STORYBOARD

The storyboard is a depiction of exactly what the shots are going to be and builds on the work which the timeline has already done. Pictures are drawn to demonstrate what the shot will look like and it helps the director decide what works and what doesn't. The storyboard is the plan that you shoot to, so if it works on paper that makes it a lot less expensive to do than shooting on camera for hours if not day. The story board works out the type of shot, the angles, the camera movements, the mise en scene, colours and shapes, and how the picture composition rules will be applied in the film.

For every line on the time line we have ten shots and each of those shots are demonstrated with the storyboard. We are using short sharp shots for our piece to give a sense of dynamism and drama. We are using tracking shots to give a good asthetic to the piece and to create the sense of movement and fast pace. Here is an example of three pages in our storyboard.

Below we have an example of a story board, in this shot the characters are spraying their graffiti 'tag' onto a wall. The page displays the timing, editing details, what is happening, the audio and what type of shot it is.

Here is a link to a video tutorial on making storyboards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hxoaikaHMA

TIMELINE

We created a timeline to display what we were going to do in each shot acording to the music. We described acording to each part of the song what the imagry would look like and gave information about the timing. The timeline describes what type of shot each of the shots are going to be, whether they are going to be long, close up, mid shot etc. The timeline also demonstrates how long each of our shots are going to be and what type of angle they are going to be, whether they are going to be low angle or high angle.


An example of a timeline


The timeline also demonstrates the narrative flow. It reveals the characters motives and how they are feeling.

COMPOSITION RULES

When film is made, directors often follow by certain guidelines and rules. These rules help dictate to the audience the meaning and flow of the piece and tells the audience consciously and subconsciously what to think. These are known as Composition rules.

TYPES OF SHOTS


The first composition rule I am going to cover is going to be the different type of shot size. There are many different types of shot size and they can all indicate different things. For example, if there is a close up of a person or a specific object, the director is telling you to pay attention to that specific thing. If there is a long shot or an extra long shot, it is usually establishing the location and the shots to follow are often located within the area established by the long shot. Long shots create first impressions. Mid shots and close ups are the establishing shots, mid shots supplying you with more information while close ups supplying the detail. Shots like the Extreme close up are unusual as you do not usually experience imagery such as this in real life. It is often used to ‘shock’ the viewer and can bring objects into a new perspective.



CAMERA POSITION AND ANGLES



Another composition rule is the rule of ‘camera position and angles’. Again, the position of the camera and the angle in which someone or something is shot can affect the audience’s perception of the subject. For example, if a character is shot with the camera angle facing up it can boost their importance and emphasises their strength and power. When the camera is facing down onto the character it belittles them and makes them seem vulnerable and weak, it turns the audience against them. Examples of the manipulation of camera position and angles in news and documentary interviews is if the shot has a wide angle lens it makes the subject look insignificant. If the camera has a long lens it makes people seem equal. When the camera is positioned to make the subject square on it makes the subject look ugly while if the camera is slightly side on it makes a person look slimmer.

CAMERA MOVEMENT



The movement of the camera is another way of manipulating the audience’s perception using a composition rule. The tracking shot can follow the subject and give a more personal feel to the piece as it can show the world from a mobile perspective. Crain shots can help give an impression of the position of a person or object, and can really help bring the film alive if the Crain is moving.

LIGHTING



Another way of putting across a certain message using composition is by using the lighting. Lighting affects not only what people see of what is being filmed, but also their impressions. For example, you can help focus an audience member’s attention to one part of the scene with the help of lighting by lighting the part which you wish to be focused on brighter than its surroundings. Contrast of lighting is also important. If you want to give the film a more mysterious and edgy look it will often have low contrast in comparison to film which is light hearted which would often have a high contrast.



RULE OF THIRDS



Another Composition rule is the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is a supposed rule which suggests that an image should be divided into nine different parts by two equally distanced horizontal line ands two equally distanced vertical lines. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would. It is used in film to make a shot look better and to help get across what is trying to be said. It encourages the audience to look at these certain points and helps the director portray their message easier. A good example is in the film seven,

COLOURS AND FORMS AND SHAPES



The director of a pop video might use all of these composition rules to put over the meaning wanted. Colours and forms and shapes connote different things to different members watching. For example, red means danger, black means death. While circles are gentle but zig zags are dangerous.

MY FIRST PITCH

The main conventions of a pop video often consist of there being shots of a linear story line, while also having shots of the artist playing the song.

Keith Negus, the pop video theorist, says that pop videos have a number of key conventions or ingredients. These include cutting to the beat, hyper reality, high impact, elements of performance and narrative and images etc.


