Evaluating Music VideoResearch and Planning

How We Developed Our Concept Our first idea was using the song 'Video Killed The Radio Star'

and we wanted to use the original idea of the development of technology, but relate it to the modern age. We wanted to relate this to the idea of digital sales taking over from physical sales and we thought we would make a video about this. We liked this idea until we realised that the song was too iconic and so was the video. We tried to keep the concept and change the song but we could not find a song that had the same idea. From this, we decided to use a song with no music video so we could be certain that our idea would not be turned down again. We then found the arctic monkeys song and from listening to the lyrics, imagined a couple.

How We Developed Our Concept One of the things that helped to develop our concept

is other music videos and artists. The music video for Leona Lewis’ ‘Bleeding Love’ influenced our dolls house idea. We liked the idea of the flats and how the camera zooms out and the viewer can see all the different scenarios in each room, all happening simultaneously. It helped us to come up with our idea of panning through the walls, except instead of a block of flats we wanted to use a dolls house and instead of zooming out in the middle of the song (like in the Bleeding Love video) we wanted to zoom out at the end and not reveal the intend of the video until the end.

How We Developed Our concept Another music video and song that we found

influential was ‘Gives You Hell’ by the All American Rejects. We liked the idea of having the contrasting lives and we thought we could apply this to our idea and contrast the life of the perfect stereotypical 60’s suburban couple with the life of the band who are having fun doing what they love. When we realised we were doing the dolls house idea and we needed to have the sickly sweet perfect world, we re-watched the video to give us ideas as to what constitutes the perfect life.

How We Developed Our Concept Another music video that had a similar

dolls house idea to ours is ‘IFHY’ by Tyler, The Creator. The music video is set in a dolls house, similar to our concept. It makes good use of pastel colours and the idea of perfection in the dolls house. When we created our concept, we imagined our dolls house to be very similar in style to this video.

How We Developed Our Concept When developing our concept we investigated our target

audience and tried to imagine the type of people that would listen to our band and the type of music video they would want to see and would be interested in. We researched into what types of music different age groups like and how many people like different types of genre. We decided that our primary target audience is males and females aged between 17 and 23. This is because they are old enough to understand that the world isn't perfect and that people do have hard times, which is a main theme in our band and partially in our song choice. I also think the themes of our song choice are perhaps too old for people of a younger age to listen to as they may not understand what the song is really trying to say and therefore may not understand what the music video symbolises.

What We Did For Our Concept Because genre is an important element

for us we researched into what artists of the same genre have in their music videos and what their CD Covers and Websites look like to see whether our band would appeal to the same target audience. This involved looking at a variety of bands, including Interpol, The Coral, Supergrass, Queens of the Stone Age and The Shins.

Why We Did This We did this because getting the right star

image and making sure we are appealing to the correct target audience is important to us. We wanted to see whether or not our target audience would like our band, music video and digipak so we looked at similar bands to see how they represent themselves and whether or not their audience likes it. We wanted to see if there was a wide variety of ways that we could take our music video and digipak.

Our Target Audience

Research into Conventions and Real Media Texts To understand our target audience and the importance of

the online age we research into Jenkins idea of Convergent Culture and how big and essential a participatory culture is and how we now live in a remix culture and how we could apply this to our music video and our digipaks. I think a participatory culture is important and I hope to apply this to our website, for example maybe having a forum for fans to ask questions to the band or live video sessions with the band or letting the fans be able to vote on titles of upcoming songs. As we very much live in a prosumer culture now I also like the idea for having a competition on our band's website for an upcoming music video in which users can upload their own creations on YouTube and the band will pick their favourite to direct their actual music video or feature in it.

What I Learnt About the Research of Music Videos Overall, I learnt that there are lots of

little details that are important in the music video that I wouldn't have thought as important, for example all the detail into the props and the set that is essential to make the video look professional.

Research into Location As we were creating sets we did not need a location as we

used the studio. This was not the original plan as we were originally going to use a corridor in school as our basement for our band performance, but after a meeting with Scott, our set designer, we discovered that it would make more sense to just use the set in the studio as it makes more sense and is easier to film and get different angles. It makes it easier to get the grunge look we wanted and it is easier to do the pan down through the house into the basement.To get the shots we wanted we had to build two sets next to each other with a doorway in-between. This allowed us to easily film our horizontal transition into the next room through the wall. We also had to raise the set on stilts to enable us to pan downward through the floor into the basement.

Research into Costume For our costumes we really wanted the couple in the

narrative to look like a 50's suburban perfect couple so we researched into the man in our narrative having a checkered V-neck, with some chinos and perhaps a floral or checked short sleeved shirt underneath the V-neck. As well as this we wanted him to have some plain brown leather shoes. This is because we wanted him to look quite 'geeky' and mainly using pastel coloured clothing, accomplishes this. We also researched into him having glasses as this would help to establish his nerd look. We wanted to make our suburban housewife as girly and petite as possible. Because of this, we envisioned her in a cute pastel coloured dress and pairing it with a little cardigan and small high heeled shoes. She would have curled ends of her hair and a bow in her hair.

Research into Costume

Research into Costume We wanted our band to be stylish and modern,

contrasting with the 50's style of the couple but still fitting with the idea of the dolls house and everything being fake. We considered them all in black and white and in suits, or in quirky outfits with trench coats and sunglasses. We finally agreed on light brown suits or jackets with shirts and either light brown trousers or black trousers and smart brown leather shoes. We agreed that these fit with the theme of everything turning into cardboard and are still fashionable enough to give our band a sophisticated look and appeal to our target audience.

