Location Recci

So that my partner and I could have an understanding of where we were going to be filming our production we decided to create a powerpoint presentation to present our decisions. Below you can view this and understand our reasonings as well.

Blog Reflection - Week 8

This week was one of the final weeks we were using for our pre production work. We managed to complete our shooting script which has allowed us to know what shots are needed. This was a manageable task that took a few days of work as both my partner and I had to work together to complete it; we had to do this as we needed to gather an understanding of what the two of us wanted to include for our production. This was completed to a great standard as we are now currently fond of our ideas, however there is still room to change if we feel that the actual production is not as great as we believed, or we find another idea.

We also managed to complete our final treatment for all three products. We understood our audience, the technology we would use and many more. This was a wonderful way to keep a note of our plans so that both us and others can look at what we wanted to use initially.

For the next week, our half term, we plan on working on our digipak and magazine hand drawn designs as well as recording a few shots and completing our location recci. Although it is currently completed, we have made some changes to it.

Final treatment for all three products

ARTIST

The artist that we are working for is an R&B female musician. We are creating a music video, digipak and magazine advertisement that will enable her to look visibly pleasing to the target audience that we have designated. This artist is a particularly dominant personality that holds her ground whenever she is challenged. She is strong and independent, which is why we have chosen this particular song to highlight that aspect of her. This will be her first single from her album so we would like her image to be presented clearly to the audience.

Some actual artists that we could compare her to would be those such as Beyoncé and Ciara, two female R&B musicians that are strong individuals. Another aspect that is particularly notable of our artist is that she does not believe in using her body to gain attention. Although she does not disrespect anybody that does this, she herself would prefer to remain publicly celibate. This would enable her to become a role model to plenty of people around the world as many people within this day and age want to look up to such a person, hence why Beyoncé is such a successful artist in her own right.

Something that our market research survey told us was that they wanted a "confident" character, and this is exactly what our artist is like. She is not someone that will be shy and afraid of what others will say about her. She makes statements and fights for what she believes in. We will present this confidence that she has in the products by her stance within the photographs. We will get her to show off a bit of skin to emphasise on her being comfortable in her skin, but to also have an elegant facial expression so that she does not look like she is "selling herself". This will be featured in all three products as we would like to use this aspect of her as a main marketing tool as it is something that has a market niche in today's media industry. With artists such as Miley Cyrus and Rihanna (who are both talented and successful in their own right) providing a lot of nudity, we as a group believe that the world needs a reminder that not every woman is like this. Our artist, like we said, does not believe in the same marketing tools as these two but also does not disrespect them. Having her use oppositional advertising methods will enable her to be both differentiated and have her personality highlighted as promotion is what gets people to understand the artist.

AUDIENCE

With a target audience of seventeen - twenty two year old's (predominantly female) we can definitely appeal to them very easily. Due to the fact that my partner and I are both within this target market, and are of two different genders, we immediately have a great knowledge of the audience. We are aware that this genre, R&B, is particularly popular and female urban artists are quite commonly listened to. From our market research survey as well as the vox pop, we found that people were fond of this genre and preferred the artists that were similar to our one (such as Alicia Keys). This has enabled us to gather a great understanding of how to target our product in a certain way that will allow her to be successful within the music industry.

As other artists that have been mentioned in the above section have very similar audiences to us, it clear that plenty of people are into this sort of product. However, as the music industry needs to have something refreshing in order for an artist to be successful, my partner and I have decided to include this with our own musician. The unique selling point that we have is her vocal ability. Due to her being very similar to other R&B artists such as Beyoncé and Ciara, she has to have something that differentiates her. Her vocal ability will allow her to interchange into plenty of genres. The way that my partner and I will showcase this in our product is by choosing song titles that are clearly of certain genres. The song titles on the digipak will be an indication that she will be singing songs from different styles of music and will be of great use to separate her from her competition. Another way that we will denote her vocal ability will be with the photographs and editing techniques incorporated within our three products. As the music video is of the R&B genre, we will definitely be sticking to the conventions of that for that product. However, with the digipak and magazine advertisement, in order to highlight her abilities to branch out, my partner and I will give her a certain mannerism that will show that she is not just a typical female urban artist. We could potentially use run down areas as backgrounds, cheap lipstick, high class costume etc. to show that there is more than just one side to her. This will be a great tool as we can showcase more than the expectations of an R&B artist, thus hopefully gaining a better response as people will be enticed by the refreshing personality we will be portraying.

