Performance, Rehearsals Evidence

Shoot Schedules and Shoot Boards

We made shoot schedules for each one of our shoots to help us organise everything before the day of the shoot. The schedules enabled us to look at the time and date that we needed everyone to get to the studio for. The sections that are highlighted in blue represent the times that we aren't actually filming, and are instead being used by setting up and preparing. This allows us to see when the kit and equipment will be needed in the studio, and what times we will need to get access to the kit. This really helps when looking at this alongside our kit list as we can see what parts of kit we will need and at what times we will need them. 

They were really useful for us because not only did they allow us to see what times people were expected at the studio but also how long each shot would take and who/what props were needed for each individual shot. Having the times included on the schedule was really important as it kept the shoots much more organised and made it easier for us to manage our time properly so we were not to run out of time without completing all of the shots.

These were the shoot schedules we used for our first shoot.

Call Sheets

We made call sheets for our different shoots to help us organise the cast and crew for that day. It lets everyone know what times to be on set, where we will be shooting, and what props/equipment will be needed for that shoot.

                                               

Studio Schedules

We had to share our studio space with 4 other groups and so we had to stick to a strict studio schedule that allowed us to know which days and which times the studio would be available to us specifically. This meant that were able to figure out which days we would use to shoot which scenes. We were able to talk to our cast members in advance to ensure that they were free on the days that we needed them.

Using these timetables along with our shoot boards we were able to make more specific shoot schedules that gave us more detail on how long each shot would take, who we would need in each shot, and when we would be shooting them. 

Final Kit List

Lighting and Set Design

Performance Scene

This is a video that we took during one of our group meetings in the studio; we used our time in the studio to test out lighting, this video shows the lighting that we were testing for our performance scenes. The choice of colours for our lighting was inspired by our recurring theme of using a pink and blue colour scheme that we used throughout our branding. We wanted Georgie in the centre to be under blue light, and the two DJs either side of her to be under blue light. We had quite a lot of trouble trying to balance the colours correctly so that one did not drown out the other. It took a lot of time to perfect the lighting but I think we managed to get it right in the end, to the point where we all happy with how it looked, The final set up is shown at 0.45.

The final lighting set up for our performance scenes.

We wanted to make our performance a bit more interesting to look at so we thought about different props that we could use to make the set more enticing to the viewer. We decided that our set design should match our Alice in Wonderland theme of the video so we searched online at different Alice in Wonderland themed party pictures, as well as thinking about the main themes in the book and the predominant imagery in the film.

We decided that we really liked the playing card imagery that runs throughout Alice in Wonderland, and that it would work really well with our set design. We cut out large playing cards and made templates of the numbers and of the different suits, cut them out of different coloured paper and stuck them onto the large cards. We hung several cards up from long invisible string to hang in the back of the scene, we also used cards to put on the front of the DJ desks to make them look much nicer. I'm really pleased with how the set looked for this scene.

Setting up the cards for the performance scene.

Balloon Scene

Keeping with the blue and pink colour scheme we decided that we wanted the backdrop to be lit with blue lights, while the floor of the studio and the actors would be lit with white lights. Using the white lights instead of coloured lights made the scene a lot brighter and looked nicer on camera. This gave the scene a more colourful and fun feel, more so than the performance scene which was darker and more serious. Here is a photo of the scene from the lighting desk during one of our shoots. You can really see how the pink/blue colour scheme worked well for this scene.

For this scene we took inspiration from the mushroom forest in Alice in Wonderland and so we decided to paint some large red and white mushrooms that we could hang in the background, using the same method of hanging them up that we used for the playing cards.

Alice In Wonderland mushroom forest

White Scenes

The first set up of the music video is when Georgie first enters the studio and sees the cupcake on the table. In this scene we will also include shots of Alice in Wonderland over the close up footage of Georgie. This is why we wanted to use white light and a white background to make the Alice in Wonderland footage seem really clear. We decided to use a white spotlight on the cupcake to make it really bright. Hopefully this will make the scene completely white and bright to make the room look really big.

Costume, Hair, and Make-Up

Georgie

Georgie

Georgie will be wearing a different outfit for each set up in the video; for the first set up - all of the white scenes - this is the style of outfit that we want Georgie to be wearing. The white scenes come at the beginning of the video while Georgie is in the character of Alice - a normal girl who comes across a strange white room. This is why we wanted a pretty basic and simple outfit for Georgie to wear during this scene, we decided some plain, slouchy jeans and a casual jumper with some bright trainers to make the outfit pop a little bit more.

Grey sweater, blue mum jeans, red trainers

We took inspiration for this outfit from the style of Kiesza in her video for her single Hideaway.We liked the simplicity of the style, and tried to replicate this idea so that we made our artist relatable to many of our target female audience, using clothes from American Apparel, Topshop, and Nike.
     

A still from Kiesza's video for Hideaway

We wanted Georgie's hair and make up to be quite simple as well; we thought that her make up should resemble an 'everyday/school' sort of look, to make it look like it's just a normal day for her character. To achieve this we decided that basic foundation, eyeliner, mascara, and nude tone lipsticks would look best, along with Georgie's hair being worn down, in its wavy natural state.

