Character Clothing

After the initial research into the characters clothing, my group planned our characters clothing. Here is the main outfit she will wear.

Outfit 2

This outfit is for the flashback scenes, when Ellie will be filmed inside 'her boyfriends house'. The style is similar and links with the boots and the similar t-shirt style but the red lips give her face a different look, while making her look more cheerful.

Outfit 3 (Digi-Pack)

We feel that for the album we will have more of a glamorous look but so it still links with the familiar style in the music video. Many artists do this, such as Kesha who has a 'rolled out of bed' look in her videos but on her album covers looks quite glamorous.

The outfit links with the previous in terms of the lipstick in outfit 2 and the hair in the initial shots of the music video. However, the outfit is slightly more glamorous and more suitable for a CD case.

Copyright letter

On behalf of my group I wrote to the 'Warner Music Group' asking for permission to use the Paramore song, owned by them. Here is a print screen of the message:

The message cannot be fully seen so here it is in full:

Dear Warner Music Group

I am a Year 13 student at Wilmington Grammar School for Girls in England. I am writing to request your permission to use one track from Paramore’s album ‘Brand New Eyes’, called ‘Ignorance’. With your permission, along with the three other members of my group, I would like to use this track for my Year 13 Media Studies Coursework, which involves creating a music video with a popular and well-known song.

We will also be producing a digi-pack and magazine advertisement which will include the name of the song. If we receive your permission, this track will be used for educational purposes only and will only be viewed by my media class, teachers and the OCR exam board. However, to upload the music video to our coursework blogs we will require uploading the video to YouTube for a short period of time until the exam board has viewed it.

The artist and the company will be fully recognised throughout the pre-production and the music video and a copyright notice supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required please send full details.

Thank you for your time, we look forward to hearing from you soon,

Sarah Biswell

Zoe Richardson

Charlotte Coe

Sarah Brushett

Clothing

Here is a collection of images of Rihanna and Kesha; two singers we have based our own character on. I have gathered a selection of different images to show their styles and therefore to see how we should dress our own actress.

From this research into clothing I have come to the conclusion the ideal outfit would be as follows:

Denim Shorts (probably worn with tights due to the cold weather)

Basic T-Shirt, loose fitting

A jacket (as it will be cold when filming) however, there are a range of possibilites so something casual.

SHOES
The collage above does not closely show the shoes being worn and so I have looked further into shoes.

These pictures clearly show boots are the main shoe worn by Kesha. However, the style of boot must also been considered and as a group we believe Doc Martens will be the best option as they are big and bulky so will suit her style. We also have them available and therefore are easy to use:

 

Who We Will Use

Protagonist Female
Ellie

For the main girl in the music video, I had previously decided they should have a similar personality and style to someone like Kesha so they fit well with the storyline. However, they must also be confident in front of the camera and also be reliable to use.

We decided to use my friend Ellie who is happy to be filmed for the music video and lives close to all of the group, meaning she will be easy to film. I used her in AS media for my music magazine model and so know she is reliable and suitable to use. In addition, I believe she has the right look to fit our character.

We have taken some pictures of Ellie in different locations of our film, so her style and surroundings can be easily seen:

These above pictures show Ellie outside of her house where some filming will take place. She looks quite annoyed but carefree which links to the style of the song. Her clothing is quite indie with timbaland boots and a blue material headband which portrays her as casual.

This picture shows Ellie in her home, where more filming will take place. The decoration is quite neutral meaning it doesn't take over the girl, while the stripy carpet includes similar colours to those she is wearing, meaning the colours link well. In addition the house is naturally quite light but taking this pictures showed us where we should put artificial light to avoid darkness or shadows.

This is the third setting we will use with our filming. The plain white wall and sign are effective as it is very basic meaning all attention is on the wall. It also represents how her life is quite empty, only showing herself and a vodka bottle on the floor.

Protagonist Male

Harry

The main boy stars in the flashback scenes and therefore not as much as Ellie, who is the overall main character. He is roughly the same height as Ellie which makes filming easy as they are at the same height in shots and so we can film at their eye level.

Harry's outfit for the filming will be quite casual; with one top being a striped white shirt and the other being purple. These colours will makes him look nice and cheerful, matching the style of Ellie in the flashback scenes. In addition, he needs to look friendly to contrast with Ellie's angry, rebellious character.