LOGISTICS

The production will begin after half term and will last for the majority of winter. We have plenty of areas that my partner and I have planned to film our production in. As we are school students, we figured that using the school would be very ideal as it would allow us to complete our project without having to worry about much travel, especially as travel can take up time and money. We will be using plenty of areas of the school such as a Media Studies room that has a green screen in. This room is great as we can use the background in any way we want as it allows us to manipulate it to whatever design we please. As our video will need to filmed so that the background can floor is both the same colour, having this type of equipment is very beneficial as with the correct editing methods we can complete this aim. Another area is the stage that is used for assemblies and performances. This is complimented by operating lights that we will incorporate to create the 'performance' atmosphere that we intend to include. As our singing will be lip syncing the lyrics, having her doing this on an actual stage will enable her to have the 'singing' aspect that we want as stages are for artists, thus making her look like one. We will also go outside of school and into places like parks and houses so that we can show flashbacks of the singer with the boy that she is speaking about. This will let the video run more smoothly so that the viewers do not get bored of seeing the same person lip syncing the same lyrics in only a few locations. As we would like the story to be told in a particularly narrative light, as our market research survey said that that was something plenty of people were fond of, having flashbacks can create exactly that as the audience are given the chance to visually see what actually happened in the situation.

We will be using a black female as our main lead singer for a few reasons. One of these is that the market research survey told us that this is something that they prefer to see in R&B videos. Another is that the person that we have chosen, as seen in this PowerPoint, is very confident and will not be afraid to do exactly what we tell her; whether it is what to wear or what to say, she will be up for it. In terms of the background singers, we will be using two females of the black ethnicity as again, our audience stated that they preferred this skin colour. However, a mixed race person was something that our respondents were particularly fond of, and with the mindset that 'asian' and 'black' were the two highest voted ethnicites, having someone that is between the two would probably be best as it meets the popular demands of our market. However this has not been finalised so things still can be changed. Finally, for the role of the ex boyfriend, a black person will be included here as we feel that this will look more aesthetically pleasing in an R&B video as it is what most of the typical audience members are used to. With videos within our selected genre such as this one having both members of the relationship with the same skin colour, it is clear that this is a typical convention of this style of music. As we do not want to steer too far away from the genre, we are most likely going to include a male that is of the same skin colour as our artist for this reason.

In terms of permission, we will just need to ask our Media Studies teachers for the use of the green screen as well as the Drama teachers for the use of the stage. Other than that, we will be using public property and our own homes, so this will not be needing much permission. With the planning, we will be drawing storyboards and hand drawn designs so that we can get an idea of what our product will look like before we spend time working on it, practically. This will enable us to fix any mistakes we may make before we begin so that time is not wasted on our allocated production schedule. Also, we will need to know what to do and when, so a production schedule will have to be made as well as call sheets, location reccis and a shot list. These will all help to save time and allow us to work on our production swimmingly.

YOUR VISIONS

MUSIC VIDEO

Brief Ideas:

• We would want the video to look very hazy and laid back but still able to get across the emotion in the song, I would want the video to look very soft because we feel it fits the feeling the song gives off plus we just think it will look good rather than having something fast paced with explosions of colour.

• We would like the video to be monochrome (black and white) or either very neutral with loads of the same warm tones.

