R+P Post 21: My key shots storyboard

We decided to make a key shots storyboard to add further detail to what we had planned out when creating our timeline, and get a rough idea of specific shots we wanted in our music video.

After procuring a couple of large pieces of black sugar paper, we used post it notes to show shots, drawing on them what would appear in the frame. We had different colour post its to denote what framing each shot would be. Yellow was for long shots (LS), greyish/pale blue for mid shots (MS), and blue for close ups (CU).

A picture of the majority of our
storyboard

The last chunk of our storyboard with
 the colour code key at the bottom right

Character or prop movement was communicated via a thin arrow, whilst camera movement such as pans or tilts was shown via thicker arrows. We also wrote out short notes above shots if there were any other details of what would be happening (such as cgi to be done in post-production).

One of our post-it-notes, a long shot
denoting the main character
drawing a flag.

On many of our post-it-notes we wrote short captions to clarify what was supposed to be happening in the shot. This appeared more often on shots with complex movement.

Creating a storyboard like this was really useful as it allowed us to iron out any gaps in the progression of shots in our music video. Furthermore by using post-it-notes we were subsequently able to re-arrange shots as and when we wanted to.

R+P Post 20: My Music Video timeline

We created a timeline for our music video. I drew out the timeline as 10 second sections from the beginning to the end of the song. Above that I drew subsections for each of our setups, i.e. bedroom scene, white scene, yellow scene, etc. These subsections were mainly based upon tempo changes, and somewhat influenced by lyrics and changes in layers of instrumentation.

We then thought it would be a good idea to add post-it-notes onto the timeline to note down our ideas of what should be in each section, be it actions, props, or effects.

The timeline was great for showing us sections (such as that on the last page) where we had fewer ideas and needed to flesh out what we had.

First page

Second page

I feel that creating a timeline was a hugely useful process as it helped us ensure scenes didn't go on too long as we had a visual representation of the length of each one.

Third page

Fourth page

We considered making a timeline on the computer as it would be neater and less cumbersome than the strip of A3 sheets we used, however it felt far more time-efficient using post-it-notes as ideas could be instantly added or discarded and moved around easily.

R+P Post 19: My Influences and vision for the project

Jackson Adams
Adams is a music video director who generally seems to work with lesser-known artists, and inspires me due to how unique the videos he creates are. The new, original, experimental styles he creates are things that I've never seen in music videos before, and work well despite how 'different' they are.
His style is recognizable from always changing shot or scene at the end of each verse, and his videos are saturated with shots which have a lot of background blur (shallow depth of field).

Bet against me - majority glitchy, loads of super imposing (datamoshing) (experimental video)

More experimental work, using slow motion, gfx and masking to create a glitchy/jumpy video whilst still looking like the artist is speaking normally.

Zach Sherwin -Goose MCs  - performance video

R+P Post 18: Analysis of my track's lyrics and instrumentation

We listened to the track many times in order to pick out what we felt were key changes in the song, whether it was the introduction of lyrics, a change in drumbeat, or change in intensity. Through this we were able to better formulate where our ideas would fit in in relation to the timeline of the song.

We then constructed a rough sheet with the lyrics listed out, and noted down times of tempo changes or significant musical dynamics such as drops or loud beats.
This is a neatened version of how that document appeared:

This method of approach allowed us to split the track up into more manageable chunks dependent on the tempo and 'feel' in that particular section. We decided this would be a good way to form each individual scene in our music video.

The lyrics gave us a great amount of ideas:

• "sun goes down" built up the idea of the main theme of the entire video being a reference from going from daytime to night-time. We felt this should not only appear in a time-lapse but also perhaps be an ongoing change as the video moved from scene to scene.
• "is just to go crazy" started to build up the idea of having crazy party scenes.
• "Earth moves in orbit" brought to mind images of space and even other planets, and thus we started to form ideas for a scene on an alien planet.
• "dancing in the dark" also reinforced our ideas for party scenes, and we decided there should be a glow-in-the-dark party scene.

This is an example of the sort of visuals we plan to
have for the sun going down time-lapse idea.

The line "just to go crazy" also helped us to create some sense of story to our ideas for the music video. We felt it made us think of going crazy in the sense of just letting go and having fun, which we thought could maybe be the main message in the video.

R+P Post 17: My Chosen Track

"Sun Goes Down"

"Sun Goes Down" is a track by David Guetta and Showtek, featuring MAGIC! and Sonny Wilson. It was released on the 31st July 2015.

When we chose this track, it had no official music video.

We were aware that the track's distribution rights were owned by Warner Music Group, who are well-known for making copyright claims on YouTube.

Ignacio wrote an email to WMG asking permission for use of the track:

R+P Post 16: My Band or Artist

Our artist is called Orlando. This name we chose as we came up with a few singular names. We felt a singular name, (as opposed to a first name-surname kind of arrangement), would work best as we wanted something that would be easily recognizable and memorable. This is what a lot of artists have gone for, such as Skillex, Avicii, Hardwell, and Tiësto.

Mario was to act as our artist, Orlando.

We surveyed 14 people within our target audience in order to ascertain as to whether 'Orlando' was a good name, and the results showed that 12 people liked the name and 2 people did not.

10 of them felt the name would be memorable, however 1 did raise the point that some potential audience may think of Orlando as in Orlando Bloom. We felt however this probably wouldn't be an issue.

Tiesto performing energetically

Giving Orlando an upbeat, energetic personality seemed like the most appropriate personality to give him, as it is something seen regularly in other artists of the genre, especially at festivals. Furthermore we decided to give him a similar, simple style of clothing, (black t-shirt and trousers), and reflective black sunglasses to give him a kind of recognizable 'personal style'.

When we asked the people in our survey what they thought of our planned costume for Orlando, although the majority of responses were positive, several did suggest that more colourful clothing might suit the artist better.

I am going to be the DJ featuring in the
video, DJ Ed-E.

Although the actual track has several artists, we decided to just have two. We decided to have a DJ, who we've named DJ Ed-E, coincidentally played by me. Although we have a DJ featuring on the track, we decided he would not be the focal point to the music video nor the marketing.

R+P Post 15: My Record Label

After much discussion amongst our group, we decided to name our record label 'Detrimental Records', as we thought it was memorable, original, and that our target audience may be able to link with it quite well. The reason we felt this was that it seems often the case that modern music of the EDM genre and its sub-genres is seen by many older music fans as 'lesser' when compared to more traditional forms of music such as Rock - which is played on real instruments.

We also found that the vast majority of record labels have 'records' in their name, so we felt we should adhere to this convention. Large-scale examples of this include A&M Records, Columbia Records, Warner Bros. Records.

Our record label's logo

A&M Records' logo was
a big influence visually
in designing our logo.

We decided that our record label logo should:

• Be simplistic yet recognisable
• Include the record label's name
• Have a graphic to further emphasise what it is we do

We also decided that our record label would be somewhere in-between an indie label and a major label. An example of a record label that is similar to this would be Spinnin' Records, a dutch indie label that has grown to be one of the most well-known EDM labels.

Here are some other artists that would be the kind of musicians our label would sign, mainly new artists with a very signature sound.

Avicii

Hardwell

Martin Garrix