Test Footage [filming]

Above I uploaded a Test Footage that has been taken during filming one of our scenes. The aim of this was to see and rate how our main artists looks on the camera and if there will be any problems with the overall look. During the filming, we also managed to get the rest members of the band and record part of one of the scene and see if they actually work well together on the screen. The result was very positive, so after we begun to film   the rest of the music video. 

Animatic of the Music Video

Response to the idea

 After choosing the artist and planning the whole music video, I was really happy with the idea that we had. One of the main reasons was that the artist that we have chosen is non-mainstream and he does not have his own music video for the chosen song. So this made me think that we have a lot of space for creativity and we don't have to follow anything or be influenced by any of the things that we see in the Official Video. I was really happy with the way our story board looks and the way we are trying to tell the story. I think our music video will be different from the rest as it will be not only showing the performance of the artist, but also tell the story within. You can see our story board post here: Click here!. 

After couple of days we were discussing an issue of the narrative being too complicated, so what we have done is to go through the story board that we already have again and do any modifications which will help the audience to understand our message and intentions. Instead of the main artist singing all the time, we are going to have some kids singing which will represent the idea of running away from adulthood and going back in time. All the member of my group are also happy with the idea and we think it will look great as there will be a lot of lighting involved which also took us a lot of time to think it through so it looks like it should and creates the effect needed.

Reasons for Choice of Artist

We had many options when it came to the choice of artist. We did not want to work on a video of any artist who is already known worldwide and is on music channels (eg. MTV Music) all the time. So we decided to choose unknown artist, still sticking to our main idea of perfect artist. The are many reason why we chose to work on Jamie T's music video and him to be our main artist.

Jamie T - Sticks and Stones Official Music Video

• First reason for choosing him was that the artist is very local and he lives and records his music in Wimbledon which is in South West London, about 30 minutes travel from our school. This made it easier for us to relate to his music. Also people from our class and those who we are going present our music video to may already know him, not from YouTube videos but from the "word of mouth". 
• Another reason is that the music that he represents is easy to catch people's ear. His music is a mixture of different music styles which made us think that it may lead to the music video having wider audience out there. It is the kind of music that youths/younger people can realate as he is singing about his life and experience/parties/alcohol. This makes the younger people being more attracted as this is the kind of right life style they want to live in too.
• The last point we have is that the artist visually is attractive for the public. He dresses following the latest style and brands. This was alsom easier for us to choose him as there is a lot of people that followe the same style as him, so there will be no problem with the costumes during filming.

Casting Choices

After the initial discussion about the choice for the people who would act as our main artist we begun to sort everything out. From the three people that were considered, we chose only one. It was Archie Harris-Eva. As we were looking for people that fit into our main idea of the artist, he seemed to be the right person. After test footage of him, we realised that he co-operates really well with us and the camera "loves him". After couple of days of planning, we found out that Archie was unable to film the footage most of the same, because he couldn't take free time from work and school. This made us to choose the second option.

Archie Harris-Eva

We contacted out second casting person who was Sam Barnham. He was also considered to be the main artist before, but as we though Archie will be available most of the time he finnaly decided on him. Unfortunately the time management issued made us to finally start filming with Sam who was a great person to work with. He co-operated with us all the time and listened to director's advice. We managed to film the whole footage really quickly without any majot problems. After couple days of filming we realised how well he fits into the main idea of our artist.

Sam Barnham

After couple of days, we contacted Archie to ask him if he wants to be part of the backing up group "TheLetdowns" who would help our artist Freddy and make the whole project work. He did agreeand we started to take scenes with the whole band which also consists of: Tom/Harry too who can be seen on the group photo below!

TheLetdowns: Archie/Harry/Tom and our main artist Freddy (Sam Barnham)

Another characters that we were also considering were young kids (male) between age of 9-12. After further discussion we made the age limit from 11-13 because we though that it will be a little bit hard to work with younger kids as they might not understand all of our important intentions during filming. The kids that were chosen to act as a police men were: Juliusz Podbielski and Dawid Pedzisz. The main reason was that both of the boys are young actors who already have some acting experiences. This is because since age of 6 they are both playing in the Polish Youth Theatre.

Hannah Watson - Girl playing the woman in the music video

 Another important person in the music video was the girl that Freddy is about to have sex with. Through our casting options that we had, we have chosen Hannah as she's our close friend who is also doing Drama&Acting for her A-Levels. This meant for us that she will have a lot of experience and she won't have problems when it comes to acting in front of the video. Also she will look the performance look realistic.

Background people (Party Scene)

It was obvious for us that scenes like party when we need a lot of background character won't work without our friends. So after school we have decided to invite them to the filming of the footage which took place in professional Drama Studio in our school. Having a lot of people in the background would add some chemistry to the overall look of the scenes and shots.

Music Website Analysis [artist]

In this post I decided to analyse a solo artist website. This is because I think that it will be easier for me to create a website for my artist who is going to be mainly magnetised as a solo, but still have his backing up band "TheLetdowns". I have chosen to analyse Emeli Sandé's website as I think that our artist and her may have a lot of similarities as they are both young and just came out to the UK Music Market. You can enter her website by clicking here: Click here to enter Emeli Sandé's Official Website!

