Final Anamatic Video

Here is the final anamatic video that was have produced. Hope that you like it we will be getting target audience feedback ready so that we can see what we need to improve before we start filming.

Plan For The Next 3 Months

 Today we have put together a calender of the next 3 months to organise and plan the dates in which we want to film, have photo shoots and have a group meetings
We have also planned when we will start advert, digipak and evaluation planning. The deadline dates have also been included to ensure we are organised and will meet every deadline.

Anamatic Deadline Approching!

Our deadline for anamatic is tomorrow. We are keeping up with the dealines and are going at a steady pace in order to be ready for tomorrow and go onto actually filming next week! Before we start filming we need to finish the anamatic to have a step by step guide and make filming more easy and more organised.

Music Video Analysis: Monster - Paramore

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoTEnaAI9Fo&list=RDaCyGvGEtOwc&index=11

This is a music video by Paramore, who are a rock band which is a similar genre we are using, use which is fast paced and has quick shots throughout the while video, our song is very much like this which means we will also need to use quick shots instead of long shots as the song is fast paced. The music video is 50:50 narrative and performance, this is also something that we will be doing within our music video. The video very much shows exactly when the guitar is playing and the drums and the singer and sticks to the beat of the song well, cutting to the next shot at the most conventional bit, which is something we will do as we have a guitarist, pianist, drummer and a singer, therefore when there is a drum beat we want to show the drums and when there is a piano bit we want to show the piano being played, as this shows us sticking to the conventions and is something that is expected from face paced music and videos. The narrative of the music video is quite strange it is hard for the audience to figure out, but they make there lyrics match what the video shows, for instance the first line of the song is (You were my conscience, so solid, now you're like water And we started drowning, not like we'd sink any further) and the video starts with the girl in water looking like she is about to drown. We want to do this as our first few lines include animals being trapped in a cage, so our idea is to put people in an actual cage, we want to make our narrative quite quirky and different which can offer alternative meanings for audience members to figure out. The ending of the song is like a cliffhanger as you don't know what happened next, we want to try to create something like this of our own for the ending of the music video, leaving the audience wondering what will happen, which adds an element of surprise to the music video and also leaves the audience with their own interpretations on what would have happened.

The use of mise-en-scene in this music video suits what the music video is all about, and the mise-en-scene is also demonstrated through slow pans at the start or in the slow bits of the song. This shows how these particular props are important for the music video narrative and should be appreciated by audiences. We want to portray this in our own music video, with the emphasis on certain props that we have used and will need to be remembered throughout the music video, we also think mise-en-scene is important for the music video, as it reflects the charatcer and is crucial for the story line, which is why we will make sure our props and costumes suit the genre and reflect the band and narrative well. 

Music Video Analysis: Fidelity - Regina Spektor

https://www.youtube.com/watc, t?v=wigqKfLWjvM

This music video - Fidelity - is by Regina Spektor who is the artist of the song that we are using for our own music video (You've Got Time).

This music video is more narrative based with very little performance in it, the only performance we see in it is the artist herself playing the piano in various parts of the video. For our music video the performance and narrative is going to be 50:50, we will also be including a wide range of instruments and singing performances within it instead of it being based on one instrument like this music video Fidelity. 
The mise en scene in this video is based on black and white colours, the different area within the home. which is the location, have black and white flooring, walls, and props, this also links with the colour of the piano which is also black and white. The arists clothing is also black and white, this includes her dress and shoes, even her nails are painted black to fit with this mise en scene. Our mise en scene will be different too this, there will be many different locations that will not include a house or home, and the clothin we are using are indie rock, bright colours to make people stand out. 
The meaning of the word fidelity is 'faithfulness to a person, cause, o r belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support'. The song for me represent a woman who does not want to fall in love and does not want to change her life, hense the black and white theme throughout that does not change until the end. By the end of the video clip colour comes out when she drops a heart necklace and a man appears and they have fun with colour dust, this shows that she has allowed herself to come out of her normality and fall in love. The colour in the whole video clip has a big representation and for our music video we have an apple that plays a part in representation a the meaning of our song is watching people pass you by and being stuck in one place, we have come up with the idea to make this person very jealous of the people that pass by her which makes her go crazy and does bad things that are sinful, the apple represents the sin that the girl is doing.
The camera work in this music video is very repetitive, the same shots are repeated in the same area of the same location and the same position is kept throughout until two minutes into the video.The takes are quite long as the song is quite slow but by the end of the song when she finds 'her man' and colour comes into the video the takes are short and fast. Our song is fast throughout most of it which means our shots need to be snappy and fast, 

Blog Diary: Week 2

This week we have been doing the finishing touches to the story broads which are now finished! It took us nearly a week to colour in and write out all 110 story boards that we have got. Today we have just finished cropping them out on Photoshop and starting the process of making an animatic. We have seen each other 3 times out side of school this week to ensure the quality of our story boards as these will be very useful when it come to filming the music video.

