Planning Progress

So far our media work has been progressing quickly, yesterday night we finished our first complete draft of our music video, and we are currently exporting it to youtube to try and get some music video views and any potential audience feedback.

As a group, we spent wednesday and thursday together completing last minute filming and slotting shots together to complete the music video. After that, Luke and I spent further time completing the video completely and adding some transitions, although more need to be added.

To the left is a photo of a plan we made in class of our to do list, this consists of:

• digipack planning, thinking of different shots and elements we want to involve within our artist and the appearance as a package.
• Uploading the music video to youtube, to gain audience feedback.
• Plan ideas for the advertisment, research and analaysis and different elements to involve within our music genre of singer songwriter.
• Think of different questions we can ask audience members when they watch our music video to gain audience feedback; similarly thinking of other ways that we can gain qualitative and quantitative data.

Public Liability Insurance

Within our permission to film within the Grafton Centre in Cambridge we needed to provide proof of Public Liability insurance; these are the photos of the letter recieved and what was sent to the Manager of the Grafton Centre.

Change of plan again...

Unfortunatley due to family poblems the 2 people who will be the artist and character are unable to film today, similarly dan has responded to me saying that he also can't make filming today. Unfortunatly due to these circumstances I have had to postpone the filming until sunday afternoon at approximatley 2pm. I am going away tomorow to Aldeburgh until sunday, as there is no telephone or internet signal I have aleady prearranged this meeting to film. I am emailing the Grafton centre to let them know that the changes have happened.

Dates for Filming

As we have a deadline closley coming, we have planed that on the tuesday of half term, the 25th of october  we will be filming in the Grafton centre in Cambridge and our outside shots by the benches. These shots will be just us, India, Dan, Emily and Will; we will all travel together via car, and then travel back together. When Luke returns from his holiday we will film on the 1st November at my house in thaxed aftershool, we have all agreed this date but if it is unable then we will film on the 3rd, thursday. These dates have been planned and prepared for, we will just have to wait until they are filmed now.

Change of Plans

As we have been planning our music video we have reallised that it is almost impossible to have Lewis Mokler himself in our music video, he has a very busy schedule and we have to stick to our A level deadlines. Luke is going on holiday in the october half term, and we only have selcet days to film, we are planning to film this friday after school or another time this week at my house to film the flashback scenes, then in half term, either on monday or tuesday Dan and I will go to Cambridge and film the other shots.

Another downside of this lack of time left to film is that we have no similar times to Lewis Mokler and the woman we agreed to film with. As we cannot use Lewis anymore, we had to find back up characters who would also be able to perform the song to the same capability. For this, we decided to use Will Mannings and Emily Abrey. This is a photo of emily and will, who will be the actors in our music video.

Practise Shots and Permission updates

Today Luke and I drove to Cambridge to get some practise shots and plan exactly where we would shoot the clips for the music video; as Luke is absent on holiday in october half term Dan and I will be going to Cambridge with the artist to film the shots. From today we managed to speak to the manager and director of the Grafton centre as we had recieved no physical copy of approval to film; when we saw him we discussed our plans, and talked dates and information. He has agreed to let us film, just making sure we dont film the front or inside of a shop!

From today, we chose to take a variety of photos showing what the content and angle of the shots will look like; here are the photos.

1 - These are shots from an elevated strip of path looking downwards onto a small area with no shops.

These are shots from a level slightly lower from the first, and from a different angle showing a different content of shot.

This is a lower angle, the same level as the singer, and it is the left angle, slightly behind.

An oppositte angle, showing the artist face on at the same level.

Photoss outside of the Grafton centre:

We found that taking these shots allowed us to create an image of what the overall video will look like, taking these photos allowed us to eliminate certain areas and locations from our planning list; this will make our filming and editing more efficient and good quality.

Risk Assestment - Thaxted

For one element within the music video we are filming a flashback in my house, in thaxted. In order to do this we need to make a risk assestment for our filming.

We need to make sure that when filming in the house we use all the equipment properly and sensibly, assuring that no breakage or damage is caused.

We will not miss any scheduled lessons at school to avoid truency; so we will warn teachers of our lack of presence at school during study periods.

When travelling to my house, we will travel all together if possible, if not we will preplan times and certain ways of travel.

When using any household items we will make sure we are all sensible, for instance the kettle to make sure nobody gets burnt or harmed. Similar to all items to be used we will preplan all usages.

As luke is allergic to cats, when filming we will make sure that all cats are not around, assuring that no allergic reaction can be induced.

As dan has epilepsy we will make sure that there will be no flashing or bright lights and take all precautions to avoid triggering anything.

