Choreography Rehearsals

The choreography for our video was fairly simple to put together as we had already finalised it after finishing the storyboard and animatic. Using the animatic as a guide, we put together a list with the lyrics in bold and the actions in light type, as the movements of Vivian and myself will be to the rhythm of the music.

With one of our study sessions, we managed to practice the choreography which will eventually in the final music video using the above walk through of the actions.

We used the establishing wide shot as the test but in the music video we will make it so the video cuts between mid and close ups in the final edit. The infinity backdrop also turned out well and in full black costume, we should contrast the white really nicely. The choreography looks how we imagined it though, so there are no issues, other than we maybe need to be more intense and not fidget when sitting still. 

Shoot Board

Putting together the shoot schedules for our group was a difficult task in some cases. With the studio shoot schedule it was relatively easy, as we knew exactly what shots we were doing, and the fact that we were just going to shoot every type of framing we intended to use for the video then cut between them made ordering the shoot board really straight forward.

Using the studio time allocated to our group (Group 5's colour is green) we were able to arrange a shoot schedule for the dates we were using the studio for a long period of time. 

 All the shots were the full length of the track to avoid continuity errors when editing. All props and costumes were the same and so nothing changed all shoot, apart from background and the lighting for some scenes but even they weren't dramatic changes.

The main problems were with creating shoot schedules for the London locations using the VHS camera as the group wanted to retain the authentic look of archive footage by not planning the exact shots. Instead, we included shot influences and decided that we would try and get as many angles and types of framing as possible on the day in order to have a wide variety of choice for the edit.

 There was also the issue of renting out and transporting the equipment, along with train and bus times affecting travel times between locations. The most obvious problem is also the unpredictability of the weather.

Call Sheet

[ Click to enlarge image ]

For each shoot we created a call sheet, which was essentially a master page of when everything was needed for the shoot and what time everyone working on it needed to be there for. It contained information such as the equipment, lighting and costumes for each shot being taken that day. This was based off of the shootboard, which we had completed previously, along with all the other information such as costume and props. 

Studio And Location Shot List

The shot list we designed as a general reference for when planning any detailed shoot boards or call sheets. It contained a shot list of both the shots we needed for the studio and the ones we needed to shoot on VHS, along with the shoot dates for both and where the shoots were situated. 

It was basically a guide to the 4 week shoot period that everyone could relate to, although no detailed information was available, such as timings, which were organised later on. It was good to put it all out on paper, seeing as there were quite a few locations for us to shoot in so a rough plan was needed so that we knew exactly what we needed to do and by when. 

Kit List

For the shoot days and also for just general organisation, we compiled a kit list of all the equipment needed to film the music video. The studio kit was easy to use, although we had to be shown how to use it by the technician as it was quite complicated technically. The on-location filming for the VHS footage was done using an actual VHS camera. This piece of equipment was quite old and we had worries that it would break during the time we were shooting, and so we also bought along another canon HD camera to the set as well. The promo shots were pretty much taken with the same equipment used in the studio.

Lighting And Set Design

Inspired by the music videos for Talana's 'Gemini' and AlunaGeroge's 'Just A Touch', during our technical demonstration we tried to replicate some of the lighting from scenes in these videos.

Using the school's studio facilities, the Leap Frog lighting desk and a Canon video recorder, we captured some test footage of our attempts to imitate the lighting layouts.

We went through a few designs, testing whether the subjects looked when best back lit, flooded with light or in a variation of colour combinations. Below are a couple of stills for when we were trying different things.

To give an example of how the footage turned out on camera here is a short video of clips captured during the testing

We decided not to use the coloured lighting for the white backdrop scenes as the infinity effect we were going for was lost because the light weren't bright enough. The black and white scenes however worked really well and so we decided to use them for our backdrops. The only issues with lighting was that Vivian and I had such different skin tones, if we made it too bright I was white washed and if we made it too dark Vivian was too dark although I think our group found a good balance. 

Costume, Hair And Make-up

Studio

Costume
For the studio costumes, we have decided to go with a black and white colour scheme to contrast the black and white studio setups, inspired by the likes of FKA Twigs and AlunaGeorge.

Using their costume as a guideline for how to make plain block colour studio shots look interesting, we designed a quirky and interesting costume that we thought reflected our artist's genre, personality and style. For the male artist, his costume will be a collarless shirt, skinny jeans and Adidas trainers with and necklace for both the black and white setups. For the female artists outfit, she will be wearing a baggy light top, fish net tights, platform shoes and a necklace. Both artist will have face paint across their eyes, either in a solid block line or dots in a pattern (black for the male artist and white for the female artist, to contrast their skin tones). 