Target Audience Feedback Analysis

Through our use of Facebook we managed to get 30 people to answer our questionnaire. We have taken the time to analyse the results in the hope that this will help us in what to focus on certain aspects more specifically when it comes to the music video. 

Noticing that our main demographic is 17-18 year olds, most likely as this is the audience we attracted to answer the questionnaire through Facebook because of this when it comes to future audience feedback we will include people from this age demographic as they seem more interested in an alternative rock video, and would be most likely the be the audience who watch rock/indie genre videos. 

Most of the people who took the questionnaire are female, however this is most likely because of who we have on Facebook. However we have tried to to balance who is answering the questionnaire by targeting males, who stereo typically would be more interested in the alternative rock genre. However we do value the opinions of both male and females, as they both have different ideas of what they want to see in our bands genre, and therefore we can try and aim the video at both genders. 

Shown through this question our target audience wants to see a mixture of narrative and performance, which is a convention for many music videos. We are happy about this answer, as we do want to stick to conventions and include a mixture of both narrative and performance. 

Our main character does depend on the acting ability of them. However we were thinking a female main character would be great for our current storyline we are developing. Since the song is sung by a female and after annotating the lyrics which have a feminine theme to them, we feel a female lead would be more appropriate for the music video.

Since the target audience agree we will make sure we are looking for a female lead who will be available to let us film them.

The fact the people want more of a short storyline means that we will have to find a way to express our storyline quickly through a use of quick shots. This may make it more difficult for us to creative a short storyline, however is our target audience wants it to be relatively short we will make sure that it is still understandably for them in that time. 

Since we are doing an alternative rock song we need a video to suit this. We are happy that most of our target audience agree that a dark storyline would be better suited with the genre and most of the target audience agree to. Since many of them didn't like the idea of a relationship based storyline we will avoid this when creating the officially storyline. 

A lot of our target demographic they agreed that something to focus on was locations. We are going to be going location spotting soon and with this information will look in many spooky places in order to stick to the dark story line. However many of them thought a heavy focus on instruments would be needed as well in order to stick to the conventions of a rock video. When it comes to editing we will make sure that on key musical moments of the song their is focus on the instruments. 

Location has been established to be important when it comes to a alternative rock video. We asked our target audience where they think would be best for location and this shows that Forrest is a popular way to represent a rock video. Abandoned places was also a popular choice, with the most surprising being houses, in which we would make look dark and creep to stick to the genre. This has been helpful as when it comes to location spotting these will be the places we target to see if we can use them within the music video.

Overall the questionnaire has been helpful to us. We have a good idea at what our target audience is expecting from our alternative rock music video, including locations we should aim to include and how long the actual music video should be. We also have an idea on who our target wants to see in the lead role of the music video, which is a female, which means that we have to narrow our search to female actors who will be willing to star. We will be gathering audience feedback along the way to ensure that our music video is attractive and interesting enough for them to watch.

Storyboards

Today we finished our story boards and are currently editing them to create an animatic. Altogether we have done 112 shots for a 3 minute 10 second song, also with a 20 second introduction to make the video become more lengthy.

     The shots will be quick to reflect the pace of the song and the developing storyline. 

Our final overall idea is the main protagonist is stuck in a dark place in her life and is "chained against her happiness." Throughout the story the protagonist takes an evil persona where she kidnaps and chains people who are happy in there lives. This is shown through her destroying the lives of successful and in love people. 

In the song there is the sound of chains, we believe this is an important metaphor for the music video, as the chains represent her being unable to be happy. 

Link to Survey

We have just finished creating our online survey to get the views of our target audience and what they will find appealing and key features we should include in order to create a successful indie rock music video. We will share this link on various social media websites because this is a good way to contact our potential audience.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HR39VWB

Florence + the Machine: Advert Analysis

We have chosen to analyse a Florence and the Machine advert as they are in the same genre as Utopia. This advert appealed to us as the use of dark colours and a deep red which make it very mysterious and makes the audience think that the story lines of the songs will be dark and deep to. There is an element of light pink flowers subtly in the background, showing that not all story lines will be dark and sinister; or featuring in the dark story lines will be some happiness. The use of white on Florence’s dress shows that she herself is pure, but portrays that others are not.  But the usage of her black nail varnish shows that she isn't all innocent.

