Rough Cut Music Video

Mood Board For Costume - Teenager Style - Abi Shaw

I Decided to make a mood board for the costume. This includes the type of style that relates to teenager girls as this is our target audience we want our main character to reflect the teenage image due to the dance pop genre being targeted for teenage females. Particular music videos within the same genre display the teenage style, especially as they are mostly female teenagers themselves. The style and costume we want to use in our music video for our main character reflects teenager girls trends, for instance the lipstick, and accessories like handbags and jewellery that we immediately associate with teenager girls. This will allow the audience to notice exactly what genre the video is, but also allow teenagers who watch it to relate and link to fashion as well as the music and teenage scenario that comes through the song, and narrative.

Dance-Pop Stereotypes

Stereotyping is common in today’s society as producing a bad image of those in relation to the Dance-Pop genre, although I see this as a way people choose to express themselves within their music. Women stereotyped within this genre tend to be crazy, forceful and unique, they are seen to be wearing bold clothes with numerous accessories and often quite revealing clothes. This can often be a demand made by the record label as some artists may not feel comfortable showing too much skin where as others release videos of them in bikini’s. Stereotypes are often repeated so much people begin to think they are true and believe the genre of this music will influence younger generations to wear such clothes.

As stereotyping also helps the audience to understand the music and reasons for the outfits the artists wear, we will try to incorporate this into our music video as I do not see it as a way of influencing children to behave in a different way to normal.

Test Shots

Today we started filming our test shots, we done this to eliminate  any problems that could occur when we start to film our music video. As some of the shots we would want to use could be complicated we thought that practicing them would make our time, when filming more sufficient.

We first encountered a problem with trying to fit the camera onto the tripod; it would not fit onto the space provided, (our teacher later told us she had given us the incorrect tripod for this camera we had). After struggling with this for a while we thought that if we continued to attempt to fit it on we would be wasting vauable filming time so we tried to keep the camera as still as possible when filming. This would of been a major problem for us to have found if we were due to of been filming our final piece as we only have a limited time and the tripod is a major piece of equiptment that we would need.

For example one of the shots we would want to use include the camera following our lead character around a corner. This would need to be a continuous movement so that we would not come across any chance in scenery or members of the public appearing, continuity is a key element to keep our music video following and looking proffessional. We have picture where this would take place and found a good corner in St Leonard's Road and another under the arch by Windsor Lesiure Centre. Another example of a complicated shot is when we would film one of our characters through a glass window of a coffee shop; we would do this from a point of view shot of our other character. This did show some difficulties as lighting and our reflections became an issue, this meant that we would need to change locations so that this did not occur.

Another shot we used was of a wall, we need this as we would grafiti the words 'N N N Neva Baby' onto it during the video. Whilst looking around we considered the fact that this is not allowed and agreed to do it on a wall in her back garden out the way of the public and with Lipstick instead of spray paint.

We also filmed small, short shots of objects we would use druing our quick cuts. We found these shots occurred within the Lady Gaga and Katy Perry videos that we had previously studied. As our music video followed a Dance-Pop genre we knew that these short shots would help add to the crazy atmosphere and fragments storyline that we would be trying to follow. As well as fast cuts we also considered including a fish bowl effect into our production, we would do this during editing our piece on final cut pro. We found this effect has been commmonly use by producer Hype Williams and creates a good effect when you are focusing on one character.

Once we had uploaded our test shots onto Final Cut Pro we were able to begin our editing process, this helped us to understand how the program works and give us practice for when we need to edit our final piece.

Storyboards

Risk Assessment

Before filming there are many health and saftey issues that need to be considered to allow filming to run smoothly and to limit problems within the duration of our filming.

What are the hazards?	Who might be harmed and why?	What action if necessary?	How will you put the assessment into action?
Cars and pedestrians on the road	Anyone involved within the filming or people around at the time. We could knock into them by accident	Be careful when moving around making sure there’s no one or thing around you	Make sure everyone is aware of the surrounding areas.
Equipment when filming e.g. Camera & Tripod	The members of our group. The equipment is quite heavy and if it fell it could cause damage even broken bones.	Make sure we are holding the equipment correctly to avoid dropping it. Ensure all equipment is set up correctly to reduce the risks of it falling.	Make sure whoever is handling the equipment knows this.
Water gun	Our male character could get water in his eyes; although it is not acidic it could hurt.	Make sure the characters closes his eyes when the water is being shot, whilst trying to aim the water around his chest	Ensure our male and female characters are aware of the risks and to do what they have been asked.
The health and safety of the people involved.	The general health of our group e.g. allergies	Check that if any medication needs to be carried that we are all aware of where to find it in case of an emergency	Make sure before we start filming everyone has what they need.
Windsor Leisure Centre play zone- ball pit	the balls within the ball pit themselves could become hazardous as they are easy to slip on	Make sure everyone is careful when standing on the balls and looking where they are going when walking.	Be sure that everyone knows they will have to take care especially if holding equipment
Windsor Leisure Centre play zone- Slide	When travelling down the slide there is a risk our character could loose balance and fall off the side	Ensure that when they are travelling down the slide they hold onto either side	Make sure the character knows to hold on

Initial Ideas for Costume and Props

Costume;
As our main character is a stereotypical wild child, we choose a member of our group to act this character as she has an urban look and would be able to act the scenes that some people might not want too.