Glittery black jumpsuit and black sandal-like heels

For the performance scenes we wanted Georgie to be wearing something more special, and more glamorous to give her that 'popstar' factor. We wanted to keep her sort of tomboy look at the same time so we decided that a jumpsuit would be the best choice as it works for both her tomboy side, and her glamorous side, creating the perfect balance. We also thought that Georgie should be wearing heels in the performance scenes, but we thought sandals/wedged heels would work better than some stilettos, giving her a more comfortable look.

Plain white t shirt, black leggings, black trainers/

For the paint fight scene we wanted all of our actors to be wearing plain white t shirts so that the coloured powder paint would show up really well. We thought that it would be best for Georgie to wear black leggings as they would most likely be the easiest to wash the paint out of afterwards. This was more of a practical decision as it would work for all of the actors to be wearing white tops and dark leggings/trousers. We wanted Georgie to be wearing basic make up in this scene, it was unnecessary for us to do much with her hair and make up as after the first shot she would be covered in paint anyway.

Casting

Cast List

Artist:

Lead female vocalist: Georgie Thoupos
- we cast Georgie as our lead female vocalist as she has the biggest part in the video and Georgie has worked on a music video in the leading role before. She is comfortable performing in front of the camera, and we feel that her look matches that of our artist.

We wanted to do a test shoot with Georgie before we did any real shoots; the purpose of this was to how Georgie would perform in front of a camera taking on the role of our lead singer whilst lipsynching to our song. We wanted to make Georgie feel comfortable singing in front of the camera before the real shoot, to give her some practice and some time to get used to performing the song so she would be able to perform her best on the day of the real shoot.

This video shows one of the performance rehearsals we did with Georgie; overall it went well but it did highlight some of the points that we needed to work on as a group. We could see that Georgie was going to perform well, and take on the role just as we had hoped but she did need some more rehearsal time to learn the lyrics. We also learned that as a group we had to be more specific and clear with the directions that we were giving Georgie to make her performance as good as possible.

Looking back on this, I think that it was definitely a good idea to do performance rehearsals and perhaps we should have done more but it was difficult to fit in rehearsals with all of the work that the whole group were already doing. The main thing I think that we all took from this rehearsal was that we were all equally confident in Georgie and her ability to perform on the day. This was really important as her role as the main singer and one third of our artist is crucial to our video.

DJ 1: Eugene Leach
- Eugene fits the profile of our male DJs, matching the look that we were aiming for; he's also confident and has had past experience working in media productions

DJ 2: Gavin Fraser
- Gavin has also had past experience working in media productions and worked with all of us on our music video shoot last year; he is also comfortable performing in front of the camera

Extras:

Mahalia John
Kayvon Nabijou
Ellen Lloyd
Maisie Macgregor
Mari Leach
Ellie Brackpool
Molly Sullivan
Tara Elcock
Josh Brooks
Jacob Lipman

Animatic

KEY:

Pink = Performance

Blue = Balloons

Green = Forest

White = Seward Studio

Black = Neon Performance

Our animatic is useful to us because it displays not only the different set-ups and shots that we want to include in our music video, but also the time that each shot will appear for in the video. Our animatic is similar to a mood board, shoot board, and shot list all combined together in an animated form that plays in time to the song. Creating the animatic helped us to envision which shots would look nice together and what ones would possibly contradict each other, clash, or be too repetitive. For example, during the making of our animatic realised that we had several close up shots of Georgie from the same angle, all one after the other.

As our video is very much based on the shots that we get on the day, we couldn't be very specific with our shot details. 

Album Cover Flatplan

We drew up some flatplans for our album artwork, including the front cover, the back cover, and the inside covers. We also added colours to them based on the colour scheme that we had agreed on during one of our group meetings. We would like to use pinks, purples and blues as they are very complimentary of each other; however, we don't want it to look too feminine as we have two male DJs which is why we want blue to be one of our key colours. 

We have two different ideas for our front cover and we really like both of them. The common factors between the two of them are:

• the positioning of the artist's name - in the centre of the front image
• having our artist, the female vocalist and both DJs in a photo together on the front in the centre

Our differences so far are:

• the font and the size of the font, we have the option of tall and thin font with capital letters, or lower case, small font. - we will most likely make this decision when we make our final decision on the name of our artists as an artists with a shorter name will look better with the font in the first option, and a longer artist name will suit the second option more

On the back cover we want a picture of the artist with some friends, after the powder paint fight scene in the forest. The colour scheme will be less obvious in this shot as we won't have the background as colours; instead, the background will be the forest. We hope to have some pink, blue, and purple powder paint on the floor and on the backs of the people so we can still see these colours appearing, to keep in scheme with the front and inside covers.