Video examples

These three videos shown in Black and White
• Ciara-like a boy
• Beyonce- Ego
• Beyonce – brokenhearted girl

This video shown doesn't have loads of different colours but sticks with the same warm tones.
• Ciara -  Promise 

We want our music video to include 5 main scenes throughout (these are not in order of how they would be shown)

The first scene would include our main chosen artist herself and these scenes would include the use of green screen to be able to change the background accordingly. We choose to use green screen because we are doing it in black and white and it gives us more options when editing, we would make sure to light these shots to the best of our ability because when using green screen this is key but when also creating something in black and white the better the lighting the better the outcome. It can also help make our music video look more professional and green screen is something which is typically used in a lot of r&b/soul music videos, so we decided to keep some of the conventions which you would usually see in a r&b/soul music video. 

In these scenes where we only focus on the artist herself we would see a lot of her lip syncing and because this is a very passionate song we would really see her get into the music by using a range or shots from close ups, mid shots and long shots all to show her outfit and facial expressions. Because there won’t be many props in this scene other than a microphone and a microphone stand we would use loads of different shots to make it more interesting. We would also have her do slight dance movements and really make it look like she is into the song because then to the audience it would allow them to think that it is actually her song and again would just make it more exciting to watch. A good actor is needed to make this possible and this is why we have chosen Jalbby (who we have casted as the main singer) to play the part. And lastly the costume in this shot would include her wearing a black dress which shows off her figure but not too much because conventionally in r&b videos they tend to sexualise females in order for them to get attention. So we would make our artist attractive but would not do it to the extreme as we see im some videos. For example the Rihanna – Pour it up video.

The second scene would be where she is on a stage and has backup singers. This would be the performance element of the video and this again is very conventional because in a lot of r&b/soul music videos there usually is some sort of performance element so we thought it would be good to make use of resources that are available to us and use the school stage for this scene. We would take advantage of the lights that already come with the stage and have a clear spotlight on our main artist so it shows the audience that she is the main focus and has slightly duller lights on the backup singers. There would be three chosen backup singers and we would use girls of different races to show diversity because usually when you see backup singers they are usually in pairs of three and for and r&b/soul song they usually have either all black and one other race but in this case we are aiming to get 2 black girls and 1 mixed race girl because it relates to the genre.            

We thought to use backup singers because again this is very conventional and within any performance you usually see either backup singers or dancers but in this case we choose singers because the song isn’t really a dance song, plus it just makes it look more soulful and like an actually performance. We would use a range of different camera shots and angles to capture these shots with a lot of pans to be able to cover the whole stage and some long shots to be able to see everything but also the dance movements of our main singer and backup singers. We would use this towards the climax of the song, where the emotional tension in the song builds up and the acting that would be done by our main artist would you would really see her pour her heart out with all these emotions.

The third/fourth scene would be where we use green screen again but we have a sofa on screen used a prop and it would have our main artist sitting on it singing directly to the camera. When we do these shots we would have her sitting on the sofa in a different position each time so it’s not all the same but by also doing that it adds a nice effect.

The fourth shot will still be the same including the green screen and sofa as a prop but we would also have the male who plays her love interest in this shot on the sofa with her and have her singing to him with a lot of emotion and to certain parts of the lyrics and have the male show no emotion and just look like he doesn’t care at all. This timed right to certain lyrics would he show the true emotion and message of the song.

The fifth scene would be when we start to hear dialogue in the song which would be towards the end of the song. And this again would be done using green screen but a prop we would use is a stool and have the male sit on it and look directly to the camera as is he is talking to the main artist or even the audience miming the words “I’m sorry” and each time this is said in the song we could see the male say it with more passion and emotion.

We would also have small flashback scene of the couple which take place in various parks and cinemas and during the beginning of the song the flashbacks would be good flashbacks of happy memories but as the song progresses the flashbacks start to turn worse into bad memories. These would only be a few seconds each and won’t consume the whole video.