The costumes we came up with included short denim shorts with a revealing top and loads of accessories. We also wanted them to have bold make-up that could easily be seen through the camera as make-up shows the characters wild side. We had inspirations from the artist herself, Kesha, as she wears a lot of jewellery during her videos and her clothing is very unique. When considering the make-up we would want to use we thought of artists such as Lady Gaga and Kimberly Wyatt as they both have strong eye make-up. This is what we would want our female lead character to look like with fake eyelashes and bold eye shadow/ eye liner.

We then thought about what we would like our male character too look like, although this did not need as much consideration as he would not be wearing make-up we looked at other music videos that followed a similar storyline to gain basic ideas. We also used the internet to have a look at still images of characters from music videos. This helped us to decide that we would like our geek to either be wearing shorts or long trousers with his shirt tucked in, preferable wearing braces with glasses to cover his eyes. Glasses are stereotyped as either making you seem clever or silly, in this case we are using them to add effect to the characters costume.



Props;

We wanted to make use of props throughout our video as we thought we could add a quite a weird funny effect to our video. Also as our video conventions follow the link between visuals and lyrics this would be easy and cleverly done. The types of props we wish to use include are;

- A water pistol - We thought we would use this when relating the lyrics with the visuals, a sentance in the song is 'Lookin' down the barrel of a loaded gun' this is when Alice you pull out the water pistol and shoot the geek with water.

- Lipstick (on the mirror writing 'N N N Neva baby') - This shot we wanted to link the lyrics with visuals, as ' N N N Neva Baby' is commonly sung we thought adding this writing on the mirror would contribute to our wild video.

- Bottles and glasses - For our fast quick shots we liked the idea of showing alcohol bottles close-ups and maybe close ups of girls drinking again the use of the bottles and alcohol glasses follows what you'd expect to see in a Dance Pop genre.

- Flower the geek holds - We liked the idea of the obsessed geek character to always be there in the background, and we liked the idea of him holding a flower to symbolise how he's trying to gain her love.

- A note saying 'N N N Never baby' - We also liked the idea of her throwing the love back at him and again linking the lyrics with visuals a note that reads 'N N N Never baby' this will be in one seen as it will be very effective and relate to the song.

- Spray paint for wall - In relation to having 'N N N Neva baby' written in the different scenes we also thought of the ways in which it could be displayed another one of these being a wall with 'N N N Neva baby' gratified on it.

Initial Ideas for Location

When first considering ideas for our location we had to think about the time of the year that we would be filming, this could affect the natural lighting that we would rely on if filming outside.  We brainstormed a couple of ideas such as a house, St Leonard’s road, Windsor high street and a party. As the road was outside we knew that we would need to be filming before 6pm as this is when it started to get dark.

When coming to face the reality of St Leonard’s road we knew it was a main, busy road and that this might prove some problems if we tried to film and keep the continuity. We also thought of the arch way by Windsor leisure centre as we would not have the constant disturbance from cars, although this distraction could be avoided we knew it was a busy oath way and we would have to be patient with the members of the public walking through.

As we had also considered filming the main parts of our video in a house, we had aimed to stick to the dance pop genre this would be a good location for us to add in different effects and shots, whilst not having to worry about our background images changing. We decided on filming at Sophie’s house as many of the shots we had considered doing linked in with the design of her house.

When planning our video we agreed that a coffee shop would fit in with the music and lyrics and could help us keep a constant flow within these. As Windsor is a wide tourist attraction we considered the quieter café’s that are often missed by other members of the public. We thought of Prêt, this café is hidden in between shops and other café’s we knew that it would be easier to film here as we would not have much interference from the public.

Our last location is at a party, as our genre is dance-pop we knew to keep the video relation to this we would need to include a club/party scene. As all our group are 17 we knew that a club would not be accessible, this is when we thought of the idea to take the camera to a already arranged party and film there.

