Issues with Filming

When we came together to review our filming and to begin the editing process our group discovered that much of what we filmed on day one was of little use. Our actor who played the wife hadn't be compliant and therefore in many cases where we needed her to show emotions of anger and upset she had laughed or failed to deliver much emotions at all. More over on the day when asked to do things such as remove the Jacket she was wearing she complained it was cold when Kirstin had already switched the heating on so that the temperature was adequate for all. Louise was unwilling to join in with much of our ideas for shooting such as she moaned when we applied the make up for the crying scenes saying she didn't want to look weird when she personally had asked if we had any roles available within out video which she could fill. Due to her attitude we found it difficult to use much of the filming for this day and therefore would have to re film all of what we filmed with another actor taking Louise's place.

For this reason we introduce Bethany John, she's 18 and currently attends St Marks Sixth form she has many previous credits within school productions and took drama and music at GCSE therefore had a strong knowledge and experience of the performing arts industry. Her look was different to the initial idea which we had for her character however we still felt she was suitable for the role due to her previous acting experience and due to the fact she took media at A2 her self and therefore could understand when we was asking her to do things why and she was a good friend of eddies therefore there was no issues when it came to the relationship aspects of the shooting.

FIlming; Day 2

Our second day of filming focused more upon filming Jodi's scenes and shooting the artists singing alone. For these scenes our team met at Jodi's house and spent the day defining the look properly using make up and wardrobe. We then took to Jodi's Garden and filmed her singing the complete song several times firstly on her decking then by a small curved greenery area which we provided a perfect backdrop whilst shooting this area we shot form firstly a straight on medium shot and then secondly using a high angle shot. After we had completed the filming within these areas we set off to the common where again we filmed Jodi walking along aspects of the common singing and walking towards the camera and away from.

Filming; day 1

On our first day of filming we took to Kirstin's house. With us was our group of Jodi, Kirstin and Myself plus our two external actors Eddie and Louise. Todays Filming was all about getting the story line which included the husbands and wife's scenes. The duration of this filming was two hours however travel to and from the location and school wasn't as efficient as we planned and as a group we hadn't planned our filming targets appropriately. Due to this we rushed our tasks causing both the team members and actors to be stressed and the quality of our footage to be poor. During filming both Myself and Kirstin worked together taking it in turns to capture the scenes as we went along so that as a group we could annotate and comment on our work before we put together our final piece. Here are the images we captured on the day.

The image above shows Louise Lowe in the role of her character the abused victimised wife. here she is laying in what is meant to be her bedroom she has been crying and her make up has become smudged due to this.
Above is an image of the makeup look we was going for, we see a close up shot of Louise Lowe's eye and her smudged makeup Jodi created this look by applying a combination or both eyeshadow and eyeliner and then smudging this with water.
Above is an image of Eddie this is during his scene where he has come home from work he is stressed he's just sent his wife to tears and she has run upstairs to hide from his anger. We see him freaking out then realising his problems and coming to his senses. Here we see Eddie in his suit in its less formal style with his tie loosened, shirt untucked and buttons undone.
Above we see the image of the after math of the fight where by eddie and louise have been fighting and he has thrown her to the floor this image was meant to show fear and vunrability from louise but instead she laughed which ruined the effect which we was hoping for.

Above is an image of the meal when eddie has just come home, its the first interaction we see between the couple and the first introduction of the abuse which the husband inflicts upon his wife.

Below are some videos which show evidence of this shooting which didn't turn out as good as we planned:

As we can see at the end off the video louise loses focus and causes both her self and eddie to laugh during an in appropiate moment.
The above video shoes evidence of a small amount of success which occured during out first day of filming.

Locations and Settings

Before we actually began shooting our footage for our music video we sat down as a group and discussed where we thought would provide the most adequate setting for our filming, taking into account the size of the rooms and the amenities that each setting would offer us. A big issue which arose from our original preliminary task was that we tried to make settings which were classrooms and other false areas out to be other setting such as a bedroom or living area. Here are some images of the possible locations which we have taken into account.

