Costume Ideas

                      Above is the costume ideas which we have for Sterling in the music video. While the character is walking around Box hill we would like to have him wearing the khaki parka, this is because it would contrast with the green part of Box hill. Also linking to the fact he blends in with the lonely town, again linking to the soundtrack.

As the music video goes on it changes for Sterling to be wearing a purple Camo jacket, this is what the character will be wearing whilst he is in Central London. The camouflage design portrays the fact that he is blending in with everyone else, also the fur on the implements the cold weather and the feeling of loneliness. 

Also whilst in Box hill we wanted Sterling to be wearing a black dressing gown making him look scruffy and depressed like he's 'lonely' in the little house we are going to film in. 

CD Cover

As you can see above there are several drawings which are my ideas for a potential CD cover for the our artist.

 Top Left:

This is the front cover. This is a long shot of the artist Sterling standing against a brick wall, preferably under a bridge in the city,I also wanted to have the writing of the artist's name going along against the wall, in a graffiti looking font. This is conventional for the theme we wanted for our music video. 

Top Right: 

The top left box is the inside cover. This is of Sterling but from the back, still against the same brick wall as on the front cover. This is just quite a plain cover, I didn't want too much detail for one of the inside covers. 

Middle Left:

This is again one of the inside covers, it is a shot of out of focus lights. This is connected with some of the shots that are used in the music video, to make a link with eachother. 

Middle Right:

The middle right is a long shot of Sterling with the city buildings in the background. But its like a silhouette of Sterling's body with a picture of city on him. This will make the cover look unique as most people have barely seen this before. 

Bottom Left:

This bottom left is the back cover, it is a picture of the cabin we are using in the music video, with the bushes outside. In the bushes there will be the song titles.
Bottom Right:
The bottom right cover is of Sterling infront of a background which is brightly coloured, this will be done by a green screen, and Sterling will be wearing dark colours to contrast with the bright colours in the background. 

The pictures above are the ideas that the rest of my group created, they're the ideas they wanted to do for the CD cover. These ideas will help as we have all thought of different ideas making it easier for us to think of what we actually want for our CD cover. This was also a good idea for all of us to do separate ones as this makes it easier for us all to reflect on our ideas. 

Advertisement

 

  

Above are the potential advertisement ideas which we would like to use for when we create the advertisement. Out of all the these ideas, the first one (at the top) is the one all of the group preferred. The second one is of a face but split into 2, half of the face will be a girl and the other half will be of Sterling, the girl will be the other main character which will be in the music video. 

Track Permission Letter

Above is the email which we sent to the Record company asking for their permission to use their song for our A2 music video. This is because we don't want to go through with all the filming for the music video for them to say no we can't use the song as that would just be a waste. By doing this we are planning ahead and making sure we have everything organized in advance.

Location Permission

Above is a permission form making sure that it is permitted for our group to film in the locations we would like to use in our music video. We have to make sure we do this form because we do not want to get to our location for them to say that we cannot film there and that is all our planning ruined. I think that it is better to be more organized which is another reason why I think we should send out these location permission letters, and that it is better to think ahead of what you are currently doing.

The permission letters we sent were when we asked for permission to go to Box hill and to film at the Southbank Centre. We sent a letter to Sterling's mum as the cabin we wanted to film at is owned by her, and we needed to make sure that everything was fine by her to make sure we could shoot there. We also needed permission from the development centre from Southbank so that we could film there otherwise when we get there and try and film someone might try and stop us because we might not have permission to. 

Soul Music Video Research

Robin Thicke-Lost Without You

Soul music videos have several different conventions, I am going to go through conventions which are present in this music video of Robin Thicke. One of the first things which I noticed in this music video are including shots of just the instruments. This shot I noticed was right at the beginning of the music video, making it clear to the audience he is passionate about his music which I think is the message which all Soul artists want to put across to everyone else.

They also usually involved long shots of the main performer (artist) in the music video, this makes the artist look more superier against everyone else in the video. In particular, (the clip below) when the camera is down low and the artist is sitting on the chair, like a low angle they look much more important and shows their higher status whereas is it was the other way around it would look like they had a lower status. 

Animatic

Above is the animatic which me and my group created together from the story boards we created. This shows an initial outline to our video. This shows the shots, angles and techniques we would like to use within our video. This has also made the direction we wanted to go in clearer. Now we have this it makes it more realistic and we now have something to follow while in the process of production.

Storyboards

In this picture above is me and my group holding up the storyboards in the middle of the process of planning for our music video. We stuck the whole of our story boards down on paper to make it clearer and easier for us to follow when filming. This also helped us to get the different shots in order for when creating the animatic which we completed to give us a clearer view of what our film will look like by the end of the process.

Props

Above is a mood board of the different props we would like to use within our music video. We had to plan these things before we started filming so that we could make sure we had these props. If not everything could of went wrong and we could of ended up with none. 

We tried to think of props which would connect to the music video, this would make it conventional. We also needed props which would fit into our genre, this again makes it a conventional music video.

Location Shots

As we have so many different shots with our music video, we obviously need different locations. As a group we have discussed which locations we would like to use, London and Boxhill. The music video will start of at Boxhill, and then throughout the day will go onto London but it will still keep coming back to Boxhill to show the contrast of locations. 

When in London we would like to film in Soho, Chinatown, Southbank and the back streets of Oxford Street. We were trying to think about places aswell which weren't as busy so that it wouldn't be as hard for us to film as there would be loads of people around us and getting in our way. So we have been thinking about the things which could happen to stop us from making our music video successful. We would also like to have a meeting place with Sterling and the other character in London. We want this place to be big and bold, so the audience will remember it and hopefully familliarise with it. We want this to be big because of the way the whole music video builds up to that moment. 

During the shoot in Boxhill we are going to film most of the shots in Sterling's cabin. A lot of the shots will be filmed in and around there. We would like to also get some master shots of Boxhill in there, and a lot of the cutaways will be filmed there. Like the trees, the woods, and there is a lake/river at Boxhill with stepping stones going along it, we thought this would link in with our music video and would like to shoot some shots there. 

Concept Shot Ideas and Effects

Through debate and conversation within our group, these are the main concept ideas that we have came up with.

• We have established that there will be 3 main strands of where the video would be set
• These will reside in a rural area, with shot locations such as Box Hill, cabins within that area, as well as possibly Kingston or Merton Abbey Mills
• This will consistently be cut with the performer travelling around Central London in less busy areas such as back streets.
• Locations within Central London include the South Bank, Piccadilly & Soho.
• Cross dissolves, superimposing and slow motion are the 3 main post-production effects/techniques that we'll use.
• We ensured that key shots have been visualised too, such as linking key shots to the lyrics, and when scene changes will occur. (See scanned image)
  
  
  
  

Location Concepts

This post is about our plan of the concept we have. This shows what all our ideas are for our music videos. It also shows all the locations we want to go for our music videos which will connect with the idea and feelings of our music videos. We have come up with 4 different location ideas. We want to start off with Boxhill, and then go on to the back streets of Oxford Street, Soho, Southbank, Piccadilly and Trocadero. Boxhill and the locations which are in central London show to difference between the two completely different looking places. The whole way through we want some cut aways from Southbank and Sterling performing on a rooftop showing the view from London.