 These costumes would be replicated exactly and inverted to white for the white on black scenes

Makeup
As our artists are not really over the top and the song is quite slow paced, we decided that having naturalistic and simple makeup for the artists would be better, also seeing as the costume is unique but not over the top. Luckily one of my friend's parents is a professional make up artist, and so gave me a tutorial as to how to do male makeup for a studio. Also, the makeup artist for the media department's girls shoot came in to tell Vivian how she should alter her makeup for studio lights, although she already had a good knowledge of natural and simplistic makeup. In addition to Vivian's makeup, she will be wearing fake eyelashes, in order for her image to look more interesting.

Hair
For hair, we will be using our own hairstyles altered slightly with gel and hairspray.
                                                                                                                                                                                                       

After shooting in the studio for the first time and reviewing the footage, we decided that the costumes for the artists were way too simplistic for the effect we were going for.

When reevaluating, we ordered some accessories that would make the artist's image more unique and interesting, drawing the audience's attention more.

The final costumes ended up looking like this:

On location
When on location, rather than plan every costume that Louis and Gina wear, we have asked them to wear their normal clothes. The way they dress normally is that of a typical teenager so there are no issues with style, and it's more convenient this way as we don't have rummage through their wardrobes. Here are a few examples of what they have worn on set so far:

Casting

For the casting of roles we were looking for a white male and black female as the band NTLS and a male and female similar to those cast for the NTLS roles. The casting of our video was done with the knowledge that we would have to rely on the person to give up a large amount of their spare time and to be prompt for shoots.

Louis Caldwell

Age: 17

Gender: Male

Height: 6 ft 2"

Role: Boyfriend

Louis was cast as the part of the boyfriend because of he is part of our media group and fits the role really well. He is in a relationship with Gina, the girl cast for the role of the Girlfriend, as we decided that the relationship would look more authentic than actors pretending to be in one.

Gina Corrieri

Age: 18

Gender: Female

Height: 5 ft 6"

Role: Girlfriend

Gina's role as the girlfriend was cast mainly because she is Louis actually girlfriend. She also has experience acting due to studying GCSE drama. Gina is not busy when we are planning to film for the music video and has agreed to the dates we have proposed to film on. 

Vivian Oparah

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Height: 5 ft 8"

Role: NTLS female band member

Vivian is a member of our media group, cast as the role due to her experience with music videos and lip syncing in 'The 1975 - Girls' A2 prelim remake. As she is part of our media group she her availability for shoot days is reliable. 

Joshua Brooks
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Height: 6ft 1"
Role: NTLS male band member

Joshua is an tall, handsome male. He is an astounding actor with prior on screen experience, including his role in 'Quantum', in which he gave an outstanding performance. He is perfect for the role in the band NTLS as he is able to adapt to any part thrown his way. He is a chameleonic actor and a rising British star of 2014.

Website

The website design was inspired by the album cover design and also the SBTRKT website. After looking at this website, we really liked the idea of using the album cover as the background for page, and so replicated the style using our own album cover.

The official SBTRKT website

Wonder Where We Land - SBTRKT (Album)

We set about doing some mock up sketches using the idea for the album cover, using a similar colour scheme and the same NTLS logo as we had created.

Using the Wix website tool, a rough mock up was put together using the different components previously created, such as PSDs of the logo and album cover. 

Hopefully this is how our final website should look like. The intended colour scheme has not been decided yet, but for the moment it is just a plain black and white tonal scheme, to comply with the black and white images in the circles.

Album Cover

In the production meeting week 3 the group discussed some possible album cover designs. We came up with a few sketches of visuals we liked inspired by images found, and made a few mock ups on Photoshop using images sourced from Google.

After using the sketches as a guide, we started messing around with the images and came up with a few concepts based on the original idea.

Personally I prefer the square design, as it allows for greater detail and makes the image look more collage like. However, the squares do not look as stylised and professional as the circle version and so we may use the circle design for that reason. The intended design for the front and back cover is that we will use a panoramic photo which stretches across both the front and back cover, of a forest background. The shot used is also a concept for a promotional shot of the artist.

Other concepts we came up with from messing around on the computer were the digital collage as shown above. The Imagery of this cover is really interesting however there may be issues with bringing together the front and back images of the CD cover, as the imagery is quite unique.