The first of these was Kirstin's House.

From the image you can see a simple capture of the front view of Kirstin's House. In the image we can see Eddies character standing to the side of the frame this reflects the idea that this is his house. The ideas of the story is that though behind closed doors there is this abusive relationship occurring on the outside they live in this rather expensive nice house which is a lot of the reason for why eddie has to work so much and therefore leads to his stress, alcohol and then abuse issues.

Jodi's Garden:

Both the images above are of Jodi's Garden. Due to much of the storyline been set in an indoors setting we felt that the artists pieces should be filmed more in an outdoor setting therefore we assessed of all of us whose garden was landscaped best and was most practical due to the current weather conditions. For this reason we chose Jodi's garden with its rather landscaped end with small decking area and large planted areas it provided a presentable outdoors area which still represented a homely feel. On discovering Jodi's garden i liked the aspect of using the decking as almost a stage an idea which jodi liked and added the thought of using the willow tree as a back drop to this however the weather caused this to be unattainable due to it looking less presentable than we wished and more scruffy than tidy due to the willow being wet, muggy and wintry.

These were not the only areas which we discussed we also looked at taking shots on the local common to Jodi's house we felt this was an adequate area to provide an extension to Jodi's garden. evidence of this appears in our final video.

Actors; Roles and Costume.

Within our piece we decided to go with the previously discussed storyline for which we see the artist as a separate actor to those who tell the story line. And the story, as that of a young partnership of an abusive alcoholic husband and his victimised wife.

The actors of which we have chosen to play these roles are as follows.

The artist, Miss Kelly Clarkson would be played by Jodi Grundy the actor needed to be a young fair headed individual who could work the pop rock appeal for this reason we believed Jodi a fellow member of our 3 man team would be perfect for the role. Jodi is 17 years old and fits the build for the role perfectly we felt she pulled off the glamourous look whilst also appealing to the male population as any artist should. I've already done a full blog post on the costume ideas for this character and therefore have not included it here. However i shall note that the image below shows evidence of the costume which we decided upon for our digipak and advert photo shoot but below this is our final outfit choice for our actual video footage.

The Abusive Alcoholic Husband. For this role we felt we needed a male figure who could come across as domineering and powerful, in order to be able to fulfil this role to the full potential which we hoped and had planned we needed an actor for the role with previous acting experience but we felt could fulfil the role without over acting and therefore making aspects seem unrealistic. Therefore we asked our friend Eddie Njenga if he would play this role, he had many previous credits for shows and for classes within the performing arts industry. Eddie Njenga is also 17 years old and currently attends StMarks sixth form for which he is head boy. We had used eddie for our preliminary task and therefore knew he would work to our request in order to produce an excellent final project. For Eddies Character we felt he should initially come across as a clean cut with a tidy appearance and dressed as a formal business man in a suit and shirt tie combo. Therefore we asked him to provide a suit of his choice along with a shirt and tie which as the video continued would become less formal as he scuffed up his appearance on entering his house as if making himself at home and letting go after a hard stressful day at work.

The Victimised Wife, for this role we felt we needed a woman who would be small and scrawny and who could give off the scruffy malnourished image. She needed to be a good actor in order to be able to provide the correct emotional appeal which we required from her character. For this reason we decided to work with Louise Lowe the actor we used previously for our preliminary task. She had worked well within our preliminary work and we knew she had previous acting experience and therefore we offered her the role. The costume for this character would involve a darkish outfit which was scrawny and minimal looking. In order to understand what we was looking for i used my previous inspiration of taylor swift's video mine and the role of the female to gain insight for our victimised wives costume.

Here is an image of this look from the 'Mine' music video:

Louise Lowe actor for victimised wife:

Storyboard

SHEET 1 (ABOVE)
SHEET2 (ABOVE)

Here are our plans of what we shall film for our Music Video. Sheet one is the first sheet at the very top of the page and sheet two is the second underneath. Both images could of been roated 90 degree anti clockwise and would then run from top row left to right 1,2,3,4 then bottom right to left 5,6,7,8 and so on.

