able to use the track as there will be no profit made from the video. 

Branding

This power point analyses current forms of branding from existing artists from the pop genre and I can therefore use this to form the basis for my own branding and style. 

Brand identity from Laura Greenley