The document discusses the development of a concept for a music video. The group initially wanted to use the song "Video Killed the Radio Star" but realized the song was too iconic. They found another song with no existing music video. They were influenced by other music videos like "Bleeding Love" which used a dollhouse concept. Research was also done into costumes, props, set design, locations and target audiences. Storyboarding and creating an animatic helped plan the shots and ensure they fit with the music. Preparation included developing a shooting schedule and cast list.

1. Evaluating
Music Video
Research and Planning

2. How We Developed Our
Concept

Our first idea was using the song 'Video Killed The Radio
Star' and we wanted to use the original idea of the
development of technology, but relate it to the modern
age. We wanted to relate this to the idea of digital sales
taking over from physical sales and we thought we
would make a video about this. We liked this idea until
we realised that the song was too iconic and so was the
video. We tried to keep the concept and change the
song but we could not find a song that had the same
idea. From this, we decided to use a song with no music
video so we could be certain that our idea would not be
turned down again. We then found the arctic monkeys
song and from listening to the lyrics, imagined a couple.

3. How We Developed Our
Concept

One of the things that helped to develop our
concept is other music videos and artists. The
music video for Leona Lewis’ ‘Bleeding Love’
influenced our dolls house idea. We liked the idea
of the flats and how the camera zooms out and
the viewer can see all the different scenarios in
each room, all happening simultaneously. It
helped us to come up with our idea of panning
through the walls, except instead of a block of
flats we wanted to use a dolls house and instead
of zooming out in the middle of the song (like in
the Bleeding Love video) we wanted to zoom out
at the end and not reveal the intend of the video
until the end.

4. How We Developed Our
concept

Another music video and song that we found
influential was ‘Gives You Hell’ by the All American
Rejects. We liked the idea of having the
contrasting lives and we thought we could apply
this to our idea and contrast the life of the perfect
stereotypical 60’s suburban couple with the life of
the band who are having fun doing what they
love. When we realised we were doing the dolls
house idea and we needed to have the sickly
sweet perfect world, we re-watched the video to
give us ideas as to what constitutes the perfect
life.

5. How We Developed Our
Concept
 Another
music video that had a similar
dolls house idea to ours is ‘IFHY’ by Tyler,
The Creator. The music video is set in a
dolls house, similar to our concept. It
makes good use of pastel colours and the
idea of perfection in the dolls house.
When we created our concept, we
imagined our dolls house to be very similar
in style to this video.

6. How We Developed Our
Concept

When developing our concept we investigated our target
audience and tried to imagine the type of people that
would listen to our band and the type of music video they
would want to see and would be interested in. We
researched into what types of music different age groups
like and how many people like different types of genre. We
decided that our primary target audience is males and
females aged between 17 and 23. This is because they are
old enough to understand that the world isn't perfect and
that people do have hard times, which is a main theme in
our band and partially in our song choice. I also think the
themes of our song choice are perhaps too old for people
of a younger age to listen to as they may not understand
what the song is really trying to say and therefore may not
understand what the music video symbolises.

7. What We Did For Our Concept
 Because
genre is an important element
for us we researched into what artists of
the same genre have in their music videos
and what their CD Covers and Websites
look like to see whether our band would
appeal to the same target audience. This
involved looking at a variety of bands,
including Interpol, The Coral, Supergrass,
Queens of the Stone Age and The Shins.

8. Why We Did This

We did this because getting the right star
image and making sure we are appealing to
the correct target audience is important to
us. We wanted to see whether or not our
target audience would like our band, music
video and digipak so we looked at similar
bands to see how they represent themselves
and whether or not their audience likes it. We
wanted to see if there was a wide variety of
ways that we could take our music video and
digipak.

9. Our Target Audience

10. Research into Conventions
and Real Media Texts

To understand our target audience and the importance of the
online age we research into Jenkins idea of Convergent
Culture and how big and essential a participatory culture is
and how we now live in a remix culture and how we could
apply this to our music video and our digipaks. I think a
participatory culture is important and I hope to apply this to our
website, for example maybe having a forum for fans to ask
questions to the band or live video sessions with the band or
letting the fans be able to vote on titles of upcoming songs. As
we very much live in a prosumer culture now I also like the idea
for having a competition on our band's website for an
upcoming music video in which users can upload their own
creations on YouTube and the band will pick their favourite to
direct their actual music video or feature in it.

