English and Media Centre

For help with our music video, I went onto the English and Media Centre to find inspiration and tips from professionals about how to create a piece of work that is visually appealing and how we need to plan our project. Through the website I found the article "Music Video - Ten Tips" and considering that we are producing a music video for our media product, it will really help.

On the website it stated several steps:

Step 1: Choose a track
Step 2: Write a treatment
Step 3: Plan for everything
Step 4: Set up a blog
Step 5: Know your equipment
Step 6: The shoot
Step 7: Capture your footage
Step 8: The edit
Step 9: Screening
Step 10: Analysis

These steps will help us to plan our media product and keep us on track since the page is very detailed and helpful.

The link to the English and Media Centre is: https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/media-magazine/articles/16151

Footage locations

Me and Imogen have discussed locations for our music video, from looking at our brainstorm that surround the lyrics we have decided to base it by the coast, include shots that are staged and planned, as well as possibly including animals, fish or water (taking inspiration from Daniela Andrade's music video) so we need to find several locations where we can film, in case something unexpected happens.

Footage locations, for coastal shots:

• Sidmouth, Devon - very close by and easy to access however is very popular for tourists so gaining footage that only includes our actors may be a struggle
• Beer Beach, Devon - includes boats so we could get some nice shots there however if we don't boats in our footage it will be difficult
• Branscombe Beach, Devon - very quite there and has a grassy area so we could film there if needed.

Footage locations, for animals or fish:

• National Marine Aquarium - has variety of fish which we can film, however is very popular so it will be difficult filming and also we would need to film through glass which may make our footage lesser quality compare to other shots.
• Buckfast Butterflies & Dartmoor Otter Sanctuary - we would be filming the butterflies since otters would not follow the codes and conventions of an indie pop video, the butterflies are kept in an enclosure - this would be visually stunning if we included shots of them. 

Staged shots:

• The King's School - at our school there is a dark room where we can use different styles of lighting and is very accessible, however for the mirror scenes it is set in a bedroom so the dark room wouldn't fit that ideal.
• At our homes - since we need a bedroom we could use one of ours for it, there we have easy access to props and costumes.

Daniela Andrade's Visual EP

For about 3 months now I have been subscribed to Daniela Andrade on YouTube, I originally found her through the music streaming site, Spotify, on a playlist. Recently she has uploaded the music videos for her visual EP; Shore, it has 4 chapters with the second being my favourite because of the lighting scheme of blue and the shadows.

The opening shot is beautiful, I really like the font of the title because the simplicity of it - the sunrise in the background also really styles the footage giving normally a boring/common image a new look, which is amazing. This shot also begins to set the video, the houses in the foreground are white with colourful sides to them, this is a style that isn't typically used in the UK or USA, it is more common in latin countries - so the audience can depict from this that it is a foreign country possibly Mexico or Spain. 

I also really like the warm filter on the footage which again gives the audience the impression that the country where they have filmed this is warm, supporting my earlier thought of it being a latin country which are warm.

During the editing process I will turn the temperature of the footage up to give the impression that the video has been shot in summer.

The shot then pans around to show the protagonist walking through the shot. I really like the colour scheme of the shot with pinks, purples and blues being the main colours. The shot is also hand-held which is shown by the shakes of the camera however the crew have a steady-cam to combat this.

The shot then pans round again following the actress and shows a establishing shot to gather that she is somewhere foreign like I previously thought.

It then quickly changes to a follow shot of the actress again, this is hand-held also with a steady cam is this obvious due to not having tracking rails in the shot. I also really like the blue walls, which the editor has made more saturated so it is more vibrant and striking.

The next important shot is a close up of her face as she is walking, this again is a hand-held steady-cam follow shot. This shot is important because the audience can view the actresses emotions, we will include similar shots within our media product also.

I really enjoy this shot, the shadows and contrasts between the houses is very appealing to the eye, I hope to have similar visually appealing shots in our media product.

In this long shot we see the protagonist walking through the shot, this is another camera angle which we could use easily during the filming process

Another visually appealing shot. In which we could use something similar.

I really like the video's transitions where the directors have the protagonist falling to the side and then rising back up in another setting.

We can use similar shots of the protagonists in our video walking across a beach.

This is a establishing shot which is strikingly attractive, the flowing shots melt into each other as we see the actress walking towards a stream.

Within our product we could include artistic and abstract shots of trees. alike Daniela Andrade's video.

By being based by the sea I feel that it would be detrimental to not include shots of the sea because it is such a big aspect of our lives.

I like the ripples shown in the footage and I think we could use similar shots in our own product.

The previous stills are extremely attractive with their colour scheme and the layout of the footage, I think that I could incorporate the colour scheme of the desert setting into our footage because it would compliment the footage of the beach and sea.

The match on action of her mouth, is a technique that we will include in our product for when the band is lip-syncing - which is a typical convention for indie pop music videos.

I like the shadow effects because they are enigmas when you first see the image however your eye recognizes the shapes solving the enigma. Enigmas are important to products because it causes the viewer to carry on watching.

I feel we could use a similar lighting scheme in our product with a dark scene and red lighting highlighting certain parts of the actors face or objects in the shot.

I love this colour scheme used in these two shots, I feel that they're are so visually appealing to the viewer that they can't help but be intrigued.

The use of shadows within this video is key, the striking contrasts between the well lit shots and the dark shadows causes the eye to focus on the two figures.

I like the ending shot of this how the footage slowly zooms out to give a view of the scenery, therefore anchoring the story and shot.

Storyboard

Here is mine and Imogen Millard's storyboard, we will edit this as our music video progresses however we hope to keep to this timeline.

The importance of having a storyboard is that when filming you what to film and how to film it. It removes confusion and the potential of missing out shots. Last year we did not have a storyboard and it caused us to panic on filming day when we couldn't remember what we needed to film. However it did give us more creativity because we had to think on feet, but we will not be doing the same this year as it will make the filming process easier.

Annotating the Lyrics

For our media product we annotated the lyrics for the song, below is the photo of the lyrics. 

We did this so that we could brainstorm ideas for shots in our piece, we found it difficult to continuously come up with ideas to represent the lyrics - so we decided to create ideas for filler shots as well. After discussion we decided that we should use footage showing bath bombs, vinyl record, seaside shots and a lava lamp. Also to use inspiration from Vance Joy's Riptide (below) to twist seemingly innocent shots into something sinister.  

This is shown within the annotations of the girl sitting in front of the mirror - we will show this shot during the chorus which is repeated we have decided to have the same shot however make the shot darker and have negative writing on the mirror. 

We also decide as well as making the footage darker on that one shot to gradually have the video become darker over time, so it represents the lyrics of the song which seem innocent at first and then when thought about are more sinister than first thought.

This discussion has really helped us because we have thought of shots to use in our video later on and will make the storyboarding process easier.