The 'Other Girl'
Sarah

We originally planned on using Charlotte as this character as she was happy to be involved in the film, however, as she could not make it we decided to use Sarah as the 'other' girl. I believe she is appropriate for this part as she has a very different look to Ellie and therefore the audience will easily tell the difference between them, unlike Charlotte who, like Ellie, has long blonde hair. Sarah was happy to play this part and as she knows both characters well felt comfortable in her part.
The outfit she will wear for her part is a black top and skirt. This is quite basic and so does not make her stand out as an important character. The black also suggests she has a dark side, reflecting the protagonist characters opinion of her.

Locations

Lighting

I have already carried out research into lighting in music videos; my group therefore will try and develop this in our own music video.

To ensure the characters and props can be seen clearly, we want the scenes to be bright and clear and will therefore need artificial lights for the inside scenes, particularly in the bedroom scenes at the start as this room is naturally quite dark and so would not show the actress well. We will borrow the school lights and use 2, positioning them at different angles to light up the actress well without causing shadows across her face.

I have labelled the window at the side but the lighting is very limited from here and so will not increase the light from this angle.

Something I noticed from music video lighting research was that the music videos both tried managed to create the same lighting and brightness in each of the clips, whether these were inside, only changing the lighting if it was a night, rather than day, scene. Therefore we too will aim to get a similar level of lighting throughout by controlling the two lights we will borrow and aiming to film on days with similar weather e.g. avoid one day it being very sunny and another cloudy. However, this is difficult to anticipate and plan.

Timeline

As a group, we listened to our chosen song for the music video and designed a timeline which says what will happen at each stage of the song. This means we know how long each clip should be when filming and will also enable us to design a storyboard, showing the stages more clearly. In addition, a story baord will prevent us from having missing clips when we edit which could be problematic.

Storyboard

Using our music video research and ideas, my group have created a storyboard which shows each stage and different scene of the music video. We each drew a quarter of the storyboard and wrote short description of what is going on which will help when we film our video by giving us clear guidlines to follow.

The finished Storyboard

Ideas

After listening to the song we considered features of the song which are important to know for filming. These included the speed of the song: upbeat and the mood of the song: aggressive at times, but also quite carefree.

The spider diagram I have drawn shows different factors we will discuss before planning the music video. These include Target Audience which must consist of the correct age group, who can relate to the song and people who like this style of music.

In the spider diagram I have also considered suitable locations for the filming which will be easy to get to and film at; there is a wide range of choices which prevents us from limiting our options while planning. I have also thought of a possible cast; people who are reliable to use and those who will feel comfortable at carrying out the roles.



Analysing the Song

Ignorance

The official music video for Paramore's 'Ignorance' is quite basic, filming the band in quite dark areas. My group, however, plan to use individual characters rather than a band in natural light in the open, which will give a very different final product to this original video.

We have first analysed the lyrics to understand the mood of the song and the basic storyline so we can reflect these in our music video.

Resolving Problems

We have encountered a few problems while preparing to film our music video. The band we have is very busy as they work at different times and so this was hard to get them together, making them unreliable to use. We have therefore made a new band consisting of the lead singer from the original group, and two other boys who we believe will look right for the part. Furthermore, they live close by and so will be much easier to get together for photos and filming. By having the original lead singer still, we still have a member in the group who can play the instruments well, making it look realistic.

Choosing music

Along with my group, we planned our prepared a shortlist of songs to which we can make our music video. Firstly, we decided the best genre would be indie as indie music is quite upbeat which is the style we wanted. RnB or rap music can often have inappropriate lyrics, while rapping may be too fast for the audience to follow. Contrastingly, soul or classical music we felt is too slow and not the style we were picturing.

After narrowing down some rock songs we were left to:

• Nickleback, Photograph
• JET, Are you gonna be my girl?
• Paramore, Ignorance
• Paramore, Misery Business

These songs are of the same genre and for each we considered a storyline. 'Photograph', however, is very specific, describing the bands own lives. The lyrics include descriptions of their high schools and friends and so we decided against using this song as it would take a lot of editing to cut out names and detailed memories which we did not feel we should use.

Initially, my group decided to use JET 'Are you gonna be my girl' as our final song. However, this proved to be a difficult song to plan a video to as it involved using a band who were unreliable due to other commitments, while the fast lyrics meant the action had to be sped up, making it very fast moving which we did not feel met our storyline too well.

 We have consequently decided our final song for the music video will be 'Ignorance' by Paramore. This song is fairly upbeat and sang by a girl which is appropriate as the people we have planned to use in our film are mainly females. Therefore the song will appear to be sung from their point of view.