Initial ideas for Characters

The characters used in a music video are obviously one of the most important elements to consider, depending on the genre. With our chosen music track and our genre being dance pop, their are certain conventions that we would need to follow and relate to. In relation to our song choice 'Kesha- N N N Neva baby' we can see that Kesha is quite a wild, bold, and a party chick, already this gives us the sort of character we want our main character to be like, however we don’t want to follow Kesha's style, but defiantly the conventions of the Dance pop genre.

As a group we agreed on Alice, a member of our group, playing the main character and playing the role of the wild, young girl lead we also took into consideration the target audience of our Music video and due to our genre being Dance pop the main target audience for our music video would appear to be teenagers of both genders. This also fits in with the choice of our main character being Alice as her herself is a young teenager; it would be misleading to have a woman or a man as the main character lead.

Other characters that we have considered included a boy playing a geek character that is obsessed and in love with the young teenager as this generally fits with the lyrics of our song choice, being about a boy desperately trying to be with the girl, and her saying ‘NNN Neva Baby' implying that it will never happen.

In relation to the genre Dance pop you generally see the  main character with a group of friends, either getting ready to go out, or having a little party and we wanted to keep that connection within our own music video. Other characters include Collette and I playing the role of the friends again it suits the target audience and fits with the Dance pop genre.

In choosing our characters we originally decided to use a boy to play the geek role, but then with the short time to film in and the planning taking more time than we thought we decided on Sophie a member of our group to play the boy, geek role. We thought this would be not only easier but interesting and amusing to the audience.

Initial Ideas for our Storyline

When first hearing our chosen song we all had various ideas that sprung to mind about what the video would look like. Although our ideas were different we all imagined a wild and vibrant video with a link to lyrics and visuals, the lyrics within the song could create a fun atmosphere within the video and keep the audiences attention.

We knew we would also want to follow a fragmented storyline as we felt this would allow the audience to understand what is going on. Following this also related to the genre that which our song is as many artists from the same genre do not follow a narrative story line.

We had to think about numerous things such as timing, locations and cast, many of our friends would not be able to make our filming dates on such short notice so we decided that the characters would be members of our group.

Once agreeing on this we started to base the storyline around what we had to work with, we knew the lyrics implied that the male characters wanted to be with the female but she kept turning him down. This is when we developed our idea about having a geek and a wild teenager, as they were two opposite types of people we thought this could add a comedy effect to our video.

Ideas for main locations-

We liked many of the ideas that artists such as Lady Gaga uses as she is at a party in many of her videos, this then made us consider having a party as well. Although this sounded like a good idea it would be to wild and would not allow us to easily follow our fragmented storyline. We also liked that fact that we could film outside as many of Kesha’s videos are in the “streets” so we decided that we would find a location in Windsor and plan around there. We knew we would need to stay close to school and home in case for any reason we needed to re film a shot.

Ideas for links between Lyrics and Visuals-

As we considered the ideas about lyrics and visuals the words that constantly come up during the song are that of the title “N N N Neva Baby” we knew we could make constant reference to these so we planned what we could do.

We came up with many ideas to show this, one was “N N N Neva Baby” being written on a note and handed to the “geek” another was “N N N Neva Baby” to be written on a mirror with lipstick.

When begining our initial ideas we had to strongly consider the reality concept, although many of our idea's would have worked extremely well and given the video a brilliant vibe, many of these idea's would have been near enough impossible to do because of various reasons such as money, not being able to find the right location close to windsor and not having a large enough, experienced cast. Therefore, we took our initial idea's and tweaked them in order for them to fit in with our ability, but still give the video a unique edge and great effects.

Time Line

Date	Task	People Involved
5th October	Brainstorm Initial ideas as a group to figure out our basic storyline	Collette, Sophie, Alice & Abi
6th October	Research our chosen Genre and analyze Location, Costume, and Props and the Characters.	Collette & Abi
7th October	Ensure we have a full understand of what we would want our video to look like so that when we start filming we are not wasting any time	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
8th October	Complete Risk Assessment sheets, allowing us to know what could be dangerous during our filming	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
9th October	Planning and producing Storyboards	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
10th October	Practice use of Location/Test Shots and random shots we want to include in our music video.	Alice, Abi & Collette
11th October	Finish main story board	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
12th October	Update blog with research that we have done over the past few days and film footage outside and in playzone	Alice, Abi & Collette
13th October	Film footage needed for the scenes inside Sophies house	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
14th October	Upload Filming to Final cut pro and see if there are any shots we need to re-do	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
15th October	Alice take camera to be able to film the party and her self there	Alice
17th October	Deadline for filming, we uploaded everything and made sure there was nothing else that we would want to add	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
18th October	Edited our test shots and made sure we add these to our blog with an evaluation as to how we found these.	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
19th October	Begin rough cut /editing	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie
20th October	Continue rough cut /editing also last day of being able to use the cameras.	Alice, Abi, Collette & Sophie