Costumes

For our female protagonist, costumes are essential, as with the way she is perceived to the audience, will reveal her different personalities. Each costume will be drastically different from each other, along with the make up and hair style, to try and prove to the audience that it is different personalities, not just different styles. With this we would also make sure our actors attitude is different. Taking inspiration from Taylor swift.

Our styles want to show a very confident woman, which is stereotypical known of someone being in black clothing, or very smart clothing with little make up. Our idea was inspired by Rihana's Monster.

Sophisticated style.

We would also like to show our actor as being rather girly, with the idea of a dress and 'pretty' make up, with elegance. examples we were inspired by are from Blank Space. I also love the completely different styles in this video, however, the story reveals a girlfriend going crazy, so with our narrative, we would have to make the clothing have a huge difference.

Blank Space

Our main inspiration for clothing comes from Jhene Aiko, spotless mind, as the video has the same idea of representing different people, from the image, you can see the completely different styles, which is what we want to accomplish in our video.

Main Inspiration

Below are a range of different ideas that could be used in our video, that with the make up and hair and attitude it can represent different people.

Troy Sivan Inspiration - #13

Troye Siva, Australian youtuber and singer has recently released a new album 'WILD', shortly after releasing a video titled 'WILD (Blue Neighbourhood Part 1/3) before even watching the video, you can see it contains a strong narrative, by the use of the 3 parts. I really find this way effective, as by giving away the fact the artist plans to release further videos, as a viewer, you would research more into this, trying to find out the release date and what would be the next song, also, while listening to the album, you would tend to visualize a video for each song, just to get an idea for the next video, but this technique is rather underused in the music industry. This could be a possible idea for our video, as we could hint towards the video continuing on in another video. Even for a small section, john Newman uses this technique as well in 'Love me again' and 'Cheating' 

The videos are an inspiration for our initial idea, as we both focus on very controversial subjects that are touchy to portray. I personally love the realism in this video but also the theatrical elements, as it makes you realize that events like this happen in the world, a message we would like to portray in our video. 

Below is screenshots taken from John Newman's two videos, to show how he interpreted the story into another video briefly. 

The couple shown above from the video 'Love Me Again'. at the end we see the couple running out together ans a sudden lorry which appears to run them over, but in the video released afterwards. 'Cheating' for a second, it shows that the couple survived. 

Target Audience

Sia is no doubtably one of the most well known singer/song writers of this generation, as she has worked on a wide rang of genres, starting of with folk, R&B, moving onto dance, pop and indie. "Sia can not be defined by a single genre". As working with a huge range of celebrities, writing multiple hit singles for them, including 'Titanium', 'Pretty Hurts' for Beyonce, 'Diamonds' for Rihanna and many more, giving her a fan base for her writing material, due to the huge range of different artists she's worked for. 

Beginning her career as early as 1983, with her parents both being musicians, however, realising her first album in 1997. In 2009 she began song writing for other musicians. 

With Sia being around for decades, it has lead other having such a broad fan base, as people will remember her from her first album, back the, to her newer material but also, from her song writing. 

However, i feel her general target audience would be between late teens to adults, mainly the female demographic, with her lyrical content being very relatable, making her audience relate to her, which causing such the big age range. 

Below is a video, where Sia explains her distinctive look and style and techniques used when writing her material, opening up about her life struggles and the message she sends to her audience. 

By thinking about the target audience, it helps us plan our narrative well as we can make it relatable to the same audience. 

Track List

With help from the precious task, we have come up with the track list for our band 'The IVth'

It consists of 11 songs which are :
1-The Black Microphone
2-Screaming
3-The Old elephant
4-Incapable Window
5-Dancing Keys
6-Back In Time
7-Generic
8-Obsessed
9-Staircase To Heaven
10-Underground Love
11-Cannon Ball

Our song we are producing a music video is called 'Cannon Ball' we chose this, as it is significant in our song, so it could substitute the previous name.

Chosen Band Name

After researching into band names and album titles, we decided we like the idea of it beginning with 'The' as it gives us a sense of power, and also, we love the idea Chvrches and Pvris have, with the spelling of their name, although their reason was when using the internet, when you search for their bands with  the correct spelling, you will get their band, rather than Paris or Churches. This marketing technique is something we would like to use, as we decided to go for the name 'The IVth' the use of roman numerals to make us stand out. We chose this name, simply due to the idea that their is 4 of us in the group/band.