The title ‘LUNGS’ is very striking and uses San Serriff font, which makes it look quite old fashioned, representing the bands style. Also just having one word as the title make it seem more striking and draws you onto the title after the image. The lighter font of the ‘Florence + the Machine’ gives the advert a softer feel, letting the audience know the whole album isn't as hard core/eerie. The use of a simple date and simple information on what is included if you buy the album is affected as not giving the audience to much to read and letting them concentrate on the image and title, makes the audience feel like they’re enjoying the advert and not reading an article. From this advert we will be using the deep red and dark colours to represent our story line of sinister and twisted things. Also we are having our singer in a long white dress to show that she is pure, making her seem more of a story teller, but also with a hint of darkness to her will be incorporated into the outfit, keeping in with the dark theme. We will also use the striking one word name with a bold font so the audience eyes will be drawn to that after the image, remembering the band’s name by making it stand out. We will include a softer font into our advert to give it a lighter feel, like the Florence + the Machine advert; as we don’t want the whole advert to just give off a darkness feel. The use of using simple information is affective and we will be using that. Making the audience think they are reading less by only using single words or short sentences and making the advert image dominated, this will keep the audience interested and not make them feel looking at the poster is a chore. 

Utopia's Online Survey

Today we are creating online surveys using a website called survey monkey. We have done an online survey because it's easy access and can be done in minutes with less than 10 questions for our target audience to answer.

Music Video Analysis: Paramore - crushcrushcrush

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei8hPkyJ0bU
Paramore has a a similar genre to our song - with their genre being rock.
However the music video is great for the analysis of performance shots, and the song is also fast paced, with a slow paced section and an instrumental which is a similar layout to our song. The overall layout of this song is mainly performance, with the narrative elements in the song mainly including the band.

Performance: In terms of performance there is the main singer at the front, drummer at the back and two guitarists to the side positioned slightly behind the main singer. The performance factor of the video is the main aspect and story line.
Shots: There is many close ups of the main artist (Haley Williams) used singing into the microphone with an angry facial expression which reflects the tone of the song. Haley Williams also has mid shots/long shots in which you see the artist dancing around to the music, looking like she is involved in the song which can be attracted to a rock audience. There is many close up side shots of Haley Williams as well as she sings into the microphone, this could be to represent the main artist as the main person in the band and the face of the band. This is also to show Haley Williams as she sings key moments of the song.
       The shots of the band are quick and last no more than a second. For the other band members there is low angles used to show that the band is in a position of power in the song and over all, from the low angles the camera moves back to show the instrument being played. This could be to fully demonstrate the bands talent with there musical instruments and also reflect the hardcore rock side of the band as we zoom out to see them moving around to the song.
       For the drummer we see many wide shots used so you can see the full drum kit and the drummer playing it vigorously in the song. We also see a zoom out of the wide shot to show the location of where the band is which seems to be a desert.
There is pan left to show the whole band on the slower music moments. However when the song reaches its climax where all the band are rocking out on the instruments, the camera starts to shake in order to represent that the bands music making even the fictional world they are in have an earthquake.

Setting: The setting for the band is in the desert, this could be to represent the song which could represent how the main protagonist in the song is feeling deserted and alone - The desert reflects this. The desert could also reflect the band style - possibly showing it to be unique.

Lighting: The lighting comes from the sun in the background - which also could reflect the elements theme - The back ground of using the sun creates great band shots. There is also shots of the band when the sun is setting which gives a dark cast over the band, reflecting the dark nature of the rock song.

Narrative: There is elements of wind used in the performance and the narrative which links together, the wind and the earthquake at the end of the music video could be to represent the song about battling against the elements. There is also shots used of a target looking onto the band to show how in the song the main protagonist is feeling targeted after a possible break up. The video shows people wanting the band behind a barricade, showing how the person in the song may feel at war.

Mise-en-scene: The band is in mainly black, which the main colour placement being the leads singers bright ginger hair. The other band members are wearing ties and relative smart clothes, however they have there shirts tucked out and leather jackets on. The musical instruments are slightly colours with blue. The lead singer is in black jeans and a ripped grey top sticking to the dark theme of clothing possible representing the bands own style. Haley Williams, the main female singer as shows her own personal style to by having heavy eye liner and eye shadow on, sticking to a more rock/punk theme as a band member. Behind the main guitar there is a massive amp, which could be a convention of a rock band as the amp represent the loudness of the music.

