A2 Planning

Our idea for the music video is to do the song 'Mr Brightside' however because of the difficulties of meeting the rock genre and audience we decided to do the Mcfly pop version rather than the killers. We have to ideas in able to make it a success.

Idea 1: Too use the school band because they have the pop look and meet the Target Audience 

However we realise that this might bring some difficulties with the band not being committed or having other commitments, the other problem we may occur is we may not be able to pull them out of lessons due to them being younger than us and still in school. So we have an alternative; this is that if we cant use the school band we are going to create our own band using 2 males and 2 females.

Team Meeting 1: 
Collaboration

Research of McFly:
Rebekah 



Research into influential videos of your chosen genre.
Amy 




The genre we have chosen is pop-rock. The band we have chosen is McFly and similar artists include The Jonas Brothers (S.O.S), Busted (What I Go to School For) and Boys Like Girls (Love Drunk).
These artists are similar because they're songs are lighthearted and still pop and rock. They are influential videos because Busted basically shaped McFly's career before they broke up, and The Jonas Brothers and Boys Like Girls sound similar. For example, the majority of their songs are upbeat and fun, with lyrics that aren't incredibly serious. They are easy to interpret, for example Busted: 'I love a member of the staff' and McFly's Obviously: 'Cause obviously / she's out of my league'. This shows the simplicity of lyrics and means that their target audience can understand what the band are trying to say without confusion.
Both Mcfly's, Busted, The Jonas Brothers and Boys Like Girls  videos have the same feel, with a mixture of narrative and performance. They're narrative usually involves the band, but we decided not to do this for our video because we feel that it would be too confusing for our audience as they're already watching a new video of a cover version of The Killers song! What I think we could get from these videos is the mixture of narrative and performance. The chosen bands all use similar cinematography, such as shot types and editing. Common shots for this genre are close-ups, mid shots and long shots, with the majority of the editing being cuts and minimal fades, and nearly always cut to the beat of the song, as this is the most natural and professional looking.  
Common costumes of the pop-rock genre include t-shirts, jeans and overall just very casual clothes. This is so that it doesn't look like they're almost trying too hard, so that it isn't almost like a music video but real life. The narrative in these music videos is often made to look natural and as real life as possible, whereas the performance often breaks the fourth wall as the singer looks directly down the lens. This means that the person watching the music video feels special, or like the singer is singing directly to them like their own private concert. 
Locations in pop-rock music videos are generally very similar to what is happening in the lyrics of the song, such as Busted's What I Go to School For is obviously going to be located in a school. The narrative usually happens in natural locations such as on a boat (S.O.S) or at a funfair (Love Drunk), whereas the performance is often shown in elaborate locations such as on a stage with thousands of fans screaming wildly - showing the success of the band. The narrative usually follows a sort of story line where the lead likes a girl and has to try and impress her in some way (usually succeeding) or the singer has been heartbroken by the girl and the narrative showcases this. Either way, the audience feels empathy for the singer and wants them to be happy. The narrative may sometimes have a cameo in it, such as Moises Arias (S.O.S) and Ashley Tisdale (Love Drunk). This may show that the band have many other famous friends and that they are really hip and cool. The ratio of performance to narrative is usually pretty equal, and there may be slightly more performance as to show the lyrics and the band - as it is their music video. 
The members in the band are often male, as it is usually females that watch the most music videos and 'follow' a band (be their fan) rather than males. Therefore, the males become 'eye candy' and people the females might enjoy watching. 

After watching these three videos I think shots that have been frequently used are mid shots and long shots because they showcase the artist the most and look more natural than say if a high-angle extreme close-up was used. I think we will have more male actors rather than female such as the band members and two male actors dressed casually, and our Girl more glamorous. Doing this task has really helped us analyse and understand the pop genre's music videos so that ours can be as successful  as theirs.
Annotation of lyrics
Collaboration - discusion was together




Conclusion:


From analysing the lyrics we came up with one of two possible narratives.




Narrative 1: A girl cheats on guy A with guy B. Guy A realises that he doesn't need the girl anymore and breaks up with her.


Narrative 2: A guy falls in love with a girl and obsesses over her, but she isn't single.


Both narratives show off the lyrics with him trying to get out of the cage of his emotions, trying to free himself from his insecurities and loving someone he can no longer have. We chose to use narrative 1 although stereotypical we can work on making it more creative and different to other narratives.



