Chosen Outfits and Why

Main singer: I play the part of the main singer, the group all decided that I should be wearing a big winter coat, that is in fashion, and also a big scarf. This is to get the feeling of cold and bitter air, because the song is sad and about heart break, which is instantly associated with cold, and bad weather, therefore we are going to play on these well known attributes.

Single girl: This is going to be played by Francesca. As this is the person you see most of in the video, she will have a lot of outfit changes to make the video seem more realistic, that the events in the narrative are happening over a period of time, but also that we can get a mixture of fashion in the video, as it is a pop video and from our research we can tell that up to date fashion is very important in the pop genre.

Main Boy: This is going to be played by Jack. Again as he is seen quite a lot he will have quite a few outfit changes to show again modern fashion and also that the narrative is happening over a period of time. As Jack is the only male in the video, however 2 main girls we wanted him to stand out a lot more therefore we have used clothing to do this for example, patterned Jumpers.

Girlfriend: This role is going to be played by Isobel. This character out of the 4 is probably seen the least, however she is key to the story and still has 2 outfit changes to show that time is passing. However we want to make the characters very different of the single girl and the girlfriend to show their differences and how things didn't work out right between the single girl and the boy however it did with the boy and the girlfriend, and this is because of their differences. For example we want to make the girl friend a lot more of a stereotypical girly girl, wearing dresses and skirts whereas we are putting our single girl in jeans and thick cardigans.

Filming the Video

On 30th of October as a group we went up to London to film our video, we completed all our filming over the whole day, and included most of the locations we talked about before going on this trip in our videos. Here are some images of us filming our video over London.

We also used a tripod for some of our shots to make them very steady.

Filming in St James park

We used a tripod for steady shots

Filming near Buckingham Palace 

Filming near Buckingham Palace 

Unfortunately our video camera died during filming, so we tried to charge it at a Cafe 

Learning the lyrics

As I became the main singer of the video I had to learn the words for the Natalie Imbruglia song Torn:

Music Video Pitch

We decided to use iMovie to do our pitch and explain the key elements of our video:

Target Audience

Our target audience is teenage girls between the ages of about 13 - 18

As it is a typical girl video about heart break we are aiming our video at the stereotypical teenage girl, who likes to go shopping and hang out a lot, with friends, but also interested in boys, and hanging out with boys. Finally the main genre of music they listen to being pop. Obviously not all girls fit into this category, however we think it is quite a large group for us to aim for. As this song is 10 years old and the video looks quite dated now, we are going to modernize the video and change the story line, with our heart break story and with modern fashion and with well known locations that will appeal to this audience. 

Narrative Story Line

This breaks down our typical teenage heartbreak narrative into a simple comic strip, although it is a basic idea we think our audience will connect very strongly to it and also it shows clearly our pop genre: 

Story Board

We decided to make a story board of our narrative which shows a second by second account, so for every second we know what shot we are meant to be including. Also we wrote the lyrics for each shot and included the camera angles we want to use. This story board will be very useful when we are filming. Here is our story board: 

Possible Locations for Filming

We have decided to film our video in London as it has a variety of different locations for us to use, however it is quite a grey and bleak city which will add to our narrative of heartbreak. Also London has a lot of different areas we can use, for examples parks, the Thames, streets and various tourist attractions:

Planning: Drawing the Story Board

Working on our story board, for the story line we will have in our music video, it is focused on heartbreak

We drew up all the scenes, and did a second by second account, every second of the song has a narrative to it 

We have made a collection of items we need for the recording

Music Video Research - Love The Way You Lie

Although this video is not from the pop genre and the song is not really linked to the one we want to do, I chose to evaluate this video, because as a group we had the idea of having the singer and the story seperate in the video. This video does this exactly, it has Eminem and Rihanna singing outside a burning house, and has two actors telling the story inside the house, before the fire. You as the audience watching it know the two are connected but I think it is more powerful, showing the singers and the situation they are singing about seperately. It is also a different idea, as it is not used that often in videos, most of the time the lead singer, is also the person in the sotry. I think as we are going to do a love story which is a common narrative choice, to do this idea would be a good idea.

Music Video Research - Never Ever

 

 

I evaluated this video of Never ever by All saints, to see if we could use any of the ideas in this video, however I didn't like this video and don't think we would use any of the ideas:

• Firstly using 3 different girls singing would not work for our piece as it is one girl singing the song
• also the clothing they chose to wear in this video looks quite dated now and we want clothing that will be fashionable now
• although it is quite a sad song, the setting used is very dark and bleak, although our song is also quite sad we want to use a brighter setting
• Although the story is about heart break it is mostly using clips from the past however we want ours to be set in present time 

However the song is closely linked with the lyrics and this is an idea that we want to use.  

Music Video Research - Call Me Maybe

As a group we analysed this video of Carly Rae Jepsen's video of call me maybe: 

We thought this is a strong piece for us to compare to because of the narrative and song genre, and picked up some tips we might want to use in our piece

I contributed all the notes in green

We picked up some ideas like:

• Using quite a few costume changes 
• Narrative is in the singers point of view 
• Use a range of settings 
• Range of shots used but a lot of close ups 
• Using a band section to break away from narrative 

Song for Final Video - Natalie Imbruglia: Torn

We all decided on this video for many key reasons:

• All members of the group know the song well and like it
• It has the potential for a strong narrative in the lyrics 
• It is a pop song which is the genre we wanted
• Lyrics are not fast so easy for lip syncing
• Finally it was in the charts more than 10 years ago, making it easier to create a video, that is updated and we won't be tempted to copy what has already been produced

Music Video Brainstorm

I contributed all the notes in green

As a group we brainstormed what kind of video we would want to do for our final piece, we all decided on pop as that was the music we were all interested in and thought we would be able to all agree on a song that way. Also a lot of pop songs have have lyrics with strong story lines, which we decided as a group we wanted to incorporate a narrative into our final video, because they keep the interest of an audience and make people watch till the end. 

Evaluation of Practice Video

We decided to do our evaluation as a group discussion, and discussed what improvements we could of made what we think went well and how it compares to other music videos:

Practice Video - Big When I Was Little

This is our practice video, we filmed all the shots within two days around school, and used the resources we had available, and also got used to using the new video cameras. This practice was very useful because it helped us to improve our knowledge of iMovie especially with the editing, as our video includes black and white shots, fade to white, and fade to black at the end of shots and also rewind. But we have also taken some good ideas out of this video for our final piece, as well as realising some mistakes which we analyse in our evaluation of this video. 

Lip Syncing Practice

This is a video that we made in a small group to practice using the new iMovie software and also to get an idea of what lip syncing will be like when trying to piece together our final video, it was difficult to start with but we soon got used to the software and this is our finished practice. 

The Brief

A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with:

• A digipak for the album's releases 
• A website homepage for the artist