This music video:

From this music video we want to incorporate into our own by having a similar band layout, however we will include a pianist into ours as well. We also want to have similar short take shots of each band member and the band as a whole. As a group we also enjoyed the shots of the main singer, which included close ups of her lips singing in to the microphone, mid shots of her dancing to the song and low angled long shots of the singer when a slow instrumental of the song came on. 
      We also want to take away the different angled and vairety of shots of the band, making sure they are quick and firey to reflect our own music song choice of indie rock. We will also be incorporating the close up of instruments. To reflect our dark story we are going to have a dark backgroud and for the guitarist, drummer and pianist to be wearing black and the lead singer to stand out in bright colours, this is reflecting what Paramore have done with Haley Williams as her brightly coloured hair makes her obvious as the lead singer. If possible we would like to see if we can have a large amp behind the lead guitarist as this would suit the rock element in our song choice and reflect the style of the band we are going for.
      What we will not be taking away from this music video is the lack of narrative attached to it. From investigating our target audience we have found that our target group of teenagers would prefer a 50/50 narrative to preformance which this video does not offer. 

Music Video Analysis: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Sacrilege

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRI3Ew4BvA

Music Video Story line:
We chose to analysis this video as it is shot in reverse, something we are considering doing for our down video. The over all story being in backwards shows how the main female protagonist looking like the victim, being tormented by a group of men. As the video continues to move back through the story we see what looks like a witch hunt for the girl, however it is soon revealed that the true culprit is the woman protagonist, as she is shown to be sleeping with all of the men that have tracked her down. To produce the reverse video, the director has done it in a non linear format, meaning the audience seems the same bit of footage but from a slightly different perspective. In this music video we all enjoyed how the story line was not as it seemed and had dark aesthetics the whole way through. We want to reflect this into our own video by having sinister themes throughout to reflect our chosen song. We also like the ideas as everything is not as it seems in the music video, how the main female protagonist looks like the victim, however through the course of the video is shown to be cause of the mania.  

Band style:
The video does not show any band performance within it which is unusual for a music video. However the reverse video does reflect a more indie band style, which is what the Yeah Yeah Yeahs represent. The style of the video is perfect when it comes to representing the song lyrics 'Sacrilege' as the main female protagonist would be considered sacrilege.
        The band style is also shown through the Mise-en-scene of the music video, as it is set in a small communal town/village and includes characters commonly found in small communities such as a priest and sheriff. In our video we are trying to use locations that have more of an indie stereotype to them including forests, urban locations and more secluded spots, all shown in this music video. 

Lighting:
Lighting used is Sacrilege is mainly dark and red. The red is originally seen by a police car light and the reflection of the fire. The red light representing the blood shed that has been spread on that night. As the video moves backwards and the female protagonist is running through the woods, the lighting of the scene becomes lighter. However the scenes of the masked man are still dark, with red reflecting of the characters faces showing a which hunt.The overall lighting on the music video is dark, with police sirens adding a darker side to the shots. From this video we enjoy the dark lighting that reflects characters moods in the music video, this is something that will be well reflected in our music video which has a similar sinister theme, from this in some of the more sinister shots we will be considering colour lighting, such as dark colours including: Black, Brown, Blue, Red and light colours such as Yellow. 

Camera Work:
Within the music video there is many close up shots, this to represent the story line that will be used. There is also tracking shots used to see the girl when she runs away from her captures. We also like the flowing movement of the shots and the use of high angles and low angles to represent the vulnerability of power of some of the characters.
From this we have taken many shots of when the main female protagonist is running through the streets, as we plan on using shots like this. The camera moves with the protagonist something we aim to replicate, we also want to have different angles of the protagonist running to give it a more professional look. We also will be using the close up idea, by having close ups of some of the sub story line actors in order to add more mystery to the sinister story line. 

Blog Diary: Week 1

This week we have decided our final narrative, as we struggled all week to think of a clear narrative. Since we have now decided the narrative we can now start the story boarding process. We are aiming for around 80 story boards as our video needs to contain quick shots to stick with the beat of the song. We want to add detailed annotation to the storyboard, which means we just need to follow the anamatic in order to achieve the video we want.

We also as a group went out for a meal to discuss the story line and get to know each other more and learn our roles for the music video process.

Ideas for Music Video

We have had many ideas for the music video. We have decided that we are going to play on the concept of time as we have selected as our final song You've Got Time by Regina Spektor. Here are some ideas we had for the music video:

1.) We have the main protagonist going through a door that leads her to different locations. It is revealed that people are following her and these are the demons of her past. It is shown where the main protagonist has hurt these people by a Red Cross in the affecting areas for instance: a red cross on the heart to show a broken heart. 

