Goodbye!

This blog is now closed. We have been signed off and our project is complete. It has been a tough journey, and we are both exhausted and exhilarated with the work we have produced. The project has been a great learning experience for all of us and we are thankful for having had the opportunity to do it! This is Group 2 signing off.

Joe, Anisah, George, Despina

To The Moderator

Dear Moderator,

This Blog belongs to:

Joseph Lane-4455
George Henry-4360
Despina Christodoulou-4195
Anisah Audu-4055

Thank you for taking the time to look around our Group Blog. At the top of the page, you will find links to our main and ancillary texts for the music video project. You will be able to navigate our blog using the labels list on the right hand side of the page. You will also find links to our individual blogs and the main Latymer Music Video blog (labelled 'Temporary Music Video Blog').

Our Group Blog chronicles all our group work during planning, research and production of the project and also is where a lot of group communication took place. Our individual evaluations and personal reflections can be found on our individual blogs, in the form of pictures, video and text.

We chose to produce a website and album cover as our ancillary products, which can be found at the top of both our individual and group blogs.

We hope you enjoy our interactive Blogs!

Regards,

Joe, George, Despina, Anisah

SIGNED OFF!

We've finally finshed all 3 tasks!

This is the music video:

The Album cover:

Click to go to the website:

Third Shoot Day

Today we had our third shoot in London. We met at 10am at Covent Garden Tube Station and had slow start, filming only a couple of shots in the first hour. We were trying to figure out where would be best to shoot and whether we were going to shoot reverse shots of lip syncing first. At 11 we decided that we'd film shots for the walking montage first, so walked around Covent Garden filming our actress in different outfits. After evaluating footage from our first two shoots, we knew what we wanted from our actress, and were able to direct her better - making our job and hers much easier.

We got about fourteen minutes of footage for the walking shots and then started to talk about the lip sync; where we were going to film it, what Liv was going to be doing, would it be static and all in one place etc.

So far

We didn't film at my house, as we wanted to keep the outdoors look. We went to Neal's Yard in Covent Garden, which had lots of colourful walls and look great on camera. We shot the lipsyncs again and we've nearly finished both the album cover and website. We hope to post the music video soon!

Group Progress

After our shoot on the weekend, we've watched the footage back as a group and tried incorporating it into the cut we already have. There are problems with some of the shots but we're continuing to piece together the video. If we cannot make what we have work for our piece, then we've arranged a shoot on Saturday afternoon. This shoot will be at Anisah's house which is a different concept to our orignial idea but the new approach seems like a good idea as a lot of the problems we've had outside won't be an issue if we shoot indoors.

We've also got another photoshoot planned for thursday. We'll be shooting in the Seward Studio again and have planned shots that we want for both the website and the album cover - hopefully this will be successful and we won't have to have any more photoshoots.

Lighting

We were unsure exactly how to maximise the potential of the lights we were given on our last photo shoot, and with a new photo shoot coming up today, we decided it would be best if we researched into exactly how three-point-lighting and other lighting techniques work, so we can really make our actress stand out. This video, although not the most high-tec explanation, was some help. We will also hopefully be getting some help from our schools' technichian.

Capture List

Here is a capture list we have made, we will now capture the footage and begin to edit. This makes the task of going through the footage easier as we will have captured only footage that we want.

To Do, Week Beginning 1st Nov 2010

1. Make capture list
2. Capture
3. Make a rough edit(s)
4. Troubleshoot after watching edits back
5. Download and upload song
6. Talk to John about hiring his house
7. Get Liv in for rehearsals 
8. Work on album cover and website
9. Book seward studio for photo shoot

Positives and Negatives from the Second Shoot

Positives from the day;
- We worked out some good shots for this section of the video
- We made good use of the colours of the surroundings, and some of the footage looks really sharp when played back

Negatives from the day;
- Our actress didn't know all the words to the song
- We forgot to bring speakers to play the song through, and we had to use phone speakers which weren't loud enough
- The location wasn't ideal, we thought it was more scenic but you couldn't really make London out in the background

Second Shoot Day

Today we had our second shoot, we all met at 9am at Alexandra Palace - our location for the day. The shots we were taking today were for the lip synch sections of the video. The weather on today's shoot wasn't as good as the day before, the sky was grey and it was really windy which wasn't ideal, but we still shot for three hours, getting some good footage. Again we had the problem of not having asked filming permission before shooting at Ally Pally, not knowing before hand that we had to do so, but once we explained to security that we were students filming for school, they allowed us to stay.

