Getting in contact with the actors

Trying to cast

We have been trying to cast our lead actors for our music video, and we had a bit of a situation that meant that one of the members was going to unable to take part due to other commitments (School Musical). Because of this the teacher involved with the musical would not let him take part in the shoot. However, we did a bit of troubleshooting and have worked out that he won't be needed the whole day and will only be called in the afternoon when there are no musical rehearsals.

Researching Album Covers and Websites

Animatic: Evaluation

This is the finished animatic.

An animatic is basically your story board shot and cut in the order in which the music video is supposedly going to follow. It allows the editors a early insight into what the end product might look like.

It gives also an indication into the movement of the final piece, for example this shot:

The arrow drawn toward the door, is telling whoever is acting in the shot that they need to walk in the direction of the door and exit using that door. It's little details like this that make the shoot day much easier.

The strength of our animatic is that it is clear what is trying to be portrayed in each scene and moment. However, in order for it to be a little clearer we perhaps needed to have a few more inserts that showed small details like the door and when the girl walks.

After speaking with Scott, a few scenes that have been put into the animatic will be taken out due to time constraints and just not needing them to make the whole piece make sense. We will also probably adapt the order of which the scenes come so that they are in a linear storyline rather than a random order.

The animatic doesn't really show the star image because you don't get much of an implication into colours and atmosphere.

Having said that, the piece isn't all about the artists so they aren't trying to big up their faces. But they are in it a little meaning they do want to be noticed and remembered.

I've learned that the editing is a major and long part of the production of the product. Time should be spent on it in order for it to look good and get across the image that you want for the band.

Response from Institution

We had a response from Universal Music, and thankfully they have given us permission to use the track for our piece as long as we follow the copyright guidelines.

Shooting Schedule

Costume

Meeting with Scott

Today we had our meeting with Scott and we discussed our locations and sets with him. From this meeting we found out that our shoot date is the 15/11/13, which gives us time after half term to get ready and prepare all our props (because we have a lot)

Scott really liked the idea of shooting the performance element of our music video in Sophia's barn, after showing him photos he decided that he would have to go and check out the space in order to see the natural light and electrical sockets.

We have decided that the studio will be needed for the classroom scene, the graduation scene, dinner date scene and the bedroom scene.

After much contemplation we have decided to cut the marriage scene, the library scene and the hospital scene.

The library scene is just too similar to the classroom, and a bit too difficult to shoot.

The hospital scene is just very time consuming and also the question of, where do we get a real baby from? was brought up. So we cut that.

The marriage scene is another tricky one, shooting wise. So rather than having a full scene deicated to the marriage at the end of the dinner date scene the boy will propose to the girl.

We have also decided that the story line has to be linear, a non-linear storyline just doesn't make sense!

We showed Scott these mock ups of our set:

This scene however, is being cut.

Casting

Writing to the institution

Today we sent off a letter to the institution that manages The Kooks. They are managed by Virgin Records which is a subsidiary of Universal Music. As a contact was not available for Virgin Records specifically, we contacted Universal Music and asked them to forward on the email to whomever was concerned.

Here is a copy of the letter:

To Universal Music

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

Naïve - The Kooks

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

If possible, could this be forwarded to whomever it may concern if this is not your area of expertise.

Yours sincerely


Olivia Hawthorne, Charlie Feeney, Mariella Bailey and Sophia Stanway
Hurtwood House School

Art Direction

Today in class we went through our music video scene by scene to look at where we wanted the mise-en-scene to go. We discovered that we have a lot of props and need to source a lot of things. I created a table that enables us to see what prop we need, with a little description and an example image. From here we can annotate and add to it, but my thinking was it was a great basis to begin with.

Tomorrow we have Scott coming in to talk about the art direction of our shoots and we will show him the rough sketches we have drawn for each of our five sets. We will also talk to him about lighting ideas. I will show him the props list that I have created and ask him if we have everything and if everything on the list is absolutely needed. We don't want to have props on set that aren't necessary!

The creating of the animatic

This is a bunch of clips that I shoved together to show Charlie and I editing the animatic.

The Finished Storyboard and Timeline

Our Storyboard - Evaluation

As a group we worked really hard for about two weeks on our storyboard and did it in insane detail. Most groups supposedly have about eighty frames, we have a ridiculous hundred and eight. Granted we have some issues where we need to insert some extra shots because having a wide shot directly after a wide shot isn't the most aesthetically pleasing.

It was really important that we did this storyboard in detail, so we were able to visualize our music video. This was helped further by turning it into an animatic.

We also have decided that the order of events is not right in this story board, so when editing our animatic we will have a play around with the order of scenes.

Sophia shooting the story board.

Annotating a story board is very helpful, and so there are frames on our story board where we have written "shh" as someone says it in that shot or we draw an arrow to show the movement of a chair. All this annotation will help loads on the day of shooting.

I think if we were to redo the story board we would have maybe tried to spend a little more time on the images. Although it's not about being a great artist (even Steven Speilberg draws his storyboards with stick men!), it does help quite a lot to have a bit more detail in the images.\

Shooting the animatic was a great way to help us see the direction our music video is going. We went into the studio and shot each frame, whilst the page was laid on the floor. From here we then took the footage up to the editing suite where we began to cut and edit, into the order that we think we might want.

Our many pages of the story board.

Charlie working hard, editing the animatic.