We have completed an entire songs worth of footage to come together to be our first draft for our music video. We filmed on about 7 different days because we wanted to perfect the footage, especially the lighting in the studio shoot.

Self assessment

I am really happy with the turnout of our first draft especially considering how long it took to edit I am pleased with the way it flows, one of our main aims was to have the agressive shots eg. the bat, in time with the beat of the song so this was something we’re going to continue to do for our next drafts as it looks effective.

Another aspect of the video that I love is the pace of the clips and editing and how it really picks up speed towards the end of the video, it portrays the anger well and shorter cuts look very effective in my opinion.

Here is the full first draft of The Love Club-

Targets

Obviously during filming and editing this, we have gathered a list of things to adapt and adjust for future drafts of our music video. Some of these being;

• Get more footage, variety of locations
• Use natural lighting in shots (outdoors)
• Gather a few more narrative shots
• Add some pink effects using premiere pro to the video to portray the love/pink theme and to make the video and locations pop.

After filming our first shoot we have got lots of shots but also have recognised room for improvement and what works well. Some things that went well were:

• The costume
• Mise en scene was exactly how we planned and our star
• Millie acted and performed incredibly well which fits the theme and song.

An area that we have realised and are going to focus on working on next time, is time management and how long it takes to set up posters, camera and lights whilst Millie does her hair and makeup. So we have to shoot on about 5 different days in order to get all the shots that we planned to do in 1 or 2 sessions.

Here are a few pictures gathered from our first shoot, showing our camera set up, mise en scene set up, lighting and team work. I have put them into a slideshow as we had so many pictures and to show the range of preparation we did in order for our shoot to look effective.

We took pictures of each other when setting the scene, adjusting lighting, angle, focus, mise en scene and props to prove that we all took part in each aspect of the shoot; this helped us work together as a group to get the best shots and video as possible.

Before shooting, we created a production meeting agenda for us to stick to as a plan when shooting. It has all details of our shoot, who’s bringing what props and key images of what we need to bring to match our aesthetic on shoot day. Having a production meeting agenda is important to stick to a plan so filming can go as smoothly as possible so we can get as many shots as possible in the time we have.

Our aims for the shoot include;

• Accumulate lots of different shots all from a variety of angles
• Encourage the star to give an energetic performance to stop the video from looking healf-hearted and dull
• Remember all props so we have a range of props to play with in shots, such as balloons, roller skates, posters to make the background exciting also as we don’t want to have a plain white wall behind our made up star.
• Variety of lip sync and non lip sync shots so we have lots to play with when editing our first draft.

Here is a copy of our production meeting agenda for our studio and corridor shoot within the school.

Next up on the list of compulsory things to do before beginning the production of our video was risk assess the dangerous equipment we were going to use when filming, such as roller skates and scissors.

We have agreed to stick to the risk assessment so not messing around with any of our props; if an accident does occur we know what to do regarding safety now and my group as a whole are very aware of our hazards. This risk assessment is only for the studio shoot inside of school, we will be filling out other risk assessment forms when we film in more locations to highlight our understanding for dangers when out using technical equipment and potentially dangerous props.

We decided to make our moodboard for our star on pinterest and create a wall as we feel as though there are more Melanie Martinez inspiration pictures on this app, which we can just pin on our wall which we all have access to edit and add to, hence all the variation of props and themes to include.

If you click on the image it should link to the real pinterest board.

Above is our star image moodboard including all our ideas for mise en scene for when we shoot our music video, this will come in handy when brainstorming who can bring what costumes and props to the shoot and also makes sure everyone in the group is on the same wavelength theme wise.

Richard Dyer, creator of the theory of the paradox of the star. Us making a pinterest moodboard relates to Richard Dyer’s theory as we want to portray almost our own brand and image. He suggests that a stars meta narrative impacts the consumption of media from the audience. He states that it is what we sell to the audience that is most important, meaning our stars image is the main brand which we are portraying and selling to the audience.