Our band name, is "The IVth". A very simplistic name yet effective, as we feel it would be easy to remember for the audience and leaves doors open for the kind of music produced.
Down below are a few test trials for fonts, as we have an idea of how the layout is, just not what font would look best when related to our narrative.

Band Name Research

In today's lesson we started to think of a band name and our track list for our album, and also started to think of the album cover design by looking at bands with similar names that we would be interested in.

We researched 5 artists in the same genre as ours, and analysed their names:

1. The strokes -By having 'The' at the beginning of the band name, it gives off a sense of empowerment and importance
2. The 1975 - Yet again, having 'The' at the beginning, but also, having numbers that is significant to a lot of people, due to it being a birth year relatively recent
3. PVRIS- having a well known word already, especially one of the top cities in the world. What i particularly like about this name is their twist on the word, by changing a letter, by still reading as the same word, means that when people search them, with their way of spelling, they will come up. rather than Paris the city. This being a very good marketing technique as now a lot of promotion is done online. 
4. Alt-J- A rather strange name, but immediately you associate this with computers and technology, something that is very common in this generation, this gives us the idea of taking someone popular and thinking of someone linking with it.
5. You me At Six - A simple name with lots of meaning behind it, but the reason we chose it was again the numbers, how it was spelt out rather than wrote in number form, i find this rather unusual as most bands just write the number.  

From this we have a wide range of different names that we can think about. 

Band Name? Tracklist?

During class today, we played a name generator. To get a general idea of some unusual band names or some track lists for our album. The idea of the game was to write down an adjective/noun, hide the word, then pass it to the next person, where they would do the same. Our results were:

The Black Microphone Screaming The Generic Staircase
The Magnificent Keys Dancing The Incapable Window
The Extraordinary Fine Rides The Old Elephant

Although these names were completely out there, there's defiantly certain elements that we could use for the track list or name.

Album Cover Research

Regarding the previous post with the band names, we decided to look at the albums they released and their album titles with the art on it.

1. The Strokes - 'Angles'
2. The 1975 - '1975'
3. PVRIS - 'White Noise'
4. alt J - 'This is all yours'
5. You Me At Six - 'Take Off Your Colours' 

All being a different style but they all keep the artist away from the album cover, by having a design rather than a picture of them selves. Once deciding our tracklist, band name and track title, it will be easier to come up with a digipak style as we will know what direction we want to go into. I really love the idea of a self titled album like The 1975 and the simplistic design that is very memorable, also like PVRIS' 

StoryBoarding Vlog

working on storyboards

As a group. we have started our storyboard, to begin with we used post it notes to rearrange until we finalised our idea and now we are starting to write up all the details, so far, theres around 90 different shots. although the locations and actors are repeated quite often. We have also thought about how we are going to present our animation and what would be quite effective as we have around 18 pages.

Storyboarding last year

After last years experience with storyboarding for our film opening, as a group we have learnt a lot from it. Although a film opening compared to a music storyboard is completely different, as music videos have quicker editing, more movement and more shots, so this year, our story board will have to be detailed to capture it all. With this years storyboard, with the amount of extra shots we have, we realised last year we underestimated the task, taking much longer than we thought, we have learnt from this, and will put a lot more time and effort in to this storyboard. Last year, we had some changes to our storyboard, which complicated our filming as we were unsure of what to do, so its a possible idea to redo it or note down the change and also, don't draw the storyboards up, after the production is complete, as again, it will complicate the filming. When we go out filming, we learnt that we most defiantly should take the storyboard out when filming to see how long we have to shoot and how we positioned it.
Last year, we did have some aspects we will use again, such as making it detailed and using pencil so we can change parts when using it, however, as there are so many shots, we will use the idea of using post it notes to jot down the shot so we can rearrange it easily before finalising our idea.

Even when we are filming last year, we learnt to make it precise and follow the storyboard completely, also, over film! as its easier to cut bits out when you have too much rather than having too little.