Positives and Negatives from the First Shoot

Positives from the day;
- Shots we'd planned thouroughly turned out really well
- The costumes all looked really good and fitted the identity of our artist well
- Our actress did everything we told her to do really well
- Improvised shots of her walking were really effective
- Group communication was good, although we were stressed at times, we spoke about any problems we had and got over them easily
- When we watch it back, the colours and quality of our shoots look really good
- Playing the shots in reverse works really well

Negatives from the day;
- Not all of our shots were thought about in enough detail beforehand which made shooting on the day harder as we were planning as we went along
- We didn't direct our actress as well as we could have done so there weren't always the right emotions/actions we were going for on the shots
- Travelling from location to location took a long time so we didn't shoot as much footage as we could have done
- We didn't get prior permission to shoot in some of our locations like Trafalgar Square, this made getting our shots there really hard as we were always being moved on
- There were a lot of costume changes and this meant that our actress wasn't always wearing the correct planned outfit

First Shoot Day

Today we had our first shoot in London. We all met up at Finsbury Park Station at 7am with Liv and got the tube straight to Hyde Park. We had to wait a while to start shooting because the lighting wasn't ideal at that time of the morning but we managed to get a couple of shots before moving off to Trafalgar Square. At trafalgar square we started filming but five minutes after we arrived a security guard approached us and said that we'd have to leave unless we had permission. We hadn't realised that you needed to apply for shooting rights at trafalgar square but once we explained that we were students, the security allowed us twenty minutes to shoot before we had to move on.

After getting some really good shots at Trafalgar Square, we walked through to Leicester Square and got a few shots of our actress just walking around as it's an iconic area of London and we needed to get shots for the montage. At midday we stopped to eat and re-group and discuss where we were going from there - this was an important part of the day as everyone was tired after shooting in the morning and we needed a plan for the afternoon.

From Leicester Square we walked to Covent Garden, taking shots of Liv as we went along which worked and actually turned out to be some of the best shots of the day. At Covent Garden we filmed some more walking shots then recorded a pre-planned shot. The shot was of Liv stopping at a shop window and doing her make up, with a match-on-action from inside the shop window - it was a really successful shot and looked professional.

After Covent Garden we went to Soho to shoot in Soho Gardens, it's a really pretty setting but unfortunately we'd chosen a bad time to film as it was really busy with workers having lunch and sitting around, made it hard to film. After Soho we got on a train to Camden where we had planned to film, however we had another problem with it being busy and there were a too many people to record any of the shots we'd planned.

Group Meeting 26/10/10

Today me, Anisah and Despina had a final group meeting before the shoot. We sat down and put in a solid three hours work and I feel that this was one of our most successful meetings as we achieved a lot. We came up with a clear plan for the day and finalised a lot of our shots.

This is the final shot list we came up with after sharing our ideas for our individual scenes.


Shot List

Storyboard of My Verse

Hi everyone,

Here's my individual storyboard for the first verse of the video. Tell me what you think / if there's anything i need to change.

Thanks a lot

Joe

Shot List

Here is a rough shot list I have compiled for my scene in the video, in the group meeting we will make a shot list in greater detail.

Storyboard

Here is the rough storyboard we made as a group - the video has now been split into sections so we will decide upon shots for our own individual scenes and then as a group join the scenes together.

Group meeting 22/10/10

We had a group meeting this morning to start the shot list which is something that we really need to do. We started the shot list, working from the storyboard which was going really slowly, so Miss Blackborow suggested that we take a section of the song each and work on it seperately, creating a storyboard and shot list seperately then meet again to discuss our ideas. This means that we can cover the detail and get more done.

There are 4 major costume changes, so we've decided to go for different looks for each one:

• FESTIVAL: harem pants, flat shoes, lots of jewellery
• ROCK: leather jacket, skinny jeans, t-shirt
• BOHO: dress, military boots
• (CLUB): dress, heels

We got a lot of feedback from Miss, which was really helpful and she suggested that we think about some things:

• Mannerisms - Liv could have different personas when she's in different outfits and do things that personify that look e.g. while wearing the leather jacket she could play with the collar, looking more edgy, or act flirty with the camera and people off screen when wearing the boho outfit
• Always think about voyeurism - shots of the eyes, lips, CUs of Liv's hands with jewellery or feet when walking
• Dont't forget about extremes - put CUs with WSs etc

We also need to arrange our meeting for half term, which I reckon should be at the beginning of the week so that we can feedback ideas and make changes to finalise everything.