The artist we have got all of the inspiration from in terms of costume and hair is Melanie Martinez, an iconic star with very similar themes that we want to portray within our own video.

I am now more aware on how to make the star look very effective with the use of hair, makeup and props and how to portray the star well.

In our double lesson, we took the time to practice filming our star lip syncing to our song to gather strengths/weaknesses for when we film our real shoot.

What went well:

• Fisheye looks really effective
• Lyrics are in sync which we thought we’d struggle with
• Gathered ideas on how to adapt our location to make it look effective on camera, eg add posters
• Gathered ideas which we will use in real shoot – eg. canted angle

What we can improve for filming the real shoot:

• Get even more shots, can never have enough
• Get variety of lip sync and non lip sync shots
• Film less mis shots, need more close ups and long shots to show the entire mise en scene of our star.
• Rotate who uses the camera and films the shots

Below is a rough cut of the song, which is our practice shoot which eventually turned out being quite good in which we gathered lots of ideas which we will repeat when filming the first shoot, such as zooming in as our star walks away and the use of the fish eye lens.

Test shoot

It is important to ask permission from the artist we are using the song from to save facing permission issues regarding copyright. My group have all messaged our artist asking for permission to use her song in our video, hoping we will get a response. From asking this permission, we are now able to go ahead with the production of our video.

It is time to narrow down the iconic shots that we are going to use within our music video and the significance of them relating to our star. We are going to use all, and if not the majority of the shots that we have put in tothis padlet for when filming the performance. It is a good reminder that we can’t have all mid shots, and that we need a massive variety of angles.

We are going to incorporate an effective use of long shots and also drone shots because this will really set the scene and will be a great image of our star along with props such as balloons. If we have alternative angles such as using a drone, Millie can then adjust her dramatic performance depending on how far away the camera is.

Another effective and alternative shot we are going to include is using a fish eye lens to film some shots, which we practiced in our test shoots. In the image above I think it looks really effective, especially if it was of the star, and will give us a cool quirky variety of shots and Millie can work with the fact the lens is a fish eye and come up closer and further away to the camera to give a circular effect.

When planning our pitch, the first thing we did was create a presentation including everything to describe our ideas for the video to our teacher. Each music video group gave a 10 minute pitch to the teacher running through mise en scene, camera and editing in order for her to adapt our ideas to improve and help us achieve the best shots as possible.

We filmed our proposal to our teacher which included her feedback but unfortunately our SD card got wiped before we could import the footage but we have a few notes from our teacher instead.

From this feedback, we gathered lots of positives and a few areas for improvement and targets.

Are positives being;

• Has good energy to the song
• Alternative, goes against stereotypes
• Good action ideas to match emotions
• Good ideas regarding props
• Gets deeper in meaning throughout video
• Great mise-en-scene ideas such as costume and makeup

Targets to think about when shooting:

• No big beat drop/change in tempo so performer energy must be sustained throughout
• Look into more locations/alternatives for school idea
• Make more of own original ideas rather than off internet
• Shoot loads of test shots so can nail real performance
• Continue with valentines day story

Taking this feedback into account, we can improve our ideas and plan very specifically in all aspects of camera and lighting for when we shoot the real performance.

Today we looked at our target audience for the themes and message of our song and narrative. We got some ideas off of pinterest and created a pink, white and black themed mood board which is on the first slide of our presentations.

On the following slides we did some yougov research of our song artist, Lorde, and our inspiration for the music video, Melanie Martinez. We found the results were surprising as mainly men listen to both but we still want to continue with these themes as our target audience is clearly, teenage girls. We have focused on the personal identity aspect of the uses and gratfication theory when creating our mood board of what our audience would look like or be interested in.

Blumler and Katz suggested that there were four reasons, collectively known as Uses and Gratification, this theory described consumers and an active audience. These four are Information, Personal Identity, Social Interaction and Entertainment and we have taken these all into consideration when creating our audience profile. We have tried to make sure that our themes and aesthetic would fit in with our audience’s profile such as their interests and identity and what they like to do in their own time.