Lip Syncing Exercise

After our preliminary and discovering how challenging matching up lip syncing can be, especially with a quick paced song, like ours. By rehearsing our song and editing the lip syncing, it gave us our a real feel of the song and the lyrical contents. The final product was very successful as i feel we improved greatly from our preliminary already, as our editing skills have improved but we was also more aware of the song. After seeing our group perform the lip syncing, we decided that Lauren would be best for our music video as we feel she looks the part and she was the most accurate already with the lip syncing, mainly due to the fact that she sang the song while music was played in the background, making it look more professional and realistic compared to mining. The fact that Lauren does also sing outside of school, means she is able to copy our song more, as she will know how to make each note look professional by keeping a straight face and being able to take it seriously when need be. 

Overall i found that doing this was a good experience as it showed us that we need to learn the lyrics a bit more, especially for the fast part at the end, plus, Lauren did say a few words wrong, but we will make sure she refines that. 

Inspirational Music Video #12 - Jaded

Today, another group in our class shared an inspirational music video. For me, it inspired our group with the multiple people seated in the same seat but quickly changes. This could relate to our idea of multiple personality disorder as it could represent the different people in our protagonists mind. What accomplices this is the quick paced editing and lighting as it enhances the effective and grabs the audiences attention, As the camera moves around the chair, the quick paced editing of different people sat and the lighting changing drastically. This is also repeated throughout the song, making it extremely effective as for us, it would relate to the constant change in personalities, not just at one period of time.

Inspirational Music Video #11 - Shadow Moses

Bring Me The Horizon uses the camera shirt technique, to create a 3D effect without the need of a screen or glasses. It is done by the use of camera movement, with a small and medium format cameras. The band filmed this video on the largest german island, Rugen, during heavy fog and snow season, this creates the link between the songs lyrical theme of "going nowhere" which also adds a creative abstract style video. This video uses all three elements of the music video category, performance, conforming with the rock/metal genre, the narrative, although being a slight narrative as the lyrics match with the visuals, and also abstract, which is created by the camera technique.

I love this video due to the unique style, and set, such a simplistic video itself, with it being performance song mainly, by having the technique, it attracts the audience and makes the video stand out. I like this idea as when watching, it makes you feel very confused and disorientated, which would be an emotion we want to express in our narrative at the beginning.  

Lip Sync Practice

For music videos, it is necessary that the lip syncing is perfectly match to create a professional music video. And discovering in our prelim how difficult it can be to match up both parts perfectly, in which we have chosen to trial this out, before starting to film our video. As our song is very fast paced and up beat, it can cause some problems when it comes to the lip syncing elements, causing us to want to practice before hand so we can get it perfect for our final product. We plan on doing a still mid shot for this, just to focus on simply the lip syncing.
Below are some examples of testing the lip syncing, experimenting and showing different styles on how we could approach this task.
After looking at the videos, i feel that having a still shot is most affective in this scenario. As it makes you focus on the quality of the lip sync, plus, as we have not thought of the narrative completely yet, it would seem irrelevant to practice that.

 

below is a helpful video done by a youtube that publishes lip syncing parodies, as she has been doing it for over 5 years, it reveals that it does just take practice.

Heres her first video and most recent one to compare. 

Clearly shown with these music videos, that the first one looks very unprofessional, compared to the bottom one, although not having the big time scale of 5 years, with practice we can make the video look professional. 

Copyright permission

Regarding our media course, and creating a music video, it is vital that we tell the producer of the song (Greg Kurstin) about our plans for what we will do with the song, as we are solely doing this for our education and do not intend to sell the product, but by creating a music video, we will be copyrighting the song. By doing this, it allows the producer to state any problems or concerns about us creating a music video for Free the Animal by Sia, but also will give us full permission to continue.

Audience Feedback

After presenting our brief to our class and teacher, we received some audience feedback, on what they liked, didn't think would work or they needed further explanations. This gives us the opportunity to answer them and rethink some of ideas.

"Love the exploration of mental illness and gender empowerment. Also love to aspect of different lighting! It will be very effective! How will you stray from the glorification of mental illnesses though?"
To avoid making the fact of mental illness seem glorious, we will be showing what can happen for someone who suffers from it, by showing the affect on relationships, and also, the idea of having a hospital scene where the protagonist getting examined continuously will hopefully stray away from the idea of glorification

"In terms of editing, how are you going to represent her change in personality?"
With the help of inspirational videos, we feel editing will reveal her different sides, as it is repeated throughout the video, it will give an idea to the audience that she has changed. With the idea that each layer would be a different personality.