The person we will cast for the main role of the singer is Jalbby because:

She is not a shy person and if I get a random idea I would like to try out she would do it, she doesn’t care what people think of her.

       She is performer and loves acting so she can play the role of the signer very well and get into character and make it believable.

       She will allow me to shape the way she looks for my video however I would like to I won’t have any problems in her ever refusing to do anything or wear anything.

       She is a good friend of mine so we will work well together as well as have some fun and she is also very reliable.

     And lastly she's best for the role because typically RnB singers are mainly black females and her face will match the sound of the singer’s voice very well

    

MAGAZINE ADVERT

For our magazine advert what have both decided are that it would be something  similar to a Beyonce styles magazine advert which would definitely show of the feminine features but we would do it in a subtle way. We have decided to make the main image the focal point and allow all the attention to be on her, the image of our artist would be her standing up almost posing seductively but very fiercely asserting her female dominance and showing her to be a bold character. The pose that we would want her to be doing is in the picture to the side but it would be a long shot so we are able to see all of her clothing. 

The clothing she would be wearing would all be tight and in all black from black skinny jeans, with a black crop top, a fur jacket and high heels. Her outfit would show her to be very dominant and confident with herself and also very stylish which is something the female audience can look up to her in and admire her for is her style. For the main titles and text we would want it to overlay the main image with it being very bold, strong and clean cut which we think is perfect because I think it compliments the main image we would choose to use very well and also relates a lot to some of the traits that our artist has.  

The information which we would include on our magazine advert would be the album title, release dates, name, reviews and ratings and all her social networking sites such as Twitter,Facebook, Instagram, Youtube etc. We don't want to overcrowd the page with loads of information we just want to include what is needed so when the audience looks at it the can easily and simply pick out the key information they need and also get a feel of what the artist is like from the design of it and the way she is presented on the page. When the audience has a first glance of the advert we want them to be intrigued by it and want them to want yo find out more, we want them to be interested and curious about our artist but also like her unique style.

DIGIPAK

Our digi-pak is going to be very similar to our magazine advert and have the same type off design and feel of our magazine advert but with this we are able to have more images of our artist and we have more room to create more unique designs which can go a long with it. The actual CD itself would be quite plain with the album name printed on it and the artists name but the digi-pak would have a very sophisticated, elegant yet urban look to it. All the songs would be included and would both have our main artist posing in these fierce positions with her stylish clothes carrying through from the magazine advert to the digi-pak showing the audience her style is consistent. We would use images on her in a grand, beautiful dress and also images of her with more casual clothes on to help show the two different sides that she has as an artist.

TECHNOLOGY 

We will be using technology for each of the different section. For filming we would be using a video camera to capture the shots, a tripod to keep the shots steady and also to help keep a pan steady, lights to light up the green screen properly and also make our work look better because we are using green screen and a green screen so we are able to edit any background we want and it will work better because as I said before we are doing our video in black and white. For editing what we would be using is an iMac so we are able to import everything we have filmed so we can edit them. On the iMac it has many different editing programmes that we could use such as iMovie or Final cut. 

And finally the technology that would be used when creating our magazine advert/digi-pak would be a camera, tripod to take the images that we need. Then we would import them onto an iMac so we could edit them and use certain programmes such as Fireworks and Photoshop to make them better looking.

Shooting Script

A great way for a music video to go to plan is by creating a document that specifies every initial shot that you would like to include. My partner and I have both created a shooting script so that we are aware of what we need to film before we go out to shoot. Although some ideas may be changed, incorporating this at the beginning of our work is a great way to begin. As a way to enhance our organisation, we have included a 'key' for all of the different locations that we will be filming in. This will make sure that have recorded everything in the current locations that we are in, so we will not miss out on anything. This can be seen below:

Blog Reflection - Week 7

This week was quite a difficult week as it consisted of a bit of work. My partner and I managed to film, edit and analyse the market research vox pop this week. This was a great step as we both obtained useful feedback that told us how what we were doing would appeal to our target audience. We also got to look more specifically at genders as some male opinions differed from the females, which allowed us to know who prefers our chosen style more.

