E-mail to Joe Hellman (Our Main Actor)

So it has been established by the media department that we will be using Joe Hellman, our main actor choice, as the main performer in the music video as well as the date of our shoot, November 10th. Now we still need to confirm with him that he will be available at that date in order to give confirmation for the media department. We need to ensure that he has no coursework or tests or any other commitments to go to on that day. So I sent him an e-mail asking him to make sure that he will be free then. Here's a screenshot of the e-mail:

Meeting With The Lighting and Set Designers

Today we had two professionals join our class and sit with each individual group and listen to what we had in mind props-wise and lighting-wise. We used the same power-point we used for our re-pitch of our idea to Luke in order to portray the exact images we had in mind for our music video lighting-wise. We told him that we want to use a mixture of red and blue lighting when the performer is outside (primarily blue). We told him we wanted to use full on red lighting on the hallway however, not incorporating the actual red light source on the shot, so it would have to be away from the shot frame. We finally told him we wanted the room to have primarily red lighting with a very little bit of blue to create a nice subtle violet sort of mixture. Once both of us were on the same page he wrote down on his notebook every detail we told him in order to create a lighting set exactly the way we want it to be.

 After our lighting designer left our group we were immediately joined with the set designer. We had to tell her everything, and every little detail about the props and everything that will be seen on the set. We showed her our set design drawing of the bedroom which portrayed a fairly detailed explanation of what we wanted the room to look like.

We explained how we want it to be a modern looking bedroom as opposed to the stereotypical classic American motel room with the dirty vibe and peeling walls. We are going for a modern cubic look, so we showed her a few pictures of an ideal prop we want to use such as the chair:

She did say however that the chair would be an issue. It is a question of whether we can find one and bring it to school or not. This is because a modern chair like that one costs quite a bit, and no school would invest on such a prop just for a single group. So unless we are able to find someone who has one and is willing to take it to school, we will need to think about something else to use other than this. Lastly she took some notes on exactly what we intend to use and is going to work hard to try and make it all happen.

Set Design Drawings

I was assigned to draw the set designs for our music videos in order to present an accurate and detailed idea of what the group wants the sets to look like. We drew two different set designs, the hallway and the motel room. However we ended up scrapping the hallway because we thought it would look more real to find an actual hallway to film in as opposed to spending a lot of time on building one that is probably not going to look very realistic. We kept the motel room because that leaves us with only one set design to build and because usually making a room setting in the media studio is easier and just as effective as filming in a real motel room. Here are the two set design drawings:

Hallway

Motel Room

Polydor Records Guest Speaker

Two video commissioners came to our class as guest speakers of Polydor Records that is part of Universal Music Group and talked about how their professions work.Our class group took some notes on what they were saying, about their lives and about the music video industry. here are my notes:

Rehearsing Our Dance Sequence

Our group did a rehearsal with our two main actor choices, Hannah Nanton and Joe Helmen. One of our group members, Hannah Everitt, who happens to do A-level Dance choreographed a dance and taught it to the main actress. We the actress perform the dance in three different ways and put it on the video. One being her facing the Joe, one being facing the camera, and one being very close to him. We came to conclusion that by having the actress dance close to actor would make her seem a bit too provocative, which is not what we intend to do in the final product. We instead intend to make her come across as a very amusing and attractive dancer whom the lead singer is in love with.

Joe Helmen For the Main Part

Joe Helmen is currently an A2  student at our school , Hurtwood House, and matches the perfect, ideal look that we are looking for in our music video. We want our main character to have blue eyes and blonde hair, keeping an attractive, laidback, grungy look. We want the character to have very monotonous facial expressions and that is one of the facial features about Joe. We can presume that Joe is quite comfortable to be in front of cameras since he is used to having cameras take pictures of him for his modeling.

Rehearsal Process For Our Firs Option For Lead Role

Joe Helmen, Hurtwood Student was asked by us to meet up during our coinciding free times and film a couple of scenes as his rehearsal process. This was done to see how he would look on camera and see if he is or is not the ideal person for the role.

We made Joe walk towards the camera outside to resemble the street shot of him walking towards us. And we made Joe walk in a corridor at school towards the camera and through a door, as if he was walking to the room where the woman is waiting for him. Here are the videos:

As it can be seen, he keeps a quite chilled out style as he walks and as he walks into the room. As pretty much a blank facial expression as he walks past the camera. The relaxed, distracted look on his face fits in very well with the laid back and depressive theme of the song, which s why we think he would fit in perfectly as our main character.