Publicity Shots

Our first promo shot was not intended as one, however we felt that it would work really nicely as a background or picture for the gallery on the website. It is a panorama of a forest with two figures, NTLS, standing in full white on the left hand side of the frame. We intend to take a few experimental shots as well as the ones we have planned, just to make sure we have a variety to choose from when editing them after the shoot. With the images from this shoot, we want them to have an intense and eerie feel to them to create the band's image as being mysterious, slightly strange and quirky.

We then decided to design some other shots for the forest shoot so that we had a wide variety to choose from on the day. These promo shots are similar to the original designs in framing, however feature a lake or a body of water. This is because we were inspired by images from other photo shoots we had found on Pinterest which we thought looked really nice, and so we decided to try and replicate them.

The promo shots on the left are ones from the studio which we designed so that we have shots from the days of shooting. The lighting and costume of the band will be the same as in the video out of convenience, however we may change the lighting for some shots, depending on how they look on the day. The Portrait shots of the two artists will eventually be the images we use for the album cover.

Here are some images that we took inspiration from:

Animatic

For our group's animatic the structure was loosely based on the storyboard, with a few changes to the order of sections in the video. The annotations in the video explain the details of the sections in the video, but in summary the video consists of contrasting studio and archive footage. The studio footage contains a simple narrative where the two artists from NTLS are singing the song 'Heart Skipped A Beat' which reflects how they were previously in a relationship but have broken up and still need each other. The archive footage is of a couple who are supposed to be the two artists in the band NTLS and the narrative progresses through their relationship until they eventually break up.

After our teacher had watched the animatic, we received feedback from our teacher. The following notes are what we were advised to incorporate into our planning for the actual music video.

 

Makeup
The artist's makeup must be unique and visually interesting due to the simplicity of the shots in the studio. This will make the shots less boring and will keep the audiences attention rather than them getting bored of the plainness of the shot.

"FKA TWIGS - Through Glass" is an example as her makeup
 makes her character stand out against the background

We decided that for the artists makeup we would stick with the theme of black and white and have a strip of face paint across the eyes, as this will make the characters less plain and more intriguing to the audience.

Narrative Section
With the feedback we received form our teachers, we agreed that the relationship between the couple outside of the studio must follow a more conventional structure to make the story clearer for the audience. To do this, we will have the relationship follow a three part structure. Firstly, the couple will be very in love and so they will be obviously happy and constantly proving their love for each other. As the relationship progresses they will be more comfortable around each other, so running, lifting each other up, laughing and sometimes relaxing. Eventually the relationship will break down. To make the break up more convincing for the audience, we have decided to have Louis' character get bored with the relationship and have him want to spend more time with his friends than Gina. The couple will seem less affectionate towards each other and Louis will begin to shrug Gina off to make the message clear visually.

Studio Performance
To have the performance work, the atmosphere in the studio has to be intense to contrast the narrative. The people must appear to be intrigued by one another but not sexually attracted to each other. This will make for them to appear to the audience like the two are admiring each other as pieces of art. The two will also move to the rhythm of the song as well which will make it a more visually interesting performance.

Editing Style
Using the theorist Carol Vanalys as inspiration, we will try to challenge the audiences expectations in terms of rhythm and style, cutting from one shot to the next unexpectedly or having the transitions to the beat of the music. For the narrative footage, we will try to make the sequence more dreamlike by maybe fading from one shot to the next. This will make it more like old footage compared to the paced and quick cuts for the studio shots.

Here is a rework of the animatic using the feedback we received.

Changes

• Changed the order of some footage
• Paris scenes removed
• Snaps to the beat replaced by studio footage
• Added London setting scenes (London Bridge, Ally Pally etc)

Storyboard

For the storyboard, the group mapped out the chronological order of shots to make the animatic easier to create. It was also a great reference to use for when the whole group was not there, as the outline for the structure of the video was already decided by doing so, so there was no speculation as to what to do. Green post-it notes were used to represent the shots within the studio and the orange post-it notes represented the archive footage. Shot type and any action within the shot was written in the top corners of the post-it note, and any lyrics that coincided with the shot were written underneath as a guide to the editing process.

Because we used post-it notes, it meant that restructuring certain scenes was a really easy process. The board was placed next to our allocated edit suit for when the animatic was being put together.