Research into Costume

Research into Props We needed quite a lot of props for our band members and

the set of the house, as well as our items that are turning into cardboard. We researched into having two guitars, one drum kit and an old fashioned microphone, with two amps for our band. There are lots of props that were needed for our set to make it look believable as a house. Most of our props were little things, like pictures on the wall, wallpaper, toasters. In the kitchen we needed a fridge, counters, a sink, a kitchen table and chairs, toaster, cutlery, plates, bacon, eggs and a scrabble board. In our bedroom setting we needed a bed, bedside tables, pictures, lamps, alarm clocks, pillows, duvet, slippers. For the bathroom scene we needed a bath, sink, toilet, mirror, flannels, make up, comb and water.

Research into Props Most of our props were regular things

which meant that we could provide them from our own homes or boarding houses. The only things we needed the school to provide was the props for the band and the big items, like the bed, the bath and the fridge.

Research into Props We did a lot of research into how we were going to turn

our props into cardboard. The props we wanted to turn into cardboard included all of the instruments in the band performance, and in the narrative it is the toaster, the lamps, the mirror and the scrabble board. One thing we researched is buying a software on the props department computer that would enable us to take photos of our props that are turning into cardboard, upload it into the software and then the picture would print out through A4 sheets of paper life size. We would then take the A4 sheets and stick them onto the cardboard. We had the ability to buy the software as it costs $19.95 so would still be within the budget

Research into Props Our only issue after this would be the cost of ink

as it would be quite expensive to print our lots of A4 sheets. Because of the cost of the ink, we then researched into having the pictures printed for us by a company and delivered. For this we compared lots of different companies but again decided it was too expensive. We then decided to make the cardboard items ourselves and the ones we could not make, we would wrap the items in cardboard and allow them to be filmed first before removing the cardboard and continuing with our shots.

Research into Set Design It was a small concern that our set seemed quite

girly and I was worried that it did not fit our star image or would not appeal to our target audience. Because of this, we made the basement contrast completely to the narrative by making it look very dark and grunge-like. I feel like this would appeal more to our target audience and fit with the bands star image more. It also could be beneficial to have the contrasting narrative as it could appeal to a wider or different audience.

Research into Set Design

PlanningThe Production: The Key Parts

Storyboarding/Animatic Our storyboard was an essential element as it is

important to be able to plan our our shots and what type of shots we were doing and also the duration of the shots. Planning out our shots is beneficial as it enables us to see what the audience would see and how each shot would work together with the transitions. It helps to give us a visual idea of how our music video will look enabling us to see if there is anything we want to change and the order of shots and also if we have too many of the same type of shot following each other, for example close ups.

Storyboarding/Animatic We found that some shots were quite repetitive

and were framed the same way and because of that we needed to gets wide variety of shots. Our storyboard definitely accurately represented our music video as our pictures are detailed and we only needed a few minor changes. It's very important to annotate the storyboard because writing technical notes helps to understand the flow of visual images. We cut our storyboard as an animatic so that we could see how each shot fitted with the music and how we could put each shot to the beat.

Storyboarding/Animatic That helped us give a visual image of our shots and a

better idea of the timings of our shot and it became a base for what for what we needed to change. Some of our shots went with the beat which we only saw when we were cutting the animatic which enabled us to add more shots and give a realistic representation of what the music video will look like. One thing we didn't realise when cutting our animatic was how quick our cuts would be in beat with the song, when we were creating our storyboard we gave about 6 seconds for each shot but when we cut out anionic we saw that we only needed about 2 seconds for each shot and sometimes less.

Storyboarding/Animatic We figured out we would have to drag

out some shots and add extra shots to fill up the entire song. It was helpful because we want to avoid our music video being repetitive.

Our Animatic

Why We Made a Record of Our Planning We created prototypes so that we can envisage

our final product before production actually begins. It enables us to make more informed decisions during production and see what we need to change or modify before we actually made the final product. Our prototypes included our pencil drawn storyboard, our animatic, our screen tests we did with our lead singer, and the rehearsals we did beforehand.

Things We Did in Preparation of Our Shoot Day One thing that our animatic was helpful in doing

was creating out shooting schedule as we had to change up the order of our shots on the day so that it made sense and our animatic was helpful in this as it had all the shots in our music video. The shooting schedule was an element of our music video that was extremely important as it was necessary to plan out the day so we knew what we were shooting first and in what order.

Things We Did in Preparation of Our Shoot Day We decided that we were going to shoot the

bedroom scenes first, followed by the bedroom scenes, meaning we had to build the bedroom and bathroom scenes first. Instead of shooting the woman in in the narrative's bedroom shots and then changing to her in the kitchen, we shot the woman in the narrative in the bedroom and then the man in the narrative in the bedroom, although this is not until later in the music video. The shooting schedule enabled us to see what order we were shooting so we knew how to plan out the day.

Things We Did in Preparation of Our Shoot Day Our cast list was also an important element as

we had to choose who we wanted early and it was important to list why we wanted the certain people, as they may fit with our star image or appeal to our target audience. Choosing our cast and creating our cast list early was important because we wanted our cast to know early so they could prepare, for example our lead singer could learn his words.

Evaluation of Research Overall, our research was very beneficial as it

helped to plan and prepare everything for our shoot day, which went successfully. Our planning went accordingly, with only a few minor flaws, like the lateness of our storyboard so it became quite rushed. The shoot would have been better if we had set up more previously as we had to set up on the shoot day, in the time that we were supposed to be filming, meaning that we began shooting late and as a result it was very rushed towards the end and we did not get all the shoots that we had planned to get.