Design Plans

We drew out a plan so we were able to successfully determine where each of our actors where , the camera position and how we would light them . This would help us minimise confusion on the day of the shoot and make as simple as possible for us .

The Lighting Plan

We wanted to have quite a harsh blue and white light that flooded our stars as they played in the studio . This idea is meant to make the scene seem dark , edgy and and cold feeling throughout the set.

The lighting plan means that you know where the lights will be positioned ,the colour rthat will be used an how the singer and members of the grup will be lit to best effect. Using the plan we also we also went back to our storyboards and filled in more details about lighting.

With the studio design plan and the lighting plan and the storyboard we had a good idea of exactly of what were going to on the day of the shoot . We have a plan , and with my group the toxic trio we need all the help we can get .

I found this site called Keithtucker.com which is all about set design and the drawings he has done .

Camera Test

Our aim was to look for people who wear across between boheniam and indie fashion.

This is almost the style of Mod clothing , which is about skninny jeans , baggy shirts , general messiness of the hair and big shoes , usually high ankle boots. As well as tyring to find people who fitted the part ,we also needed to try and find people who would be easy to direct ,follow orders and not be afraid to go for it on the day so they would actually look the part .

Storyboards

The storyboards are used to build on the time line , by helping you get a clearer visual by a rough sketch of what is happening in the shot and what it will end up looking like . The type of shot is detailed and explained thoroughly.We again can see if the timeline will work with help of actual drawings . The story board is the plan that you shoot to , so if it works on paper that make it alot less expensive to do than to waste time filming for hours not days.The storyboard works out the type of shot , the angle , the camera movement , the colours and shapes , the mise en scene and how the picture composition rules will be applied in the film .etc.

Everything and anything is thought about in the stroy board so that no time is wasted on the shoot . We have only 1 day to shoot so we need to have everything ready

There is a mid shot of a guitarist in the story boards since is when the guitarist is playing his solo and in order to highlight this and draw focus to him . We wanted a mid shot and not a close up to show that he was actually playing the guitar.

On page 6 one of the examples of my tracking shots is when we film the band drinking with some girls in the changing room . This a mid shot and would probably filmed using a handheld camera since we wanted to walk down down the line of people in the row . This will hopefully make the scene more intimate . For shooting to edit we are planning to zoom on shot 26 which will give us the close up of the guitarists hand in shot 27 . This will make these two particularly easy shots to cut and edit later on .

Timeline

The time line is used to try and link the music and the lyrics to what is happening in the music video . We can see how long the shot is going to be on screen for and what the actual shot is .

This helps us to know that when we actually film we know the exact amount of time we should film for , and in the actual post editing it will help us cut to the beat to the music and make sure our shots actually will work in our pop video.

We then filmed all the story boards for ten seconds and cut it in Final Cut Pro to the song.

From doing this we can see how efficent this will work in terms of designing our storyboards and the eventual outcome of the pop video itself.

For example when the singer is singing so naturally we will have a close up of the singers face , which will most likely focus on his lips .This may shot at a low angle to give the lead singer some sort of authority and a sense of 'cockiness' towards his audience since we are trying to give the image of our band being edgy and rebellious.

Another example is when we hear the band playing we will have a wide shot the band which will show the whole band performing . This will start with the close up of the singers face and wiull slowly track out to the whole band which which be an establishing shot and will show the band playing outside an abandoned factory with corragated iron in the background.

Introduction To the Music Industry

Music taste can be a controversial topic –almost to the point of tribalism. Everyone has their own opinion and taste of various music, and it is hard to sway their views or try and convert them to listening to your favourite genre of music. Music is not just what you listen to it can affect all the aspects about you. Your personality, the way you dress, the way we speak and sometimes even the way we act. The main example of this is when a music company creates a star or a band that is destined for fame then they don’t want the star or band to be a one hit wonder. In fact the complete opposite they want to be able to market this band as long as possible this can be up to 20 - 30 years and sometimes even longer. It is more than the actual music to them; it mainly matters about how they’ve created a business like element from this band, a product of money. They start to produce t-shirts with the bands logo and faces on. This then starts to branch out to cups, wristbands, pillows, curtains .Any item that can have a design on it will be sought after by the company. The music company does this so that their star product can be known worldwide and achieve global stardom.

Some times the dynamic tension that exists between the artistic and commercial forces underpins the success of this vast media business. This may be due to thecae that sometimes that that the band as a whole does not work well together, whether it be their talent or other reasons. The only good act in the band may break away from the band and aim to try and launch a solo career. An example of this is Bruce Springsteen realising his full potential as a musician and going solo. Yet there is also this dynamic tension between bands and record companies, the tension between organic and synthetic music. Organic music is all about being natural and making music for the soul purpose of making music, the band write their own songs and make the music they want, this also means they earn 100 % of profit. This can also be considered real music as it is made by the band not a business tycoon music producer. Synthetic music is Factory based, manufactured pop bands, written for the band by the producers of usually big multimedia companies. This is usually a group of good looking girl or boys, created for the one and only reason to please mainstream audiences and make commercial record companies a lot of profit.

The pop video is only one strand of a multimedia campaign. Television, radio, newspaper and magazines also fall into this category as this is a great way to get music out world wide. With such a wide range of choices the pop video can be shown and displayed all over the media. For the example the single can be easily broadcasted on the radio while the actual music video can be shown on television, with the band being interviewed in a music magazine. 3 trans-national corporations dominate the music industry. Universal, Sony/BMG and Midmost are major companies which own a line of smaller companies. www.universalstudios.com

This is done so companies can have many various genres of music to reach different kinds of audiences a. These are called Major independents. Next there a record company that has little or no financial connections to the major ones. These are known as independent companies or ‘Indie’ companies.

