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.