Take me to church

Our main ideas for our Music Videos are 

• Black and White effect throughout the video

• fire

• fighting

• love/hate

• emotional

• smoking shot, but use alcohol instead 

These ideas are all included in the music video 'Take Me To Church', we only saw this video after creating our idea and story board therefore do not want to be seen as copying it but just putting it in our own perspective. 

The opening shot is of a fire, this particularly was of interest to us as we have shots focused around the burning of a fire.







We would like to include a shot like this but instead of smoking of our main character drinking vodka to show clear facial expressions and emotions.





When the tempo of the song changed, the shots became faster and the actions within the shots showed suspense and urgency. The slower shots showcased the love towards each other and the faster ones showed panic and violence.

We thinking that a black and white colour scheme creates a gloomy tense atmosphere, in which we want to create. Furthermore, this video uses a black banner above and below we would like to replicate this with out videos as we felt it made a darker feel towards the audience with we found powerful. We might refer back to this video when filming for inspiration on effective shots.

Choosing our Artist Names and Album Album Names

We have decided the artist is going to be called Tobias Kane as the other names did not achieve a positive feedback when we asked our target audience. For example, Tobias Berberich did not seem like a pop star name.

We were really not sure in which album name we prefer. Therefore, we asked 15 different students aged 17-18, and 5 young teachers. These were the results

BLUE  /////

FLAME /////

ALIVE ///

EXISTENT ///

SHATTER

IMPACT   ////

We also considered keeping our album self-titled. Therefore, the front cover of the digipack will only showcase Tobias Kane (our artist) on the front title. We like this idea and may use this instead as we could not figure out which one worked well underneath the name. Self-titled albums are normally used by new artists or already established artists. We feel this is very appropriate for our song and genre of music, which focuses on the music rather than the promotion and extras of creating an album.

Therefore, our album will be self-titled.

James Bay Marketing Strategy

We looked into James Bay's marketing strategy, to get a greater insight into how he wants to portray himself and connect with his fans, in order to understand how we should create our music videos and digipaks to appeal to this audience. 

Although he uses a wide use of marketing techniques, we found that his main strategy was through different social media platforms and networks.

The main examples include:

Twitter- He uses twitter to connect with his fans personally, posting pictures of meeting them and messages saying thank you for being a good audience. He posts videos in which are sometimes personal and of him on tour, as well as promoting his music video to fans. 

 

Youtube- He uses youtube to share his music videos, tracks and live performances, as well as giving a platform of linking the audience to similar videos such as covers and interviews. Not only this, but this Youtube account could be considered as a type of social media as viewers are able to 'like' and 'comment' on the photos, in which others can reply to. Therefore, this is another powerful tool to promote himself and his music, and receive feedback for viewers.

Facebook- often his social media sites mirror each other. However, they retain his look, personality and passion for music sharing music and kind words, whilst providing information contour dates and advertisements like the examples below.

Blog- A common theme, including colour scheme and mood of each marketing technique is kept consistent. This makes the artist look more professional and eye-catching to spot information and other works by him. For example, more natural colours with a down-to-earth, simple theme where it shows his focus on music.

Instagram- He uses this in the same way, providing another platform and way to connect with fans.

An important thing we learnt from this research is the way James Bay markets himself in the music industry and towards his viewers, is extremely consistent.

Not only this, but it portrays his personality, type of genre and mood, in which the viewers can expect from his music and videos.

For example, his calm, relaxed, soulful approach in which he connects, reflects his music type and is consistent within his music videos in which are focused on a simple, 'back-to-basics' type of video in which provides a thoughtful meaning. In comparison to people like Lady Gaga who involve more special effects and excitement in their videos.

Therefore, in our music video we want to mirror this consistency between the material we create, for example the same sort of themes throughout the music video, digipack and CD cover, in order to make our work more powerful.

Location Pictures

Garden 

We will shoot in the garden for scenes involving the fire pit, and closeups of our girl actress. This is because we feel the lights already in this garden will look effective and provide an attractive, emotional environment which will connect to our song and story. The front door location may be used briefly within the video. The mirror location will be used in the shot of Emma (our actress) when she looks at herself, this is because the light will provide a interesting reflection on Emma for the audience.

The road location will mostly feature in the beginning when the actress is shown to be drunk walking down the street. This location is in Bushey. A limitation of this location is the lighting and therefore we will try and overcome this by using street and car lights to our advantage to create a gloomy light beam on the road and actress. In addition, we could use a flashlight which would not look realistic but would look alarming and dangerous.

 

Furthermore, we will use this public location of Harrow Viewpoint as our establishing shot. This location looks very good in the dark as the lights of harrow, however in the dark it will look extremely dark and visibility will be low. This may be effective for some shots , however we may have to overcome this by shooting in a earlier, lighter time of the day and using darkening effects over the top of the shots. In addition we could use car headlights on our actor.

