SD - Filming Update

Filming update

We will be now filming the performance aspect of the music video tomorrow with mel and annie and hope to get two cameras so we can have greater shot variation and more choices when it comes down to editing throughout the week we also plan to upload the footage we have already got and editing up on the blog so we can get feedback on work we've completed so far.

SD - Meet 'Destinys Child'

Meet 'Destiny's child'!

Melodie Abraham is also a media student and does alot of dance outside of school so we thought she would make a good candidate to be in out music video and wouldnt be shy when having to be involved in a short dance sequence we're planning to put together for filming tomorrow. She will be wearing a white dress with silver heels standing out from the other two as she will be playing Beyonce

Annie Cutillo will also play one of the band members and has also done alot of dance such as poledancing so she will be able to 'throw some shapes' haha when filming tomorrow. She will also be wearing and white dress but with black heels. Annie will play Kelly Rowland.

Sophie Dixon Unfortunatly since our other actress has too much work on with exams at the moment I have had to take on the rold of Michelle Williams during filming tomorrow although judging by the majority of Destiny's Child video she takes more of a back seat than the other two Beyonce in particular which is why I thought i should be her and I have alot less dancing experiance tan the other two so ill just have to do my best.

Photos from filming behind the scenes, make up and wardrobe will be uploaded tomorrow after filming :)

Mine and Sophie's first Digipak idea.

SD - Destiny's Child, Fansites

In order to get our music video for Emotion out there I have contacted a number of fan sites to let fans know what we're planning to do links for the fan sites are linked below.
The most well known fan site 

Others include http://beyoncedaily.org/category/destinys-child/ and http://www.fanpop.com/spots/destinys-child.
All of these fan sites will be contacted via forum or contact pages linked available on each website. Doing this may also allow us to link our final product onto the pages for fans to view upping our views once it has been uploaded to youtube.

What Influenced my Idea.

Ever since the Spice Girls were spreading 'girl power' across the country as well as many others at that! I knew that girl bands were one of my favourites when it came to my taste in music!

Then came along other girl bands such as The Saturdays, Girls Aloud, & the Sugababes. All very well known and because of this the were automatically a role model for young girls.
Watching their music videos over the years I have noticed things that the "typical" girl band will include sexy outfits, lots of make up, usually they will dance, and good looking boys are used in the videos.
My influence for Destinys Child song, Emotion was from all these videos. Seeing the matching outfits, glitz and glamour. This is how I imagined my video to be.
The common shot types used in girl band video's and usually a close up on specific body parts like, legs, chest, lips and eyes.
Also a group shot is used to show the whole band together, this varies the shot types in the video.  



Also, as part of our research building up to our final idea, we looked at last years A2 groups and the music videos they had made to see what was good to include.
I looked at Emmie & Megan's music video which was Backstreet Boys, "As long as you love me", for one of their locations used in the video was the Ilkley Moor, which is now being used in our music video. 


Another influence for a specific shot to start our music video was from the film 'Paranormal Activity' this is used because there is a part of the film were the picture of the couple together is smashed on the boyfriends face, signifying bad luck to him, or something bad is going to happen to him, which in our case is that he cheats on his girlfriend. 


This shot will be used at the beginning zooming in and then coming to life, this is when the video will start. 
Black and white will be included in the video as a flashback. This will be shown in the video when the aftermath of the breakup is taking place on both behalves of the boyfriend and girlfriend. This is also being used in the previous A2 video I watched, as you can see in the picture above ^^^.

Asa recently looked at The Book of Enoch. "Fallen Angels", play a massive role in this book, and this is what has influenced us to look more in depth at the costume the band members will possible wear. Sophie has suggested black, so we are not 100% which direction we are going to take just yet, but looking at a varieties of options helps us figure out what we can imagine the band members to look like.  This picture could possibly help us figure out which route to take, Minus the Wings!! ------->

SD - Digipak Ideas

As a group we have discussed digipaks alot as it is a big factor of the coursework. My idea for our Destiny's Child 'Thought&Emotion' being a potential CD title, is to have the Band in a big dominating picture wich is photo shopped and edited heavily with light (typically pop and highly commercialised) the title and band name will be in glitter, possibly silver and the background a pale blue colour. The back of the digipak will have the list of tracks showing any features and the length of song in italic font smaller than the other text. The background image behind this text will either be Katies idea of lots of words in a newspaper style font such as love, hate, hurt, heartbreak etc or solo images of the band members the glitter theme will be repeated on the reverse of the didpak but track names will appear in a different color maybe gold or pink. 

   Inside the digipak will be two CD trays, one plastic containing the tracks and the other paperboard which will have concert/live footage on of the band. I also want to include a small booklet inside the digipak with pictures of the band, lyric page of the songs and a fan subsciption page.

  Asa will also be making his own digipak so we can compare ideas between the group and then maybe combine what we agree on if we have time or choose one of them. Katie will be working on my digipak with me as I want to put quite alot into it. Pictures will be uploaded later of our progress.

Advice from other media students!

I have recently taken a visit to Blackheath, in London to visit some friends, all who take an interest in Media Studies.


The students at Thomas Tallis school, spoke to me about what experience they have in the 'Music Vid' department area, and it just so happens that one of my friends has done a music video using similar ideas to what my group have. 
Picking a song by the well known girl band The Sugababes, using their song Too Lost in You. 
For the performance side to the video, she made the band members where similar clothing to the original video, casual but sexy, keeping the male gaze in mind. Each band member was walking around the streets of London, using the streets as her setting, giving it a more 'real' feel to it. 

