Props list

Letter to the record label

For this process we had to write a letter to the record company that owns the rights to the 'clap snap' song so that we knew whether we were allowed to legally use this song for our music video.

Name of artist and research

In one of our lessons we were asked to think of a name for our artist. We knew that we wanted our artist to have a name that actually meant something. We used websites on the internet by typing in 'baby names' and original short names that would make an impact of interest on an artist.

When looking at this we came up with the name 'Isis' which we all really liked and not only was the name short but original it also has a historical background as the name of a greek goddess. The correct meaning of the name Isis in mythology is the 'god of the Earth', and also the 'goddess of the Sky', and she was born on the fourth intercalary day. She was worshipped and thought of as a God and Queen to the people of Greek mythology which can then be used to influence our our props, costumes and projections. I know that we still want to create shapes and include them in our black and white projections but another idea could be to shoot a video or time lapse of the sky and also put that in our projections because this would then link to her role as the 'goddess of the sky'. Another link could be to use a Royal chair in our Girly set that the artist could sit on to give the interpretation of the 'queen' or 'Goddess' role. 

A more modern look at the goddess Isis is the image of isis that was tattooed onto famous singer Rihanna. To her the tattoo pays a tribute to her Grandmother who passed away due to her battle with cancer and decided to get this tattoo to remember her grandmother by.

Emily Tedor

Emily Tedor is a speaker that came into our media class to talk about creating music videos in the real music industry today and below are notes that I gasped from her speaking to us.

• Emily is a video commissioner
• She works at polydor records which is a subsidiary company to conglomerate company universal.
• The importance of her job is to mediate opinions between everyone.
• A&R's job is to decide the single for the artist to be released based on popularity and then they give this information to them and the artist.
• Marketing will add up costs and give a budget and timed schedule for the video.
• The commissioners job is to represent the needs of the artist for the music video. There is a lot of people managing the video before they go to the directors because they need to know that everyone is on the same page as well as giving the director visual freedom.
• There is a lot of directors at the moment that want to go from music videos into film so they usually create completely narrative based music videos to show their narrative structure in their portfolio.
• The Commissioner puts together a brief from the directors list of ideas that they then send out to the producers to please the vision that is to be created and get everyone on board.
• You can find inspiration from anywhere but a lot of people go too far and re-create what has already been done.
• The Commissioner usually does not send the brief out to more then five directors and then they will send them a treatment and give them a week to come up with the final treatment draft.
• To make the artists content they see how the creative ideas merge between the artist and director and see if the artist is content with the choice.
• Things have changed, the single used to be released 6 weeks before sale so that people would get hooked onto the song via the radio and then buy it but now as soon as the single goes on air it goes on sale. This effects dance acts but does not really effect album artists.
• A lot of directors will keep image banks and photographer references to have a creative flow of ideas. 
• The location of the choreographer for 'years and years' was located in La and the weather was bound to be sunny so it was filmed in LA. They had an average budget for this video. The years and years music video was shown to us and was created on an 'average budget'.

• Sometimes you have to think on you feet because not all ideas pan out. A music video that created these issues was 'lucky charms' feat. wiley and by SKANK

• You visually need to represent the similarity between the narrative of the video and the lyrics or structure of the song. For instance the narrative needs to build up to a climax when the song does.
• Sometimes its good to go back to the same director used previously for that artist because they understand the image of the artist.
• Treatments are so important when explained to the artist because then you know that they like the ideas and that they can not divert from the plan or the director after everything is agreed, which i why they tend to work with the same directors because the artists get along with them. The treatment and story board protects the director from being left out of the final cut of the music video.
• Shooting in the studio allows you to have more control but the costs go up of mine en scene and also you don't have to worry about the weather.

Editing our animatic storyboard

The process of editing the animatic storyboard was also quite simple but was more about finding the time to edit it around other lessons. We uploaded our video previously shot and made a folder called 'animatic storyboard clips' and because we filmed the shots in order it meant we didn't have to rearrange the order to fit the sequence and structure of the music video. Editing the animatic meant that we had to look back at our timeline and use it as a guide to check and make sure the order was correct and so that we knew how long each shot lasted. We cut the shot to the timing on our timeline and because when we filmed the animatic we made sure that we filmed each shot for about 10 seconds, it meant that the shot would only need to be clipped down to its shot timing and length. Below are a few pictures that we took when editing the animatic to show the technique on screen.