"How are you going to recreate the 'How deep is your love' section?"
Thinking ahead again, we feel it will be mainly done by editing after filming, with layers and changing the colour.

"Are you going to conform to the indie genre?"
We plan on conforming with the indie genre by focusing ur video on a narrative, however, the props, costumes and miss en scene do not necessarily conform, which means we are subverting to the indie genre and conforming with the Pop and Alternative Genre.

"How does your lyrics relate to the narrative idea?"
The lyrical concept for this song is about freeing her animal, and although this can be interpreted differently by everyone, with the violent lyrical content, the meaning we got from this is that, everyone has an animal, and they want it to be freed as it holds them back from what they want. In this case, the idea of the animal is her disorder and it holds her back from having a happy life with her boyfriend. Yet we also felt that we would show how love drives you crazy, as the man stays around and gets pushed around because he loves her, but it drives him crazy.

"Where are you going to film the hospital scenes?"
Being very unlikely that we will get permission to film in a real hospital, we hope to recreate a scene, similar to 'This Is Gospel' by Panic At The Disco, as they simply have a bed and the equipment. Having a bright room, but a black background.

"How will you get the hospital props? the bed?"
The props for this may be difficult to get a hold of, in which case, if we are unable to, we will use the standard equipment, i.e a clipboard, checking the patient etc.

"Are you sure the school hall/house locations will look professional enough for your video?"
After discussing, we feel that the school and house will not work well for the music video, and therefore will not being using it within our video.

"How are you going to make the two extremes link?('American dream' vs 'Mental institute')"
This is something that will need to be planned with details, yet an initial idea is lighting and mise en scene. With the hospital scenes and first half of the video, where she will appear in a mental institute, there will be a very basic and minimalist set, simple clothing and just a black background, compared to the extravagant idea of the american dream.

"Why has the female protagonist got control over her boyfriend?"
As a common stereotype for someone with this disorder is to put themselves first, and thus, ruins relationships, and we want to expand on that as her boyfriend would be with her throughout, but he slowly becomes drained due her dominance, as we want to reveal the way she drains him, starting of with the happy relationship to where she controls him.

"Really like the idea and the inspiration video that you showed. How/where would you get the doctors equipment, e.g. needle, oxygen mask etc."
Stated above in another question, we do not intend to be as graphic as our inspirational video, as we know we will not be able to portray it professionally, which is why we will probably use the minimal props, as the mise en scene should reveal the location well.

"Are you following the narrative video compilation completely?(Really like it!!)"
We plan to try and stay close to the video shown, as we feel it portrays our narrative well, although some elements change.

"How are you going to reveal the protagonists multiple personality disorder? love the video"
Similar to a question above, we plan to use editing to reveal the change in personality, however, we like the idea of not stating the exact reason for her being in the hospital, as we feel that everyone has their own interpretation to why she may be in hospital and acts the way she is, but with the editing similar to "How Deep Is Your Love", will give hints.

"How are you going to approach such a touchy subject and not offend the audience?"
As we research more into this topic, we will find out the stereotypes for this, and try to avoid these as much as possible.

"How do you plan on showing the projections?"
Thinking roughly, we have two ways we will experiment with this before deciding finally, either by layering on photoshop or using a literal projector. But it will need some testing before hand to see what works best.

"Have you done any research into 'Madness' as a taboo controversial subject?"
Not yet, we have not, as we wanted to make sure people understood and liked our initial narrative idea, and now that we know people like it, we will be looking into ways to represent her Multiple Personality Disorder.

"Love all of the ideas for the video! i especially love the idea of the bit of Gigi Hadid"
As people enjoy the idea of using this, we are extremely happy as we feel it will work well in our video.

"We love the projecting images. Not sure about the school location. How would you show she has taken control?"
We plan on showing our female protagonist has control, by our male character mimicking what she does, taken from our inspiration with Taylor Swifts 'Blank Space'. The apple scene, can have a religious meaning behind it, with Eve being able to control Adam, which is what we want to represent. Yet, in our inspiration, the video has jump cuts between the two protagonists, she grips the apple, he grips his head, she bites in the apple, she spits it out. We want to reveal that she has control in a very similar way. And the school location if used, would be simply used for the photography studio as we realised the school and the house would look unprofessional for our video with our narrative idea.