NEXT MEETING
TUESDAY @ 2PM
DESPINA'S HOUSE

Album Cover Research - Possible Fonts

Things to sort out for shoot

Costume: what is Liv wearing on each day?

• leather jacket, tight white vest top, coloured bra, baggy trousers, military boots, lots of necklaces
• jeans, Despina's crop top, black converse
• military boots

Locations: when and where and at what times?

Thursday-central london scenes

Friday - Ally pally lipsynch bits

When and where exactly are we meeting?

Thursday meeting at finsbury park 7am
Friday meeting at ally pally 7am

Weather

UK Outlook for Monday 25 Oct 2010 to Wednesday 3 Nov 2010:

An unsettled period that starts showery with some sunny spells, with strong winds in the north and east. Some of these showers could be wintry at times over higher ground in the north of the UK. Becoming fine and bright for a time before midweek with frost possible overnight, though this is soon followed by rain, as well as milder conditions from the west. This should shift the focus of the strong winds westwards in what should be a generally windy outlook, with gales possible in the exposed west at times. Remaining unsettled over the weekend and new week, with bands of rain separated by sunshine and showers arriving throughout from the west and later southwest: this heralding milder overnight temperatures in the run-up to November, reducing the frost risk.

Test shoot

We had our first shoot today from 3.30 to 5.30 in the Seward Studio with Liv. We had a couple of costume changes, in a variety of poses to try and get shots for our album.

 The Seward studio: testing the lighting and framing before Liv arrives

Getting Liv ready - hair, makeup, outfit

Sorting out lighting and framing for the shoot

We got props such as a guitar amp and headphones to really give a music vibe.

For the front cover, we want Liv posing with the amp and headphones and for the back we would like a shot of her looking at the tracks.

These are a few of the shots we liked, although in some of them we had problems with lighting;

Artist

We've decided to create a new identity for Liv and she's now called Alexandra Grace Hunter.
We want fans to call her Lexie Grace or Alex Grace, which is more personal and youthful.
We also asked some friends what they thought of the name and feedback was mostly positive, which is great.

Test Shots With Liv

We bought Liv into the media block last week to finalise everything with her. We gave her a contract to sign and made sure that she knows all of the project requirements, and gave her the confirmed dates and the lyrics to learn.
We also took some quick test shots of her to have on record:

Group Meeting: 15/10/10

We came up with some ideas for the album cover today.

On the front cover, we want to focus on Liv with either a CU or MS to really establish her as a debut artist.

We also think that the inside cover would look good with a wide photo stretching over both sides, instead of two separate photos which is quite unique.

We want to present Liv as a quirky kind of character, and she would look good on the back cover, with a cool expression, as if she's looking at the track listing. Katy Perry's expression here is similar to the kind of image we would like, only Liv would actually be looking at the text that would appear on the cd cover.

Our shoot is next week, in the Seaward studio at school, so we're really thinking about image and styling at this point.

15/10/10

Ideas for album cover shoot next week.

Image

• 1st look: black leather jacket, glamourous top, grey jeans, heels
• 2nd look: dress (possibly formal/glam), bare feet? - quirky

Where We Plan To Go

Here is a map of our route around London, the map shows the route we will take to the shoot locations and what public transport links we need to take.

Group Meeting 12/10/10

We used this meeting to make a schedule for the next couple of weeks, so that we have a plan of action for our meetings. The schedule is as follows:

Wednesday 13th October
Periods 2&3 - Storyboarding
Periods 4&5 - Storyboarding

Thursday 14th October
Period 4 - Bring Liv in to sign contracts, confirm dates for shooting, give her the lyrics to start learning, and take a few test shots.
Periods 6,7,8 - Continue storyboarding

Friday 15th October
Lunch, 12:30 - Test reverse shots with Liv, start talking through clothing ideas in more depth

Monday 18th October
Lunch, 12:30 - Confirm clothing and locations.
Period 6 - Shot llist

Joe Update

I've told George this already but to let the others know:

Liv is coming in for our Thursday Group Meeting Period 4 to discuss everything. Hope thats ok.

