Our Casting Video

We filmed a variety of girls we thought could potentially be in our band in order to see who within our peers we could possibly cast in order to test how they acted or presented while being filmed. We wanted to see how they reacted to the instructions we gave them, so we let them listen to the song a few times and get familiar with the tone and attitude of the song. From this, we were able to get a good idea of the people we potentially wanted to cast and the look we were going for. 

After watching and auditioning a variety of potential band members, here's what we've decided we wanted our main cast to be:

Lead- Lottie Alfred-Warren

Guitar- Connie Bowes

Base- Cat Dunkin

Drums- Gina Garcia

We were also aware, however, that we should be prepared for casting to potentially fall though, as the members may have conflicts or time commitments that don't allow these girls to be part of our video, so as a backup, we also choose 4 girls who could step-in. These girls would be just as able to play the part as the main cast.

Lead- Connie Bowes

Guitar- Sienna Friend

Base- Gina Garcia

Drums- Neave VT

Moodboard

 I created a Moodbaord of colors, concepts, costumes and ideas our audience may expect to see form our band, due to their genre and style:

Camera Lenses Workshop

Here are the notes I took in the advanced camera workshop on Friday:

-When turning on lights on set, be sure to call out "eyes down" in order to let everyone there avert their eyes before the lights turn on

- The camera we're using is a Black Magic 4k mini URSA 

The shutter speed is measured in degrees and controls motion and blur

-    When the shutter angle is at 180 degrees, that's what's considered realistic, and seems the most like real life.

-    When lowering the angle to 75 degrees, the blur becomes sharper, this is useful for exact instrument playing, sport, and dance. This gives the shot a much clearer effect which means you can see action very clearly

- When you increase the angle to 360 degrees, the movement within the frame becomes softer and blurred, which makes things look dreamy, more intimate, and warmer.

The Frames Per Second, (or fps) is usually a standard of 25 in the UK, 30 in the USA and 24 on average in film. In order to shoot in slow-motion, you increase the fps to 50, in order to then slow it down during post-production.

We will be shooting our music videos on two types of lenses:

Prime Lenses

These are lenses that are made specifically for that lens, so it is further specific to its specialty, and therefore very good at singular jobs. This means they are much nicer quality.

Steps in order to install a Prime lens:

• Take the lens cap off
• (add adapter)
• Align the red dot on the lens to the dot on the camera body
• Wait for the click

How to focus the lens:

• Using a tape measure, begin on the focus plane, and measure until subject, and focus it till the measurement
• This needs to be a two-person job

General Rules: 

The lens box must be all the way open or completely locked and clasped, no in-between.

The higher the number on the lens, the closer the zoom.

Wide lenses are worse quality, however, it gives the full image and is ideal for movement and establishment.

Close lenses are the best quality, so for beauty, and close-up shots, use the closes lenses possible.

New Lenses- D20 Pictor Zoom Lenses

These are a mix between a wide and a close lens.

 They are heavy, and expensive, but very high quality, and therefore extremely top-heavy. 

There are two lenses, the 55-02 and the 521-05, the first shoots extremely wide, and the second shoots extremely close.

Band Configuration

When bands are initially set up, they are commonly positioned in stage-like or performance-like set-ups that don't necessarily cater to the screen or video. Instead, tailor the positioning to the viewer by creating interesting shapes and dynamics within the frame. 

Legal Letter of Copyright

We sent a legal letter, asking for permission from the band, Grumpy Plumb, to use their song in our music video. Gumpy Plum own the copyright of their songs independently, so we emailed them directly rather than any record label. We found their email through they're Facebook page, though we also looked at their Spotify, Instagram, and Twitter page.

Genre Conventions

 

The Feedback of our Treatments

Here is the feedback we received on our Treatment presentation for our main idea

Despite wanting to focus on all the girls, we still need to lead the singer there to carry the performance more than the rest, and so it will be important that we cast a strong leading performer, as she will have more of the focus. We would need, minimum, a guitar, bass, and drums player, so if our band is only three people, the lead would also need to play an instrument. In order to give them some sense of individuality, we would need to try and find 3 very different-looking girls who could pull off the look.

We would always film the performance first, and so, in addition to the lead, we should add the whole band to our first set-up and film them first. In order to maximize the Barbie set, we should use the band in there as well as the lead, and we can do other takes with just her, but do some with the band as well. In pre-production, we should be sure to buy two pairs of every costume, and ruin one set before the day, so we can control how it looks, and ensure it looks authentically destroyed, and keep the other one nice and pristine for the barbie set.

They recommended we scrap the third set, and instead film the band trashing the set and film them graffitiing as part of that same set. This could look staged and fake very easily, so the destruction of the set would have to be almost choreographed and well though through. in order to do this, it should seem like these are friends messing around and getting too carried away. so we would have to think of specific things to trash so that it can look like they have actually done substantial damage.

Our Target audience

 Our Audience Profile- 

In order to understand our audience, we must create an audience profile, this helps us market, address, and appeal to a specific group of people, which is likely to make our new, upcoming band successful. In order to do this, we can classify our audience either by demographic, or psychographic.

In order to classify by Demographic, we would classify our audience based on a variety of significant social criteria. For example, age, gender, ethnicity and class. In our case, our audience would be a female, young teen audience from the ages of …..

In order to measure Demographic, we can use the JICNARS scale. This scale measures stereotypical expectations in class, disposable income, age, and ethnicity. Eg: the higher you are on the scale, the more likely you are to be older, more educated, and wealthier. 