We also managed to begin working on our hand drawn designs for our digipak and magazine advertisements. Although we did not manage to finish working on them for this specific week, they will hopefully be complete by next week. As it takes a lot of time to draw them to our required standard, we have chosen to take our time so that we do not make any mistakes due to us rushing. However, I am definitely pleased with the way both of the pieces of work are going as they are working out to be the same way that we imagined it to be.

Another thing that we have started is our production schedule and shooting script. We managed to complete the schedule, which is great as when it comes to filming and editing, we know what to do and when to do it. This has enabled us the ability to work as a pair better as we can both refer to this when we are confused. When creating it we kept in mind when the deadlines for filming and editing were so that, based purely on initial prediction, we were accurate with our timing, leaving enough space for either task. The shooting script is a little harder than what we have at the moment, but will be up by next week on our blog.

Production Schedule

This schedule has enabled us to be more organised. We would rather stick to a pre-scheduled timetable as oppose to making it up last minute as my partner and I both aim to get this completed before the deadline, so that we can gain feedback and edit it to the standard that we aim for. A key has been designated so it's clearer to follow, and both the schedule and key can be seen in the document below:

Market research vox pop

As a pair we have decided to make another focus group based on our pitch idea for our chosen song, but instead of having it with members of our class like last time, we went for people that are not as educated in the media industry so that we could get a response from the general public. This allowed us to have another view of our idea as we got a range of responses.

We asked a few people what they thought of our idea and here is a more detailed summary of our results and what we obtained.

1) What do you think of the idea of a positive breakup?

Everybody was fond of this as idea as it showcased how "not everyone comes out of a relationship heartbroken" (0:17)and how it was unique due to it not being seen in most music videos. As everybody gave us a positive response to this, telling us that they are fond of the idea, we can definitely connote that we are heading onto the right tracks and can keep up with our current idea. This is a particularly important attribute to our production as our artist is somebody that likes to think optimistically; the fact that our audience has told us that they like this idea is particularly ideal as it means that it can be quite popular within our target market, which is something very key for success.

The way people responded to this especially the females in this group where that they found the idea to be very empowering. They liked the fact that is was something different because not everyone comes out of a relationship extremely heartbroken or sad and it shows the other side to coming out of a relationship. They also thought by having a positive breakup it can also help females and show them that it doesn't always have to be so bad and can act as inspiration towards young females. They also thought that the theme had potential and could go far because it was unique, because the word breakup is usually associated with bad things so if we were to associate it with good things it would allow the audience to change their perception on it.

Other people said:

Clip 1: "not everyone comes out of a relationship heartbroken" (0:17)

Clip 2: "I think its good because its different, because breakups are usually shown as negative things and putting a positive spin on it makes it different from everyone elses." (1:35)

Clip3:"I think that theme has potential as you don't really see a positive breakup in most music videos, I think it will go far, its unique"(3:34)

Clip 4:"It'll give it a good insight on how break-ups could be" (5:54)

Clip 5: "It will engage more people" (6:56)

2) What are some female artists within the R&B genre that you like?

All of our respondents told us that they liked Beyoncé. Plenty of reasons for this included her portrayal of a "positive image" as opposed to showcasing "too much sex appeal". This is definitely a relevant piece of research as our artist presents exactly this; we want her to have this positive vibe highlighted with her actions whilst remaining clothed. The fact that our audience have told us that they like this attribute within a female R&B artist is very ideal due to it being so relevant to what we will soon produce. Other people told us that they were fond of people like Ciara, Aaliyah and Zendaya because of their good dancing and soulful vocal abilities. Again, this was a great piece of feedback as our artist is very similar to these people and has the exact same aspects that our audience told us about. However, something that was interesting was that at4:08 our respondent was not too aware of who Ciara was; as our artist that we will be creating is very similar to her, this was a negative piece of information as we would like her to be successful within our target market. However, our main audience is within the female gender, and this person was a male, so it does not matter too much (especially as the male at 6:03 liked Ciara) as it is not the priority. After a bit of reminding, our respondent did know who she was and found her "alright". From this we can understand that maybe we should not link our artist too much with her as this may not receive the positive outcome that we want (as the preference would be for both genders to like her) but the fact that others told us that she was a good R&B singer shows us that she does have a following. Overall, this question has taught us to showcase a positive vibe from our artist, as well as making them unique. So we can still use some conventions that other musicians have incorporated into their work, but by adding our own creative twist we can become successful within our target market.

