Group Meeting

In our own time our group got together with the intention of choosing a song for our music video. We discussed artists that we like and that could be suitable, and after a fairly long list we considered 3oh!3. We watched as many of their music videos as we could find to obtain a feel for their style, then began listening to their songs without videos. We knew that we wanted to choose one without a video so we wouldn't be subliminally influenced. We considered I'm Not Your Boyfriend Baby amongst others, but came to the conclusion that the song; Deja Vu had the strongest lyrics for a narrative, and had no expletive language unlike the majority of other tracks. We researched 3oh!3 (see the label 3oh!3) and discovered their iconic image which we now know we need to incorporate into the video.

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Yesterday we had another group meeting during class. We knew that it had been suggested that we try out a preliminary lip syncing task in order to get the hang of it, so that we have more of an insight into how it will work when it comes to doing it for real in our actual music video, as none of us have ever done it before. We should also learn the cans and can'ts of lip syncing which is useful to know before the planning stage.

As a group, we decided that we wanted something light, not very serious and with a change of tempo so that we could experiment properly. As Amy had originally wanted to do Dinosaur - Ke$ha we looked into that. It was fun, but after the second verse we'd all become sick of it and no longer wanted to work on it. After individually Youtubing songs (I looked at Beyonce, Eminem and Florence and the Machine) Amy came across the perfect track. It was fun, had a change in tempo and was quite 'tounge-in-cheek' which is ideal. It is Mono Mono from Madagascar 2.

We then spent the remainder of the lesson listening to the track, practicing miming to it, reading through the lyrics and compromising on where to make cuts and jotting our decisions down. It was very rough and we're not so bothered about costume or location as we're focusing solely on making the lip movements in sync with the track. So far we have worked very well as a group, although we do have very different opinions and ideas, we've all been talking it through until we agree or compromise.

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Today we got together again, although this time to focus on our main piece. We decided to plan a rough idea of what to do for the video. Initially we came to the conclusion that we would like:

• A narrative with the storyline linked to the lyrics, featuring the artist miming
• A plain, empty room solely for the artist
• Fast, varied cuts
• At least one section with sped up photographed stills

Next, knowing what we were setting out to achieve we listened to the song the whole way through, each mentally forming ideas of what we could do. The second time through we paused after each line and exchanged ideas. Most of the time they were actually quite similar, other times; one idea would outshine the others so we went with those, and a few times we disagreed so we kept talking until we reached a unanimous decision.

Some of Sophie's ideas stood out:

• Filming out of a car window at night, then speeding up the footage in order to create a blur of lights which should create a preferred reading of the main character travelling between locations.
• When the main character emerges from a females house after a one night stand, his clothes should be on back-to-front/inside out, etc for a comical effect.

Amy:

• Thought through the practicalities of our intended plan of having our main character jumping out of a second storey window.
• She also said that she could borrow some real police equipment and clothing from a policeman she knows for our 'officer officer' scene.

I:

• Suggested the idea of involving a seperate room for the artist, aside from the narrative in order to make the video more conventional and busy.
• Focused on the camera angles and movement in each frame.
• Organised the group during our discussion in order to make our ideas merge rather than clash.
• Am taking on the responsibility of gaining the use of a taxi for our 'cab driver cab driver' scene.
• I'm also looking into venues available for our useage that have a bar.

The rest of the planning stage was a combination of all of our ideas put together.

Group Meetings
On Thursday 21st October we found out who are other group members are and decided to have our first ever group meeting there and then. We discussed our individual intentions to combine ideas and reach mutual decisions for a rough direction of what we intend to aim for. We unanimously decided on three major aspects in the end.
1. We don't want a slow song, We want to be able to use fast, short cuts so we consequently need an upbeat track to accomodate this.
2. We don't want anything too serious. Facing real life issues for instance is too heavy we feel for our first ever music video, besides, we want to have fun and experiment with this project.
3. We'd really like to construct a conventional music video, as conventions we believe are definitely there for a reason.
None of us were biased to any particular genre, we all have a variety of tastes in different types of music, so we agreed to go away over half term and each come back with a couple of song ideas each that follow our previous conclusions: fast, fun and relitively conventional.
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Over the half term I looked at a wide range of videos and felt strongly about Nickelback's - Burn It To The Ground. I even started to draw up a plan for the introductory series of shots.
When I presented this to Amy and Sophie and explained what I had come up with over half term, neither of them felt connected to the song I had chosen, so the idea was rejected however it has still given me a small insight into how time consuming and detailed the planning process will have to be.

Nickelback - Burn It to the Ground Intro Plan

We also decided that we'd like our music video to have a narrative as well as a "live" performance and lip syncing, as we believe that all the most successful music videos are set up in this way and we personally find them more engaging and to watch as they manage to hold our attention. It also gives us a chance to learn new skills rather than focusing on purely a narrative, for instance.
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Today we had our second group meeting - Thursday 4th Novemeber - where we bounced song ideas off of eachother. I shared the idea of Eminem songs: Spacebound and So Bad, though neither were found to be appropriate for what we're looking for. Sophie suggested a perfect track however the lyrics were in German, which, as none of us speak German we decided would be too difficult and time consuming to learn to lip sync. Not to mention we'd have to translate the lyrics to work out what the song is about before we could even begin to think of a storyline for a narrative. Amy put forward a couple of Calvin Harris songs which although good, were far too famous already for us to focus on without being influenced by the original videos.
We also created our group blog - http://emma-amy-sophie.blogspot.com/ - where we all worked together to decide on our details. Amy and myself then wrote our first post together on the day's progress whilst Sophie looked up more possible songs. Amy then helped Sophie whilst I created our blog's graphology. It took three attempts to get it in a way that all three of us were content with, but the end result stuck. I also added a link list to make it easier for us to navigate to our individual pages as well as our school's media blogs.
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