Filming Schedule

Today we are setting up our filming schedule, as we realised it's not long til Christmas!

Our first filming date is going to be this Thursday at Lana's house.

Location

                            

Here are secondary source images I have found, showing what kind of settings we would like to film our music video in. The beginning running shot, we would like to be filmed against an urban-y, rough setting such as a brick wall or an alley as shown in the first picture. We also like the idea of shooting in an abandoned building or something with similar effect, particularly when showing the distress of the ex-lover. We have also come up with the idea of having a shot of the girl having fun in a room full of over-sized balloons, which would be a brilliant shot of her going through them and perhaps, popping some. 

Selena Gomez has also used this balloon idea in her new music video, as shown at 2:28.

Todorov's Theory

Relating Our Narrative to Todorov's


a state of EQUILIBRIUM, displaying normality
We plan to have this flashing shots of this at the beginning of our music video, particularly when our main character is reminiscing at the times when her and her ex lover were together
a DISRUPTION of the equilibrium by some action
This (positive) disruption takes place when our character sets free and the running track shot takes place for the initial parts of the video
a RECOGNITION that the disruption has taken place
This recognition of disruption could be portrays, perhaps by showing our girl to have fun with her friends and entering her new found freedom
an attempt to REPAIR the disruption
We wanted to show this attempt to repair by the ex lover trying to win back the girl, by maybe sending her messages to meet up. My group and myself definitely want to create a sense of ambiguity to leave the audience questioning what will happen next
a return to a NEW equilibrium 
As we are having a twist element in the end of our music video, our character will not actually return to her old lover, however, it will be apparent that her a resolution will be found with her new lover. 
Our narrative will be have an OPEN structure, as the audience are left to wonder what happens next and make sense of it themselves.

Audience Theory

It is vital to know our audience
- We then know our *target audience*
- We can fulfill the audience's expectations of codes and conventions depending on our genre
- See who will BUY our music and videos
- We know what will appeal to our audience, therefore allowing us to promote according via our music video/digipack
-We may be able to relate to them, using specific iconography
STUART HALL
Developed the concept of audience positioning as a result of examining news reports on industrial strikes. Claiming that media representations established a framework for possible responses – this is like setting an agenda for issues to be raised with audiences. The responses to an audience watching a media text would be likely to fall into three main categories:

 Dominant readings - Audiences respond to the way narrative is constructed and adopt the points of view implied

Oppositional readings - Audiences reject the way the narrative is constructed, question and challenge the points of view implied
Negotiated readings - Audiences partially accept the way the narrative is constructed but can see both points of view

the dominant and oppositional readings

Aberrant readings is an additional interpretation, where the text is read in a deviant and largely unanticipated manner, the preferred reading not being recognised at all

Split Screen/Opening Idea

How we intend to begin our music video (0.00 - 0.06)...

Metronomy - The Bay

The first six seconds are how we want to start ours, as it introduces the video in an original way.

We also plan to use a split screen towards the end (0.39-0.43)...
Due to our narrative having a slight twist element in the end, the audience can be considered to be perhaps, 'tricked' into thinking that the girl is going to meet up with her ex-boyfriend, yet essentially stitches him up when she actually meets her new lover. We thought the idea of having both the ex and the new lover on split screen would represent this nicely, then squashing the split screen gradually towards the ex so the full screen turns on the girl and her new love. 

Marroon 5 - She Will Be Loved

Maroon 5's video to this song, displays a strong narrative featuring a male and female relationship. I am especially captured by the ending, as there are extreme close-ups used of each character, which I hope to interpret in our music video. This effect will bring into motion the expression and mood of each of our characters.

Developing our Concept

Whilst storyboarding with my group, we thought of a main narrative for our music video. Although we don't want this narrative to completely dominate the entire film, we want our audience to know roughly want the song is about and how we are portraying it. As the song we have chosen suggests, it is about LOVE. We are going to represent this love in a damaged way, involving both a main boy and girl.

This love they previously had will be displayed in flashbacks of them together, mostly sad times yet happy times too, perhaps. These flashbacks will be very quick and will only be at the starting point of the song. As the lyrics state, freedom of the girl is going to be shown - where she goes out with her friends, 'forgets' the boy and generally enters her new single life. 

                                       

The character of the male, however, will be portrayed as a control-freak who begins to obsess over her after their break-up, where we will use pinhole shots and represent him as a moody, depressive person who cannot deal with his former girlfriend's new found freedom. 

                                 

Storyboard's Done!

Here we have one page of our storyboard - we tried to make ours as detailed as possible so we could know EXACTLY what to shoot on the day. We have explained what location, what shot type and the details of what we would need at the time. This is a good outline to go by, even if we do alter or change some of it along the way. 

Rich Mix Trip

Today we visited Liverpool Street, where a Media music video seminar was held. I found it really captivating how we had the chance to listen to a couple of professional music directors and learnt the journey they went through to produce famous tracks. 
I found the music videos directed by Corin Hardy the best - the 'Warrior Dance' track by The Prodigy is one of favourites and the video to go with it is definitely creative and very quirky (making the cigarette packet people come alive!). He appears to have used stop motion film in order to produce this, which he said was a very length yet effective process.

Another amazing video of his is by The Horrors - She Is The New Thing - as they are a very rocky, solemn sounding band and Corin's work also reflects this, his ideas for this video worked perfectly. He explained how he simply filmed the band for roughly two hours, then added layers of ink painting he had created over the course of 4 weeks managing this edgy, scratchy music video.

During this trip, I was also able to learn about the different budgets of film - Corin Hardy explained how most of the music videos he makes are for much cheaper budgets of around £5,000. However, the other music director we were also able to hear from directed Britney Spears new music video - Criminal (which is not available on YouTube yet) and stated a much larger budget, including flights, costumes, location and of course the cast/singers.
Overall, it was a very successful trip, where a great deal of useful information was given particularly from the chief Media examiner. Looking forward to shooting some footage now with my group!