Emeli Sandé's Main Page

When you enter the website for the first time you can see that it is kept really simple and its main aim is to promote the artist to 100%. In the middle of the page you can see "play" button from YouTube. This allows you to play her latest music video and start up the whole play list of her music videos. This is very useful for the fans and the people who get to know her music for the first time. The background photo is also very well chosen, because it shows Emeli Sandé as her own with the instruments in the background which may represent that her whole album is made just by herself.

Links used to promote the artist

 In the right corner of the website you can find many links and logos eg: Facebook/Google+/Twitter. The logos and links are placed there for the purpose of promoting and magnetising the artist. The people who enter the website can also follow Emeli's private Twitter account or be able to send her email and "Like" her page on Facebook. Through those actions the fans or ordinary people are update constantly about her life, what she's doing and updates about her latest singles or album release. At the bottom of the logos you can also find music navigation buttons. You can skip or go back to the previous songs that are played in the background. This is very nice feature of the website, because as you explore it more and more you can enjoy the artist's voice playing.

Emeli Sandé's News Page

 When you go thought the main menu you can see that it is kept really simple so the website is easier to navigate. One of the options is: News. When you enter the sub-page you are re-directed to the site with the latest news about the artist and what she is doing at the moment. As you can see above, the latest news is about her taking part in Sport Relief 2012 on BBC1.

Emeli Sandé's Live Date info page

 The next useful feature for promotional and further artist marketing is sub-page called : Live dates. This allows you and any other fans to see the whole schedule of the artist and you can see all the information needed eg: Where/What country/When/What time. You can even book the ticket straight from the website. When you click on the link you are re-directed to ticket selling website like eg. Ticketmaster. From the menu you can also choose options like Diary where you can read the artist private diary. This makes the artist be one step away from Emeli. This is quiet useful for promotion as the fans are keep updated and they know that they artist is not just making the music for money, but actually care about their listeners.

Emeli Sande's SHOP

On the website you can also go to the Official Shop. The whole website seems to be ready for every person and acts like the artist merchandising medium. When you enter the store you are able to buy her latest and only album at the moment. You can choose from variety of options eg. Digital Album/Hard Cover CD/Single etc. In the top right corner you can see what you bough in the basket and you can choose between the countries you want your order to be delivered too. You can choose from Australia up to Japan. This is another promotional techniques, because you can't get her album in the normal music shop on Australia eg. HMV Australia. So the only thing for those people is to order the album online.

Main Gallery

The last thing you can enjoy on her website is the Official Gallery where you can see all the photos. Above you can see photo of Emeli holding Brit Award. So you can see that the gallery shows important things from her life too.

Story Board of our Music Video

Below I add the scans of our music video. Below you can see our provisional story board, because everything can change during filming as well as editing process in future days.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

Analysis of Music Video no. 5

In this post I will be analysing POP Music Video. It will be Rihanna - Only Girl in the World which is one of her best selling songs from the previous album. I have chosen to analyse this music video because it really shows the ideas of showing artist's sexuality/body parts in the music video in order to for better promotion or attraction of new fans. The whole video have accents of red and pink colour second by second which might represent the romance/love which can also be implied from the lyrics.

 We are introduced by a wide shot if the artist in the middle of nowhere. This may imply her freedom that she got, but still looking for her true love. The colours used in the whole video as well as this shot represents romance and need of love which she might not experienced yet. After this shot we see the artist in the place where there is a lot of flowers. In my opinion each of the flowers is representing men.

This shot basically implies what I mentioned before. This music video is the perfect example of selling the artist by her undressing on the front screen. This is showing her sexual side which attracts wider audience and more people are curious about the artist which makes them search for her music and finally buy the album.

When we get to the bit when the lyrics goes: "Want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world" we see the shot of Rihanna dropping on to the floor full of flowers. As I said before in my opinion in the music video the flowers are meant to represent the men and by her laying surrounded by them, she may think that is being surrounded by a lot of men who love/respect her. I can also make this argument stronger by saying that when she she sings: "I will make you feel like a man", she is actually singing and looking at the flower.

The colours of white/yellow and blue are not only seen in the scenes with the flowers but also the balloons that we can see behind the artist in the image on the left. This is another interpretation of the men. This implies that wherever and whenever she moves somewhere they follow her everywhere, but she just doesn't know what to do.


In the shot below we can see Rihanna and the big flow next to her to which she is singing too for about 25 second in the entire music video. This is going to be another repeat, but that flower represents the perfect one she has chosen from the crowd, which is shown in the image number 3 above. She wants to use personification towards the flower by singing: "You'll be my prisoner for tonight" which obviously also have sexual content include in it. This also links to the title of the music video which is "The only girl in the world". It links to have being so full of herself and thinking that it's all the men surrounding her and are being attracted to her, but it actually might be different and completely opposite.

In the last image, you can see the artist in the middle surrounded by the fireworks around. This, at the end of the music video was done to represent her emotion. Firework might represent happiness/excitement/over-reaction.

