Initial Group Planning ideas- miss Georgiou

The members of my group are me and Harry Fagan. In our first meeting we discussed what our favourite genres of music were and decided on the genre of house music. We discussed our favourite artists from this genre and chose the artist Calvin Harris. We chose the song blame as we felt it was current and we both enjoyed the song, which we felt would make it easier to analyse. We printed off the lyrics for the song and analysed them. After annotating them we found that the lyrics were relatively simple and repetitive. Because of the simplicity of the lyrics we felt it would be easier for the lyrics to link with the visuals, and make it a more engaging video for the audience. We used an a3 sheet of paper looking at different elements of our music video. We looked at things like mise-en-scene which we decided would be set on a road for the majority of the video, with it being filmed from a car. We also decided on props like smoke bombs and lasers. We decided that we would where normal clothes in order to appeal to an audience and seen ordinary. We looked at artist representation which is where the costuming came under, and decided this would relate to 15-20 year olds as the family argument at the beginning of the video would be relatable to our audience. When looking at cinematography we chose to use a handheld camera to film the scenes within the car, with wide shots also use to establish the scenery that the car is travelling through. Close up shots will provide a link between the actors and the audience as they can see there emotions and feelings throughout the video.  The editing will show a contrast in slow and fast timing of shots. This was something seen in a Calvin Harris song and other house music, which start of slow and build the pace as the tempo of the song does. We felt the narrative style of music would engage the audience more than a performance based video which we felt were repetitive and slightly boring. Once we had chosen the song and had a rough idea of what we wanted to include, we had to apply for copyright. Emailing Calvin Harris's record label, Fly Records meant that we could ask for permission to use there song without breaking copyright laws by uploading their song to Youtube without their say so. We also began to look in more depth at the video and decided on things like where we were specifically going to film and where would look appealing to an audience. We wanted to choose scenic destinations while also making the video relatable for the audience. We decided on range of shots being filmed at viewpoint in loughton which provided views across london. The effect of this was that it created a sense of escapism for the audience watching. When looking at the actual narrative itself  we thought that the theme of friendship  would create an appeal for the audience through the relatability. Looking at the artists image was another important thing to decide on especially when creating our digipaks. Each member of the group had created a digipak, which we then extracted ideas from to create our group digipack. We decided to present the artist as a serious musician, with a professional attitude towards his music. This was done through the layout and typography of the digipack, as well as the images of the artists showing him as serious and focused. I believe that the group meetings where the most important and key feature im creating our project. The discussions helped us gain advice from eachother and combine ideas, leading to an altogether greater final piece. I feel that we were successful in listening to eachother and taking on board constructive critiscm, which then allowed us to make the necessary changes and get the best out of our group. I think our group also worked well when it came to our storyboard and also to our filming schedule. Our successful completion of both of these meant that when it came to filming our music video we had the advantage of knowing what we were doing on what day, meaning we could be more time efficient. It made the whole process more stuctured and allowed us maximum editing time, to perfect our production