Filming our animatic storyboard

The process of filming our animatic storyboards was a simple use of just a camera and the already drawn storyboard images. Georgie and I basically set the camera focus and zoom on the lens so that each image or frame of each shot that we had drawn on our storyboard could fit into the whole frame of the camera. This allowed us to get a close up of the visual aspects towards making our music video and then all we had to do was carry on this process for each shot, gradually moving the A4 pages down to the next image. The importance of making an animatic storyboard is so that the viewer and my group can see how the shots and the drawings fit to the song 'clap snap'. This helps see what is wrong or shouldn't last for the duration of a shot so that we can change it before it becomes a problem on set.

Visuals of sets

For our 4 separate sets for our music video we all created mood boards using 'gomoodboard' app which allows you to present images of inspiration onto a an online template to modernise the look and present it in a spaced out approach.

UV SET

This link is the moodpboard for our UV set and shows makeup styles that we want to use in our music video. The outfits and lighting will also be similar because the outfits need to be bright or white to show up in a UV light set. The lighting will clearly be the same because UV lighting is used specifically to exploit the colours of UV paint and makeup.

http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/xl-09arn/share

BLINDERS SET

This mood board is more about the lighting and simplicity of our second set. We want to use blinders and want this set to be all in black and white filming effects which will be created in the editing process in post production. This mood board shows the type of 'blinder' lighting that we want to use to create silhouettes from the artists body.

http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/6xlU3_N9/share

GIRLY SET

For our girly set we wanted to create a wall of flowers as the backdrop for the artist and hopefully get a piece of furniture for the artist to sit on to give the impression of her higher status.

http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/mCnEftxK/share

PROJECTIONS SET

For this we were inspired by Rihanna's 'you da one' music video and shapes used that are then projected onto Rihanna. WE also wanted to create this moody black and white imagery.

http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/UjwyWN7V/share

Final meeting with Luke

For our final meeting with Luke we pitched our final idea of the use of 4 different sets creating different imagery and outfit looks and a different form of appearance for the main girl. For our visual inspiration for the 'projections' set we showed Luke the Rihanna music video for her single 'you da one'. He understood the simplicity of this black and white set and the use of shapes and lines to be projected on to the artist. Luke suggested that we should be more specific of all of the looks for all four sets and a positive and visual way of doing this is to create mood boards for all of the sets and our own sketch on the sets and the placement of the dancers and main girl.

Another contextual link to the art of these projections is from photographer 'solve sundsbo' who is known for his artistic and photographic fashion photographs like these:

Sketches of sets

Lighting

History of the 'clapping' song

The clapping song was an American song originally written by Lincoln Chase but the lyrics of the song date all the way back to the 1930's when they were borrowed from the song 'little rubber dolly'.
The lyrics were made to give instructions so that audience members could dance along to 'The clapping game. The clapping game is a group game which is generally played by two people and involves clapping to a song, whether this be a rhyme or other forms of song. Clapping games appeal to a global audience as it gets people involved with each other. Some clapping games like the one described in the lyrics of Icona pop's 'clap snap' have dance moves to accompany the songs. One of these being the clapping game 'rollercoaster'.

The clapping game has many different targeted audience members but since the song in itself is evolving dance, players and clapping to nursery rhymes it has even been dated back to children's programmes like Barney.

The original clapping song is performed by Shirley Ellis in this dated video.

A more updated and modern take on this game and the 'clapping song', which includes the use of the game in choreography but to a different song with different lyrics compared to our song. This is shown in this adapted version performed by Cher Lloyd on the programme 'x factor'.

Story board

Finishing our timeline

This is the finished version and short video of my timeline that we made in our group. The importance of completing our timeline was so that we could then move on to working on our story board. The story board process is a technique used to visual portray each shot of our music video before we film it. All of these processes are important for the future of our music video and actual production of it. We can learn and change something if it appears not to work or look good in the shot before we film it so that it is not too late. This timeline is a written summary of each shot that compliments the visual summary made in the story board. 

Timeline

Our music video is 2 minutes and 44 seconds long. In class we looked at Negus's views of repetitive conventions for pop videos. It was important for us to create a repetitive music video because the lyrics of the song were also very repetitive, so they both compliment each other. Repetitive conventions creates visuals that the audience will be used to with the artist and will feel like they can be interactive with the music video because these aspects in the music video are conventions of pop artists. It was useful for us to highlight the timeline because then we were able to see what section we were discussing for which set in the studio.