Casting Of Our Artist

After brainstorming ideas we decided our artist should have the following aspects: fun, seductive, cheeky and be able be able to draw in the audience and lock them into the music.

Therefore we decided to cast Chelsea Hull as our main Artist. This is because shas typical generic conventions of a pop artist in that shes young but not too young, can easily engage with the camera and audience due to her background in drama and generally has a warm personality, perfectly suited for the role. Alongside Chelsea Hull we have a few others who play the role of her friends who try to cheer her up and party with her. It looks professional to have a big cast and we want to get that image across.

Genre

From the reflection of the song we got a feel for the genre of our music video. As its a very upbeat and happy song, the genre that best fits is pop. Like other pop songs we have researched into they are all portrayed in similar ways. Theres always a very glamorous artist living a glamorous life usually located in a variety on places with different shots to reflect their busy lives. Norwegian singer Tone Damli's music also has elements of electronica including a wide range of contemporary electronic music designed for alot of uses, such as listening, some forms of dancing, and background music. It works effectively with the music video were trying to create that includes dance routines from inspirational artists such as Pixie Lott and Cheryl Cole. With the music and dancing combied we aim to create the illusion that the audience is locked into the music and the video will flow smoothly to create a realistic atmosphere. We really need to consider the genre when we're filming to make sure that we our music video can match the mood and tone of the song, from the research we did we can now expand our ideas and produce a well conducted music video.

Preliminary task

For our Preliminary task we had to create a slow and fast sequence to two separate tracks. ( a slow track and a fast track) by using the same images, and camera shots but just editing the shots in different and contrasting ways.

We kept the camera rolling but had our characters static, we moved the camera in various way;

swaying the camera

spinning whilst holding a hand held camera

track from side to side

constantly keeping the camera static

We focused on moving the camera in new/unique ways. We experiment with exciting and new movements. Some which we later one watched back in the editing suit realised were not as effective as we initially thought.

In the editing suit we added special effects such as changing the colour settings, and adding lighting strikes to the character props.

If we could re do the preliminary task we would have taken more still shots in order to create a vast variety of different locations positions and characters in order to make our short clips more engaging.

Below are our fast and slow sequence.

Three Words - Cheryl Cole - Nicola Giles

Cheryl Cole featuring Will.i.am- Three Words

We also decided to look at Cheryl Cole's music video 'Three Words' as we originally thought the way the dancers were positioned within the music video was very inspirational as this links with the way we want to present our artist as being unique and mysterious, therefore we felt that our dancers should also be represented in this way.

To add to this the choreography in the video is also very mysterious which is similar to the way we would like our choreography to be so our star image motif is reinforced. The theme of mystery and uniqueness is carried out throughout the video by incorporating it within the choreography, the mise-en-scene and the costumes.

We would like our music video to also include these themes as this is how we would like to represent our artist and appeal to our target listeners. To add to this we liked the way the screen was split to show two different narratives and would like to also include an aspect similar to this as, again, it adds more levels to the song meaning the audience will be more intrigued when watching our music video.

Gravity - Pixie Lott

Today we researched various artist in order to discover what artist would we like to base our singer on. We decided Pixie Lott, an English recording artist, would be a fantastic inspiring artist to study due to her blonde flirtatious innocent yet sexy attitude and sense of style. Also due to Pixie Lott being a very young artist ( 18 years old ) she is easy to relate to. We would like our chosen singer in Butterflies to have this sense of independence and flirtatious attitude just like Pixie Lott does.

Through looking at Pixie Lott's music videos and songs we selected certain videos which inspire and motivate us. Such as "Gravity" Which was released in March 2010 has key aspects which we would like to try to portray in our music video. Such as the attractive backing dancers mirroring and copying the main artists dance motifs. We decided since the lyrics of Butterflies are about the music always being there to support and free people we need a scene of people and the artist dancing to the music to highlight the fact that it frees people calms and supports people. Below is a Screen Grab of Pixie Lott and her two backing dancers. You notice that the backing dancers costumes are not as revealing or flattering as Pixie Lotts' costume. This has been done in order to make her stand out from the other dancers and to look more attractive and sexier than them, which therefore makes her look more like a "star" when compared to ordinary people.


By watching the "Gravity" we noticed a number of shots which was of Pixie Lott singing and flirting with the camera whilst she was lying on her back on a mirrored floor the constant eye contact with the camera created a sense of voyeurism. we have decided we would attempt to achieve a similar effect like this in our music video. Here is a screen Grab of the Shot which will try to recreate, yet make our own below.


Furthermore there is also a number of shots where Pixie is dressed in a red leotard with red material flowing off around her in a black background. These shots suggested the artists are being very innocent and delicate as well as showing she has a number of talents, ( Balletic dancing). The idea of soft light flowing material showing soft edges and with the artist in the middle of all of this gave us an idea to have our artist dancing doing leaps pirates and jumps whilst wearing flowing material and whilst holding long coloured ribbons. Perhaps we could have dancers twirling around our artist with the ribbons in circular motions making our artist the focus point in the shot...? Below is a photo from the music video where the red material is being used.

Group Disscussion

Today we got round to discussing various locations and ideas and came to the conclusion that for a music video to look good we felt we would need at least 5/6 different locations. Our plans are as followed:



We can use the drama room, have a table in the dark with an ipod and coffee, like a sihloutte all in black. Then suddenly the lights come on and the dancers appear behind in shadows while our main character is singing. We can borrow strobe lights and coloured lights which we can easily get hold of from the school and media department. Our next idea for a location will be a yellow storage box. We have researched well into it and if we all put in money we will be able to hire it out for the afternoon. Within the storage box we aim to have our actress lying on her back looking into the camera at a bird eye view and flirting and looking seductive into the camera. And another location that came to mind would be a hotel. Using the staircase of a hotel to create an effective image. From the research we did we were really inspired by Pixie Lott and her image and the way she presents herself in her videos.



Audience Questionnaire- Nicola Giles


Before carrying out the majority of our research we decided to carry out an audience questionnaire to enable us to see what is currently popular amongst our target audience and what they like to see in a music video. We carried out the questionnaire on 20 different people so we could average out the answers and draw conclusions from the questions which helped us create a basis for ideas for our own music video.


The questionnaire we carried out is as follows:

From this questionnaire we were able to analyse our audiences preferences in a music video and genre thoroughly which helped initiate our ideas for our music video. We found that the majority of people that chose pop as their preffered genre

Brainstorming

Today we got together to listen to our music track (butterflies - tone damli) as a group we brainstormed different ideas and narratives which could acompany the track. Originally we thought up of a fun and girly narrative which had a main theme of pop, dance perhaps a love interest and many other ideas we could expand on. We want to put our artist into a postive happy light where viewers would look up and aim to be like her.

We think it will be a great idea to have loads of close up, mid close up shots of our artist as the song is very simple straightfoward with an edgy twist. We want to build the idea that shes having fun and living life like a young adult. We aim to film in a bedroom first perhaps she could be doing her makeup getting dressed with friends, with the right edits and cuts we can make it look really effective.

We are yet to decide on who will be in our music video but were confident we can find someone with the right abilities we're looking for who would fit the part.

Here is the song we chose: