Ignite Me Test Shoot

Today we shot our test shoot for our music video. We brought in Honor, Taiya and Sarah in. We wanted to visually show how we want our music video to pan out.

We made a tunnel out of 4 black slats that were in the pavilion and got Honor to stand inside them to make the illusion of our first element idea.

Then we used a plain white wall to symbolise the white sheet we are going to be using for the silhouettes. We got Taiya and Sarah to pretend to be shadows making wavy dance moves.

For the 3rd element, we got Honor to lie down next to a black slat and we used the people in our group to imitate the projection of people walking, with them walking all around her.

And for the 4th element, Honor and Taiya just stood next to the white wall and performed.

I cut and edited all of the test shoot in a software called iMovie.

Here is the finished product:

Projection Video for 3rd element

I have been assigned to take a video of a busy street in London for our projection element. I will be in London for some of the days so will take some close up, wide and mid shots for video:

I took the video in my local town, Bury St. Edmunds. There were jagged flows of people coming down this particular alleyway, so in post-production, I had to cut them all together so they fitted well. I also coloured the video into black and white, because our video is quite colourful already, it would be a nice contrast.

CONFIRMED DATE FOR OUR SHOOT: 2nd NOVEMBER 2017

WE ARE SHOOTING ON THE 2nd OF NOVEMBER

Sending emails to our cast list for a test shoot

Today we sent off an email to the cast asking to meet us for a test shoot, so far the responses are positive.

Meeting with Matt

Today we met with Matt for the final meeting about set design and everything is organised for the 2nd of November. He prepped us by giving us advice on making sure that all the performers are going to handle the situation with ambition and energy. Today we are planning on doing a test shoot for our video, so we will try and bring everyone in and prep them to be as energetic as possible for the shoot.

Editorial Meeting

The next stage for our group is to:

1. Do test shoot for the silhouettes - Wednesday October 18th

2. Rehearsal with Honor to see how she should move in the video - Wednesday October 18th

3. Shot list - Tuesday 17th

4. Research in choreographing

5. Interview dancers on how to create a push/pull dance move

6. Audience feedback from animatic

Editing the animatic

Today we edited together the animatic. We made this to truly visualise our idea and the way we want our music video to go.

I started the editing process and made it look nice and clean cut.

Miranda went back and finished the editing and made a few changes to make more sense of it. For example, when the artist says 'ignite me, ignite me, ignite me' it was at first a mid, wide then close up, but it was changed to wide, mid then close up.

The animatic was easily made and simple. It has refreshed our minds on how to edit a sequence and also how to work the application itself.

Here is the finished piece:

Taiya's Audition

Honor's Audition

Sophie's Audition

Drawn set designs

Here are our set designs that I drew. They are meant to be more visual than explaining the video itself.

Costume ideas: Tops

There are going to be 2 outfits for the artist throughout the whole music video, and here are some ideas we came up with. They are all from Pretty Little Thing. ( https://www.prettylittlething.com )

These tops are all ideas for the first to third set up. The black will look really good against the colourful strip lights. They are all relatively cheap too, so we can gather up a few potential items.

These tops are all ideas to use for the fourth set up of our shoot, when it is the artist and the potential partner 'igniting'. The nude coloured tops will go better because the whole sequence is meant to be based on skin and touching, and it'll look good next to a white background.

Cast List

Here are the girls we are going to audition for our music video:

Main Girl: Honor Gilles

Potential partner: Taiya Kamyshan

Main girl understudy: Honor Collins

Potential partner understudy: Sophie Hyam

Dancers: Katlyn Perelman, Amy Lam, Honor Collins, Nandi Clarke, Sarah Stotter (understudy)

We are in the process of talking to each of the girls and asking them to learn the song to see how the act in front of the camera and fit the star image we are looking for. The dancers will not be seen, but we have to take into account height because the video will look more consistent like this. Sarah will be our backup dancer if one cannot make it.

Requesting permission from the record company

Our written storyboard

Creating the animatic for our storyboard

Today we created our animatic for our storyboard. We shot in the studio so that we had a fair amount of light so there wouldn't be any shadows on the sheet.

Feedback from set designers

Today we met up with the set designers and this was their response to our idea and set design:

1st element:
Matt agrees with the tunnel idea and suggested that we have black flats as the walls and cool toned colours for the strip lights to set a mood. He also suggested that we get reflective mirror material which we put at the back of the tunnel to reflect more of the lights to give an illusion of infinity. He said that we needed to work on our details such as makeup and costume and how we are going to present our star image.

2nd element:
They like the idea of the silhouettes being projected onto a white sheet, and we found out from the set designers that we can use a deep blue gel for the colour of the white sheet, which will set the tone of music video. The artist will be in the foreground with the dancers in the background, and Matt suggested warping the shadows to make a more funky effect to them.

3rd element:
The same white sheet from element 2, but the camera would be low down. This is her on the lying on the ground, and there will be tracking shots of her up and down her body, a projection of legs behind her 'walking all over her'

4th element:
This is the transition from darkness into light, therefore having a white sheet as the background and a bright light shining through the back of it. There is a shot of being pulled up by the potential partner, dry ice smoke comes over and is overexposed near the artist. We use smoke because it is an indexical signifier of fire, and the song is called 'Ignite Me'. Then there are up model-like shots of skin and not much moving from the subjects, a tracking shot of them would be effective.

Animatic Storyboard TBC

Here is our draft animatic storyboard.

Teenage VALS we expect to be attracted by our music video

In a media context, there are such things as 'teenage VALS'. They are summaries of peoples personalities.

Out of all the VALS, we chose 3 that seem best suited to our music genre/star image:

INNOVATORS: who wish to make their mark
REBELS: who wish to remake the world in their own image
PURITANS: who wish to feel virtuous.

Initial Audience Reaction

Here is a selection of people I chose to explain my idea to, and here are their opinions:

Set Design

Here is a mood board of what we want for our set design:

Costume and Makeup ideas

This mood board shows what we were thinking about for the costumes. We looked at different vintage and nineties images from inspiration from the images. The bottom right image with the dungarees is our main inspiration, this goes with the genre of the song and is very British. Another idea is the one in the top right-hand corner: high waisted jeans with a tight crop top. We don't want any branded clothes to be in the video like Nike or Adidas.

We also want her to have her hand a bit scruffed up and wear hoop earrings. Makeup-wise, it will be very minimal, just a plain canvas with a tad of shimmery eyeshadow.