Group Meeting: 11/10/10

I thought of a to do list that we should try getting done by the end of this meeting:

• finish analysing lyrics
• identity of singer
• location

We have finished the lyrics sheet and it's on the blog.

For the singer's identity, we think that she should have 4 costume changes and alter her clothes twice (taking off a jacket for example.)

Possible outfits we came up with are:

• floral leggings and a crop top?
• floral dress?
• black skinny jeans, band tee, leather jacket
• trench coat?
• union jack flag?
• lots of jewelery

We looked at lots of locations and have decided on Alexandra Palace, as it has great views of London and is a big place, giving us choice and it doesn't really get very busy.

We liked the bench used in the film Notes On A Scandal (2006, Eyre) which is situated in Parliament Hill and would be great to shoot around for the lipsynch part of the video.

Other locations were Hampstead Heath and Southbank.

Most of our locations are outside, which could be a problem i the weather is bad, but the skate park on Southbank is sheltered and would have a great urban vibe.

Lyrics Timecode

This is the timecode for the lyrics of our song; I went through the song and wrote down the time every line starts. We then went through the time code as a group wrote out shots for each individual line - giving us a much clearer initial idea for the video. By visually seeing how much time we had for each shot, and by looking at the phrasing of words on particular lines, we were able to slot in both shot ideas we already had, and also new ideas based on lyrics in the line.

The lyrics with time coding also allowed us to decide where we would use the narrative structure of her walking backwards, and where we would show her lip syncing the song. We've decided that we want the lip syncing sections to be filmed on a bench with an iconic view of London as the backdrop. Ideas for the reverse theme have really begun to take shape and the group has also agreed on a new idea of the singer changing clothes throughout, with four striking clothing styles being agreed on.

Timetable

We've decided to plan ahead for the next two weeks and make sure that we have meetings every day, for around 30 mins and if we don't, we'll plan in the lessons.

Weather Prediction

Weather this month has been notoriously unpredictable, ranging from pouring rain to blazing sunshine, and so we cannot guarantee good weather conditions for our half term shoot at all. The BBC website predicts a lot of rain for the half term period of 22nd - 31th October, which is bad news considering we plan to shoot our video outside on a bright, Autumn day. If we are indeed forced to shoot on a rainy day however, there will be some positive outcomes, eg. reversing rainfall will be an interesting effect to play around with, and there are some possible shots with umbrellas we can incorporate. There really is no way of telling what the weather will be, as the BBC weather forecast is quite often hopelessly wrong, and as they say themselves on their website: "predicting the weather beyond about a week ahead stretches even the most experienced weather forecaster".


Here is a link to the official BBC forecast for the month:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/10209

Reverse Testing

It's Despina and Anisah here. We decided to take out a camera and take some shots to see how successful the reverse effect would be. We recorded some actions, such as walking, sliding  down banisters, taking clothes on and off and they all looked quite good reversed.

The shots that we really like are:

• Despina taking her hair out of a bun - looks really cool
• Sliding down the banisters
• Walking - simple, but effective and suits the London street look of our video

We're going to show the video to George, Joe and Miss B as well to get feedback from them.

Group Meeting - 7/10/10

In the group meeting today we went over the newly-timecoded lyrics sheet and started to plan exactly where our shots would go and which shots would suit which lyrics. We got through most of the sheet in this way and now have a much clearer idea of how we are going to put this music video together.

We made some crucial decisions regarding the performance too. We decided that direct address to the camera would be the best way for the star to stand out from the people around her and would increase her connection with the audience.

While we were brainstorming, some great new ideas for possible shots came to us, including a shot where the star takes a coffee from a man reading a newspaper and catches a coin that fires itself out of a wishing well/busker's guitar case. The idea of the star swinging backwards round a lamppost also appealed to us.

We have new location ideas, including a bench near Notting Hill which overlooks London. This location will be used primarily for performance and lip-synch footage. We decided that a carousel would be a great location for reversed footage. We also added the Underpass at Hyde Park to our possible locations list. We intend to do a rekkie within the next week.