Finally, we will film in this location within our school's boarding room. In order to use this location, we got permission from the owner. This is a good location as we are using it to film boys playing playstation, in which it is used for normally everyday which makes the whole scene look natural and not set up. The location is well lived in and not fake for filming in.

Our Actors

Costume, Props and Equipment

Tobi  

For all the shots we would like Tobi to wear casual clothing (e.g. jeans, tracksuit, t-shirt). We will describe our costume choices in further detail in a different blog.
The only prop for Tobi is the phone, for shots 7,8 and 16.

We got an old phone in which we can use, for when our actor receives messages from his girlfriend. This is also second hand and able to ruin and throw into the fire at the end.

Emma 

For shots 2,3 and 4 we would like Emma to wear a dress, symbolising she is coming home the next day from a party and is in a bad state. In these shots, Emma's make-up will be all messed up due to us wanting it to look likes its from the night before.

For the rest of the shot, we would like Emma to wear casual clothing (e.g. top and jeans). The probs Emma will be having is a Vodka Bottle for shots 2,3,4,5 and 11 and pictures of her and Tobi to burn in the fire pit in shots 10 and 15.

Fire Pit

As none of us have a fire pit available, we have decided to buy one from a local scrap yard as buying a brand new one would not have the same effect as an old worn out fire tin.

This is an example from Google of what we want it to look like.

Wine/vodka

We collected wine bottles in order to smash for our slow motion shots which create a tense, damaging environment. The smashing of the bottle reflects the nature of there relationship; violent, toxic, poisonous and slowly breaking down.

Cranberry Juice


This isn't necessary a prop, but was essential to buy in order to fill the bottles of something that will be good to film with. Not only this, but when using wine bottles, it may look similar to wine


Make-up

We will use make-up when getting ready to film. But also, the actress may attempt to put more on when drunk looking in the mirror. This is stereotypical and will make the actress look more vulnerable and more of a 'drunken mess'.

Equipment

Location permission

We are also using Harrow View Point, which is a public place therefore we do not need permission

Actor's Permission

For our music video, we need to get permission from our actors to ensure that we can use them in our music video. As we are using two main characters and extras, we included them all in one form. The permission form looks like this:

Permission:

Our Updated storyboard

Shooting schedule

28th November 

We feel we will need at least 2 days shooting time.

12.00 - 
smashing glass shot 5, 13

5.00pm - 
Meet at Bushey location. Alice's house.
Do actor make-up and outfit
Organise props

5.15pm -
Start filming shots 2, 3, 4 on the street.

5.40pm - 
film shot 12 at Alices house

6.00pm - 
shot 6, 7, 8
location: Beevors at School

7.00pm -
back to Sophie's
Harrow on the Hill Viewpoint for shot 1

29th November

5.00pm-

Photoshoot (for Digipack)

7.00pm - 

Shots 10, 11, 14, 15, 16

At Alex's house for fire pit 

9.30pm - 

Argument shots 9 

Storyboard

We took a different approach to creating a storyboard. 

This is because, although our music video follows a story, it does not follow a specific order. For example, although the argument would come later, it could also come earlier or at the start. We found that many music videos mix up there shots like this.


Therefore, we decided to draw each scene we wanted to use and each idea on our storyboard. We then cut them out and lined them up.



After, we played the song, and referred back to the lyrics in order to decide where we think each shot/scene should go in relation to the others.

We understand that this could change, however for now it gives us an idea.

Permission letter for the song

Date: Tuesday, 13 October 2015

Republic Records (Universal Music Group)

Dear Lucian Grainge (Chairman & CEO)

Our names are Sophie Compton and Alice Freeman-King and we are currently studying A level Media Studies at Aldenham School.

As part of our coursework this year, we are creating and producing a music video to a song of our choice. We have chosen 'Let it go' by James Bay as the song we would like to create a music video for, and we are writing this letter to seek your permission to do so.

Please note, this video will be used only for my coursework and will not be distributed or marketed in any form. We would greatly appreciate your permission to use this song,

Many thanks,

Sophie Compton and Alice Freeman-King.

Inspiration for my digipack

As the genre of our song is blues rock, we have taken time to research different fonts, colour schemes, photo and layout uses within this genre. 

We would like to use a similar to this because we like the simplicity and it is very easy and clear to read.

 we believe a dark colour scheme is more effective than a brighter one as it is more appropriate to the songs on the album and this allows it to touch the audience more powerfully. We also like the way the red lips stand out on a black and white shot, therefore we would like to use this in our digipak.


As our ideas are based around a argument within a relationship, we feel the front of the digipack should include emotion that the audience can expect within the song.

For the layout of the digipack, we would like the writing of the artist and the albums name to go in the middle of the front cover. We believe this will make the name of the artist stand out.