Casting - what look are we going for and why? (MALE CHARACTER)

For the male character we would preferably like him to have long hair so that we can work with it in hair and makeup. His look should also be quite edgy to complement the female characters look and when it comes to the interaction between them they will look good together. He should be quite tall and taller than the female actress and look late teens. he should be lanky so that he is easier to style. I think that a good reference to the look we are going for is like Robert Sheehan as he has long hair and is lanky.

Casting - what look are we going for and why? (FEMALE CHARACTER)

As a group we decided for the female character we wanted a euphoric looking girl to fit with the themes of dreaming and the surreal elements. We want her to be interesting looking and we also want a female that has an edge to her look to show the audience that she is different and this also fits in with the target audience and makes her more relate-able to them. We want her to have mid/long hair so that when filming the water sequence her hair will flow with the fans so give the illusion of floating. We want her to be quite dainty but not necessarily shot but height isn't a factor that we are concerned about. We agreed that the kind of personality that Cassie Ainsworth from the TV show Skins has is what we want. (images below)

Similar Products and their Genre Conventions

Story Board

We used our timeline to help us split up- the sections of the video and made individual frame guides to give us a visual interpretation of what the video was going to look like. we drew out the frame and the content of each frame.This forced us as a group to discuss further the mise-en-scene of each scene. it also allowed us to discuss suitable camera angles and movements we could explore with.

Mood board for Intended Target Audience

I have collected images off the internet to create a mood board for my intended target audience. I have aimed for fashion from London in different eras before 2000 like 1990 and 1970, to fit in with where the music would usually be played and people who would appreciate this music, and the vintage London scene to fit in with the style of people for our target audience. I have also included likely places that the people in our target audience would spend time.

Idea Formation

When discussing our idea, we decided that we wanted a clearer idea of three elements and ensure that they all link closely by making the ideas and themes more basic.

Element 1

- Water -

Costume : The white plenty of fabric dress which links into the majority of the set.
Makeup + Hair : She will be wearing natural looking makeup and her hair down so that it can be blown by a fan to add to the effect of her being underwater and her hair flowing to the movement of the water.
Props : We wont use any props in this set to give the effect of water and to make sure that there are no distractions to take a way from the effect that she is suspended in water.
Lighting : Clear soft blues to create the effect of water

In this element the female singer will be the only one on set and she will be moving slowly to the beat of the music and lip synching to the song. We will use effects in post production to make it look like she is underwater using filters etc. She will be suspended in the studio by wires so that her feet can hang to make it look more realistic that she is floating in water.

Element 2 

- Woods -

Costume : She will be wearing the same dress that she is in the water sequence which will be attached to the branches of the trees around her to submerge her into the set.
Makeup + Hair : Again she will have natural looking makeup with her hair down and natural.
Props : there will be no props in this element so that the focus is all on the artist.
Lighting : We want very soft natural lighting to create a pure effect to go with the pure, natural effects of the water sequence.

In this element the female singer will be amongst her dress in the woods lip synching whilst exploring her surroundings to create the dream effect that we were going for, that it is an unknown environment.

Element 3

- Mixed Sets with UV -

This is a more recent idea that our group has decided on. We wanted a contrasting element to our previous idea to continue the surreal natural dream theme that we initially based our idea around. We didn't want to use the Alice in Wonderland theme that we thought of before because we thought it was quite cliche. We thought that we could use lighting and projection effects as that is what we started with as an idea in our group. We also thing that the amount of fabric in the dress can be utilised when thinking about colours and effects in projections and lighting. We wanted a kind of synthetic theme to this element to contrast to the previous elements.

For the possible editing and camera techniques which we could use, we were thinking of using the effect where the film is played forward back then forward to the beats of the song.

Costume : Same dress as have used throughout as can use fabric to play with lighting effects.
Makeup + Hair : We think that we could use bright colours on the face makeup which will glow in UV light. As the other elements are all in sunlight, we want to lighting for this theme to be dark with bright UV colours.
Props : We were thinking of using just small things like confetti which will create nice effects when glowing with UV light. We also were thinking of using smokey effects which could glow to the UV lighting.

We've added this element as we also think that the visuals match the kind of sounds of the song and it will also create a more exciting image for the artist which will help aim it at the target audience of this genre of music. The visuals of this element also sort of represent the kind of environments that this kind of music would be played at.

Timeline

This is the first draft of our timeline created for our music video.