October 2016 | Anne's Media Blog

Thursday 20 October 2016

Prop list

On: 16:36

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By: Anne Braatz Media

After our meeting with the art director we are now starting to think about sourcing some of the props we need. This is a prop list that Honor created that allowed us to fill in the sources.

For the office setting we are lucky since we have most of the props available in our school environment and have the permission to use them. The list also helps us to see what else we need to source.

Next we will need to continue sourcing the props and costumes, while also keeping an eye on the budget. This process might take a while to complete since we want the right look to each prop.

Wednesday 19 October 2016

Audience feedback

On: 10:00

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By: Anne Braatz Media

We selected a group of students that fit into our target audience:

-Haydon

-Jon

-Kenneth

We also showed our animatic to India and Jess to see how another audience (teenage girls) reacts to our music video concept. We were presently surprised.

Target audience:

How well did they understand our concept?

What new information did we gain from the feedback?

secondary audience:

How well did they understand our concept?

What new information did we gain from the feedback?

Will we make changes to our video, based on the feedback?

Tuesday 18 October 2016

Bird cage building progress

On: 02:00

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By: Anne Braatz Media

We went to talk to Paul (the media technician) multiple times, since he is starting to build the birdcage. One of the things we discussed with him is if we could have the top of the cage as a round dome, he said that he would try since it will be heard to bend the material. Later on he then informed us that it will have to be a pointy top. We also discussed the size and asked him to add another bar to all sides so that the actress has more space to move in the cage. WE also informed him that we want one of the walls to be removable so that we can film the artist without the cage bars too and that we don't need a door since the door won't play any role in the music video.

After we agreed on the form, size and construction we offered Paul any help, to which he replied that he will let us know if we can help. I can imagine that we will get to paint the cage once it has been build.

These are the plans:

Confirming the shoot day

On: 01:12

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By: Anne Braatz Media

We have emailed our cast to inform them about the shooting details. We will also have to create blue cards for our two lead artists (Beteeva & Ashen) to avoid complications with the students teachers.

Animatic

On: 00:00

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By: Anne Braatz Media

An animatic is an animated storyboard, that is created to help visualize the idea. The shots are transferred into an editing program and aligned in the right spot and order with the music.
The band shots work very well, since they adhere to the music.and the proxemics around the cage is successful.
We will need more shots in the video.
To get further opinions we will do an audience screening of the animatic and get some feedback.

Monday 17 October 2016

Casting extras

On: 03:00

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By: Anne Braatz Media

We did it! Today we confirmed our cast!

This is a picture of our extras and band members. After a short meting this Monday at 1:50 we gave them a brief of the music video concept and their roles with in it. They all liked it and were happy to become part of the Cew! Our nest step will be to rehears the song with them so they van play it on their individual instruments. Thomas said he will teach them since he himself is a talented and skilled musician. WE will also need to contact the students teachers and confirm the shooting day.

Set design

On: 02:30

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By: Anne Braatz Media

In yesterdays lesson the set designer came in to talk to us and discuss our plans. We showed her our two drawn images to give her an idea of what we wanted.

Sadly I couldn't make it to todays lesson, but my reliable team took control and updated me today.

These are the notes Honor took during the meeting:

One of the women has some wooden liner for the office.
Don’t like the office- cliché
Get loads of photographs of an office- do we want bleak, standard type
Do we need to get cubes – boards to divide everything up
Swivel chairs- all the stuff from the office- full desk.
Make a mood board of the office
What do the sheets of paper have on them??
Go see Paul about birdcage
Want it on rostra. A circular one- always going to be looking up at her.
Need more research
Birdcage is going to be made up of sections- have enough space around it for people to walk around.
Do we think the image id going to hold?
We will be supplying everything in the office apart from the flooring and the windows.
Flats around office- will need to have wallpaper on them- look into research- it adds abit of texture
Fluorescents- as lights- create the ceiling- creates ceiling of light
Need to get rostra, birdcage, wooden floor and blinds

Request for copyright permission

On: 00:30

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By: Anne Braatz Media

We needed to seek permission weather we may work with the song due to it's copyright. Therefore I did some research into the copyright owner.