Obviously after many team meetings we have expanded on these ideas, adding the element of stalking, creating a more clear narrative, fit for the song.
 Questionnaire
Megan - who was still on the course at the time

Teens 13 - 17



Young Adults aged 18 - 30

Adults aged 31 - 50


Ages 50+

From doing the questionnaires it seems that our main target audience are of the ages between 13-17 years of age. They are the age which is right for our genre because pop is aimed for younger audiences. This age wants the video accessible by social networking sites like YouTube rather than being viewed on TV, which would be easiest for us to achieve. It seemed that the majority of people aged between 13 and 17 listen to pop music with the people aged between 18 and 30 enjoying rock. With McFly being a pop band we thought it  to be more important that they liked this genre. Older participants enjoy more classical sounding music so we knew our band wouldn't be right for them. We asked the people if the gender of the band would matter to them and older participants seemed to prefer girls in a band than guys, however our chosen song was sung by a boy band and the younger participants wanted either a mixed sex or male band. Older participants also didn't care much for music videos, meaning having them as our target audience would be pointless. By taking in account all the factors we found that our target audience would be of people of the ages between 13 and 17 because they tick the majority of the boxes showing they will enjoy our music video the most. 


Survey Results

Myself - Josh



Team meeting 1.5
Collaborated - Amy wrote Minutes 

September 12th 2013
Present: Rebekah, Megan, Joshua, Amy
10:02 – Created a list of what we have completed; questionnaire, results, brand research, costume/location/props survey.
10:06 – Decided that the lyrics needed sending to the band A.S.A.P
10:12 – The group decided that Amy needs to finish, upload and distribute the influential videos and genre conventions.
10:22 – Rebekah uploaded the questionnaire results to Blogger.
10:30 – Discussed when/where we are going to talk to the band.
10:37-10:54 – Finished treatment.
10:56 – Meeting finished. 

Brand Image
Brand Image updated:

We have chosen the colour red because it connotes lust, promiscuity, hatred, evil and death, and we feel that it sums up the song's angst well. This common colour means that it can be interpreted by many people including our target audience. I think that our brand image is very successful because it shows the grungy yet somewhat formal feel and look we want for our music video.

Treatment

Collaboration, written our by Rebekah

Treatment Analysed 

Notes were wrote down by Poppy and Sara 



Team Meeting

Collaboration 

When another group analysed our treatment they left us constructive criticism so we could make our music video better because of the fact we had such a stereotypical narrative. After taking these into account we decided to continue on with the stereotypical narrative and characters because its easier for our target audience to relate to and really understand the meaning and the message. However we have tried to make our video as original as we can by adding shots of burning a photo and ending on the photo disintegrating, you don’t see this happening in many videos. We also created an element where Guy A  is watching the couple in a 'stalking' way this is because he is unaware of her affair and he is getting suspicious of her, so he decides to follow her and thats where he catches her, this leads up to the break up. We did this because of the fact you don't really see this in a music video and you definitely don't see it in a pop rock genre music video, so we've challenged a convention.. This links with the lyrics as the guy is not getting over this girl easily, and he is watching them together all the time.

We improved this treatment after our first pitch to our class and teachers.

Improved Treatment

Pitch

Collaboration 





    Have you given the lyrics to any of your band to learn?
     Yes we have given the band the lyrics to learn, we are organising a meeting with them soon and will be finding out if they have learnt them.
    
     Are you going to have a rehearsal with the band the day before shooting to get the movement right?
     Yes, we are organising a meeting with them to talk through what they will be doing in the video and will be asking them when they are free to have a rehearsal.
    
     Have you allocated which member of the band is going to sing which part of the song?
     This will be discussed in the meeting with the band soon.
     
     Have you considered how you will direct the band?
     We will talk to them from behind the camera whilst filming as the sound will be dubbed out from our footage. We will make sure they look natural and look like they are enjoying the performance. We will ask them to do little gestures like bopping their heads to the beat.
   
     What will happen in the instrumentals?
      In the instrumentals we will be focusing on the band performance and have lots of close ups of the instruments and have some of the stalking element of the narrative.
      
     What are the narrative actors wearing? How will this link to the band performance? The actors are older than the band, how will this look?
     The narrative actors will be wearing casual clothes. The girl in the narrative will be wearing some element of red to represent how she is promiscuous. To link this to the band we have decided that in one of the costume changes the main singer will wear a red tie whilst the rest of the band will wear black ties. We have also decided that we will use a younger girl actress to blend the age link between the narrative actors and band. 

