Planning for filming

Shooting session one

Shots: 1,2,3,5,6,19

Locations: Toton Park by the river and Beeston Train Station

Order of shots: 1,19,2,3,5,6

Shot 1- Establishing shot, taking as a birds eye view of a puddle with rain drops falling into it. Location, Toton park weather permitting.

Shot 19- Face of actress reflecting in the water of the puddle. Location, Toton park weather permitting. Will be an overhead shot or taken from the angle which best shows their face.

Shot 2- Actress looking out of the window through a long shot and mid shot to see which we prefer. Costume- casual clothing : Jeans and a T-shirt with natural make-up and hair.

Shot 3- Actress walking along the platform of a train station, shot from the bridge over looking the station, crane shot. May also try shooting the same scene from the opposite platform as a panning shot so we have different angles on the movement. 

Shot 5- Mid shot and long shot of a train passing by, will film from the opposite platform from our actress so we can get an image of her on the bench behind the train. 

Shot 6- Actress is sat on a bench at the train station, will shoot from the opposite platform to show the location by getting the railway tracks in shot. I think we should try the same shot shooting from the same platform and doing a side angled close up to show her emotion.

Costume for the train station: Sophisticated vintage style, white shirt with a blazer jacket, and jeans or a skirt with wedged heels so that she looks classy but not too dressed up for a train station. Her make-up will be quite natural with red lips and eye liner flicks, and her hair will be styled with a roll or curls. 

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule

From looking at the storyboard we created together, we realised that we need to plan our time wisely in order to do all of the shots we plan, in the locations as there is a wide variety, and will probably be shot on different days due to costume and availability of all three of us. This is the shooting schedule I devised to help us keep on top of the filming, whilst sticking to the story board as much as we can, although we are likely to change ideas along the way.

Storyboard

Storyboard 

We have devised a storyboard to the song Summertime Sadness by listening to the song and studying the lyrics. We both shared ideas of what we thought would look good at that moment of the video, and made a tally chart of the shots which we wanted to include so that we had a variety and not too many of the same shots so that it would look interesting. This is only a plan of the shots we want to do and we may change the order and angles of the shots when we actually start filming.

Mock up of magazine advert

Magazine Advert 

I want to keep the magazine advert simple with a close up photograph of our model in the center showing her sad emotion, with paint splatters behind her on a black background. The title will be in bold white text, and the remaining text will be slightly smaller in the same colour and font. Like the digipak mock, I need to change the title to 'Born To Die', however I think a close up image of her showing emotion will still work well with this title as it suggests the sincere meaning of the album.

Mock up of digipak

Mock Up of Digipak 

I have created a rough mock of the design of the digipak that I would like to make for the track, I haven't drawn the images accurately as they will be photographs from when we shoot the video. I realise that I put the wrong title as her album is called 'Born To Die' so this will be altered in the first draft. After looking at this design I have produced, I feel it represents the track Summertime Sadness too much, rather than the album as a whole, and I will therefore change my design for the first draft, with original photography which I will take away from the filming scenes to ensure they are not linked directly to that video.

The front cover will be a close up image of our model making direct eye contact at the audience, with bright paint splatters in the background on a black wall to create a contrast between summer and sadness. The text will be in bold in white so that it stands out.

The back of the digipak will have the track list on in a column format, in white text. There will also be the record companies logo and credit blocks at the bottom, with imagery of a tree representing the end of summer as the leaves are falling off.

When we shoot the scenes in the film, we can take a photograph of her walking into the distance and use it on this page, I think it will look best if it is slightly distorted as it shows her dispair.

We will take an action shot of her doing a dance move and have her wearing bright clothes against a blank background so she stands out.

The CD will be on the middle insert with information of the tracks behind it and paint splatters as headers and boarders to keep the design from the front page running throughout.

I got this idea of the quote from an artist after analysing the Example digipak as they used this idea and I liked the idea of making the CD more personal to the consumer.

Location Recce Shots

Location Reece Shots

After we had brainstormed ideas of the locations which we consider good options for our music video, we decided to visit some of these places which were local to check where would be best to film from and the different backgrounds and lighting.

Beeston Train Station

The train station would be good place to film the miserable shots of the artist, as the setting is rather dull and the lighting is poor, suggesting a darker atmosphere which also represents the sadness that summertime is over. There are many different areas which we can film from at this location and get interesting shots, as we can stand on the opposite platform and film across, or from the stairs and do a low angle shot, or on the same platform and have her walk past or do close ups.

Wollaton Hall and Park

Wollaton Hall - slideshow

Wollaton Hall is my favourite location for a background in a shot, as it has a beautiful presence and is a grand building, which would represent the wealth and success of an artist if they were able to film their video with it in the background. There are many different locations within this place as round the back of the hall are some steps which would be good to film the artist walking on, and and arch way which could be interesting as there are vines hanging from a particular arch, which would make a creative shot if we could get the model to stand or sit by it. The lighting is good here, but very dependent on the weather, as we visited this location when it was briefly sunny and therefore the lighting was impressive.

Nottingham Town Square

We initially had an idea to sit our artist on the steps here and film people walking past quickly, however after visiting the location and experiencing standing in the square where we planned to film, I feel this is an unsuccessful plan, as there wasn't a huge amount of people walking past this area for a long time, and we would have to film a lengthy piece of footage in order to speed it up at the editing stage. Also we may be in the way of people passing in the square, and lose focus of our model which would not be a good idea.

Nottingham Castle

Nottingham Castle - slideshow


I was on a school trip here, when I noticed it would be a great place to film at as there were different elements such as beautiful gardens, and the castle itself. However I don't know if we will film here as it is similar to Wollaton Hall, and both me and Laura-Jo prefer that location as it had more to offer.

 East Midlands Airport

EMA - slideshow

We had an idea that we could film our model waiting for somebody coming out of the airport as it would be romantic and suggest the beginning of their summer, or have them both departing so it would add to the narrative of them being in love during summer. However we realised this may be difficult to film with security precautions and people departing. We wouldn't be able to get them through the airport so they could depart either, so this location will not be used in our video.

This was an unplanned location find, as we were driving round and found it in Long Eaton. It is a graveyard which represents the album title of 'Born to Die' so I thought I should take my own photography to use for my ancillary texts as I feel this could make an amazing section of the digipak.

Location Ideas

Locations

As part of our planning and research for our music video, we find it important to have various options for locations to film at so that our video is more interesting with different landscapes and backgrounds. We created a brainstorm of different locations which we may want to use during our music video that will fit in with the ideas that we have for the narrative. We chose a variety from public places which may be busy such as Beeston train station, Nottingham Town Square and East Midlands Airport. Then chose more deserted areas which would be easier to film at with just the artist in shot, such as a deserted field, river and Wollaton Park. Then we thought of the shots which would be personal to the artist in the narrative such as a bedroom, and a plain room so she can stand and sing in front of it with no distractions.

Costume and Make-up

Costume Ideas 

After listening to the track which we have chosen, we both shared ideas of the images of the actress who will play the artist in our music video and what costume she will be wearing. The style of the song 'Summertime Sadness' reminded us both of the vintage fashion from the 50's, and how it is being rediscovered in fashion now. We decided to construct a mood board of photographs and images we found in fashion magazines such as 'Look' and 'Now', which represented the style that we want to portray through the actress in our video. There will be various costumes in our video due to our idea of shooting in different locations, and therefore, we need inspiration of what costumes we will use in the different shots.

Hair and Make-Up Ideas

As we had decided to style the costume around a vintage theme, we needed to make sure that the hair and make-up also worked with this style. We created another mood board using images from the fashion magazines, but this time showing inspiration for make-up and hairstyles which we could use on our actress. The theme of make-up which we want to use is generally summer tones, however with a hint of dull colours to convey the idea of her being sad and alone. The red lipstick was something we thought would be a good idea as it is similar to fashion icons in the 50's such as Marilyn Monroe who wore bright red lipstick, as it looks glamorous, which is important for a female artist in a music video. The vintage hairstyles that stood out to me are the rolls in the hair as they also look glamorous and I feel that we need to show our actress in that way.

Make up and costume from Cloburrows

Experimenting with different costumes for Wollaton Hall and Park

As we were planning the Wollaton Hall and Park scenes, we felt it would be a good idea to plan her costume and hair and make-up. She tried on a variety of dresses, although we knew which shoes and make-up and hair we wanted.

Lyric Analysis

Lyric Analysis

We wanted to look into the lyrics in more detail, to understand how the narrative of our music video would be constructed around the different lyrics, so that we could include a relationship between the lyrics and visuals in some areas of the video. We thought the best way to do this would be to find the lyrics to the song online and print them off. We then separated the lyrics into smaller sections which made it easier to analyse them. We played the song and stopped it after each section and shared ideas of what we imagined to be happening in the video at that time. We also read the meaning of the lyrics and came up with ways of interpreting them into the visuals, for example:

'I got my red dress on tonight'- we didn't want to just show the artist stood signing with a red dress on as this seemed to obvious, however we thought it would be more interesting to show her having a flashback to when she was wearing a red dress with her summertime love, and then return to a shot of the artist in a different costume, so that the visuals linked to the lyrics but in an unusual way.

We also considered the different locations which the sections of the songs would be shot in, and the positions that the actors would be in during the shot. We had to also think about when our actress would be singing to the camera to connect with the audience, and found that a section which has a slightly different pace and style to it would be a good idea to show the artist looking at the camera as it separates it from the narrative.

Target Audience Research

Target Audience Research

We decided to compose a survey to get feedback on what would be a good idea for our music video and to get the correct target audience age. However, nobody answered our survey and this was therefore unsuccessful for research. We decided that as we were both interested in the artist, and many of our friends agreed at sixth form, that young adults and teenagers were most likely to be interested in the music video.

Track Permission

Track Permission

Me and Laura-Jo found one of the record labels which Lana Del Rey is signed to, and located their email address. We then wrote an email to them requesting track permission for the track we are wanting to use.

The response we got informed us that Lana Del Rey was no longer signed to that label, and improved our knowledge of the artist, as we found out she was signed by Polydor. This was an important fact as we need to include record label information on our ancillaries, so the response to the email was a great help.

I then inboxed Polydor on FaceBook as there didn't appear to be another email address, and I received no response after over a month.