Casting Process, Our First Option For Our Main Role

Lucas (my group member) and I did a casting process for the male character in our music video during our free time on Monday. On this casing process we took pictures of Joe Helmen from 4 different angles in order to portray and examine his face to ensure he looks right for the music video. Here are the 4 pictures:

The reason why we want Joe Helmen to be our first choice is partly because his face would resemble the voice of the singer in the song and because we wanted someone who had a slightly expressionless look in their face. We wanted him be blonde and attractive as well as to have a melancholic expression in the face. Thus, Joe would be the best option we had from all the Hurtwood Students.

Animatic Storyboard for 'Without U'

Conventions of Music Videos, Digipacks and Homepages Analysis

Luke's Latest Bit Of Feedback

So we explained our latest idea for the main music video to Luke in the studio in order for him to say the final word, dictating whether we will move forward with the idea or change something in order to make it do-able. We told him our four performance elements which are all of the artist lip-syncing while:

1. Walking down a street
2. Sitting on a comfy chair 
3. Laying down on the girl's stomach on the bed
4. Walking down the corridor

He told us a good location for the hallway would be one of Hurtwood's boarding houses, Peaselake . The house contains plenty of different hallways that all resemble and remind us of Hotel/Motel hallways. The only problem with this location is that there is a window on the far end of the corridor and the glass would make a reflection of the camera. However this can be easily countered by covering the window with some special sheets for shooting. Luke said he would provide us with these sheets on the shooting day.

He provided us with a bit of feedback saying that we would need to be 100% sure that Hannah (our dancer performer) will be comfortable with doing provocative, seductive dances in front of a camera with many people including men looking at her in little clothing. He told us to go talk to Hannah and try hard to make her feel uncomfortable about the music video, and if she does have second thoughts about it, then great. However if she does have to re-consider it, we would have to tweak our idea a little bit in order for it to work.

He also told us that the person we have in mind (Joe) might not be the best for the main role. Since he does not take A-level Theater Studies nor has he ever done any acting, he might look a bit silly or awkward in front of the camera performing with an attractive girl dancing for him. So Luke told us to think of other possible people that might be able to play this role better and who have a similar kind of look.


The last bit of feedback he provided us with is the fact that it would be hard to shoot the bedroom scene in a Hotel. This is because we had a cheap Motel in Cranleigh in mind for the shoot. The reason why it would be tough is simply due to the fact that while shooting we will need to be repeating the song over and over and over for an extended period of time with a significantly loud volume. Thus it might annoy some other neighboring rooms in the Motel.

My Part of The Storyboard

My group was provided with sheets in order to draw out every shot in a storyboard sequence. I was tasked the following parts to draw:

 

  Note that the costumes drawn in the storyboard are not yet what we are intending to use.

Song Editing in Logic Pro X

As a group we came to a conclusion that the song we want to use by Spooky Black is too long. As a group we decided where we wanted to cut the song in order to become slightly shorter and considerably reducing the amount of tie we would spend in our filming and editing stage. The song went from being over 5 minutes long to around 4 minutes and 5 seconds long. I basically cut a big chunk of the introduction which is just instrumental, to right about where the artist starts singing, and I shortened it by cutting part of the end out and adding a sample of an impact FX (sounds like a bass-drum with a lot of reverb) to indicate that the song ended, as well as a fade out.

Monday's Guest Speaker of the Music Video Industry

On Monday a guest speaker named Ollie Allgrove froom the multi-awarded "Passion Pictures" came into the our class to talk about his career in the media industry, not necessarily only the music video industry but a general overview of what it is like. He did however talk about the music video industry and a bit of what he has done in it.

He started his talk discussing how the music video industry has changed over the period of time. he said that only ten years ago music videos were a lot more exclusive and were only shown in TV, on music channels such as MTV and others. It was also a way for artists to express themselves even further apart from only the music. Basically it was a big thing, but nowadays, with the technological progression the internet made it possible to stream music videos taking away a lot of credit out of them, since people can watch it whenever they feel like it.

One difference from music videos today and about 7 to 8 years ago is how much more expensive they got. They budget for music videos back then used to range somewhere between 500 to 2000 dollars, whereas nowadays it has increased by at least ten times in order to create just an average music video.

Ollie Allgrove mentioned to us the different stages of making a music video. The stages include:

1. The Brief
2. The Treatment
3. The Shoot
4. The edit

He mentioned that those steps should be strictly followed in order to make life easier in the post production stage. The reason for this is because any changes made in post are considerably more expensive.

Timeline For Our Music Video So Far

My group and I created a detailed timeline of what happens throughout our current music video idea using word document. If it is too small to read click on the picture to make it bigger!