Location Shots

Our whole group went out to take some location shots in a church graveyard in the village of Horton Kirby. This is the main place where we are planning to shoot our video in. We chose this place as we knew this church had a graveyard apart from the rest if the church, which meant that we would have less chance of being disturbed whilst filming. The graveyard has a metal gate onto the road, which is perfect for the ideas that we had in mind for the main character's bullies to be seen by the gates looking ashamed.

We will definitely be using this location for filming again.

Claire has put together a small slideshow to show photos of this location and what parts of it we would use whilst filming.

Deciding on Our Ancillary Tasks

We had 3 options to choose from for our 2 ancillary tasks:

- A website homepage for the band

- A cover for the music video's release as part of a digipak

- A magazine advertisement for the digipak

As a group we have unanimously decided to create the digipak and magazine advertisement, purely because we all feel confident in our abilities to use Photoshop confidently, which we will be using to design these 2 products. We felt that is we had chosen the website option, we could not have been sure that it would end up looking the best that it possibly could as we would have no previous experience of the programs used to create it.

Looking at Current Alternative Music Video's

In order make our group's music video as professional looking as possible, we need to have an idea of the rules and conventions of current music videos in that genre: alternative.

I started off by looking at the music video for Caesar: I Blame Coco feat. Robyn.

The first show that I really like in this video is the close up of Coco's eyes with make up streaming down her face. This is the type of shot I would want to use in my group's video as it is an effective way of showing the audience how the character in the video is feeling in a hard hitting way. This would work beautifully in the video that our group has planned, as it could be used to show how our main character feels about her cyber bullying.

I love the use of close ups of objects or certain things to subtly show the audience what you want them to focus on the most. we are planning to use this idea in our video to put focus onto the girl's rose in our story.

I think the iconography in this video is very good, with Coco wearing a leaf metal crown, synonymous with the Romans, tying in with the song's name: Caesar.

This iconography continues through the video with someone holding up a flaming torch to the sky, also reminding me of the old Roman times.

Our group is planning to relate our visuals to the lyrics by having the rose as a symbol of love, and as the love dies throughout the video, so does the rose (petals being picked off, being left by a grave).

The Animatic

In order to see how our ideas fitted in with our music, and to work out timings of shots, we had to create an animatic. This way we can hear the music being played with our shots and we can see if the ideas we have are appropriate for the different parts of the music.

We did this by getting Char, the only decent artist among us, to draw out on paper all of our shot ideas, so we could scan them into the computer, edit them using Photoshop to insert into our video using Final Cut Express.

We feel that this animatic is an accurate vision of what we plan our actual final music video to look like, but that could still all change from any feedback we receive from our peers or teacher...

Work So Far

This past week, whilst Jack, Claire and I have been updating our blogs with target audience research and looking at the potential music channels and platforms that could show our finished music video, Charlotte (the only artist among us!) has been drawing out the images for our animatic to be uploaded onto our blogs. This will show our ideas drawn out alongside our track, so that we can see how our video will pan out in terms of scenes, shots and timings.

Letter To The Copyrighter

To be able to use this song for our coursework we need the approval of the songs copyrighters. Claire has sent off an email to them asking for permission to use The Funeral.

Link To Letter

How The Story Will Pan Out

Story Outline

A girl has has committed suicide by overdose because she saw her boyfriend with another girl and has now been dumped by text. The new couple now rub their relationship in her face i.e. laughing at her behind her back, posting facebook status (i love blah.... so happy right now etc.). She receives abusive texts from them and other people, belittling her confidence. Eventually she will snap and decide to take her own life. The story starts with her already dead, and uses a series of flashbacks to tell her story. The end of the video will be of her family surrounding her 'grave' with the people who have made her do this are standing apart from them looking guilty. The idea of this video is to provoke a reaction from the audience and make them think about how we treat people.

Sections of the Music

Instrumental - Starts with her laying dead, flashes to happy times, then gets increasingly gloomy. We see that they are growing apart (shown by the shots off them together quickly followed by her sitting by herself) it finally boils down to her seeing him with another girl, and she explodes with anger just as the music changes and gets rockier.

Main Music - Could have her leaving objects of significance near the boy the flower on her chest at the start of the video (that he could have given her in the happier flashback?). The abuse over the internet begins, and we see her losing control, this section of music ends with a particularly nasty text. We see frequent references to death (black clothing, cuts to petals being picked off the flower?)

Breakdown in Music - This is the point where she eventually cannot take

any more and decides to kill herself.

Back to Main Music - See her laying out pills as the new couple are perhaps laughing?, she succeeds and we see the 'ghost girl' smile (to show her new freedom?), ends with a shot off her family standing around the grave with her abusers standing apart from them.

Here is the new moodboard I have created to capture the mood of our new idea: