Shoot day confirmed

We have been given our shoot day on Wednesday 2nd of November. Having received this we have had to email our actors informing them of the confirmed date. This is now the date where we will need all our costumes, props and actors ready to go so we can hopefully shoot with as little problems as possible. 

Below is an email I sent out confirming our shoot day: 

Organising and Ordering make-up and hair products

In terms of organising and ordering our items, we looked into having our friend to the make-up who is very good. However we soon realised we were naive in thinking how easy it is, and actually we nee a professional make-up artist as for the make-up to be seen clearly through the camera it has to be done in a certain way that we don’t have the skill set for. 

We have decided a make-up artist can create the look we want so it will look visually fantastic both in front and behind the camera. With the hair, we don’t think it is too tricky; therefore we will bring in gel and hairpieces to help create this look on the girls. On the day the changes in hair-style are not to complicated so will do this to save time and money.

Make-up and Hair Inspirations and Decisions

We decided we want pretty simple make-up, not to overt stated. We want our females to look elegant but not over done.

 

I wanted to research to try and get some inspiration, and I found different artists who had the look we are going for. For instance we looked at women such as Kylie Jenner, who have beauty make-up done very well. I also looked into hair and wanted to use slick backed for parts of our video and then a high statement ponytail as well as free flowing and natural for the last few bits. 

This is both sexy and oozes confidence and girl power, which is important as it links in with the genre conventions of R&B. Part of the reason we have gone for this look is due to our target audience being young females who all want to look pretty, and have make-up similar to these styles, we decided our female audience will look at the artist and therefore Dyer’s star image falls into place which sees the stars being simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary.

They will see how beautiful the girls look and therefore will look up to them aspiring to have the same look, and Dyer’s theory suggests they will feel they can relate to the artist and therefore also get to enjoy that style.

Animatic Storyboard

Using Adobe Premier Pro, we put together our animatic storyboard using pictures we had taken from our drawn out storyboard. 

Creating our animatic Storyboard

The animatic storyboard has been very useful as my whole group now have the same visual image of what we are striving for in our music video. We all agree how long ours shots should be and where they should be placed. As well as this we can now show other people involved in our music video the storyboard so we are all on the same page, which should help make our video as good as it can be. With our music video we realised we need to make the most of our props, from looking at our animated storyboard we know we have to take lots of silhouetted shots and make sure our dancers and singer use the props as much as possible on the day. 

I think we pretty much have enough shots, although on the day our main concern is timing, we have so many set and light changes and only one day to shoot so we are going to have to be very efficient in the change overs and make sure all our actors are ready to go when we need them.  

We realised the neon lighting saying “Are you that somebody” is unfortunately to expensive and difficult to get hold of, therefore we need to scrap that part which is a shame however we are fully prepared to spend longer on other areas to make up for the lost shots and time. As a group we decided we already have so many elements that even without those few shots, the video will still be very busy with lots going on.

What is an animatic storyboard?

An animatic storyboard is a graphic organiser in the form of illustrations or images that shows them in a sequence for the purpose of pre-visualising an animation. It is basically a filmed version of the storyboard drawings. Unlike a simple storyboard it is filmed to show the flow of narrative, being visually accurate. 

In the modern day industry they are becoming more and more popular as they give a clear, precise timing of what is needed and for when.Today some animatic companies have developed their own computer generated 2-D and 3-D art to use in their animatics. Some of the 3-D images look so realistic that people no longer bother with photographing models as they just don’t need to. Whilst the animation is being used, a rough sound track is often used to establish timing, for shots to change and so on.

Rehearsal with our main girl

We decided to do another, test shoot with our main girl, it was more of a rehearsal where we got her to practise lip-syncing the song, which fortunately she had gone away and practised so when we met her yesterday she knew the song very well. After running through the song a few times, our next step was to ask her to strut down the corridor with as much confidence and sassy girl-power that she could give. We asked her to wear heels so that she could practise and we could try and resemble what it will be like on the day as much as possible. 

Sampling costumes

We ordered a few items to test out, hoping they would be appropriate and then when they arrived we tried them on for sizes. We even got out our artist to try a few things on.

My group and I decided one of the pieces worked however one didn’t so we will need to consider sending it back and ordering another. In terms of shoes one of the girls in my group has a size 6 similar to the dancers however we cant be sure they will also fit the dancers as everyone has different sized feet so we decided to wait and see if they fit our dancers. 

We have paid for the items and are going to divide it by three in our group to make it fair and as cheap as possible for us, we managed to use student discounts to help keep the budget down.

Ordering the costumes

We started to order the costumes we needed, we knew that it was going to be expensive so decided to bulk order on one online shop, and use our student discounts in an attempt to lower the price. We went through our chart, with all the items on and ticked off each thing as we chose and ordered it. Using next day delivery we are hoping they will arrive by tomorrow if not Wednesday so we can try them on our actors and know if we need to change any sizings or fits. 

Dance Rehearsal

Today we organised our first official dance rehearsal, we got Lottie the dance teacher to help us choreograph the dance we want in our video. 

The song is slow, therefore we want to get a commercial Jazz type vibe. We were lucky that Lottie helped us and with one of our dancers and our main girl who were there, then we started running through it. 

One of our dancers could not make it, so we plan on holding another rehearsal/teaching her the dance another time. So far we have got about a minute and a half of choreography which should be plenty although we might add  a few elements if we feel we need more. 

We have had to consider that it is half-term next week meaning none of us will be in school and potentially we shoot the week we get back, so the longer the dance the tricker it is for our dancers to remember it and have it tidy ready to present. This is why we are hoping to go over it at least once before our final video, we want the dancers to be in sync with each other, and make the dance look as clean as possible. 

Discussing specific designs - getting Inspiration

Towards the end of last week, my group knew the 'look' we were going for however were unsure about the exact style and material... We sat down and all went on different websites trying to get some inspiration. We  also did some rough sketches to work out exactly what we wanted. 

We know our video is so soon, so we need to order them quickly to get a chance to try them on, see if our dancers can really dance and move freely in them and make sure they all work together. I think after today we all have a better understanding of what it is exactly we want, and how we can organise that.