11. What I Learnt About the
Research of Music Videos
 Overall,
I learnt that there are lots of little
details that are important in the music
video that I wouldn't have thought as
important, for example all the detail into
the props and the set that is essential to
make the video look professional.

12. Research into Location

As we were creating sets we did not need a location as
we used the studio. This was not the original plan as we
were originally going to use a corridor in school as our
basement for our band performance, but after a
meeting with Scott, our set designer, we discovered that
it would make more sense to just use the set in the studio
as it makes more sense and is easier to film and get
different angles. It makes it easier to get the grunge look
we wanted and it is easier to do the pan down through
the house into the basement.To get the shots we
wanted we had to build two sets next to each other
with a doorway in-between. This allowed us to easily film
our horizontal transition into the next room through the
wall. We also had to raise the set on stilts to enable us to
pan downward through the floor into the basement.

13. Research into Costume

For our costumes we really wanted the couple in the
narrative to look like a 50's suburban perfect couple so
we researched into the man in our narrative having a
checkered V-neck, with some chinos and perhaps a
floral or checked short sleeved shirt underneath the Vneck. As well as this we wanted him to have some plain
brown leather shoes. This is because we wanted him to
look quite 'geeky' and mainly using pastel coloured
clothing, accomplishes this. We also researched into
him having glasses as this would help to establish his
nerd look. We wanted to make our suburban housewife
as girly and petite as possible. Because of this, we
envisioned her in a cute pastel coloured dress and
pairing it with a little cardigan and small high heeled
shoes. She would have curled ends of her hair and a
bow in her hair.

14. Research into Costume

15. Research into Costume

We wanted our band to be stylish and modern,
contrasting with the 50's style of the couple but still
fitting with the idea of the dolls house and
everything being fake. We considered them all in
black and white and in suits, or in quirky outfits
with trench coats and sunglasses. We finally
agreed on light brown suits or jackets with shirts
and either light brown trousers or black trousers
and smart brown leather shoes. We agreed that
these fit with the theme of everything turning into
cardboard and are still fashionable enough to
give our band a sophisticated look and appeal to
our target audience.

16. Research into Costume

17. Research into Props

We needed quite a lot of props for our band members
and the set of the house, as well as our items that are
turning into cardboard. We researched into having two
guitars, one drum kit and an old fashioned microphone,
with two amps for our band. There are lots of props that
were needed for our set to make it look believable as a
house. Most of our props were little things, like pictures
on the wall, wallpaper, toasters. In the kitchen we
needed a fridge, counters, a sink, a kitchen table and
chairs, toaster, cutlery, plates, bacon, eggs and a
scrabble board. In our bedroom setting we needed a
bed, bedside tables, pictures, lamps, alarm clocks,
pillows, duvet, slippers. For the bathroom scene we
needed a bath, sink, toilet, mirror, flannels, make up,
comb and water.

18. Research into Props
 Most
of our props were regular things
which meant that we could provide them
from our own homes or boarding houses.
The only things we needed the school to
provide was the props for the band and
the big items, like the bed, the bath and
the fridge.

19. Research into Props

We did a lot of research into how we were going to turn
our props into cardboard. The props we wanted to turn
into cardboard included all of the instruments in the
band performance, and in the narrative it is the toaster,
the lamps, the mirror and the scrabble board. One thing
we researched is buying a software on the props
department computer that would enable us to take
photos of our props that are turning into cardboard,
upload it into the software and then the picture would
print out through A4 sheets of paper life size. We would
then take the A4 sheets and stick them onto the
cardboard. We had the ability to buy the software as it
costs $19.95 so would still be within the budget

20. Research into Props

Our only issue after this would be the cost of ink as
it would be quite expensive to print our lots of A4
sheets. Because of the cost of the ink, we then
researched into having the pictures printed for us
by a company and delivered. For this we
compared lots of different companies but again
decided it was too expensive. We then decided
to make the cardboard items ourselves and the
ones we could not make, we would wrap the
items in cardboard and allow them to be filmed
first before removing the cardboard and
continuing with our shots.