Other people said:

Clip 1: "I like Beyoncé because she portrays a positive image compared to some other artists who portray like too much sex appeal" (0:31)

Clip 2: "I like Beyoncé, but everyone loves Beyoncé. Also Amelie, I like really soulful voices and any artists who have really clever lyrics" (1:52)

Clip 3:I like Zendaya Coleman, she can dance, shes my age, shes beautiful. I like Beyoncé, shes the queen" (3:53)

Clip 4:"Ciara and Aaliyah because their music is deep and it has a good meaning"  6:02

Clip 5: "Beyonce, because she comes up with new, fresh ideas" (7:03)

3) What do you think of our chosen artist?

This again allowed us to obtain very positive feedback as people told us that she was"confident", something that is a notable attribute of a successful R&B singer. Another person said that she's somebody that "is not afraid to try - new things". With the response that we took from our previous question, it is clear that people like creativity, so by choosing somebody that is not afraid of that is definitely useful as we can achieve something in terms of pleasing our audience from it. 

Other people said:

Clip 1: "Yeah I like Jalbby, because shes confident, I like the way she thrives to do things" (0:59)

Clip 2: "I think that is a very good choice because Jalbby is very confident .... especially if you want to portray someone who is very confident and cool in your music video" (2:39)

Clip 3: "I think that will be a really good idea because Jalbby is confident and she will make a good impact on your music video"(4:31)

Clip 4: "Shes a good candidate because she is very confident and outspoken, and shes not afraid to try new things" (6:17)

Clip 5: " Shes a strong character and she is really confident, I think she will be able to play the character really well" (7:47)

4) Do you have any ideas on what we can include in our music video?

The idea of having a black and white production was very popular within our market research as it was said to"match the theme of a breakup". As we would like to meet the artistic view by making the mise-en-scene connote a particular meaning, this piece of feedback has definitely highlighted that, which is a wonderful thing to hear. Another person said that we should avoid the conventional aspect of having people "ripping photographs up" and "on her own, crying" and have our artist with her friends, and happy. This is something that we have decided to include through the scene where there will be backup singers on the stage with her, so it is great to know that our audience likes our current plans. Others said that they wanted to see some "dancing" with we have contemplated on but will only use to a bare minimum. As the song is not very fast paced, having a choreographed dance routine would be particularly odd. Somebody told us that they liked having dancing as it is what makes it a typical R&B video. However, we already have a few conventional aspects in it, so by adding in yet another one would defeat the whole creative aspect of it, so we will most likely not include this choreographed routine. Nonetheless, we will definitely include some swaying and a bit of movement when the girls are on stage so that our audience can be happy with our result.

OVERALL

What we understood from it was that artists such as Beyoncé are very popular within our target market. Our artist is also comparable to these two so this is very good.

Also, the idea of having our musician lip sync to the camera was popular as it helped the video "flow" and enabled it to be more enjoyable than a plain narrative; even though many liked the narrative idea, this showed that both styles of video were popular.

When we asked about our idea in general, we did not receive any negative comments so this is a really good thing as we do not need to change anything. This is also a great compliment as it means that we have already done enough research and understanding of our audience and can now begin production on the video as it will most likely please the audience, based on what we have found out already.