      How will you make them look like an established band and not a school band?
      Even though our target audience wanted a school look we have decided that this won't work, as the band will look like school children with instruments rather than an established band, and have changed the idea of them wearing a school uniform, instead are asking them to wear a white shirt and tie.

     How is your video going to have a "rock and roll feel" and demonstrate rebelliousness? 
      I think this idea came with the band being a rebellious school kids, but this idea we decided wouldn't work and the video won't have this look.

     We decided that we were going to improve and change the idea against what our target audience wanted from the questionnaire, but will still keep aspects that the audience wanted like the costumes of the narrative actors, the locations and the basic idea behind the narrative. Things had to be changed to make the video look more professional and the band to look more established.
   
      It is important to mention that promptly after we had done the practice pitch featured above, Megan decided she would not like to continue in our A-Level media course. She has not been included in any work after this moment, and our original team name R-JAM has been changed to JAR.

Second Team Meeting

Present: Josh, Amy, Rebekah 





Team meeting 2.5

Present: Josh, Amy, Rebekah 

 September 19th 2013
Present: Rebekah, Joshua, Amy
10:06 – For today’s meeting we decided to create an agenda for the meeting with the band that we are having on Monday. Instruments: Do they have instruments that they can bring in? Rebekah and Amy can apply both an electric and bass guitar.
10:14 – Costumes: do they have black/navy/red/dark rinse jeans and a plain white t-shirt? Do they have either a red/black tie?
10:16 – How do they feel with performing in front of an audience?
10:18 – When are they free for recording? For example after school and on weekends.
10:19 – Have the band learnt the lyrics?
10:21 – Which person plays which instrument? And who would like to be the second ‘singer’ in the video?
10:23 – Decided we needed to find a room to hold said meeting. Josh volunteered to ask around.
10:25 – The group debated whether or not we needed to give the band the treatment so that they knew the vision. We decided against it, but will just explain the narrative and where they will be performing.
10:35 – Decided that Josh would write the reason Megan left the A-Level course and Amy was to create a new brand image.

10:44 – Meeting finished.

Meeting with the head

Present: Josh, Amy, Rebekah 

On the 10th September we had a meeting with Mrs Tunnicliffe our headteacher to confirm that our letter to the band was acceptable to be sent out. We wrote a letter as we recognized the band to be under the age of 16 and still in full time education meaning we would have to get parents permission to use their images online, for our educational benefit. It also had to be accepted to make sure it fits with the health and safety rules of the school. Mrs Tunnicliffe accepted the letter and they have been sent out to the band to be returned ASAP. 

Meeting with the band:

Present: Josh, Amy, Rebekah 

    We recognised the band to be younger than 16 so we had to write them a letter asking for health and safety reasons as well as to make sure they applied to the child protection act, we received all four letters back with a positive response and had a meeting with the band to discuss their role in the video. The four letters are shown below.
     In the meeting we asked the band the questions we had from the agenda:
     We found out who played which instruments. (Joe on Bass, Matt as singer, Jordan on Guitar and Alistar on the drums)
    
     We found out who had the correct costume, and they all said they had a white t-shirt, but no one owned a red tie. This is a problem we needed to sort by either asking around or purchasing one.







Pitch to focus group






We pitched our music video narrative idea to a group of 9 girls all aged between 13-15 this is because they are the main target audience we are trying to reach out too. We showed them our narrative idea to see if they could understand it and if they thought it made sense. Which they agreed with and said the narrative was a good idea and they can understand our interpretation to the music video. This is great as we achieved what we wanted to.

Team Meeting 3

Present: Josh, Amy, Rebekah 

 In this meeting we came to the conclusion that the original actor for Guy B isn't committed to being in our music video as we first thought he would be. This made us have to have a discussion on what we could do, this made us come to two alternatives; the first one being try and find another actor to be in the music video and would be committed to it, or get myself who is playing Guy A too play both roles and have it as "twins". We all agreed on this idea as it meant that they had the commitment from me as it is also my A Level coursework. This allowed us to think about the costumes for my characters. Guy A is going to be shown as a "geeky" twin and will be wearing a shirt with braces and bow tie and also wearing glasses. However Guy B would be seen as the "cool" twin and would look completely different to his twin brother, so he'd be wearing trainers and have fashionable clothes on such as designer polo's.  

Storyboard 
Present: Josh, Amy, Rebekah 


Team Meeting 3.5

After investigating into our storyboard we come to the conclusion that we cant do the "twin" idea as in the story both character meet up as some point and this would be difficult to show as its the same actor playing both characters. So we decided we had to find a new Actor to be Guy B, which we did.


