First Idea for DigiPak cover.

This is our first rough sketch of our Album Cover. We decided to use the wall of flowers to link it into the video. The name ISIS also means godess of Nature so that is another reason why we incorporated the flowers into the cover and we also used the crown to show the Godess.We also liked the idea of having the silhoutte of the artist as then it is more intriguing for the audience as they dont know much about the artist so may want to buy the album to find out more, making more money for the artist, this would also look like the blinders set However, we felt that it looked too similar to the music video and this is something that we don't want, therefore, we are going to sketch another idea once we are back from half term and when all of our group is back.

Our First Dance Rehearsal

Anamatic Feedback

We asked the girls these questions to see how we could improve our video:
1. Do you think we need less or more of the artist lip syncing?

2. Do you think it cuts to the beat effectively?

3. Do you find it visually interesting?

4. Do you think we can do anything interesting with the lips?

5. Do we need a motif?

6. Would extended/ complicated choreography interest you more? 

7. Is it too repetitive? 

8. Is there anything you think that doesn't work?

9. Do you think the shots should be shorter?

10. What is your favourite set and why?
11. What star image are we trying to represent?
12. Is there anything unconventional? 

Meeting with Set and Lighting Designer.

Yesterday, we had a meeting witha professional set designer from South London and a professional lighting designer from North London. 
We showed them our prop and lighting list to find out how much of our idea/vision would actually be able to be made possible. From the meeting we also found out what props we/the school need to get and what they will get for us. My group need to organise buying the paper pom pom lanterns, which we are planning on buying from Amazon and a Tiara, which we are also going to buy off amazon. We also need to find an old Brown armchair, which we found on FreeCycle, but we need to find a method of picking it up and getting it to school as it is in Caterham at the moment. Finally, we/the school need to find somewhere to buy or hire a throne chair from-which is what we are researching at the moment, trying to find the best deals and cheapest prices.
We decided to change our floor from swirly wallpaper, to pale pink or off white in the girly set as we think the wallpaper may look too much and take away from the flowered wall, so the set designer told us to pick a plain colour but she said white didn't look great on camera, so we therefore decided on Off White or Pale Pink floor 

Costumes and Make up Ideas.

Girly Set:

White and Pink to keep it girly and the crown to represent the godess element of the artist.

UV Set:

Black and White striped dress as then it will stand out in the UV lights. 

UV paint used for make up to make it visually appealing to watch. 











Blinders Set:

Plain clothes as we will only be able to see the outline of the artist and dancers, so we wanted to keep it quite simple as you wont actually be able to see- as long as they were all the same. 








Projections Set:

A White leotard so we are able to project things onto it\her easily. Might be too see through when it arrives and therefore we will just use a white top and jeans. 

Make up like this as it fits with black and white theme in projections. 

Polydor Talk.

Today we had a talk from Poldor records. A girl named Emily Teldor came in to talk to us about her job as a video comissioner and the music industry in general. Below are some notes I took on the talk.

• Polydor is a subsidairy to Universal. 
• In the industry at the moment, it is popular for music videos to include a narrative structure. This is because the producers want to show this in thier portfolios. 
• The comissioners put together a brief from the ideas that the directors come up with and send it out to usually around 10 producers who are then given 1 week to reply with a treatment.
• The comissioners job is to represent the artist. As there is a lot of different people working on the video, everyone needs to know what is going on and what time etc 
• To make sure that the artist is happy, usually the director and artist will lialise with their ideas so that they are both happy. 
• The single would usually come out on radio 6 weeks before it was released to build a buzz around the song and artist, but now, to try and cut down illegal downloads, the single is pretty much released as soon as it plays on radio- this doesnt affect the single, but it does affect the artist, as people dont have the time to establish the artist, they just want the song. 

We watched two very different videos that they had comissioned:

Wiley- SKANK

And Years and Years- KING

Cast List.

We also found out our cast list in the lesson today- the girls in our video are;

Anjuli Vadera
Vogue Phelps 
Charlotte McGee
Natasha Christianson
Maddy Bowyer 

We are going to take photos of them on Thursday(3:10-4:55) to post on our blog and see what make up we can use on which girl. We are also going to have our first rehearsal on Thursday to show them the choreography. We will also have rehearsals on the first Monday and Tuesday back to make sure everyone knows the dance etc. 
We sent an email to confirm this...

After the rehearsal, we decided we wanted to recast our girls, we changed our mind to having only 3 short blonde girls as this made the dance look sharper and neater and all the girls looked the same which was more visually appealing. Therefore, our new cast list was...

Sasha Ward Smith (artist)

Vogue Phelps (Dancer 1)

Maddie Bowyer (Dancer 2)

Shoot Date.

Today, we found out that our shoot date is 4th November. This means that we need to set up our sets in the studio the day before (3rd Nov. 

Anamatic

What is an anamatic and what is its function?
talk about target audience (pop genre, female etc)

After we created our story board, we filmed our anamatic to see what the final video will look like- shot wise. We are planning on asking an audience a few questions on this to see what they think and this will then give us ideas to improve it and make it more interesting to watch.

