Production meeting 17/10/14

In our prouction meeting today we talked through the technicalities of shooting our music video with Chris, the media technician. He gave us advice for our ideas that would need special technology:

• Slow motion shots: he recommended that we film in 50fps on the GoPro or the Canon 5D. however, as we have planned the slo-mo shots for the paint fight, we thought it best to use the GoPro as it has a protective case, whereas the 5D could get ruined b the paint.
• Neon performance: the media department only has one black light which would not be strong enough to make this possible. He suggested we test it anyway, or film in normal lighting with dark make-up and then invert the colours in editing for the same effect.

We are able to plan in more detail after this meeting as we now have an idea of what is and isn't possible to achieve.

Request for permission to use the track

In order to obtain permission to use our chosen track, we had to request it from the record company which owns the rights to the song. After searching online for the right person to contact, I sent an email on behalf of my group to the record label which owns the MK remix of 'My Head is a Jungle':

They emailed us back, granting us permission to use the track.

However, they also sent us a document with a few conditions we have to stick to if we are using the track:

The gist of these conditions is that we must acquire the song by legal download or purchase, and the final project must not be broadcast publicly or commercially. As we plan to upload the video to YouTube, we saw this as a huge problem. However, there are other websites such as Vimeo were we can upload the video and keep it private, and so therefore, our request for permission was successful.

Production meeting 16/10/14

In our production meeting today we tested using overlays of pieces of footage. 
Our initial idea was to project footage from Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland over our artist while we filmed it, but after realising that the projector would not be strong enough to be picked up by the camera, we decided to use overlays instead.

Our idea is to have footage from Disney's 1951 Alice in Wonderland over the top of our female artist during some parts of the narrative. To test this, the group filmed me acting as we want Georgie to in the video, and edited it with the Alice in Wonderland footage over the top by changing the opacity.
We were really pleased with the result (which is shown below) and so we will definitely be using this technique for the real video.

Animatic

We made the animatic to help us to plan the specifics of our different set-ups, and to plan the sequence and timings of the shots. The different colours for different scenes allowed us to vaguely visualise what the video will look like and what order the shots should go in.

Scene key
Green - forest scenes
Pink - performance
White - white backdrop scenes
Blue - balloons scenes
Black - neon scenes

After creating the animatic, it has made it much clearer in my mind what we want the final product to look like and how the different scenes will fit together. This has also made it easier for us to make a shot list as we have a reference for what shots we want to get.

Storyboard

As part of the planning process for the video, we made a storyboard:

• By colour-coding the different set-ups (yellow for forest scenes; pink for performance scenes; orange for white scenes; blue for balloon scenes; blue&highlighter for neon scenes) we were able to visualise the sequence more clearly, which helped us to decide how to order the different scenes.
• We weren't able to plan every single shot for the storyboard as a lot of our shots will depend on what we film on the day, as some of it will be improvised (e.g. paint fight, balloons). 
• Making a storyboard was important as we were able to make sure that the shots we did plan will fit together well.
• We all contributed to the storyboard. The artists did most of the drawing but we all had a say in what each shot should entail, which shots went where and how long they should last.

Lyrics analysis

We drew some ideas from the lyrics of our chosen song to help us plan the video:

• The chorus ("My head is a jungle...") inspired most of our ideas, as the character in the narrative is imagining all the crazy things happening around her.
• The part of the song where the music suddenly slows down influenced us to film slow motion shots for this bit.
• We felt that the performance side had to come in at a suitable time and not too far in to the song, so we decided this should happen at the start of the first verse, after the intro.

We have decided to create what Goodwin would describe as an amplified relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, by taking the serious meaning of the lyrics and creating a fun and upbeat interpretation of them. The performance aspect will contrast to this, taking the lyrics much more seriously and illustrating the deeper feelings being sung about. Put together, these will help to create a sense of escapism.

Production meeting week 3

We started our first meeting this week by making a to-do list of all the things we needed to discuss in that meeting. We then went on to discuss and plan the narrative sequence in our video, and the specifics of the different set-ups.

To-do list

As we plan to use a lot of props and creative techniques, we decided we need to test them so that we get it right and it looks good for the actual shoot, so we made a list that we can refer to as we continue to plan and develop our ideas.

List of things that need testing

The main purpose of our meeting this week have been to discuss and confirm the ideas and concept for our video. We have decided on definitely having Alice in Wonderland influences, a powder paint fight, slow motion shots, balloons, projections of archived footage and hopefully shots using neon paints and UV light (all shown in the lists above).