Prop List

There are certain elements within the lyrics and video that need to be included, for this we are making sure that we have a selective prop list, these are the things we need to include within our video:

When filming at my house for the flashback:

• A jar of nutella
• A wii
• mario cart
• sugar
• teabags
• general kitchen area
• lounge
• sofas
• the outfits of the characters

When filming in cambridge:

• A guitar
• shopping bags potentially
• shoes
• Phone x2
• Postit notes

With these props they will fit into our plans and enable us to make our music video and the shot contents look more realistic and authentic.

List of Different shots for the music video

As we are a the stage of planning and research, we realise it is important to keep updated with our ideas, these are some of our plans and shots to involve within the music video of Nutella.

Postit notes on walls, showing certain lyrics
Live performance of him playing in Grafton Centre
Live performance of him playing alone in a bedroom or private room
Live performance of him playing on a bench by a tree with a jar of nutella.
A girl, following his postit notes
Segmented shots - similar to Hey there delilah
Photos of the artist and girl in the video
Close ups of playing - guitar, eyes, mouth, hands
Jar of nutella
Old fashioned film reel
Still shots in segment with camera footage

Planning music video ideas

Music Video Ideas on Prezi


A short prezi created to present our ideas for a music video, we chose to present this onto a prezi as it makes the content and information look more interesting, and creates a diversity from the rest of the text on the blog.

Planning work for your digipack

Some of the planning for our Digipack altered in the process of development, at the moment our plans seem non existant. Me personally, I think that I would like to follow the style of famous Hip Hop artists that have had iconic CD covers and Digipacks, Lil Wayne for example. I found his CD cover including a photo of him as a child, with edited shots of his iconic tattoos placed onto the baby, similarly creating a play on words with his artist name of 'Lil Wayne' Lil representing little, and the photo of a young child created the iconic collaboration.
Other CD covers such as LiL Wayne's other CDs and Nas have used iconis photos of younger children collaborated with a state of presence, for this instance to the right, the editing effect showing the urban location behind the child, indicating this is where the artist lived and grew up, or to where his present location is.


Another idea which I really think looks effective on the front of a Hip Hop CD or Digipack is the photo of the artists face or body, having a lot of editing to it to make it look artistic and effective. The CD covers of Drake, T.I and Eminem have really stood out to me, and I think that if we could create an image similar to this, with a lot of editing, ours could look similar.

We intend to take a photo of a male face, preferably someone with peircing/tattoos visable (similar to other Hip Hop Artists) and to transform the photo into an edited style similar to above.

Planning work for your music video

Our music Video is based on the Song 'This aint a love song' By Scouting for Girls; we chose to remake the first 30 seconds of this mucis video. I think personally the main reason we liked the video was because it had a variety of content and shots involved, including shots of individuals and the artists. This is the video itself, upto 30 seconds.



For our plan we watched the video repeatedly and paused after everytime the shot or content of shot changed, we noted this down onto postit notes and placed it in order on an A3 piece of paper. After the general content was noted down we annotated the timings of shots, who out of our group would be reinacting the shots, and what props would be required; this is the photo of our plans. To the left is our notes.

For the filming, we drove to Lukes house, and we took ne camera with us; we planned certain shots depnding on the content of the shot and the placement of setting. It became a humourous event filming and reconstructing the film as finding a goldfish became a task, in our final version the shots will be shown, but it ended up with Luke holding a very very small white fish in a lunch bag, not alike to the video.

We planned to make sure that our shots and content would be the same as the video to the best extent possible, when filming singing shots we made sure the person in the shot new the right words and was fimiliar with how they should be performing.

Genre work and conventions for our digipack

Our group task is to design and produce a digipack for a new artist under the genre of R&B or Hip Hop, we have decided ti choose Hip Hop, similar to other artists.

Through research we have discovered that often on the CD covers of Hip Hop artists there is a variety of conventions:

artist on the front cover

face shots

lego, for example dr Dre

tyres/car items
flags
cartoons
old fashioned glasses
destruction
TV - children watching it
Streets and urban areas
Parental advisory stickers are often found.
American Flags

The wikipedia link offers more indepth detail about the origins and conventions of Hip Hop which I have read and intend to involve with our Media Digipack, the link to the website is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music.

We originally planned to stick to the comic style of the construction of a Hip Hop CD Genre, we produced the front cover involving the artist called 'Lil Crunk', an artist who we aimed to be a younger adult, just breaking into the music indistury; his CD cover involved a Plastic doll of a baby wearing the architectual 'Gangsta' Clothing. Ufortunatly this iconic cover was not suitable as it had to involve a photo which our group had taken personally.

From these conventions research and first attempt I have learnt the steriotypical conventions and styles of CD/Digipacks that are involved with the CD and artist, I plan to stick to this style strongly.