Production Meetings 13/10/14

Story Board completed
- Studio narrative complete
- Archive narrative complete but not solid. Still some issues with placement of shots and how believable the story and characters are.

Animatic

- Completed and all storyboard shots compiled into a timeline using the edited 2:59 ‘Heart Skipped A Beat’ track 

- The animatic was used as a template to see how the archive narrative worked with the music. The narrative was finalised after issues with the placement of key scenarios. The scenarios are as follows

1

- Party (drinking, laughing, dancing)

2

- Park (talking in playground/grass/bench)

- Bedroom (watching TV/reading/smiling)

- Street (Walking together holding hands/laughing and pushing each other)

- Birthday (Cake/smiling/laughing/blowing out candles/handing an Eiffel Tower)

- Paris (Holiday footage)

3

- Park/Bedroom/Street except things are not as they were in the previous sections. The two seem more distant and Louis is shrugging Gina off, annoyed, having small arguments.

4

- House (Louis doesn't want to be in a relationship any longer, Gina gets sad and starts crying/shouting/throwing stuff at Louis)

- Louis leaves the house

- Gina is left crying

- First draft of shoot board for the studio shots has been completed but may need changing after reviewing the animatic with the teacher

- Archive shots need to be finalised e.g. when, where, who 

- Rushes of locations need to be done seeing as we are shooting outside of studio

Publicity shots

- 2 publicity shots planned and finalised. Definitely a few more sketches need to be made but research into influential photos and artist promos is underway.

Flat plans

- Flat plans and mock ups have been done using wix and Photoshop

- Screenshots of the wix homepage need to be taken as the website draft will change as we build the website up

- Album cover designs have been finalised to 2 possible variations of the same idea. 

- Maybe some sketches of new ideas after researching into album covers further just for variety

Production Meeting 24/09/14

Development from last meeting

‘Ghostpoet – Cash And Carry Me Home’ track vocals were distinctively a mature black male, and so we thought it would be better to not use it and play to the strengths of our group, rather than have to spend ages finding someone with enough experience who fit the description. No development with the Artist name or Record Label, and seeing as track has changed target audience will have to be re-evaluated too. 

Track shortlist #1

[1] Glass Animals – Holiest

[2] FKA Twigs – Video Girl

Thoughts

[1] Good track and lyrics are workable. Track is slow and repetitive. Boy and Girl so duet possible. 

[2] We had a very strong music video concept. Studio based music video, messing around with visuals and using interpretation of lyrics as reference. Track is very slow and repetitive. Hard to keep audience engagedwithout change. 

None of the tracks were finalised because of the issues with tempo and how engaging the track was.

Track Shortlist #2 

[1] Basement Jaxx – Good Luck

[2] The xx – Heart Skipped A Beat

[3] Little Dragon – Klapp Klapp

[4] Bad Idea – AlunaGeorge

[5] DJ Fresh – Gold Dust

Thoughts

[1] Female lead singer is good. We interpreted the track as the girl is singing about herself and a partner who cheats on her. The first couple times she takes him back or he’s just a cheat and she’s narrating the story of their relationship. HD bits are close ups of me in studio lip-syncing, VHS bits are him cheating on his girl (undercover footage / voyeur).

[2] Songs and intro are long. Similar idea as Basement Jaxx but this time the two people have broken up. The VHS shots are a narrative of the couple’s relationship. Lip sync of us alone in studio mouthing words like 'sometimes I still need you'. We considered using the studio as the foundation (solid lip syncing) and then outside as a narrative, possible break up at end of song. 4 people needed possibly, 2 for studio lip sync (girl and boy) and 2 for narrative (girl and boy). 

[3] The whole thing is a concept video in the studio, lots of flashing images and jump cuts with quick reverses of shot, maybe some in slow motion (similar style to glitches with playback). ‘Sprinkles’ in the song we could use glitter or something in slow motion and make it look stylised. Glitter out of focus behind afigure it would catch the light really well if the shiny pieces were big enough and you'd get a shimmer effect. We also liked the idea of using a mirror effect and hand / body movement to create a kaleidoscope image. In summary a studio based music video and lip-syncing with various arty visual concepts. 

[4] We had similar ideas to ‘3’, however you could play around more with the tempo and editing style. Further analysis of lyrics could uncover some ideas too. 

[5] This is more a track to fall back on. The lead singer is female and ideas from previous possible videos could be used (will go into detail if needed).