The mood and tempo of the video always complies with the tempo and mood of the song. In my pitch I am trying to imitate the convention of having a linear story line while also having shots of the artist playing the song. The song I chose is Hall & Oates’ ‘You make my dream come true’. The song is an upbeat and kooky tune which has a certain sense of optimism and simplicity which I am trying to portray in my video idea. I want the kookiness to be displayed through the fact that it is strange that people are so drawn towards this song and I want people to be getting towards the window in strange ways which will hopefully imitate conventions of a pop video as I am reflecting some of the characteristics of the song into the video. I wanted to imitate the convention of having the same mood of the song in the video by making the music video optimistic and to ‘not take itself too seriously’ if that makes sense. The song is reasonably simple therefore I thought the video should reflect its simplicity. I wanted to give the band an image of not being too threatening and help them appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The song is quite a retro song (although we are under the illusion that this is a brand new band); therefore there is the potential to appeal to an older audience. The band should be good looking which would help get a female audience and also relatable looking so that boys will relate to them and empathise. They will be teenagers and the bedroom will look like an average boy’s teenage bedroom. This will help gain empathy from teenage boys (an important market).

I pitched my idea to Luke and I believe he was generally positive about it. One of the problems he believed it faced was the trouble of finding the right house to set the video. He believed it may be hard to get permission from certain people to use their house and he encouraged using a Hurtwood owned property as it would be more convenient. He also suggested that it would be hard to get the right amount of people as well as a lot of people would be needed if we wanted a successful crowd scene at the end. That, he claimed, would be a big problem. Both John and Luke thought there could be some kind of message about the pied piper, I thought there could be posters in the bedroom of a band called Pied Piper or a literal picture of the character The Pied Piper. They thought this due to the nature of the character relating to my video; both play hypnotic music which attracts people towards it. I decided I would look into the right building to set the video in as well as finding the right people to play the part of the bystanders in the video.

Both of my teachers, Luke and John, thought my idea was very strong ‘if not charming’ and quite different from the normal. But my group did not like the song or the idea and because of the difficulties of having a big cast and finding the right house, we went with a different song and treatment.

MY IDEAS, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

To start researching I viewed various music videos which I found on Youtube. I got inspiration for ideas from simply just listening to the music as I found then I could think of ideas specifically for the song and I wasn’t plagued by copying other ideas. I got the idea for my pitch when I was just playing guitar in my room. I thought a good idea for a video would be if a band was simply playing their song in a bedroom and some of the neighbours could hear it coming from the bedroom window. They look up and are drawn hypnotically towards the window while listening to the music. The neighbours could get to their destination (underneath the window) in unique and interesting ways and they could all have their own special character. At the end of the video the band looks out of the window and sees all of the neighbours and passers by standing underneath the window in a big crowd watching the band.



There was consideration of a joke at the end, such as the passers by were actually watching a band next door to them or they were watching someone on the roof. Another idea I had was to show a superhero on and off duty. On duty he is the city’s saviour and the entire city loves him. He has women crawling at his feet and people coming up for autographs. There are then shots of him while he is off duty and at home, where he is just an average person watching TV. He lives alone apart from his cat, who he sings the song too. The song consists of him having the time of his life dancing around his house with the cat. In the cat he finds true happiness and he forgets about the fame, money and attention he gets in the outside world. The third idea I came up with was my least favourite idea, this was to have a band talking in the bus on the way to their concert while watching the people of the outside world pass by. They realise that they do not deserve their fame and success and that there are people who deserve their pay checks much more then them. At the end of the video they stop by the concert they are playing at and get out. Instead of going inside they wander away and give away all of their money to the people in greater need of it.

My idea for how to end my video was like the Pied Piper with my band playing and being followed down the street by the people who had gathered to see them.


I explained the pitch of the band playing in the bedroom idea to my group, but they didn’t seem too keen on it. They preferred an idea of having a rave to rave music.

THE FIVE STAGES OF PRODUCTION

These are:
• Research and development
• Pre-production
• Shoot
• Editing
• Exhibition and distribution
• I followed these five stages in making my pop video.



To go about the production of my pop video I will first of all have to find the right location for my idea. It will be hard to find the right building for my idea as I want it to be set in a rural suburban area and it may be hard to find someone who lives in an area like that who would be willing to let out their house. As soon as the right house is found we can build the bedroom set. All we need is to copy the design of the window in of the house and then we can put it into the studio. The next stage would be to draw up a story board. I think this is important to go after finding the location as we could then work our idea around whichever location we find as finding the location is going to be tricky and it could alter the whole appearance of the video.

Story boarding it will give us a good narrative of the idea. The next stage will be to right up exactly what we need for the video (props, make up etc) so that we can go out and organise them early. The next stage we should cast the video. We will need a big cast as there is a big crowd scene. There are actually two members of Hall & Oates but we could turn it into a trio when we cast the band so that we can have more going on. The song consists of a keyboard, a bass, drums, a guitar, a singer and a backup singer. I was thinking the singer could sing as well as playing the keyboard. There would be someone who will only play bass and someone who only plays the drums while the guitarist can also be backup singer. The final stage will be to actually film the video. This will consist of half studio filming (the scenes in the bedroom) and half filming on a street yet to be chosen (the scenes which consist of the neighbours getting to under the window). We will have a whole day of filming so we can dedicate the first half to filming in the bedroom and the second half filming on the street or vice versa.

MY A2 POP VIDEO PROJECT BRIEF

The breif for this year is to create:

• A pop video for a song by an existing group where we manufacture a new band for the song, including the brand image of the new group.
• A digipak cover for the album of this song.
• A magazine advert for the album for my new group.
• This is to be part of a multi-media campaign to launch and promote the new group.