We decided that costume changes will be a bigger part of our video, being used to represent the psychology of women and relationships - changing their identities and having different 'faces' at different times. Our actress will be dressed in three iconic costumes throughout the video; we have yet to finalise these.

We learnt from Anisah how to reverse camera footage, which is a crucial technique for us to master in this particular project, and we intend to do a test shoot in the near future.

New Actress

We have agreed that Liv, a girl in our year at school has a more suited image for the main actress we are after than the other two girls, as we wanted someone with darker hair who was a little "edgier". She has agreed to take part and seems really enthusiastic. She takes ALevel drama, so is confident, and is good-looking without looking too innocent or "cutes-y". We want her to have a dark, sexy edge. She is also reliable and we all get along with her well, so she is ideal for the role.

Mood Board for London style

Group Meeting

It became clear to us after pitching our treatment that some of the ideas we had about the video itself varied from person to person, so we thought it best to go back over the idea and brainstorm everything in more detail so we could make sure we were all in agreement over the general image we were going for. This is the results of our meeting:

Institutions

Things that we need to think about are the artist name, album and record label as these things will create our brand and are what the audience will look for.

Artist, Album, Record Label

These artists all have unique styles and album covers that focus on themselves. For their debut albums, they were signed to quite big labels, who have a good influence in the UK market, but can also reach a mainstream American audience.

I think that our artist should just use her name as a stage name, like Lily Allen, Cheryl Cole and Pixie Lott (although Pixie is her nickname). We could do something quirky like Pixie has and use a nickname, with would give a playful, youthful vibe.

I think that our record label should be a british one, which would have good communication to a young, british audience; who are essentially our target audience.

The album cover should also be focused on the singer. As we can see from these albums, the main image is of the singers (Lily Allen and Cheryl Cole's albums say the album in a really small, almost invisible font and Pixie's doesn't even mention 'Turn It Up'.)

Image

We have decided on who our singer will be and know we just need to think about the image we want her to portray. We've talked about artists like Lily Allen, Pixie Lott and Katy Perry who are all inspiratonal role models who appeak to both genders and a wide audience, especially young people.

I think that personality is something that really sells the artists,as audiences can relate to and admire them.

Our singer would create an identity through personality, looks, outfits, makeup and hair.

Lyrics Analysis

Lyrics

I remember all the things she did before
I remember all the times she cried
I remember all the things you promised her
I know it hurt, I remember all the times you lied

Don't meddle with her heart, meddle with her mind
Meddle with the things that are inside
You don't know what you'll find
You don't know what she hides

So don't go messing with her heart or messing with her mind
Or messing with the things that are inside
You don't know what you'll find
You don't know what she hides

She still remembers like it's yesterday
She still remembers you so well
She still remembers all the things you saw forever more
She still remembers but won't tell

'Cause she's a mixed up girl in a mixed up world
And you know she don't mean any harm
So please understand if you take her hand
You'll get much more than you bargained for

Don't meddle with her heart, meddle with her mind
Meddle with the things that are inside
You don't know what you'll find
You don't know what she hides

So don't go messing with her heart or messing with her mind
Or messing with the things that are inside
You don't know what you'll find
You don't know what she hides

Don't meddle with her heart, meddle with her mind
Meddle with the things that are inside
You don't know what you'll find
You don't know what she hides

So don't go messing with her heart or messing with her mind
Or messing with the things that are inside
You don't know what you'll find
You don't know what she hides

We first got the idea to do a reversed video from the opening lyric: 'I remember all the things she did before' and the recurring use of the word 'remember'. Playing the video is reverse would echo the idea of going back in time and remembering the past. This idea suits the whole song, as the video will literally 'meddle' with people's minds.

Also, by introducing the idea of her living outdoors and carrying out her daily routine in the open, we are 'messing with the things that are inside' and literally turning her world inside-out and back-to-front. Our video will be all about meddling with coventions and audience expectations, to subtly show the inner turmoil of the girl in the video.

Ideas Brainstorm

Ideas Brainstorm

References and Inspiration; Music Video's

The inspiration for the reverse theme in our video came from a Spike Jonze video we watched in class;

• The music video director produced a video for a song called "Drop" by an American Hip-Hop band Pharcyde - the whole video was shot in reverse then played backwards so it looked like it had been shot forwards.
• The whole video has a quirky feel to it and features the members of the band coming towards the camera in a weird fashion - as if they were just walking weirdly.
• A lot of the movements made by the group are abstract and would be seemingly impossible if you didn't know it was played backwards.