ScreenShots from Too Lost in You video, Sugababes.

She did not include a couple in the video, instead she used a variety of couples and filmed them for a variety of shots, some in love, some crying, some arguing and even two people just meeting for the first time, sticking to the stereotypical theory of 'Love at first sight'. Something all girls dream about having, but it doesn't seem to work as much as us girls would hope!!!
The original video, consists of the girls witnessing men whilst walking past them in an airport, and a 'fantasy' of them seducing them. This gives the audience a sense of 'sexual tension' or 'Intentions'. 
I mentioned that I was considering Stop motion for the band, and another student from her class tried this, although it worked, it too a lot of time as they chose to keep pausing the camera after each shot. This can take time and work well, but will the actors be patient enough?! 
I was considering using this for the band members, or the boyfriend and girlfriend for the after math.
... Speaking to her and seeing how she worked around her video, helped knowing if you equally split the jobs then stuff will get done the way it should be, smoother and quicker!

"Good Luck to Blazing Grace! Would love to see the final product!" - Niamh, Student at Thomas Tallis School.

SD - Footage, Flashback scene

SD - Footage

We filmed some new footage yesterday with our two actors Francesca Fox and James Newton. We were able to shoot the flashback scenes of the couple when the relationship was going well. We took a varirty of different shots for example the couple kissing in a close up, holding hands in a medium long shot and extreme long shot (POV) over the couple's shoulders showing the setting and the town of Ilkley below them. The Cow and Calf was a good place to film and the couple are featured going on a romantic walk together. Footage of from the day will be uploaded within the next school week.

AN - Costumes

AN - Costumes

Concerning the costumes in the video, the couple will be wearing everyday, casual clothing. However, they will be have different looks in each sequence to show the passage the time.


The waitress (the boyfriend has an affair with) will be wearing the a white shirt with some of the top buttons undone and a short black skirt. This will add sex appeal to the character and will fit in with the theory that blondes are the most attractive people, since the actress playing the waitress is blonde.

As for the performers, they'll be also be wearing casual clothing during the narrative sequences because they'll be making brief cameos. As for the performance sequences, they will be wearing white dresses and jewellery because they will be performing in front of a white background. In philosophical terms, the performer's clothing will represent that they might be angelic beings, since one of the performers is in the restaurant during the one of the narrative sequence and she disappears when a person walks past her. This also shows that the performers could also be fallen angels, since they are roaming around Earth in human form.

This theory also links in with the Book of Enoch which was written during the old testament because there are seven beings known as the Watchers who had to watch over Earth, but then one day defied God's orders and descended to Earth, becoming the Fallen angels. Not to mention the fact that since the clothing symbolises the performers as being angels and gives their costumes polysemic meaning, they lack wings signifying that they might not be part of Heaven after all...

AN - What needs to be done

With the coursework deadline in seven weeks and a day's time, here is what our group has currently done so far:

Brainstorm of music video ideas
Treatment
Lesson on narrative & digipaks
Director case studies (Francis Lawrence, Spike Jonze, Jonas Akerlund)
4 podcasts
1 Vodcast (which STILL needs to be uploaded)
Codes & Conventions of Girlbands (40% done)
Destiny's Child Research and background information
Setting up the company blog
Digipak codes and conventions
Digipak design ideas
Magazine Ads research
Animatic
Setting up a Facebook page
Sample footage

Here's what we need to do now:


Finish off girl groups codes and conventions
Analyse five different digipaks
Possible deconstructions of girlband music videos
Location scouting
Lyrics sheets
Storyboard
More podcasts and vodcasts
Influences on our music video
Digipak creation
Magazine ad research part 2
Magazine ad creation
Rough cut of music video

SD- Contract for the record company

Music World Entertainment are the record company that Destiny's Child are signed to in order for our videos about the track to be allowed onto youtube we were told to contact the company about permission (see below). I also left my contact details so hopefully they'll be in touch to let us know either via e-mail or phone.

Hello my name is Sophie Dixon from Ilkley Grammar school in West Yorkshire, England. My question is would it be ok if for my school project to produced a remake of Destinys Child Emotion music video? This video will not be used for commercial purposes and solely for my school and exam board to view but could be uploaded to Youtube so the exam board is able to view our work. The video will be totally different from the original and non of the concepts will be copied.

Many thanks,
Sophie.

AN - Filming Difficulties

Despite having a plan as seen in my previous blog post, we have encountered filming difficulties concerning the actors. We were suppose to be filming on Friday 23rd December, but due to the actors being busy doing Christmas related activities we couldn't film. However, if we manage to get some of the actors this week we might and try to film some footage before we go back. If this isn't the case, we'll just have to film during January despite exams.

AN - DigiPak ideas.

I have begun to come up with ideas of what our group's digipak will look like. I have come up with the idea that the digipak will have compartments for two discs rather than one and the digipak will fold out into three panels with the track listing in between the discs. The first disc will contain various songs by Destiny's Child, while the second is a DVD which will contain all of the vodcasts that we've done, behind the scenes footage, interviews with the cast members and outtakes.


I came up with the idea when looking around my DVD collection and found the Team America/ Beavis & Butthead/Jackass the Movie collection and noticed how it folded out and how three disc trays were used instead of one. I then thought that if I used a similar design for the digipak, then it would make it look more unique in comparison to other digipaks of this day and age.

The cover of the product.

This is what the product will look like when folded out.

Here is how the set folds out.