The purpose of creating a music video is usually in order to promote a single or an album. A video being released is much more entertaining as it engages the audience more with the song , and from watching a video the audience can see what the real meanings of the song are. This also makes it easier to distribute on other kinds of media platforms such as TV , Advertising and internet , including youtube , my space and other social networking sites.

Trying to get your music video out to the public may be one of the hardest problems you can face but even once the video has been sent to the public whether its shown on various tv channels, or broadcasted on youtube there will still be problems facing it. The pop video is frequently is becoming less cared about and irrelevant to fans. At the rate of which modern society is downloading illegal music of the internet, more people are beginning to get more and more of their songs for free. This also has a knock on effect as when someone downloads a song by illegal means they then share it with a friend and the friend copies it over to his and the process repeats. This means that record sales are going down in their thousands. Music television is becoming more increasingly popular like shows like MTV , Kerrang and VH1 .Aswell as well as MTV just showing music videos it also airs new reality shows dealing with rich and annoying teenagers . The music videos that are mostly shown now are the more mainstream based ones , the idea is the more money the artist or the music company pays to the music tv shows , the more likely and often there video will shown per day.

Permissions Letter

HURTWOOD HOUSE
HEADED PAPER


Head of Copyright and Legal Affairs
Sony Music
9 Derry Street , London , W8 5HY
September 12th 2010


Dear Rolf Schmidt

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

The Only Ones , Another Girl , Another Planet

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely

Tom Warhurst
Hurtwood House School

Composition Rules

Film making is a language which uses various parts of film grammar to communicate the meaning that the director wants in pop videos and movies . The picture composition rules are this grammar . I explain with some of the key ones below.

1) Different types of Shot size

Different types of shot convey different types of meaning.

Extreme close up (ECU this shot is meant to be emotive and filled with detail. Forexample it could to show a smile on an actors face to show an emotive repsone of how the charcter is feeling.

Close up (CU)this shot shows a small bit of the scence yet its main emphasis is on the charcters whole face .

Mid shot (MS)this is where your able to see most of the actor .A good example of this is seeing things that the actor with his hands , giving something to someone or just a simple hand gesture.

Wide Shot (WS)this shot allows you to see the entire actor and most of his surroundings for example sitting an old man sitting on a park bench with a small sycamore tree behind him in shot

Extreme wide shot (EWS) this shot can shows where the film is being set , being either a long landscape shot or just a shot of a town

2) Camera Position and angle (up shot,down shot)

If the camera shoots the actor at his/her ‘eye level’ then this is usually to display factual information

If the camera is shot at a higher angle the camera looks down at a character then this suggests that the main character is humble and we as an an audience feel a sort of power or authority over the character

If the camera is shot at a low angle this gives a sense of authority to the actor . This could also be used to juxtopose the charcter to be of an arrogant nature .

(3) Camera Movements

Crane shots are used to give an aethestic pleasure to the scene. As it is a camera attached to a long pole that can lift up and down , side to side . which ghives a whole new element of movement to a camera.

Zoom. We use zoom to move from a long shit to a closer one very quickly . The subject size is increased and the viewers attention is drawn to whatever the camera zoomed on for example a fight scene zooms into a hand clutching a knife. Following pan. Zooming out how ever could be used as an establishing shot to show the viewer where the subject is.

Tracking (dollying). Tracking involves the camera actually being moved closer or futher away from the subject . It gives a smoother feel to zoom and looks more ‘professional’ lines are put down on the ground to make this operation easier. A camera tracking to a particular scence can make it intimate and emotiona;

Hand-held camera. A hand-held camera can produce a jerky, bouncy, unsteady images . This used for POV shots sometimes or to feel close to the charater as your basically ‘walking’ with him .

4) Lighting

Soft and harsh lighting. Soft and harsh lighting can manipulate a viewer's attitude towards a setting or a character. The way light is used can make objects, people and environments look beautiful or ugly, soft or harsh, artificial or real. Light may be used expressively or realistically.

Backlighting. A romantic heroine is often backlit to create a halo effect on her hair.

If the main protagnist is sitting in a room you would have 3 lights to light him properly.

1) The spot this used to light the subject , the main aim of this is to flood the subject in a pool of light

2) 32 * anticlockwise to this you would have the Fill light. This is used to create shadows and give the person some depth.

3) The actor will still look like a cardboard cutout so we then have to use another light directly behind him which gives the person a 3D sense to him .

Light is mainly used to change the emotion and mood of an scene. Soft lighting can make the scene beautiful and romantic .Harsh lighting can make an actors face look horrible and ugly and the scene dark , dismall and even provoke fear.

5) Rule of Thirds

This used to make a scence visually pleasing .If you look at the diagram there are 4 different hot spots and a head or the main subject content in that spot will look great . But you can subvert this idea by breaking the rule and placing the main content in different spots to the the 4 main hot spots.

6) Leading the eye

This can be done to make the viewer look for what is the subject content . It gives the picture a pleasure to look at . For example there could be a extreme long shot of a desert , barren area , with a long and twisting path cut deep into the sand with a small cabin at the bottom of it

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