Production Meeting 29/09/14 and 01/10/14

Development from last meeting

Track ‘the xx – Heart Skipped A Beat’ was chosen, as we felt that the possible narrative and group ideas for this track were strongest. No developments on Record Label or Artist. Audience has been pinned down to fans of the Electronic/Indie Genre.

Audience

Primary - Electronic/Alternative music fans

Secondary - Late teens/early twenties 

Tertiary – Late 30s / Early 40s

Record Label

Branch of Sony Central Records

Red Pigeon Records

Alternative/Electronic music specialist

British Indie Record Label

London Based

Chosen Track

The xx – Heart Skipped A Beat

Artist - NTLS

• Duo
• Male and Female
• No band
• Smart casual clothing
• Electronic Music 
• Produce their own music tracks
• Female – (Simone Battle)  
• Male – Shirt and Jeans

All information about the project was finalised and an attempt at obtaining copyright from the owners of the track was attempted.

Production Meeting 23/09/14

Shortlist of tracks

[1] Ghostpoet - Cash And Carry Me Home

[2] Glass Animals - Holiest {NO IDEAS}

[3] Spooky Black - Without You {TOO SLOW}

Ghostpoet Track - Ideas

- Narrative of people going out lip-syncing (different people race/gender ect) 

- Breaking the fourth wall (White Lies – Bigger Than Us)

- GoPro facign person, on stick (head stays still everything else moves)

- Time code okay, not too long

- British Artist, Young Turks Record Label? 

Record label

Young Turks

- British 

- XL Recordings branch

- Indie company

Find who signed Ghostpoet? 

Audience

- Late Teens / Early Twenties

- Urban

- Underground

- Indie

- Pinterest of audience members and style of target audience? 

The Artist

- Name = ???

- Solo Artist 

Ghostpoet track was decided on as this was the one that everyone in the group liked. Only issue was waiting for teachers to verify the track.

Group Research - Steal-O-Matic

After finalising the information surrounding our project (audience, record label, music track and artist) we set about creating a steal-o-matic, which is basically a collection of images and videos which we felt were similar to what we wanted the final outcome of our music video to look like. Compiling a playlist of influential videos on YouTube, we took various clips and produced a two minute mock up of the intended structure of the video. Above is the result.

Group Reseach - The Artist

After deciding on the track for the project "The xx - Heart Skipped A Beat", the process of creating an artist image around our previous decisions of audience, genre and style was relatively easy. Using the track as way to direct our ideas, the group decided that the duet between the woman and man in the song would be represented for the project by a two person collaborative artist called 'NtLS' (pronounced 'nettles'). The duo consist of a male and female artist, which we thought logical seeing as the song contains a male and female voice, who are unaccompanied by anyone else. We realised that there is a lack of mixed ethnicity artists in the charts, and even fewer male/female duos, which encouraged us to create an artist with a black female lead and white male.

Nico & Vinz

AlunaGeorge

Complying with our choice of genre, NtLS produce music of the Alternative/Electronic and references of real artists that we feel are similar to them include AlunaGeorge, a male and female duo, and Nico & Vinz, a male duo.

We found their style similar to our intentions of artist image  and possible concepts of style for NtLS could be having the male band member wearing a shirt and jeans and the female band member wearing a grunge style outfit or alternative clothing, a generally smart casual look in both cases to make clear the Indie/Electronic image of the duo. There is also the possibility of obtaining a iconic band image by using face paint and tribal-inspired dots in the music video, but this idea has not been finalised with the group.

Group Research - The Music Track

Our chosen track asked for in the brief of this project is 'The xx - Heart Skipped A Beat'. The track is owned by The Young Turks Record Company and is 4 minutes long. The song is of the Electronic/Alternative genre, which complies with our chosen target audience.

This song was suggested to the group by Vivian. We thought that this was a good track to use as not only was it of the Electronic/Alternative genre, but that we immediately came up with some possible ideas for the music video also, and we agreed the ideas worked well with the song. Issues with other tracks we chose before this one were that the beat and tempos did not develop, however with this song they did so that was not an issue. Vivian also suggested to the group that the gaps in the song where there were no lyrics could be used to show VHS footage of a narrative story, which we thought was a really good idea and was one we had been looking to do from the start of the project regardless of track. The length of the track however is an issue, as it is 1 minute over the exam board's 3 minute maximum for the length of a music video, so this is something to discuss with the group. Seeing as The xx are under The Young Turks record label, Louis contacted their office asking for permission to use the track in our project. A copy of the email we sent is below.