Our Plans for our music video went as follows:

1. Begin the Music Video with an establishing shot of the artist playing the piano and singing.
2. Cut to Woman Victim sitting on sofa upset and depressed over fear of husband, receives text instructing to make dinner or else from abusive husband.
3. Jodi Singing amongst different mise-en-scenes.
4. Woman Victim panicking and rushing about due to husband being due home cooking dinner and stuff.
5. Jodi Singing amongst different mise-en-scenes.
6. Husband returns home.
7. Jodi Singing.
8. Dinner and Meal FIGHT between Abusive Husband and Victim Wife.
9. Jodi Singing.
10. MAIN FIGHT between Abusive Husband and Victim Wife.
11. Jodi Singing
12. Beth in bedroom crying after fight.
13. Jodi singing.
14. Eddies anger followed by realisation
15. The attempt apology which seems to be accepted
16. Beth Leaves and leaves teddy behind to represent leaving old memories and past behind a new life new start.

Creating the look

In our recent double lesson Kirstin was absent for the first period and therefore Jodi and I worked together to try and carry on with our project as much as possible. As noted within previous posts kelly clarkson released this single back in 2004 therefore the styles and fashion and appearence of the artists would be different to those today. We felt that repesentation through fashion was an aspect we must consider.

Taking this into account we assesed the general fashion stylings of Miss Kelly Clarkson and how she adapts her look to match her pop/rock music genre. In order to establish the look which we needed to represent though our artist we researched for some images which showed these stylings.

To begin with we both looked at several well known images of Clarkson and what we could tie in about the images which showed a general house style and a similar connection which reflected the artists genre.

Here are the images which we have assessed:

Assessing all three images we can see a clear style emerging for what is a fair haired woman focusing more upon her pop nature with a combination of dark clothing and dark eye make up in order to reflect her darker rock genre of her pop rock label.

Within the images there are minor adaptations to trends of the time, and with Miss Clarkson's career she has been able to become more experimental with her image. When Because of you was released in the early 21st century we saw Kelly as this more Pop based image with fair blonde hair but still aspects of rock though when we look towards the images of more recent shoots we see a darker woman with not so fair and with a more experimental rock image combining corsets and flamboyant rock genre dresses.

However we decided to focus more upon the image of when the single Because of You was released and for this reason we looked to find a currently emerging star who holds a keen eye for the pop/rock fashion for this reason i suggested we looked into using more Pixie Lott as the style icon for our more up to date Miss Clarkson.

Our next task was researching images of Pixie Lott and working with Jodi's wardrobe in order to recreate this look.

Here are our images of Pixie Lott:

In these images we can see the common style emerging of Miss Lott possessing her light fair hair and darkish eye make up. Along with this we noted the use of boots in combination with the majority of outfits. Another keen trend for this look is short shorts, short dresses and skirts. Another aspect is often the clothes will be of a darker colour or combine dark clothing choices with small aspects of light clothing choices.

Once we had taken note of these aspects we looked to how we could combine them in our work to create the image. We already had our artist as Jodi Grundy who has rather Fair blonde hair therefore we decided wed just work with her wardrobe to recreate these looks.

For make-up we decided that Jodi would wear a simple combination of :

-Foundation (to create a clear healthy complexion of almost perfection)

-Bronzer (to illuminate the skin and give a healthy glow)

-Mascara (to lengthen the lashes and create a glamourous feminine look)

-Black Eyeshadow (to create the dark rock image)

As mentioned we also looked at the wardrobe choice and therefore i asked Jodi to work with these looks which we discovered of Pixie Lott and see what she could come up with from her own wardrobe. Jodi searched around and came up with a few clothing choices of which i suggested she uploaded images of to Facebook so that the rest of the group could look and assess them to ensure we all agreed on the look. As you can see from the images Jodi has worked with the ideas of leg appeal and darker clothing with only small aspects of light clothing. Here are the images of these choices:

Audience Profile

As we’ve sat brainstorming different ideas which we had for our music video and which we agreed would be the most appropriate and were most practical we realized we needed to draw up and audience profile in order to be able to understand who we was marketing our video at and therefore what this select audience would be looking for within a music video. From this discussion we concluded the following. This audience profile will look at the Age, Gender, Income and interests of those whom which we plan to market our product towards.