On our inside cover we want a profile portrait of Georgie blowing some powder paint in front of her, so it will be blown across the right inside cover. Perhaps something similar to these photos: 

We took lots of inspiration from MGMT's cover for their album Oracular Spectacular. We took inspiration from them as they are an artist who have quite dance-like music with two males; however, they are also quite unique in their styling.

Whilst looking at some pictures of Ellie Goulding online we came across the album art for her album Halcyon Days. She also uses this pink and purple gradient on her art and we think that it works really well. Ellie Goulding is an artist that we have looked at for inspiration in many different aspects when creating our artist, especially for our main singer Georgie.

I really like these to photos as album covers however I think it may not work for our own album cover as it is very feminine; the use of mainly pinks and purples is perhaps too strong for the look that we want to go for.

Prop List

Performance Scene:

Giant Playing Cards: 

Playing cards are used as repeated imagery in Alice in Wonderland. Our plan was to use this familiar imagery in our music video to create a similarity between our video and the story of Alice in Wonderland where one of the main characters is the Queen of Hearts. By making the cards quite large in size, we are also playing on the part of the story where Alice shrinks after falling down the rabbit hole, and so all of her surroundings become extra large. We hope that the cards we make will be visually attractive and will make the performance scene more interesting to watch.

DJ Booths

We need to make some DJ booths and DJ decks so we had the idea to use tables mounted with sound boards, keyboards, and electronic products like Apple macbooks that DJs often use. Hopefully this will create the illusion of a DJ booth.

Disclosure using their DJ decks at a BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge session

Microphone

We need to source a microphone and a microphone stand for our singer Georgie, hopefully we will be able to find one of these at school that has been in previous productions.

Balloon Scene:

Balloons for the floor

For the balloon scene we plan to cover the floor of the studio in balloons that match our colour scheme - light blue, light pink, and purple/dark pink. For this we needed to buy several hundred balloons so we went online to find the cheapest deal we could find. We also found a website that sold some slightly more special/different balloons, where have placed an order for two 2 foot balloons, and a pack of marble-effect balloons which we hope will look really nice on camera.

The floor covered in balloons is how we want our scene to look, similar to the balloons in this picture.

 Balloons for the mushroom

We wanted to make a giant mushroom prop to use in the video that would tie-in with our Alice in Wonderland theme. We came across the idea to make a mushroom out of red and white balloons like in the picture below which we found when looking at Alice in Wonderland theme party sites.

Giant toad stool / mushroom made out of balloons.

We decided to do a trial with the mushroom balloon, a couple of weeks before the shoot date to assess how we would make it, and how long it would take. We bought some multi packs of balloons that were relatively cheap for the practice trial, as to not waste money or good quality balloons.

Mari and I attempting to make the structure of the mushroom.

Pinata

As part of the balloons scene we really wanted the fun aspect to come across so we've bought a pinata that our artist, Georgie, Gavin, and Eugene are going to play with, without the extras in the scene. We also need to buy small things to put inside of the pinata that will look good when we film them hitting it in slow motion.

We are looking to buy a colourful, classic-themed pinata, similar to this one,

• Powder paint

Example of some of the powder paint that we wanted to buy for the shoot.

For our shoot we needed powder paint which is something we would have to buy. We wanted lots of different colours, but we also wanted lots of pinks and blues to match our colour scheme. We looked on many different websites to source our powder paint and compared prices on all of them to try and get the best deal as to minimise our spending costs as much as we could. We also considered making powder paint ourselves and watched several demonstrations on YouTube of how to do it but we worked out that it would cost just as much to do this, and would take up a lot more of our time.

One of the websites that we found selling powder paint, in bulk.

Pre-Production Group Meeting 16/10/14



In a group meeting that we had today, we decided that we wanted to test out our idea to have an overlay of two layers of footage; the first being our female vocalist in the narrative, and the second being a clip from Walt Disney's production of Alice In Wonderland in 1951.

We used Maisie as our female vocalist for the purpose of this test shot. We wanted Maisie to act as if she was trying to reach out to the objects and characters that were in the Alice in Wonderland footage. The purpose of this test wasn't to see Maisie's acting or to see if it worked in time/in place with the action on the AIW footage, but it was more to see if the overlay of the two images would work together.

From this test we concluded that this form of editing would work really well and looked effective, so we can definitely use this technique in our music video. Now we need to find a suitable clip from the film that would match a section of our video, and work out the choreography for our female vocalist, so she knows where to look/reach out to when we shoot it. 

Inspiration and Ideas for promo shots and cover art

Colour Scheme Ideas:

We have decided to keep a recurring colour scheme throughout our artist's brand identity. We wanted to stick to 3 key colours - blue, purple, and pink, as we think that they work nicely together and do not clash with each other. 

Promo Shot Composition Ideas:

We really liked the way they have over-layed images on top of each other to create a long-exposure effect of the artist. This would link really well into our theme and title of "my head is a jungle". This idea would work well for our female vocalist, and we could do a similar type of promo shot for the two male DJs.

We are hoping to take stills during our balloon set up, to show continuity between our music video and the artist's website so there is familiarity for the audience.