However, this scale is highly inaccurate for our demographic, as the audience we’re appealing to is underage, unemployed, and hasn’t finished their education, so many of the factors based on the scale don’t apply.

It is more accurate to measure by Psychographic, this type of lifestyle profiling combines the psychological profile of the consumer, along with their values, priorities, and life circumstances.

In order to measure this, we would use the VALS scale. However, due to the age of our audience, we would classify them using the Teenage VALS scale. This scale was created due to the large power and sway teenagers hold in the music industry, and how it affects the popularity and relevance of stars today.

 Our band would be appealing to two main categories, the Innovators and the Rebels. 

Innovators are defined by their “wish to make a mark” and Rebels are defined by their “wish to remake the world in their own image”.

The people who fall into this bracket would be very anti-establishment and would tend towards rock, or alternative music due to it’s often aggressive message or independent style. This appeals to the messages and tone we plan to set for our band.

Our genre, pop-rock already tends towards these brackets, but we plan to appeal to our target audience using the expected conventions in order to create a larger audience for a new band. In order to do this, our band would reject the common conventions of a typical "pop princess" and instead, dress and act like a hyper-feminine rock band, this would mean they find empowerment in femininity and reject the stereotypical expectations of girly pop-singers.

The song itself has the lyrics:

"I'm not your perfect little girl, in your perfect Barbie world

What if I tried to be one of the pack? I'd probably just end up fighting back"

"So I'm gonna scream it and I'll scream it loud, how the fuck did you want me to sound

Say something, be something, just be alright
Not that easy, try to please me life's got a bite
I'm not a liar, I've got a fire, and it's in my eyes
Don't try me, try to buy me, watch my demise"

These lyrics play into the anti-establishment, rebellious spirit which would appeal to our target psychographic category. The hyper-feminine aspect of our girl-band would appeal to the age, gender and attitude of our target demographic. However, due to their age and gender, we would be careful not to over sexualize or create an extremity of rebellious nature surrounding their attitude, because it would be the parents of our audience who hold the income in order to finance the band, due to their age.  They would have to feel it was age appropriate. We would communicate the values and attitude of our girl group through their costumes, props, colors, and album artwork.

Visual Treatment: Idea 2 Male solo artist

 Here's the visual treatment which we passed out in class, this helps everyone understand our concepts and ideas through the use of similar imagery.

Treatment: Idea 2 - Solo male Artist

 Here's the second treatment we created for our next idea, based around a male solo artist. I worked on this with my production crew, together we explored how to create an engaging video for a male pop artist.

Visual Treatment- Idea 1 Dollhouse

 Here is the Visual treatment for our first idea, which I worked on with my group.

Treatment: Idea 1 - Dollhouse

This is our first treatment presentation which I worked on with my group. Here's the presentation we did in order to explain and explore our concepts. 

Production Groups and Song Choice

Today in class, we were put into our production groups, our production team consists of myself, Tegan Howard, Bashy Slater, Gorgie Butch. We created a snapchat groupchat in order to keep in contact.

We listened to three of our top pick songs once again and ended up picking Dollhouse- by Grumpy plumb as the main idea, hoping to create an Avril Lavigne type girl band, that is a mix between feminine and a little rebellious. So for example, an early costume idea we had would be a dress or skirt with combat boots outfit, modeled after the early two-thousands or 90s fashion trends, considering this song has those sort of twenty-year-old sound. We watched Avril Lavigne's first youtube video, "Complicated" in order to draw inspiration.

We recognize that in order to do this we will need to find all-female musicians who can create a cool performance onstage. WE will also have to keep this pretty PG-13, because our audience would be younger, and so parents would be buying their kids, (mainly young daughters) tickets, CDs, and albums.

Early feedback of song choice

Song: Dollhouse - Grumpy Plumb

This song was a “definite band” piece, this was agreed upon unanimously by the class. I took note of the fact that there would be a performance aspect needed within the video itself, which would be easier to film in a group, as they would have a few musicians as band members. This song felt more feminine or female-oriented, and therefore could potentially be a girl band, but either way would need a strong female lead singer. The genre, indie pop, was evident through the general tone and vibe of the song itself. The type of voices and instruments would make this group very easy to cast, and make a video around, however, I am aware of the fact we would need to cast people who can play those instruments live.

Some early image ideas were an edgy, or aggressive, anti-establishment vibe, which intertwines both rebellion and performance. There could be a grungy feminine vibe which is similar to an Avril Lavigne type image, this sort of thing could thrive being low-budget, since the band, the performance, and the style would be the focus of the video. This would appeal to a younger female audience, so it couldn’t be too risqué, as it would need to appeal to the parents who would buy tickets, albums, merchandise, etc, which would be important in order to market a new upcoming band.

Song: Mamma Mia- Sam and Sounds

The general consensus of the class was that this song sounded like a solo artist, but could just as easily become a boy band with 1 lead singer, because of its upbeat, classic pop tone and rhythm. This would be very easy to cast, as the lead singer sounds young and could be played by any young male. If made into a band, it would be important to emphasize the lead artist, much like Florence and the Machine, the band would be second to the main lead singer himself. This definitely appeals to young people and has bright happy tones, which would make the song easy to film and conceptualize as this audience has a specific taste, and would also need to appeal to their parents, much like the previous song. As an obviously classic upbeat pop song, some common conventions we would use would be lots of bright colors, and fun costumes, we would really lean into the summery tone and have the ability to also lean into a slight aspect of the narrative, similar to other pop artists, which would appeal to the upcoming artist’s target audience.