Prop and Lighting List

Girly Set:

Projections Set:

UV SET:

Blinders Set:

Lighting.

Set Designs.

UV Set:

Projections  Set: 

Blinders Set:

Set Mood Boards.

George Heaton decided to created some mood boards to help us visualise our sets. 

UV SET:
http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/xl-09arn/share

BLINDERS SET:
http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/6xlU3_N9/share

GIRLY SET:
http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/mCnEftxK/share

PROJECTIONS SET:
http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/UjwyWN7V/share

Name Ideas For Our Artist.

We want to call our artist something unique that will stand out. We wanted to make the name quite short, preferably 4 letters as then it is easier to remember and it sticks in people's memory. After searching around for a while online, we found the names ISIS, SUKI,  and NAYA. Next we went onto ' whats in the name ' website to find the meaning of the names. We found that...

ISIS:

"Greek form of Egyptian Ist (reconstructed as Iset or Ueset), which possibly meant "the throne". In Egyptian mythology Isis was the goddess of the sky and nature, the wife of Osiris and the mother of Horus. She was originally depicted wearing a throne-shaped headdress, but in later times she was conflated with the goddess Hathor and depicted having the horns of a cow on her head. She was also worshipped by people outside of Egypt, such as the Greeks and Romans."

NAYA:

"Purpose"

SUKI:

"The smell of tomorrow"

Email To Record Label.

To ask permission to use the song 'Snap Clap' by the band Icona Pop for our music video we emailed Ten Music Group, The record label that Icona Pop are signed to, to ask for their permission. 

Below is an image of their website. They are a Synthetic Label. 

Costume Ideas

We haven't thought a great deal about the costumes yet, however we do know some things we want and we have considered a few things. 
For the projections, we would like the artist to wear a white leotard- this makes it easier for the projections to be seen and they will be much clearer. 
For the girly set, we want her to wear something like Rihanna wears in her 'only girl in the world video'

Casting Ideas.

We decided that it was very important for our artist to be able to dance as alot of the video revolves around choreography. We are planning on holding auditions for the artist, this way a veriety of different girls will audition all with completely different looks and then we can pick who we think will fit the video best. 

From the auditions, we selected 5 girlS. The main artist and then 4 dancers. 

Our Main Artist:


Dancer 1:



Dancer 2:



Dancer 3:



Dancer 4:

Set Ideas

SET 1. 
This is going to be our simplest set. We are going to use 3 blinder lights that will flash up behind our artist(as used in the wicked games video by the weeknd). This will enable the viewer to see the outline of the artists body but not their actual features. We will use this at the start of the video to keep the viewer engaged. 

The Weeknd- Wicked Games. 

SET 2. 
The next set we would like to use is also very plain, it will just be a black background as we want to use projections in the video. Therefore by having a black background, it will make the projections stand out alot more and they will look more clear. We would like it to look similar to the image below.

U Da One- Rihanna

SET 3.
This set is more complex than the first two. I'd say it would be probably the hardest set in terms of what we want to create. We want this to be very girly, so everything pink (including lighting) 
flowers, and lots of girly props. 

SET 4. 
The final set is going to be very colourful, we really liked the idea of UV. See images below. 

Final Meeting with Luke.

This week, in the lesson we had our final meeting with Luke, this was for us to let him know our final idea and to see if he thought there were any changes/extra things that we needed to work on in order to make the video work. Luckily, he thought our idea was brilliant but asked us to produce 4 different mood boards of each set we were planning on using so that he can visualise what we would like need- this allows him to see anything that we need to order specially for the shoot, such as blinders for example. We dont have them at the school so therefore, he told us to research online where we could hire them from and for how much. 

Inspiration on Shot Types.

Our artist is a female solo artist, so I looked at some similar female artists to see what shots are most commonly used in their videos and what works best and what looks good. 
The first artist I looked at was Rihanna, I looked at her videos Diamonds and Stay. 

The diamond video is split into 2 sections- a narrative and a performance (lip sync). In the lip sync parts of the video, we see alot of close ups. 

In her 'Stay' video there are also loads and loads of close up's and extreme close ups of her lip syncing- this is to show the emotion in her face when shes singing. 

The next Artist I looked at was Beyonce. I looked at her videos, Pretty Hurts and Run the world. 

Her pretty hurts video consists of a narrative and lip sync. The video is just over 7 mins long so therefore has a majority of shot types, However, I would say the most common shot types were Close ups, mid shots and Long shots, Close ups and mid shots allow us to see the emotion and detail in the video whereas Long Shots allow us to view the full set and costume of the artist. 

In the run the world video we see alot of long shots- this is to establish where the video is set, so we can see the full costumes and also so we can see the choreography. 

In our video, it is going to be performance based. We will have lip sync and choreography. Therefore, I think it is important that we have a mixture of different shots. Long shots for the choreography and close up and mid shots for the lip sync and to help re inforce the lyrics of the song. For example, a close up of her clapping.