Another inspiration for our video came from a music video produced by Latymer students in 2003;

• The video features a girl walking through London which is what is happening in ours
• She is changing clothes which is one possible idea for our video - although ours will obviously be played in reverse
• The video uses lots of shots to create pace and interest, a point that is really helpful for us as we need to draw in audience attention with more than just the reverse theme

We really liked the styling in this video, another by old latymer students;

• Although it had a retro theme, the setting is similar to what we are aiming for in ours
• It has a really London feel about it which is what we're trying to achieve
• It also has a female singer, similar to ours

References and Inspirations; Artists

We're basing the appearance of our singer partly on other popular established artists and partly on an individual idea to make her different from them. Three main successful, similar artists we're basing the styling of our girl on our; Katy Perry, Lily Allen and Pixie Lott. These singers all have a similar target audience to our artist, young females who can look up to her and young males who will fancy her. They also have a similar look to what we imagine our artist having - sexy and fashionable so both genders will find her appealing.



Katy Perry;

• She is a young, attractive female with a massive fan base
• She is well like as she speaks her mind and is percieved as real and down-to-earth
• She is sexy which appeals to a male audience
• Her music is received well by an audience outside what would be considered her target market

Lily Allen;

• She is a young, attractive female with great success in Britain
• She speaks her mind and is very real, which her audience appreciates
• She makes music that a wide audience listens to
• She has a very British image, which manages to be sexy but also very relatable, similar to what we want our singer to have

Pixie Lott;

• She is a young, attractive pop artist with success in the UK
• She has a male following which comes from her sexual appeal
• She came from the britschool, a talent school aimed at finding young, British performers

Group Meeting: 30/09/10

In today's meeting we achieved quite a lot;

• We decided on a specific identity for our main girl
• We've created a theme for our video
• We created a shortlist for the possible actresses

After a lot of deliberation we've decided that the criteria for the girl in our video should be along the lines of this; she should be quirky and pretty but at the same time be edgy and sexy. We all decided that because the setting for our video would most likely be the streets of London, the girl should look like a typical London girl - streetwise and clever and dressed in a typically London style.

The primary theme for our video is obviously the shots played in reverse so it seems like the girl is walking backwards, and today we decided that it would be a really cool idea to add another theme; where she is performing typical indoor activities outdoors while she walks. For instance, she would take be eating or taking off an item of clothing. Then, when played backwards it would look like she was putting the item of clothing on. We have a lot of ideas based on this theme and we will talk about some of these in the next group meeting.

Group Meeting: 29/09/10

Today we had a group meeting discussing the possible actresses we'd use for our video. There were a lot of suggestions but we didn't really come to a conclusion about who we would use. The main reason for this is that we all had different ideas about what the girl in the video would look like so we agreed that we'd all go home and brainstorm two or three possible girls to use and come back tomorrow for another group meeting. Tomorrow our main objective is to come up with a clear theme for our sequence and create an identity for the girl. We will then all put forward our ideas and come up with a shortlist of possible actresses.

Copyright issues

Yesterday I emailed Little Boots' record label 679 Artists, asking to use the song or our project and they said it was fine, so there shouldn't be any issues with copyright.

Group Meeting: 27/09/10

Today we had another meeting and discussed ideas for the song Meddle by Little Boots.
So far, we have agreed that:

• the song would focus on the female singer
• variety of shots- performance and narrative
• we would film everything normally but edit it backwards, ie starting from night to day
• the song is about conflict in a relationship

The song is quite electro/indie-pop so the target audience could be fans of these genres. This kind of music could appeal to a wide audience.

Group Meeting: 23/09/10

Today we had a group meeting (minus Joe) to propose our ideas.

My idea is Cajun Dance Party - The Next Untouchable and the idea is that a boy is following a girl but she doesn't notice him.



Despina's choice is Little Boots - Meddle, and the idea is that the video would be shown backwards, illustrating a relationship between a couple, with the main focus on the girl.



George's idea is to  use Dizzee Rascal - Heavy and film it in a club, centred around a male.


We really like Despina's idea as it could be very creative. We are going to speak to Joe and update him on our progress and find out his idea on Monday.