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Costume And Props List

This is the props and costumes list Jackie produced, from which him and Anna had discussed about  and decided how we do not need many props as we are filming in the boxing gym and they have got most of the things we need there. However, we might need to get some different costumes for our characters:

Timeline

With most of our elements and initial ideas formed and understood in our group, I began writing up a rough draft of our timeline for our music video so we can see and discuss specifically what goes on throughout with the narrative and performance side of the video. The video is structured into mainly two elements, the narrative side with the boxer training in the gym, and the performance side with the band members playing their instruments while lip syncing. Jackie and I discussed the main concept and idea we want the storyline to go like during the video:

(NARRATIVE) : The video starts with the main singer and actor for the track lying on the floor lip syncing to the opening number of the music while awakening, from which it will connect near the end to when he was knocked out in the boxing ring during the video

(NARRATIVE) : The actor carries on singing lip syncing while showing some more of the boxing element side by following through his routine of opening up the gym doors, windows etc

(PERFORMANCE) : From the actor side of the video it then cuts from the main singer lip syncing in the boxing scene to the band members performance as a wide shot POV to establish the bands performance and where they are

(PERFORMANCE) : The shots will cut from the lead singer who is also the main actor singing to the track to some of the band members playing their instruments nodding to the beat playing

(NARRATIVE) : The actor will travel around the boxing club after opening it up with the previous shots and then being his warm up for the boxing

(PERFORMANCE) : Cuts to the band playing the track building up to the chorus line and the tension in the atmosphere from the lyrics and beat of the track

(NARRATIVE) : Different elements of the boxer warming up are shown similarly shown in our test shot video with skipping rope, punching bag, sit ups, duo boxing etc

(NARRATIVE) : During the warm up the track beat will match in time with the punches and high energetic moves to allow the atmosphere to be really strong and upbeat

(PERFORMANCE) : When the chorus of the track starts the band all start to mine the chorus part with shots cutting from the main lead singer and parts of the band members using high energy confidence towards the camera

(NARRATIVE) : After the warm up element shots of the boxing scene we may cut to some scenes of the number girl getting ready to make up some of the time of the track with different makeup, and hair scenes

(NARRATIVE) : As the track starts up to the next chorus the shot scenes open up to the final fight in a boxing ring with bright lights and punches matching the heavy beat track

(PERFORMANCE) : The band heavily beats to the track with fast editing between performance and narrative of the final fight

(NARRATIVE) : For the final shots of the track with the final track of the music to the beat it will end with the lead singer/actor boxer getting punched in the face and knocked down to the ground finishing face up like at the start of the video

Our New Location : Guildford Boxing Gym

For our new location, our teacher Phil contacted the Guildford Boxing Gym, shown in the email below, and we are planning to have a look around the location on Monday. This location has a boxing ring so therefore it probably might be a lot more suitable for us to film in as our location to for final music video

  

Set Design

This is the draft for the set design of our music video of which Anna was looking into some similar rock videos to get an idea of our final product and how we want it to look like on camera. After discussing as a group and focusing on our main ideas and planning, we all came up with one that we agreed on with building a set in the studio for our performance element with the band and the corner of a boxing ring in the studio.

There are 3 band members and we want them to perform in a studio- they need to be in the centre of the set so the audience would only pay attention to them.
Then we put some of our ideas on paper while brainstorming. We thought about how the band would be placed (on the same level/line or singer in front - musicians at the back.), what would the set include (e.g. props), he background/wallpaper and so on.
After a first draft we could clearly see that the idea with bricks  was't the best one - the video is black and white and the audience would not see the bricks anyway, so we decided to have a simple black background instead.
Then , I've drawn second draft and showed it to other members of the group and our Media teacher to make sure they all agree/approve the set design that we have created.

This is the final set design drawn by Anna.

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Polydor Production Records Company Talk

POLYDOR PRODUCTIONS

In todays lesson we had two members of Polydor's Records team who are the two music video commissioners, based and located in Kensington, London.