Wikipedia told me that the who usually own the copyright were 'Go! Dics records' and 'London records'. While I couldn't find any email adress to contact them, however once I researched London records I found that they are a subsidiary of Universal music.

Therefor I send this email to umusic to ask for permission to work with the music. We are now waiting for a reply.

Sunday 16 October 2016

Lighting design

On: 23:30

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By: Anne Braatz Media

Today we were visited by the lighting designer, George. We explained our music video concept to him and told him about our lighting suggestions that we picked up on during his introduction talk about lighting.

During our introduction about lighting, I noted a few facts and questions down to start the brainstorming for our lighting concept.

strobe lighting , creating a step effect -> bridge of the song
warm or cold lighting ?
spotlight
soft box-defused light- close ups. ->office location
Moving lights -spots or wash
areal effects -shadow
don't create a harsh change
add layers

We then went on to discuss this and decide on lighting with George's help:

We will have the cage set in a warm lighting and the office in a cold/ white light.

This is the drawing George did to explain the lighting of the cage to us:

This is the Martic Mac 700 Profile:

Soft Box:

Saturday 15 October 2016

Looking into alternative Jobs for narrative

On: 13:36

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By: Anne Braatz Media

We did some online research on boring jobs, that we could potentially use as alternatives to the plain office setting.

One article that we found very helpful listed the Top 10 Most Boring Jobs. These were:

Security Guard
Bank Brancher
Data Entry
Accountant
Nanny
Dishwasher
Truck Driver
Cleaning and Housekeeping
Garbage Collection
Teacher

Into closer consideration we drew the jobs of the Security Guard, Dishwasher and Teacher for reasons of them being most accessible to us and easy to recreate. However we all came to the realisation that we actually like the stereotypical look of a boring office setting, since this is exactly what we are trying to connote. So although we took the Luke's advice in consideration we decided to stick to the original plan of an office setting, since it immediately channels the right message to the audience due to it's stereo-typicality.

Sourcing costumes - starting point

On: 00:30

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By: Anne Braatz Media

Now that we started sourcing props and costumes, I decided to contact Hurtwood's theatre department since they have a wide variety of costumes stored in the stock.

This is the Email I sent to the Wardrobe Mistress, Elizabeth. Due to previous work with her I knew of one dress that would be suitable so I used this and a section of three reference pictures as an example get across what we are picturing.

This was her reply. She was happy to help us.

This is the following interaction :

We had to face a small problem of the dress being lost, but Elizabeth provided us an alternative.

This is the dress we ended up fitting.

However, we quickly decided that we will not use it since it is too short on her and not exactly what we want. This fitting however, helped us to decide that we would prefer a coloured dress to add something more visually exciting to the set up.

Friday 14 October 2016

Talking to Luke

On: 03:13

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By: Anne Braatz Media

In today's lesson we had another catch-up session with the creative director, Luke. We told him about our new concept, including the narrative and second set, and updated him on the bird cage building progress. He was happy to see our progress but also gave us a few vital points of critique that need further development:

He said that it is ok for us to have a second set.
That the shots of the male throwing over the table in slow motion , won't look as good as we imagine them to. Therefore we should consider objects falling to the floor or spilling.
He said that a 'boring office' is super stereotypical and not very visually exciting, so we should think outside the box of other more interesting boring jobs.

We will now need to think about these points and develop our idea further.

Thursday 13 October 2016

Cast List

On: 13:53

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By: Anne Braatz Media

This is an update of our current cast list, we have nearly confirmed all of them except for our Base player. This cast list helps us keep an overview and visualise the final product by referring back to the actors looks.

We are currently working on finding an appropriate actor for our base player. We are planning to contact Max Rollason and Oliver Hodges, however they sill need to be confirmed.

This is a picture of Max.

This is Oliver .

This is a google document of our cast list, that allows us to add to it through out the process.

