Recorded Location

This is a copy of our location which we recorded. Shows what it will look like with the balcony and how it will look in the camera.

Album Cover Artwork

Here is a draft of the artwork. Some of this is from other inspired artists. 

I thought that her artwork would look something along the lines of this, abstract and showing very little of the artist but something that reflects the genre of music. This pattern is alternative and far from mainstream which suggests what our target audience is.

Cubes are very bold, strong and unusual for an artist to have in his/her artwork. The simple design is something I would like to encorporate into our official digipak. Very abstract and distinctive.

Album Covers

I started looking up artists which are similar to Lykke Li. I discovered that their album artwork and music are very similar to hers which gives us more of an idea of what our art work should look like.






Firstly there's Fever Ray; another alternative artist. Her sleevage is shocking and interesting. Like Lykke Li she represents feminitiy and has an alternative look.



Another inspirational artists artwork is Miike Snow. He is an electropop group from Stockholm. His album cover is modernised and something which I find more appealing that the one that Fever Ray did.

We found lots of similar artists to Lykke Li but one that I found particularly mirrored her is a Danish artist called Oh Land. She combines her background of orchestral music with modern electro. This album cover is glamorous and represents the artists sexuality. This is perhaps a little to feminine for what we want to convey. However there are aspects to her sleevage which we will encorporate into our own; her feminitiy but in a subtle way.



I want to combine her naturalistic style with her alternative, unusual and modernised music to create a fusion in her artwork. Something like the album covers above.







Finalising Cast List & Song

"I Follow Rivers"

Oh I beg you, can I follow
Oh I ask you why not always
Be the ocean where unravel
Be my only, be the water and I'm wading
You're my river running high, run deep run wild

[Chorus]
I I follow, I follow you deep sea baby
I follow you
I I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey
I follow you

He a message, I'm the runner
He's the rebel, I'm the daughter waiting for you
You're my river running high, run deep run wild

[Chorus]
I I follow, I follow you deep sea baby
I follow you
I I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey
I follow you

You're my river running high, run deep run wild
I, I follow, I follow you deep sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you deeps sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you

[Repeat till end]
I, I follow, I follow you deeps sea baby,
I follow you
I, I follow, I follow you, dark boom honey,
I follow you
 

Here is a picture of our lead singer Francesca Waterworth. We have also done a screen test with her which was really useful. She's a good performer and will cause less hassle on the day by getting on with the job.







Here we have our two actresses who will be playing the leads; Leah Chapman (left)
Layla Stedeford (right)

Storyboard

By converting our storyboard to an animatic we are able to have an idea of how our music video would work and what looks right and what looks wrong. Since then we have made a lot of adjustments and have moved away from our original idea which happens a lot when creating an idea from scratch. There are still elements to this which we will use and have still been helpful to us for planning out our video.

Star Image & Target Audience

Lykke Li is a modern, alternative and interesting singer. She has a quirky voice which correlates well alongside her songs which have an edgy and eery tone. She has frequently been used for the Twilight Films which attract fans who like fantasy and mystery. By allowing her songs to be apart of the soundtrack she is reaching her target audience which although is mainstream is still very unconventional. She targets a young modern audience as well as 'rebels' and 'trendies' due to her alternative genre.  Here is another exapmle of her song which clearly demonstrates her infinitive and abstract style of music.






Lykke Li also represents acceptance and conveys naturalism through her innocent black and white editorials as well as her soft voice. The remix of her song 'I Follow Rivers' although been converted to a mainstream dance track, still has her style of individuality which she conveyed in the original track. She has a very individual look which allows her to be more likeable to an audience because unlike popular chart-hit artists she is stripped from glitzy outfits and extreme make up. She has been made to look more normal which an audience likes.

Artist's Twitter

Seeing her online twitter allows us to see how popular she is through her number of fans and enables us to see who her target audience is as well as what she gets up to.

Target Audience

• This is a very feel good song which is similar to I Follow Rivers.
• It's got similar beats to our track which invites the same youthful, out going audience.
• This attracts both male and female.
• It's a type of modernised jazz which appeals to both sexes of an older generation such as 18 to 27 (there or abouts).

Target Audience

• This track invites a very limited target audience.
• This type of music is something that would be played in a club or dancing environment.
• Its a very upbeat song which attracts 16-24 year olds. People who enjoy going out clubbing and dancing.
• Both male and female.

Organisation

Organisation of Props and Costumes for the Shoot Day.

Name of Band/  Song:	What Props do I need to provide?	What Costumes including Jewellery and make-up needs to be provided?	What set design and Props does Dan and the Drama department provide?	Who is responsible for the props and costumes?	Have you got the band to practice the song & rehearsed this?  Are these casted and have they been screen tested?
Cleo Ida	Masks (x30) Inflatables Champagne bottles (x3) Silver pallets (x2) Champagne flutes (x15) Canapés Cake	Layla + Leah dressed in white (UK 6)   Fran dressed in fur coat, leather trousers (UK 8)   Extra’s dressed in tux’s, dresses, heels	Masks/silver platter, champagne Rope Pointy nosed masks Straighteners Hairdressers	Bel + Me = Props   Cook = Costume (dreses/heels/make up/clutches/no bodycons/nothing garish like white suits)	Screen test No.1 done Screen test No.2 today 16/10/12 Prepare costume

Emailing The Record Label

In order to have permission for copyright we were obliged to email Atlantic Records to secure our use of the track for our music video. Here is a draft of the email sent;

To whom it may concern,

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours sincerely,

Georgina Morton, Charlie Morton, Bel Lee and Charlotte Cook
Hurtwood House School

Animatic Editing

We are currently editing our animatics. This involves layering our music track with drawn images from our storyboard.