Their main line of work is mainly focused on the making of music videos and overseeing the process in which it takes to make the final product which is created. To help give us a good oversight of what they do and illustrate examples of the treatments they've received from directors on different projects, they handed out and gave us some booklets to overlook and share with examples of storyboards and test shots to gain a good visual understanding of their line of work. 

WHAT THEY DO:

When the commissioners are shown a track for a potential video, they firstly discuss with the artist what the initial track/single will be and how they want the final outlook to look like to then create a small briefing of the clear idea they want about the song. This is then followed on by the budge which is based on the expectation of the sales of the track in the future. After all this finalising they then discuss with the artists, managers and directors to make sure they do their job properly by making sure everyone's expectations are on the same page at the end of the day.

After the initial briefing is complete, the commissioners then have the task of choosing directors do work with depending on the style, genre, budget and the team. To do this process they sent out the brief to around 5-10 directors, then, after a couple of weeks those directors respond with their treatment, each different to each other giving a variety of choices to choose from. From getting a track and then delivering the actual final video it normally takes around 2 months for the process to be completed. However, they also said how that the radio has a lot of power with dictating what the viewers and audience will listen too depending on whether or not the sales increase, for example if the sales of a song which has been playing on the radio for a couple of weeks doesn't change, then the radio station will stop playing it all together and therefore probably stop the sales of the track all-together. 

EXAMPLES OF THEIR WORK:

The music video YEARS AND YEARS BY KING is one of the most successful current products Polydor Records have created at the moment. They showed the treatment and storyboard of this track to show us an example of how similar the storyboard was to the final product which is actually very rare nowadays. They went with the initial idea of wanting to capture the audiences attention immediately as soon as the track started by using visuals which are essential in a music video to make unique and entertaining. The video was shot in L.A. with the commissioners being present on set during the shoot as they were in charge of making sure everything was going well on the day and everyone taking part was happy with what they were doing, not the most easiest job when the whole process of creating the video is hard enough already. The budget was around the average UK budget between 30-40 grand.

                                                                                                                                                              

Another video that Polygon Records has created is Wiley ft Lucky Charms - Skank.  Before filming in South Africa - the  team of commissioners had done a research into subcultures of South African citizens to make the video more believable .

Analysis of the first Test Shot and what we need to do

Test Video Notes Analysis:


Looking at our first test shot of our final product we all realised how much we still need to do and improve on in order to get our final product how we visualised it to be. These are some of the elements and notes on what we still need to do and improve on before our final filming day:




The shots of the video in the first test shot look quite amateur due to the poor quality camera which can easily be improved by on the final filming day by using higher tech cameras on the day of shooting . In order to make it look much more dramatic and effective from the camera on the screen we can use lower depth of field shots with more slow motions elements in order to take up more of the film time from the track and also allow different types of shots and angles in the film. As a group we decided to film it all landscape not portrait as it fits all the film in the shot and looks more clean and professional for the final product. We found that the test shot video elements ands shots of the gym were far too repetitive due to mostly all being the same performance and narrative style with the main character performing different gym techniques over and over again resulting in the audience becoming easily bored. In order to avoid this with making the story boring, we need to add more narrative elements to build up on telling the story more clearly and therefore also adding more shots, perhaps adding the girl on the board getting ready as well as the boxer?

The gym in the scenes look way too basic and obviously shown to be a teenager training in a gym which is not what we are aiming for our final image, much more the opposite even with and elder looking boxer in a professional and harsh looking training gym. In order to make it much more visually effective, we can add different editing effects, the lighting can be changed to a bit more dark to add a more mature and serious feel to the shot, also more close up shots can be added to give more originality.to the video.


  


For the performance element of the video and style it is clear that we definitely need a lot more rehearsals with the band and also lead singer to make sure they know what they are doing and know the words and how to play the track with their instruments more confidently on camera with the lip syncing.