2.) We have the main protagonist walking through the door. When going through this door a young girl appears. The door takes the protagonist to different stages of her life where she had an option to change a significant milestone in her life. In the end due to the making changes in her life the protagonist now has a successful

3.) We also had an idea to do a reverse video in the style of Yeah Yeah Yeahs Sacrilige. In the reverse we set the scene of the main protagonist being an innocent victim trapped in a cage. It is soon revealed as the video rewinds the protagonist is not in fact the victim but is evil in the way she treats people. 

4.) In this idea the protagonist is depressed and questionably psychopathic. A countdown begins at the start of the video. We see a cork board full of faces. The main protagonist wants to destroy people's happiness by stealing them from it. We find people in a cage where the protagonist has kept them and we see her steal them from there lives. The concept of time is shown through the countdown in which the audience do not no what is going to happen when the countdown finishes. 

Apples

We are using apples in our video that will occur in many scenes. We are using the apple as a metaphor for sins. Our inspiration from Adam and Eve, how they were forbidden by God to eat the apple and by doings so they sined. Our video is about a girl who is in a dark place and sees other people happy, so she wants to take their happiness away! Therefore the apples will be discreetly occurring through the video.

Metaphor's

Metaphors that will be in the music video:

Chains:

In some parts of the music video the main protagonist will be wearing chains, this is to represent the protagonist as helpless and chained to other peoples happiness, which is why she wants to take it away from them in the hope it will give her happiness.
The chains sound effect is used i throughout the song. which is why we thought it should be relatable to the music video .


Apples:

Apples are related to sin from the stories of Adam and Eve where they eat an apple in the garden of Eden. Throughout the music video we will be using apples to represent the sin of the main protagonist and the other actors in order to represent sin in there lives.

Cage:

The cage is a sinister and dark part of the music video and viewers never have a full understanding about the cages purpose until the end of the music video. The cage represents people being able to take someones happiness quickly and how things can change in time. The cage also represents the meaning of the song by how being in the cage people are stuck in one moment of time and have to watch everything else pass them by.

Band Name

We have finally decided for a band name. The first name we thought of was 'Mia and The Moment' but we realised it sounded more like a pop band. We realised we needed something quirky and came up with 'Utopia'.
The definition of Utopia:


an imagined place or state of things in which everything 

is perfect.

Lyrics Annotation

We have looked through the lyrics and annotated what we think they mean, this will help when doing our storyboard and creating a narrotive for our music video, we have also listened to the song and found out which instruments are used throughout the music video 

You've Got Time: Song Meaning

Our song is about the frustration of being stuck in one place in life and watching everyone else pass you by. People changing overtime and moving on without you. So we have chosen our band name as Utopia which means a place where everything is perfect eg garden of Eden, paradise and heaven. This is where our character wants to escape.

Band Name Ideas

Here are a list of band names that we have considered. Our influences for band names so far has came from indie bands such as:

MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS

FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE

SELENA GOMEZ AND THE SCENE

ELIZA AND THE BEAR

We also took influence from one word band names such as: 

COLDPLAY

BEYONCE

PARAMORE

AEROSMITH

You've Got Time - Regina Spektor

This is the song we have all finally decided on, we have chose this song because we have thought of many different ideas about the video for the song.

 The animals, the animals
 Trapped, trapped, trapped
 'till the cage is full
 The cage is full
 Stay awake
 In the dark,
 count mistakes
 The light was off
 but now it's on
 Searching the ground for a bitter song
 The sun is out,
 the day is new
 And everyone is waiting,
waiting on you
 And you've got time
 And you've got time
 Think of all the roads
 Think of all their crossings
 Taking steps is easy
 Standing still is hard
 Remember all their faces
 Remember all their voices
 Everything is different
 The second time around
 The animals, the animals
 Trapped, trapped, trapped
 'till the cage is full
The cage is full Stay awake
 In the dark,
count mistakes
 The light was off but now
 it's on Searching the ground for a bitter song
 The sun is out, the day is new
 And everyone is waiting,
 waiting on you
 And you've got time
 And you've got time
 And you've got time

Music Video Initial Ideas

Here are some of the many ideas we have been having since the start of our project! Below are also some excited pictures of our group discussion

Powerpoint of ideas

Welcome To Our Blog!

Hello! Welcome to our media music video blog. On this we will be taking you through the progression of our media music video! In our group we have Abby Davidson, Iona Pollock, Sophie Atkin and Emily Wright!
This is us...