Change of plan!
In early December, Amy and I got talking about Deja Vu, and I expressed doubts in how I wasn't sure about whether or not our planned music video would be as successful as we'd previously hoped. I was relieved to find that Amy had the same concerns and we decided that perhaps we should change the song.

In our next lesson we shared our views with Sophie, and although she wasn't worried about Deja Vu, she did agree that we should change the song if we weren't all happy and decided on the song. We recognised that we all had to be one hundred per cent content with our song selection before planning in detail. One major concern was that 3OH!3 is male, and our group is solely female. If we relied on a lead and they pulled out part way through, it could dramatically affect our music video and waste valuable, crucial time. By choosing a song with a female lead, one of the three of us could be the focus of the video and there is no way any of us would pull out.

As Amy revised, me and Sophie searched YouTube for songs lead by female vocalists. We searched: Ke$ha, Amy Studt, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. We knew that we should pick a song without much (preferably any) publicity, and without a current music video so that we wouldn't be subconsciously influenced.

After listening to a few tracks by Taylor Swift, we realised that she was the artist for us. All that we had to do was choose a track that followed our criteria we'd drawn up prior to choosing Deja Vu. One track that did this is: Better Than Revenge by Taylor Swift. Instantly, we both knew that this was the one we wanted to work on. The tempo, pace and story line through the lyrics were ideal for a "live" performance and was open to a strong and satisfying narrative. We called Amy over, and she agreed with us.

For the rest of the lesson, me and Sophie then began discussing possible story lines for narratives. We had very different ideas, but they all were related to a main female character plotting revenge on another female character, ultimately for 'stealing' her boyfriend. As we kept disagreeing on underdeveloped ideas, we decided that it would be best for all three of us to go away and get to know the track, and form ideas of our own ready to discuss, compare and hopefully to combine. By the next lesson, I was the only one to have started due to the others having to focus more on other subjects, so I printed off sheets with lyrics and space to write and gave them to the others to save them having to take time to organise things. I then got cracking with my own decoding of the lyrics and transforming my subjective interpretation to realistic and creative ideas.



I decided to look at a certain section in more detail, as this is where the tempo noticeably slows down, so instead of having disorientating edits, this part needs to portray a little more cohesion and I hoped that planning it carefully would get this across. To include all the necessary information needed in a more visual way, I designed a storyboard.

PASTE PLAN WITH LYRICS HERE

After sleeping on it, I reached the conclusion that no matter how we did it, it would be far too confusing for our targeted audience, especially as it is all our our first attempt at a music video. I told the others how I felt and they agreed and said that it would probably be best to keep things simple to start with, and then build in professionalism through editing and swapping footage for new more advanced footage if we felt we were capable and it would improve our work.
For the rest of the lesson, I got another sheet with lyrics ready to write down all of our ideas combined to form our first proper draft.

The opening is what I'd planned, as the others hadn't got around to producing their own ideas for the introduction yet. The instrumental then, I'd figured out the timings. I said that we should introduce the "live" performance somewhere here so that everybody important is introduced early on, like in a film. They agreed, and Sophie suggested that we should have a narrative introduction too, setting the scene. Me and Amy thought that it was a good idea too, and said that we should produce a montage of footage conveying a harmonious relationship between the main female and her boyfriend. The editing should be in sync.
During the next lesson, we shared ideas. Amy had formed the idea that instead of there being one female plotting revenge on another, it would be one female angry at her split personality. Sometimes she is kind to her boyfriend and completely normal, the next minute she's like another person. I said I needed a while to get my head around this idea in relation to the entire song, so we said we'd continue next lesson.In my free periods I planned and jotted down my ideas whilst listening to the track on my ipod. I worked out the exact timing of the introductory instrumental part, and planned an general story line. I then began thinking about how to get suitable editing and camera angles in, and focused in on locations, mise-en-scene, costuming and colour choice.

Media Storyboard

Above is our completed lip syncing product of Moto Moto from Madagascar 2. We recorded and edited the footage for just 60 seconds, as it was purely a practice to use the program for the first time, though it allowed us to try out everything we needed.

The shoot itself proved to be an issue, we struggled finding a venue as we didn't know of any vacant classrooms in the school, so finding one was time consuming. When we eventually found one, setting up the camera with the tripod took time, as none of us had ever used either before. Next, we had to decide on the camera angles and shots to use, as well as any dance routines - we hadn't planned any of this at all!

From this task we learned that:

• In our real music video we need to facially over exaggerate every single word - even if it feels ridiculous, it's easier and more comfortable for the audience to watch.
• We need to record each frame more than once, as the footage we found was not always suitable - we had to go out and film on two separate occasions! It's better to have too much to use rather than too little.
• We found that we should be listening to the track at the time of lip syncing so that we're all in time with not only each other, but the track itself. We found that as we didn't do this with the chorus, the recordings didn't fit as accurately when we were putting it to the track.
• Every single shot needs to have been carefully planned, as we went out with just a rough plan and found that our ideas weren't developed enough to do everything without planning more. We need to consider: location, costume, actions, lighting (our lighting was very dark and shadowed, to an upbeat, content song - we edited the recordings to make it brighter, however this lost a lot of the quality), and most importantly; CAMERA ANGLES, before setting out to record.