Wednesday 12 October 2016

Contacting the cast

On: 04:05

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By: Anne Braatz Media

Now that we have a basic idea of the music video in our heads we are starting to source materials and actors. Over a longer period of time we kept our eyes open looking for potential actors around school. We all had our individual favourites that we sugested, so we decided to have a casting to see who is most suitable and who will provide the look we want. We are mainly focusing on finding the solo artist first, since she is the most important actor in the video.

This is an e mail I send out to the potential actors of interest:

Sadly neither Franek or Ashen could make it to the first casting, however all the girls managed ane we persiut with our test shoots.

Monday 10 October 2016

Planning Music Video

On: 02:48

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By: Anne Braatz Media

Wednesday 5 October 2016

Audience feedback

On: 11:03

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By: Anne Braatz Media

As we have now settled on our video concept we wanted to have some feedback of our target audience. There for Honor and Thomas had a short interview with Ben, Anjuli and Rory who all suit our target audience profile.

We had 5 questions that we wanted to ask...
1. what do you think of the idea?
2. do you like the song?
3. Does the music video match the style of the song?
4. As our intended target audience do you like the Bird Cage concept?
5. What qualities do you think we are trying to promote about our artist?

Tuesday 4 October 2016

Visit from executive producer

On: 23:30

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By: Anne Braatz Media

Today Olli Allgrove came to talk to us about the company 'The Mill' and his work as an executive producer. These are my notes:

Updated Time Line

On: 01:54

Comments: 1

By: Anne Braatz Media

Sunday 2 October 2016

Narrative development

On: 23:30

Comments: 0

By: Anne Braatz Media

In this voice recording I am explaining the updated and developed music video concept, after our feedback from Luke. We decided to reintroduce a narrative to add more variety to the music video, preventing it from becoming boring.

These are the notes I referred to during the voice recording:

We developed our narrative idea, since we came to the realisation that we will have too little footage and action to create a interesting ad entertaining 3 min clip.
We developed the narrative idea.
before we dismissed the idea of a fully fleshed narrative strand to avoid cheesiness and an unprofessional look, however we have now altered this.
We are incorporating another set and small narrative that places the entire video into another perspective.
We will have the male lead actor sitting in a stereotypical plane and boring office, simply staring into the camera.
We introduce this element a 1/4 into the video.
While cutting back to him the audience can see the paper work piling on his desk.
He is daydreaming about the cage set situation. He is frustrated with his own life and the fact that he can not be with the female artist.
During the bridge of the song he loses his self-control and lets lets his frustration loose. He throughs around the paper work, desk ornaments, spills coffee, throughs over the desk etc.
In the last 20 seconds of the song he then, in the bird cage set, walks into the birdcage and starts kissing the artist.

Time line #1

On: 13:59

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By: Anne Braatz Media

We needed to cut the song since its original length of 3 minutes 35, was too long. We selected to cut the guitar solo of 32 second. Therefor we are know working with a cut version of 2:99.

We then created this basic timeline of our song. We identified the timing of the chorus in the song and the timing of the bridge. Based on the 'skeleton of the song' we then started location our ideas and creating a rough outline of our music video.

However this work is incomplete, we have a lot of questions concerning our video concept. Once these are answered and we have touched up ou idea we will work back into the timeline, to enable us to create a story board.

Saturday 1 October 2016

post created by honor

Group discussion

On: 23:30

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By: Anne Braatz Media

In todays lesson, we have brainstormed what we want the girl to be doing while she is in the cage.

The questions that rose when we were discussing the artists role:

Who is it?
Is she going to be strong enough?
What is she doing?

So as a group we have made a list of some of the actions we want her doing

Stand still and prominent
reaching out of the cage
touch the cage
dancing
flirting
dancing with the boy
flirt with the boy
use microphone??

We also we discussed the Bird Cage. We need to think what it is going to look like and how it is going to be made.

Cage design

On: 08:12

Comments: 1

By: Anne Braatz Media