Specific Album Art Analysis #5

Jay-Z - American Gangster

I have chosen to analyse this artist, because I did not mention any of the Rap/Hip-Hop genre that is being really famous in United States. Jay-Z is very successful artist and I think that his album artwork has a lot of symbolism included in it. The first thing we realise after looking in the centre is the artist who is wearing a suit. He has that "Man in Black" look and walk. This is made on purpose to show the kind of person the rapper is and to show his character in depth. In the front of him as well as at the back there is a lot of smoke which creates an image of him being a supernatural person/angel that has come from the above to save the world. People might feel that when they gonna start listen to lyrics they are going to feel like all the problems are gone and world is just a perfect place. Another thing that might be very important is the simplicity of the colours used. The only colour you can visually see are: black and white. This might be done this way to show the simplicity of the album and the songs that they are on the album. You can hear sometimes people saying that :"This is so easy, like black and white". So this is maybe where the idea came from. The last point that I have links to the title of the album and the surrounding of the artist in the background. You can see that the title is "American Gangster" and every chair and the tables in the back look like they have been cleaned up by someone which may signify that the American Gangster that the artist represent may be sorting things out wherever he is. Also the cover links a bit to American Western Movies when we look closely on the floor and the style of the chairs.

Specific Album Art Analysis #4

I decided to analyse One Republic's Album Cover. The album is called "Waking up". The first thing we visually see are the number of different colours. If you count them properly you come up with 5 different one. This actually links to the number of band members that One Republic consists of. So we can see that there is already some symbolism in case of the whole band. The colour might also represent each member of group by their character and what kind of person they are. As there is not a lot of green colour, we may assume that the band member who the colour is assigned to may be a bit shy etc. Another thing I came up with during analysing process is that the cover looks like a fountain which can relate to ideas or what might be happening in our head in the morning. I analysed this in that way, because of the title of the album which is "Waking up". So I assumed that the cover might represent what happens in our head when we wake up. The red colour of the font may represent that the "waking up" process is something that people might not like etc... The background is kept really simple which may also link to the simplicity of the band and the songs they are making. The front cover does not give away anything about the music inside. In other way, we can also interpret the fountain of colours by saying that they represent different kind of music styles put together on this album, but if we want to find out about that more we need to buy and listen to the album. So it is right to say that the album art work is appealing to wider audience.

Analysis of Album Art [DIGIPACK]

Rihanna - Loud (Album Digipack)

The digipack consists of CD and two dicks that contain Rihanna's music on it. It is made up of three sections.The CD opens to both sides (right and left). In the centre part of the CD there is a plastic part which holds the discs. This digipack is used as an inspiration for parts of my final thing. The main part that influenced me was the inside of it. The effect is created by a one image of an artist appearing in all three parts and therefore it makes a whole photo. The main theme colour of the digipack is red which shades of white. It is all combined with roses all other the photos. The roses represent love, romance etc. She is laying across the roses, exploring her sexual side as you can see bug parts of her body uncovered.  So this is another inspiration, because in my artist's art work I can use a symbol like: bottle of beer etc...to represent him and his life. Another digipack that may influence us more is : SUPER JUNIOR M's Front Cover. This is because I think that the band has some similar features to the artist we want to create. 

You can see below that the front cover shows the main artist biting and apple which may represent the Adam and Eve concept. At the back of the album you can see the other band members which is perfect for us as we want to show our "Letdowns" who help Freddy on the instrumental side of the album. In the middle there are two versions of song and it can be helpful for us as we can have normal songs and the one with censorship put on them for the younger audience between the age of 14-17. 

SUPER JUNIOR M's digipack!

Band Logo [Reflection]

The Main Logo of the Band - Production Company

When it comes to the logo, I think that it fairly represents the overall "image" of the band and is doing its job when it comes to attracting the primary audience (over 16 year old). The smoke in the background represents the youth culture of the people at the same age as well as our artist's. But on the other side I think this is too general and mono dramatic and the colours that are being used in the logo are not really representing the overall mood of the production company and the whole music video. Also it does not use the photo of our artist, so audience might not know who the connected with. So I have tried to create different types of logos after discussing it previously with my group peers.
Below I uploaded another design:

Another design of the band's logo!

For me this design it too suttle for the kind of music video that we are making. It looks very modern and has different variety of colours. We decided as a group that this logo is not saying anything about our artist and if it is...then the message that people are going to get is not our intended one. So we decided to combine both of the logos together and see what might happen.
This is the final outcome:

Final Logo of the Band

As you can see on the final logo it combines things from both of the previous designs. It has black background, but because the writing is white and there is no smoke coming the writing is more clear and visible when it's put onto the album cover. The writing "FREDDY" is made bigger on purpose, so when people walk around and look at the cover the first thing they are going to see is the name of the main artist. The writing below was made to look like it is hand written so it may relate to the letter in our music video which is what ignites the whole music video at the beginning. The last point that I have about the logo is that the "&" that has been added there looks like the symbol used by musicians. So this is open to many other interpretations.