After this discussion i can conclude that personally from what was discussed out target audience would be those who fall into the teenager-young adult category. This is due to its heavily pop based nature which is generally consumed by the younger audience however due to its slower tempo and deeper nature and emotional context i believed it was unlikely for the song to be reaching out to those much younger than 13/14 due to their younger minds and in ability to understand the emotional context which the song explores. The pop culture usually focuses upon creating idols and role models for the audience and for this reason i believe it would be this age group who are of the age of the artist whom would listen to and be able to feel a more emotional connection and idol appeal towards the artist. In a sense when the audience is younger the emotional appeal comes from them not wanting to grow up and be put into the same situation.

Due to the song being told from the females perspective and dealing with the dark aspects of a vulnerable female mixed with the controlling violence of a dominant male. Therefore we believe that the viewer would most likely be a female as we feel we shall be able to connect more emotionally with a female more than with a male in the sense that we hope to look for sympathy from our audience towards our characters and therefore we want to really connect in a sense that we feel we couldn't with a male.

Due to the young age of our employees we expect their income to be little or none, with some being below the national working age their only income could be through parents in terms of being given money or through pocket money. Those who do have an income would be earning very little due to being on part-time wages of maybe only 8 hours a week. Therefore we can conclude the wage is of very little.

Finally the interests of the audience well, due to the heavily pop based nature of the artist we agreed that it is likely that the audience would be interested in similar artists such as Katy Perry, Britney spears and other such artists. Due to this girly pop theme and genre of the video we looked into what these sort of females would be interested in generally we notes a passion for romantic comedies and emotional reaching movies such as "Love actually" and "The Notebook”. The girls would love cheap high street fashion and most likely purchase their clothes from shops such as new look, Primark and H&M.

Using other media forms within our work

As this is a media course we thought it would only be right to try to communicate with the other members of the group through as many other forms of media that we could. For this reason we have taken to discussing events and ideas through the media forum which is the Internet; social networking site facebook. We chose facebook as its an up and coming form of media communication which works well with today's technological age. Another bonus was that every member of our group had a facebook account

The particular instance in question involved a conversation between Jodi and myself discussing an idea which i had bought up in class and elaborating upon this so to create a better understanding for the rest of the group.

ideas for our video

Now that we've chosen our video and really researched into what the songs initial message was and what the video was trying to portray in the original, we decided as a group that over the weekend and during the next lesson we should begin to look at ideas for which we thought would be appropriate to adapt into our own music video. We looked into particular directors and aspects of videos which really caught out attention and which we personally enjoyed.

The overall idea which our group decided upon would be the basis of our story line would be the perspective of a young woman who is dealing with an abusive relationship, whereby her partner is a business man who comes home stressed from work and has a serious alcohol problem where by he returns from work begins drinking and the abuse starts. in the end we plan to have a sense of a happy ever after with the woman realising she's had enough and leaves.

I personally had several videos which i enjoyed to watch due to the direction and just the particular ways in which the director chose to portray aspects using direction and representation. The first of these would be the video of mine by taylor swift with a similar story line dealing with a girl whose watched her parents fight as a child and then grows up and enters into a relationship whereby an argument arrises and she expects to see a repetition of the events which occurred in her childhood however in this case the boy friend doesn't repeat the childhood night mare but instead he chases after this is the realisation that things aren't the same where by in Kelly Clarkson's we see her running back into the house and changing things her self so that there isn't a repeat. This video show a similar idea to that of what i thought of for our music video in that we see the story line and the artist as two separates the actors portray the actual story however the video also cuts to segments of the artist singing amongst a forest surrounded by images of all the memories of the characters within the story. This was an aspect i really liked and which we did discuss including within the video however it would be hard to include due to the need for a large amount of photos of the characters which would be rather costly. The link for this video showing these ideas is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPBwXKgDTdE

Another video which we agreed we all rather enjoyed as a group was that of Eminem "Love the way you lie" again the video looks at an abusive relationship however although we were rather amazed and interested by the editing aspects which were included within the video we was rather attracted to the way in which the video portrays the fight scene. The director seemed to use more creative movement techniques rather than an actual full on punch up. This seemed to add emotion and appeal which can lack in videos which and simply pure action and less emotion. As with our idea the video uses actors who are separate to the actual situation in the sense that we have the artists who sing the actual lyrics and who have their own inclusion within the video and those whom tell the story of which the artists sing portray are different actors and not the artists them selves. Here is the link showing the full video with the aspects which have been discussed included:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelHwf8o7_U/

research into the song

As mentioned the song because of you as originally wrote the song with David Hodges and Ben Moody, the pair were former members of the band evanescence and they also worked to produce the video. During summer 2008 the song became the second most played song for the past 5 years through all forms of media communication within the UK. 2009 saw the single become the biggest single of an american idol album, with over seven million albums worldwide and was ranked 7th most successful pop song of all time by billboard within the same year.

The idea of the song focuses on the cycle of families and the idea of nature/nurture. In the sense that we act how our parents acted towards us and therefore this is a continuous cycle which in some circumstances can be a continuous negative cycle.

The song was written back when kelly was 16 as she was trying to deal with emotional stress that she herself was trying to deal with as the result of her parents divorce. However when she met with Moody and Hodges and decided to start working with them she asked them if they'd aid her with polishing of the final aspects of the song.

Her Label 'thankful' never wished to release the song yet it won her an ASCAP songwriters award for "Song of the Year"

The video because of you was directed by Vadim Perelman and is based upon the true story that is kelly's troubled childhood.

At the beginning of the video we see the Clarkson household where a heated argument is taking place between her and her partner. We see a threat of the fiance threatening to smash a picture of the family. Time freezes and with this so does the character which is her partner. However Clarkson is a separate part of this her character still keep the ability to move and be mobile. We see her character looking around her house, and onlooking upon her younger self. She takes the hand of her younger self and the two relive her troubled childhood as various painful memories are played. An example of this sees the younger Clarkson making a picture for her father, who tosses it into the sink, and Clarkson's mother making an unappreciated dinner for her father. These events drive her mother to the point of taking pills and crying in front of the younger Clarkson.

The breaking point for the Clarkson parents is a finals physical fight which gets out of hand and we see them throwing object and attacking each other. Shortly after this were shown her farther with his bags packs leaving with the younger kelly trying to get him to stay yet he pulls away and we can tell he leaves at this point we see the older Clarkson running back into the house but in a sense is running back in time to the present day. Here we see time unfreeze the partner become mobile and the twos fight is non existent and instead of fight we see the two make up the daughter of the older Clarkson then comes into the shot and we see the family together they accept her and all embrace together.

The offical release of the video "Because of You" was on October 3rd 2005 via 'Total Request Live'

Lyrics of chosen song, because of you - kelly clarkson

I will not make the same mistakes that you did
I will not let myself
Cause my heart so much misery
I will not break the way you did,
You fell so hard
I've learned the hard way
To never let it get that far

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid

I lose my way
And it's not too long before you point it out
I cannot cry
Because I know that's weakness in your eyes
I'm forced to fake
A smile, a laugh everyday of my life
My heart can't possibly break
When it wasn't even whole to start with

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid

I watched you die
I heard you cry every night in your sleep
I was so young
You should have known better than to lean on me
You never thought of anyone else
You just saw your pain
And now I cry in the middle of the night
For the same damn thing

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I try my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don't know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I'm ashamed of my life because it's empty
Because of you
I am afraid

Because of you
Because of you

Goodwin's theory

Andrew Goodwin's theory is ab

The key features concerning Andrew Goodwin's theory are:
-relationships between lyrics and visuals
-relationships between the music and visuals
-music genres have their own music video styles and iconography e.g. country music always has cowboy boots and hats
-demand from record company for a lot of close-ups of main artist or vocalist
-likely to be references to voyerism: related to females usually, also in terms of looking (binoculars, keyholes etc), the sense of spying
-intertextual references to other music videos, film and TV texts

Ideas which were discussed.