21. Research into Set Design

It was a small concern that our set seemed quite
girly and I was worried that it did not fit our star
image or would not appeal to our target
audience. Because of this, we made the
basement contrast completely to the narrative by
making it look very dark and grunge-like. I feel like
this would appeal more to our target audience
and fit with the bands star image more. It also
could be beneficial to have the contrasting
narrative as it could appeal to a wider or different
audience.

22. Research into Set Design


23. Planning
The Production: The Key
Parts

24. Storyboarding/Animatic

Our storyboard was an essential element as it is
important to be able to plan our our shots and
what type of shots we were doing and also the
duration of the shots. Planning out our shots is
beneficial as it enables us to see what the
audience would see and how each shot would
work together with the transitions. It helps to give
us a visual idea of how our music video will look
enabling us to see if there is anything we want to
change and the order of shots and also if we
have too many of the same type of shot following
each other, for example close ups.

25. Storyboarding/Animatic

We found that some shots were quite repetitive
and were framed the same way and because of
that we needed to gets wide variety of shots.
Our storyboard definitely accurately represented
our music video as our pictures are detailed and
we only needed a few minor changes. It's very
important to annotate the storyboard because
writing technical notes helps to understand the
flow of visual images. We cut our storyboard as an
animatic so that we could see how each shot
fitted with the music and how we could put each
shot to the beat.

26. Storyboarding/Animatic

That helped us give a visual image of our shots and a
better idea of the timings of our shot and it became a
base for what for what we needed to change. Some of
our shots went with the beat which we only saw when
we were cutting the animatic which enabled us to add
more shots and give a realistic representation of what
the music video will look like. One thing we didn't realise
when cutting our animatic was how quick our cuts
would be in beat with the song, when we were creating
our storyboard we gave about 6 seconds for each shot
but when we cut out anionic we saw that we only
needed about 2 seconds for each shot and sometimes
less.

27. Storyboarding/Animatic
 We
figured out we would have to drag
out some shots and add extra shots to fill
up the entire song. It was helpful because
we want to avoid our music video being
repetitive.
 Our Animatic

28. Why We Made a Record of
Our Planning

We created prototypes so that we can envisage
our final product before production actually
begins. It enables us to make more informed
decisions during production and see what we
need to change or modify before we actually
made the final product. Our prototypes included
our pencil drawn storyboard, our animatic, our
screen tests we did with our lead singer, and the
rehearsals we did beforehand.

29. Things We Did in Preparation
of Our Shoot Day

One thing that our animatic was helpful in doing
was creating out shooting schedule as we had to
change up the order of our shots on the day so
that it made sense and our animatic was helpful in
this as it had all the shots in our music video. The
shooting schedule was an element of our music
video that was extremely important as it was
necessary to plan out the day so we knew what
we were shooting first and in what order.

30. Things We Did in Preparation
of Our Shoot Day

We decided that we were going to shoot the
bedroom scenes first, followed by the bedroom
scenes, meaning we had to build the bedroom
and bathroom scenes first. Instead of shooting the
woman in in the narrative's bedroom shots and
then changing to her in the kitchen, we shot the
woman in the narrative in the bedroom and then
the man in the narrative in the bedroom, although
this is not until later in the music video. The
shooting schedule enabled us to see what order
we were shooting so we knew how to plan out the
day.

31. Things We Did in Preparation
of Our Shoot Day

Our cast list was also an important element as we
had to choose who we wanted early and it was
important to list why we wanted the certain
people, as they may fit with our star image or
appeal to our target audience. Choosing our cast
and creating our cast list early was important
because we wanted our cast to know early so
they could prepare, for example our lead singer
could learn his words.

32. Evaluation of Research

Overall, our research was very beneficial as it
helped to plan and prepare everything for our
shoot day, which went successfully. Our planning
went accordingly, with only a few minor flaws, like
the lateness of our storyboard so it became quite
rushed. The shoot would have been better if we
had set up more previously as we had to set up on
the shoot day, in the time that we were supposed
to be filming, meaning that we began shooting
late and as a result it was very rushed towards the
end and we did not get all the shoots that we had
planned to get.