This has transformed how we can visualise our music video and gives us a better idea of what it will look like.

These screen grabs represent our animatic as work in progress. It's interesting to see how it will look over animatic but also gives us an outlook into how much more difficult yet fun it will be to shoot it in person.

New Ideas

After talking with Matt and Luke we decided that the bedroom scene is unnecessary and diverts from the mystical and erotic narrative.

Gazebo
We are going to shoot the lip sync in the gazebo's outside of hurtwood which will be lit with these inflatables. They're visually beautiful and will add colour and atmosphere to our music video as the contribute to the mystical theme. We are going to shoot this at night to add to the darkness of the theme. Matt and Luke know somebody who we can get some of these off. As they are quite expensive we won't want too many so by getting 2/3 we can re use them throughout as we're only using tight shots.

Balcony
We need to find a way to link Leah and Layla together and give them a motif for leaving the masquerade ball. We also decided that we will have Fran lip syncing and Leah and Layla playing what's going on in her mind. We know that Fran will be really good to work with when it comes to the lip syncing purely because she's experienced in performing arts and we've seen her on stage before so know what she's like.
We decided that we want Leah and Layla running away into the woods from the balcony and as well as looking at the erotic side to homosexuality, looking at their passion and love.
Matt and Luke gave us the idea of looking at Eyes Wide Shut and how they encoporated sex with a masked ball.
It's inspirational for us because it looks at how characters react to a sexual situation, when we see Tom Cruise take intervals of what's surrounding him and you see his reaction to it. Something worth looking at and replicating.

Prop List

• Petals
• Vase
• Picture Frame
• Inflatables
• Fairylights
• Lamp/Chandelier
• Teapot
• Ice Bucket
• Bottles of Champagne
• Chest of Draws - wooden/brown
• Ring
• Masks for masquerade ball
• Simple white dress for Leah (UK 6)
• Simple lilac dress for Layla (UK 6)
• Naturalistic make up
• Glitter
• Candles
• Suits/Tuxedos
• White Bed

This is the sort of bedroom we would ideally want, very minimalistic, classy, simple, soft through white and ivory colours.

Developing Ideas - Masked Ball

After our set design meeting and weighing up our locations, we came to the conclusion that it made more sense moving away from the princess/girly feel to a much darker through the enhancement of dramatic lighting.

Location 1: B Webb House, entrace hall - this would be used for the masked ball, Leah/Fran being subtly 'controlled' or 'abused' by boyfriend (grabbing her arm), she then spots Layla through crowd (shown from POV shot/as well as mid shot of Leah/Fran spotting her in crowd).

Location 2: Layla runs into the woods just before the first chorus and Leah/Fran follow her - chasing her/shoot when dark.

Location 3: Leah/Fran's bedroom, smashing mirrors and vase in anger - sense of entrapment/unhappy relationship with GUY.

Location 4: Balcony for lip sync - use inflatable lights and shoot when dark.

Masked Ball

When doing our storyboard we were struggling to produce something different and interesting as all our video seemed to consist of was a girl in a wood which of course is not at all original.
I then started brainstorming the idea of fairytales and princesses and the stereotypes. It seems that we stumbled across the most obvious scenario, a masked ball.

I then looked at the Smirnoff advert and realised it was the exact type of thing that we wanted to do and it could not have been more perfect for inspiration, its clean shots with dark back drops and rare exposure of the party's size of ammounts of people leaves an element of mystery to it. Rather than exposing the size of the party or the number of people and making it look naff and tacky.
Rather than basing our focus on the beginning of the commercial where it is light, we are more interested by the nighttime towards the end of the commericial.

Producing An Animatic

Here is a video of our group filming our storyboard to produce an animatic for our music video. We had to use white balance to produce a good image.

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is an extremely important part of the process, it enables us to be able to plan out the plan of our music videps in a large amount of detail. The storyboard is mainly created around the mise en scene of our video so it includes the casting:

• Leah Chapman
• Frannie Waterworth
• Layla May

It also includes the location:

• The studio (bedroom scene)
• Rent out a place to have the masked ball
• Hurtwood House (For the lip syncing)
• The forest (for the chase)

It also includes the costumes:

• Leahs/ Fran's dress -> white and simple
• Laylas dress-> lilac simple
• Masks

It includes the props:

• Balloons x10 pink and white
• Ribbons x10 pink and white
• Ring
• Petals
• Natural makeup
• Double Bed- white and blue bedding
• Bedside table- brown oak
• Lamp- chandelir, diamonte
• Tea pot- simple, white
• Flowers in vase- red roses
• Chest of drawers- wooden, brown

Today we have been shooting our anamtic storyboard, overall we have 60 shots to build our video with but we do need to make some changes in the sense that we are now changing it to a masked ball without the mass of activity we shoot in the forest. We set up our cameras and then filmed each shot for 10 seconds, it was important that we made sure the camera was on the correct angle and it had been white balanced before we started as the whole process needs to be in good enough condition for us to be able to start filming.

Brief From Luke 1/10/12

• We were told to consider the weather and whether or not we could still shoot it outside no matter the condition.
• We need to fill out a cast list in order to secure the people we want so that they can't be taken for other videos.
• We were also intstructeced to fill out a prop list.
• We were also told that we need to complete a screen test of the 3 different people we want to use; Leah, Layla, Franny