When it came to deciding upon Genres, Settings, Actors and most initally the actual Song which we would use for our video, my group discovered many issues due to mixed opinions upon which genre would be the most appropriate. We were tied between the more rock aspects which kirstin would prefer and the pop side of the music industry which was more aquired to that of jodis taste. I myself have wide aspect of music passion and therefore was open to pretty much anything, however i did try to suggest possibly looking at an indie alternative band such as that of The Kooks or Paolo Nutini. However there was issues with trying to think of actors who we could use to fill these parts and how we would attempt to portray the messages fo these songs to the audience on a low budget. Another issue with these perticular bands were many of their songs were slow and lacked a continuous upbeat rhythm which we could use to pace ourselves upon and also other memebers of our group ( jodi) were not so familiar with their work and therefore did not feel comfortable withgoing forward with this idea.

Example of the work of 'The Kooks' and 'Paolo Nutini' which we did asses as possibilitys to use for our music video.

The Kooks- Naive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkaMiaRLgvY&ob=av2n

The Kooks- Shine On.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivnj5J6KCYc&ob=av2n

Paolo Nutini-Last request.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkA4xcIAvuw

Paolo Nutini-New shoes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CCQ7IiWZBg&feature=related

These were the main indie alternative, songs which we looked at however there were a few more which were bought up in conversation but not really assed but more or less dropped upon being mentioned.

As mentioned kirstin prefered the more rock genre of the music world and therefore did ask we looked at trying to do a paramore video, which i myself wouldn't of minded due to having a strong love for this band however we did struggle with trying to look at how exactly we would film this genre as most aspects would involve the more 'in the band' aspect in which we would need a small group playing instruments along with. The song which kirstin was rather interested in doing was:

Paramore- That's what you get.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kz6hNDlEEg&ob=av2e

Furthermore jodi has a passion for the pop genre of the music world and therefore we assesed artists of this genre of which we looked at artists such as kelly clarkson and avril lavigne due to jodi feeling these were artists which she knew of and incorperated a cross over pop rock genre. The songs which we assesed were as follows.

Avril Lavigne- When your gone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R95CkWaLNo

Kelly Clarkson- Because of you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3D8J1rjGLg

Kelly Clarkson- Behind these hazel eyes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svxP2LjBg_4&feature=related

The three of these videos were deeply thought about however we felt that because of you would be the best video to use due to the fact we felt the message would be easier to portray to our audience for this reason we chose because of you over the other two videos.

Final task introduction.

For our final piece our task was to produce a music video to a song of our choice within small groups or by ourselves. During this task we had to show our skills through how we planned, filmed and finally edited and evaluated our own work. Although when in some cases such as mine, where we were in small groups it was our task to ensure, we had our own opinions and ideas heard and incorperated where possible into the video.

My group consisted of Jodi, Kerstin and myself.

I wasnt in for the most part of the first lesson in which we began to plan out our ideas for our music video nor for the rest of the lessons for this week after due to illness and other issues at home. However for the part which i was in i have caught up on what was discussed within the lesson and now i am on top on what has been happening within my group. I have tried my best to asses the ideas of my group and to add my own input into where i think i could with extra ideas which had not been discussed.

preliminary work missing.

During the period of time which the class carried out both the preliminary evaluation and the majority of the preliminary ancillary tasks i was rather ill and therefore i only took part in the main filming stages and preparation for my preliminary task.

preliminary video.

preliminary video.

Preliminary task planning.