Shot List 

Present: Josh, Amy, Rebekah 

Location and Prop List

Myself - Josh 

Risk Assessment 

Amy

Permission Letter

Myself - Josh 


Problem Solving 

Rebekah 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5LbdXK0Qz7IVXZhYkI3UHI3b1k/edit?usp=sharing

General Planning 


Over the course of planning for our music video we used many different programs to make sure all our actors and any members of staff new what we were doing and when. This included meetings with our headteacher, Mrs Tunnicliff, various office staff and music teachers to book equipment such as a drum kit and microphone stand, and locations such as the music practice room and the main stage. We had to have meetings with our band to discuss the treatment, their costumes and what they would feel comfortable with doing. We repeated the same steps with our actors. We also had to arrange a recording schedule and what they would need to bring with them. Sometimes we would film after school so we would have to make sure that the cast had a way to return home, and if we filmed at lunchtime we would issue passes so that those that needed to purchase food from the cafeteria could skip the queue. Sometimes we would ask their teachers if they could leave their lesson five minutes earlier than normal as our lunch times are only 30 minutes long, so it would mean we would have more time to prepare and film for our video. Sometimes we would use the social networking site Facebook to remind our actors what they would need to bring for filming, as well as them being able to text or phone us if they had a problem or were confused with something.
Between team JAR we used emails, Facebook and texting a lot so that everybody knew what they were supposed to do and when/where. It also meant that we could stay in touch with our media teachers outside of class time.

Here I have taken a screen shot of important events that occurred during our Facebook conversations:



A2 Practical Work Planning Sheet

Group Name: JAR
What needs re-filming: Narrative (majority), Opening shot of the stage dollying forward, stage shots with movements (not Matt's close-up), music practice room- long shot, close-ups of Joe, Jordan and Matt. 
Narrative Filming: Happy flashback scenes: Lauren and Josh hugging, close-up of Josh. Lauren and Josh in a photo booth and photos. Lauren and Josh twisting/ dancing on multiple locations. Josh's attire: Pink shirt. Lauren: casual clothes with some element of white. 
Present day: Lauren and Josh - unhappy walking outside school. 
Lauren and Alex walking happily - park. Lauren touching Alex's chest and looking up (like she did to Josh). Josh pushing Lauren away - outside school. Lauren and Josh arguing. Lauren on the phone to Alex. Josh see's Lauren and Alex together, he storms off from her. Josh's attire: Blue jumper (where he sings i'm Mr Brightside), Lauren: red jeans with blue shirt when with Josh, dark, black clothing when with Alex. Film Alex lifting his head up at the park.
When are we going to re-film? 
when the band, lauren and alex are free, Thursday lunch- main hall. friday lunch- music practise room. lauren is unavailable this weekend will have to discuss further to know when she is available. 
Where are we re-filming? Stage, music practice room, park, photo booth (boots), external location.
Who is going to film? Band shots: Josh, Narrative, Rebekah and Amy.
Who do we need to act? Josh, Alex, Lauren. The band - Matt, Joe, Jordan and Alistair.
What props do we need? Instruments, mobile phones.
What equipment do we need? Tri-pod, camera, dolly, costumes, money.
What costumes do we need? Josh: pink shirt, blue polo and jumper. Lauren, white outfit, dark clothes, red and blue shirt. Alex: casual clothes. 

Music Video

This is the first draft of our Music video:



Technical conventions of our music video genre:



 

Feedback from the rest of the class: 


Feedback from the teachers:




We watched this video because we realised that our music video needed more movement in its shots as it was very static and was boring. This music video continues to track from the left to the right and we thought that we could use this as it is effective, modern and interesting. We decided that we wouldn't do this much movement throughout the whole music video as it wouldn't have a purpose.



This video shows a really good narrative, as well as a lot of movement shots. We particularly like the continues movement as the band was performing as it looked a lot more professional. We decided that we would like to do this to our music video.


 We wanted to focus on the movement and imagery this music video had. It included things that fit well with the song and the video is good and makes perfect sense. We decided that we needed more movement in our video if we want to make it good and a success.



We looked at this music video because we wanted to achieve an opening like this, where the band members all walk on stage. For our music video we are going to record them walking onto an empty stage with their instruments where it then flash/jump cut into them singing.

Conclusion: 

We come to the decision that for our music video to be a success we need to ass a lot more movement, such as; pans and tracks. We are also going to re-record majority of our music video so it looks more professional like the ones above.

Final Music Video:



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