We were given the email and name of our make-up artist for the day so I emailed her with the details of what we would like. I also attached the collage of images of the models from the catwalk shoots so that she can visualise the idea. Here is the email I sent:
Katie later replied with this email:
I am encouraged by this email as she seems as though she will able to do a really good job with the dancers make-up which will make the video look so much more professional and artistic.
She has recently got back to me with all the materials and equipment she has for everything we want so I am pretty happy with this. I realise that there are 6 dancers and therefore it will take a while for each dancer to get their special make-up done however in the shooting schedule I was consider this and sort the problem out. We want the make-up, and the colours, to be the distinctive difference between the dancers and this is what will give them their identity in the performance. We would like to steer away from all the dancers being the same. Their movements will be but their costumes and make-up will divide them up into their own characters.
We have spoken to the dancers and asked them if they could be involved in our video after their successful audition. Today we were given the date of our shoot which is Monday 14th November after half-term. Originally it was meant to be Tuesday 15th November so, as you can see in the email, I had to email the cast twice.
Copyright is the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material. Because "Don't Stop" is a song taken from another artist, we had to email their record label to ask for permission to use their material. Boxinbox & Lionsize's record label is called Unborn so we googled their email and copied the letter from sharepoint and sent it to them. Until we get a reply saying we cannot use their material we are good to go.
On my phone we did a little video of each frame from the story board which Callum then took and made an animatic with. This animatic is a rough version of the order we want to show the different shots and the way in which we want to show them. It is an animated storyboard. Boards are brought into an editing program (Callum used adobe premier pro) and are cut together with the correct timing and pace of the film. When we showed it to Luke he said we need to think about adding far more shots and cuts however at this stage this is a really good start and I think Callum did a really good job.
An animatic story board is a graphic organiser in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of visualising a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence. It has been useful to our music video concept because it has allowed us to visualise and piece together a rough version for what we want it to end up looking like. I think the shots of Jonty interweaving with the shots of the dancers work well as it really emphasises the party vibe and it allows for a lot of movement and fast pace cuts. In the actual video, as mentioned before, we are going to have to use many more shots to make it even more movement based and fast pace however for now we have the baseline idea we can work off.
As a group we discussed who, from school, we would want in the music video and we asked them to come to the dance studio and quickly learn a dance I taught them. We chose 6 people to do it as this is how many we would want in the actual video. They were all were really impressive and we have decided they are perfect for the video. I will email them to ask if they can actually do the shoot for us.
We chose:
Charlotte Mcgee
Megan Mackay
Daisy Jelley
Maddy Bowyer
Sally Waine
Eden Bowyer
Here is a video of them performing the final audition dance:
I looked into Fashion shoots and how they manipulate the paint so that it looks effective on the face and I made a collage of ideas we could use for our dancers:
It would be cool if all the dancers had paint on their hands and feet too and even their arms etc with the tops on. This would add a bit more life and this would be when we could incorporate the idea of messing with continuity by painting them as they go and in the editing process we would go back and fourth from shots with paint everywhere to shots with no makeup.
Today we had talk to the set designers about our idea and our plans. Elizabeth wrote down notes we gave her which I managed to take a photo of:
They suggested maybe leaving the drum kit set up as it is slightly random and would work best if we actually had a boys bedroom with a kit inside. However, seen as we don't have that we will just stick to the dancers and Jonty. They also liked the idea of messing with continuity as we could play around with the dancers paint on their face and the clothes they are wearing although we would really need to plan this out and know exactly what to tell the Make-up artist to do. I will do research into unique make-up styles on catwalks and fashion shows for inspiration. Furthermore, they said the pixel lines will be fine and that will be how we show the colour changes light pulses. Elizabeth had a really good suggestion of making the floor almost like a video game and that is how the colour changes, when the dancers step into different zones. It is possible to create and we could research into it to see if it works however if it doesn't she also said we could just change the colour of the floor. There could even be different shapes of different colours in which they step into. The idea of Jonty and the girls with silver paint and other coloured paint on them was agreed on and was said to be possible which is good. I think this will add to the idea of 'surreal' images we are aiming to go for.
We have discussed what kind of theme we want to have and have decided we want it to be quite surreal overall. For example, it would be cool if lips filled the screen (the dancers different coloured lips) as the lyrics repeated themselves. I'm thinking of something like Andy Warhol's art of the lips and colour image wise.
The lips with strange liquid coming out of them would also be strange and unusual.. as it gets deeper into the song the shots of the lips can start being similar to this to had range:
The video that comes into mind is 'Deep Down Low' by Valentino Khan:
Obviously this video is really out there and we wouldn't want to go that far but it has an element of craziness that we would like to go for in our video. We have also discussed how it would actually be unusual if Jonty and the dancers were splashed with paint as costumes. So instead of the coloured tops which may be quite cringe they can be covered with paint with a nude sports bar underneath. Jonty will have silver paint all over his face and his neck.
Moreover, instead of having to change the whole idea of the coloured tops to paint, we want to have a section where the girls are standing in a line with their tops on and then underneath they have the paint on their bodies with the sports bra on and black jeans on. They will just be swinging their hips, a simple dance movement so that it is not to hard to edit, and then it will cut to the girls swinging their hips with no top and just paint. The shot will cut back and fourth and get faster and faster as it builds to the drop in the music.
If we can't just throw paint onto the dancers we could just have the silver paint at the top of the body (like Jonty) and then a ring of their assigned colour running around their stomach area.
We have decided on the song 'Don't Stop' by Boxinbox & Lionsize...
This song is an unusual song which isn't that popular therefore will work well; it doesn't have a music video which is a good start. I am glad we moved on from our original idea as I believe this has much more potential. This song also goes well will the plan we have in terms of the actual production which means we are ready to go.
A birthday party, the girls come on with balloons, sit down as if they were celebrating
They could be dressed up really strange and made to look really young and weird
'House Work' sort of vibes, director trying to sort everyone out but...
When the beat drops they go crazy, start bursting all the balloons and then start doing this sick routine, bubbles blowing everywhere, confetti and basically mahem
The director tries to control them but be can't
Jonty cuts in and out performing the song on the decks
I have spoken to Jonty about what tracks we could use instead of 'WWISYA' as he knows some cool ones to do. The reason we want to change the song is we don't feel the original song has enough of a drop to demonstrate the mayhem and craziness. Jonty is super good at remixing music and offered to remix 'WWISYA' which would be awesome but just incase we don't want to use it or it isn't done in time, I have made a playlist of other suggestions on Spotify so we can pick and choose and see what works best with the idea:
One of Jonty's remixes called 'White Tiger' is a song we will highly likely use as it is vibrant and our idea fits well with it:
We are deciding to change the song as we are not really going anywhere with it. We still want to stick with the idea of colour and vibrancy but we want something with more of a drop and speed so that we can incorporate dancing and movement. We are thinking of having a guy performing on a platform with loads of lights and colour moving around just so that we can include as much as we can to emphasise the party/festival vibe and then it would cut to girls dancing to the song with lots and lots of energy and performance. We are thinking along the lines of Justin Bieber's music video for "Sorry":
At this stage we really don't have that long to sort this out but because the idea of colour and movement isn't changing it won't be that difficult to change it all up a bit. We are going have to do some research into what songs we would like to do with a big drop in the music and with lyrics. The song 'Battle Sirens' by Knife Party...
...is the kind of thing we are going for but the problem is there are no lyrics in it. This means we need to look for a song with a good amount of lyrics so that the performance element is successful enough. The dancers will be the ones singing along to the long (like the 'Sorry' music video) meaning we don't need to add any other performers in it, just so that it doesn't become too complicated. We obviously have far more development to under go but so far this is the changes we have made.
Atomic 3000, strobe light (x2) - have warning signs, can go at whatever speed to create differetn effects
UV cannons (x2) - pitch black room, no extra light added
Source Four Juniors - spotlights, add a gel to change colour
Thomas 4 cyc - has 4 individual light cells, green screen things and infinity screen things, floods everthing with light, no shadows
Galaxia LED softlight - heavily diffused, light isn't hard, no shadows under the eyes, change colour temp of them
Pixellines 1044 - long LED batons which can do any colour, chases, effects, in view of camera (visual effect) or use them to light people
Sharpy wash 330 - wash light which can change colours, beam size, make it more frosted or hard edge
Martin Mac 700 Profile - can do everything, colours, movement, hard edge, soft edge, size, fill whole studio, images (gobos), water animation, fire animation etc.
Today we realised we actually had no specific ideas which was slightly worrying. We have generally been saying this whole time that we want colour, excitement etc however by this stage we need to be thinking of specific shots and the reasons for the actions. Therefore, we need to hurry up and get a solid idea together. We quickly thought of some we could do at the end of the lesson and I jotted them down:
- classroom: guy drawing on a piece of paper and teacher comes over, scrunches up the piece of paper
- mirror: both at a mirror and a sink, just him first then the camera pans to both of them doing the same thing
- Girl getting on with her day whilst the guy is always around her without her knowing
- at the end he could move her head so that she finally sees him
