Evaluation: 4) B - How did you use media technologies in the planning stages?

The use of social networking sites were highly important in the planning stages of our coursework. Firstly, this is the medium of contact we used to gain permission form our chosen artist, after using music streaming websites such as Myspace and Last.fm to find songs that we felt we could work well with to produce our music video and ancillary texts. Having previously sent a number of emails to a few record labels of signed artists in order to receive permission to use their tracks in our coursework but failing to hear any responses, we decided to find a band or artist of a more low-key status, who would be more inclined to allow us to use their song. I personally contacted a number of bands through websites such as Myspace and Facebook, and we contacted our particular chosen artist as a group, through the question and answer website, Formspring.me. Although a long and frustrating process, it eventually ended up being relatively straightforward, at the website does not necessarily require you to register or log in in order to ask questions, and allows instantaneous anonymous posting. As Gabrielle Aplin is an extremely small scale artist, she is quite reliant on the internet as a promotional tool for her music, as is conventional of low-key artists in the early stages of their musical career, providing a cheap and quick marketing method. This meant that we received her consent within hours, and could immediately begin planning the creation of our product.

Facebook was also a key factor throughout the duration of our coursework, serving as a quick, free and easy method of communication, allowing us to plan and prepare as a group, outside of the lesson setting. This is also how we arranged and contacted our actors and locations, as it allowed us to relay more information to them than perhaps a quick text message would have permitted. I felt that this was an effective form of communication, as text message communication alone was starting to become costly, and we were all sending the same ideas to each other simultaneously, perhaps wasting time that could have been put tot better effect. As soon as we began to use Facebook as a method of communication, it seemed as though we put our views across in a much easier quicker and easier fashion.

Due to complications in the beginning of our filming process, we had more time to devise a more detailed storyboard. To document this process and record all of our ideas, we constructed a number of mind-maps and rough story board sketches, which we then used a still camera to document in order to collate all of our rough ideas together to form our main products. We also used the camera to capture shots of potential locations, which we then shared with the rest of the group, allowing us full visualisation of the shots we were hoping to achieve, instead of having to risk turning up on the day and sacrificing the quality of the visuals due to unthorough preparation.

We created a textual questionnaire, which we then distributed to people of a variety of ages and backgrounds, in order to draw a representative selection of society, which would then influence the ideas for our main product of the music video, and the ancillary texts of our CD cover and magazine advert. This was crucial, as there would be no purpose to making a product of this sort if it was of no appeal to anybody. Additionally, such products are viewed as a marketing tool for the music of the band or artist, and if we created a product that failed to register interest then we would have not achieve any success with the whole purpose of the product.

In this stage, we looked a fair deal into previous products the artist had already produced, in order to determine common conventions and themes that she included, which would then have obvious impact on our own work. Although we had decided to go for an unconventional approach to the video, we felt it was still necessary to include some of the ideas behind Gabrielle Aplin's own products in some matter - for example the representation of the young, pretty girl, and so researched these images in order to incorporate the themes into our own work in some way, creating a loose connection and synergy to previous products that would perhaps serve to make our own product as something that could be visibly associated with the artist.

The use of naturalistic lighting and bright, sunny weather was quite an important factor in preparation for the filming of our happier flashback scenes. Ideally, we would have hoped for the weather to be idyllic through the whole of the filming period, but due to the typical British seasons, we accepted this as a relative impossibility. We often checked the weather forecast using websites such as that of the BBC to predict the forecast and therefore the most suitable times for filming. I feel that the poorer weather in the modern day, unhappier shots actually worked in our favour, as I think it served to effectively accentuate the feeling of gloominess and misery that we were hoping to convey through the narrative.

We continued to document the entire process on our blogs, which allowed for us to make reference to it at a later date, such as now, and also to coordinate our ideas to create our products.

Planning: Props and Equipment

PROPS:

As our video consists entirely of narrative, the mise-en-scene is highly important in conveying our ideas. There are a number of props that we need to bring tomorrow, either for a specific use in the scene, or to help create the overall impression we were trying to achieve.

For the initial bedroom scene, we will need a clock for the opening shots, however as we are filming at Kuda's house, this along with many other props should not be a problem. We will also need an acoustic guitar for the guy to kick over in this scene, as well as for the photo shoot, which I will bring. It is an old, battered acoustic with loose strings at the head, which we feel would add to the whole indie, folk and almost hippy like style we are trying to convey. This is important, as we have planned it to be a key focal point within the photo shoot for our CD package and magazine advert, and if it looked completely out of place then it would have a detrimental effect on the mood of the whole style and image.

We have also decided to bring a number of items such as books, CD's and jewellery for mise-en-scene in the bedroom. Although we have not incorporated any of this into our storyboard, it may be beneficial to bring it along and have it in the background to add to the style, and also include the postmodernistic element of intertextuality. For example, two books that I intend to bring are J.D. Salinger's 'The Catcher In The Rye', and Stephen Chbosky's 'The Perks Of Being A Wallflower' - both of which are typically associated with the alternative, indie scene. Additionally, both of these books concern the whole 'coming of age' and teenage angst ideas, which could potentially relate to our video. For one of the CD's, we could bring a copy of Joe Brooks album 'Constellation Me', which would potentially be representative of the artist and her style - in terms of the narrative, it could represent an influence of this type of music over the artists own personal musical style, potentially drawing similarities between the careers of the two artists, suggesting a similar direction and widespread success for Gabrielle Aplin in the future.

We have decided to use candles in the initial flashback scenes in order to create an atmosphere of romanticism and exultance, parallel to the themes we hope to portray in the narrative. The candles will not only serve to act as props, but will hopefully be the main source of lighting for these scenes, creating a low-key lighting effect, thereby heightening the impression of intimacy we are aiming for.

Evidently we will also need Scrabble for the flashback scenes, which Hannah is more than happy to provide. We have chosen this board game to use in the 'date' like scenario as a board game implies youthfulness and innocence, in cohesion with the style of both the artist and the genre. The game of scrabble represents a certain element of intelligence and a love for literature - a stereotypical indie / folk-like theme. Additionally, the game gives us an opportunity to create a wide range of synergy across our 3 media products, as we may be able to use the tiles as a form of typographical code in our ancillary products.

We have decided to create an element of humor in this flashback scene in the way of playing on typical romantic conventions. In addition to the obvious opening for word based play that we create with the scrabble board game, we have decided to amplify conventions of the typical 'date' situation - for example one may expect a flute of champagne or a beverage of some sort on a date like this to elevate the romantic feel. We have decided to manipulate this idea, purchasing a pair of champagne flutes at an expense of 60p each, which the character will bring out to suggest an adherence to these conventional expectations. He will then go on to pull out a bottle of juice, thereby manipulating the typical stereotypes of the situation into a more innocent and youthful light.

EQUIPMENT:

Our AS coursework showed us the importance of having multiple cameras, in order to get a wide variety of different shots thereby giving us much more of a choice in the editing stages. We have borrowed two camera's from college, and Hannah will be bringing her own so that each of our group will have one. This means that we will be able to simultaneously capture a number of different angles and viewpoints, which should also save time as we won't have to do too many run-throughs of the same shots. In addition to this, we have borrowed a tripod, which will enable us to ensure that we have at least some steady shots. This will probably mainly be used for the long to mid-shots, and we will probably find another means to steady any shots of the less straightforwardly framed shots. I have bought a pack of 5 mini-DV tapes for filming, which will enable us to have one tape per camera without having to switch, meaning we can all film at the same time, and also leaves us 2 spares in case of any problems.

Planning: Weather

Unfortunately, as it is now almost winter the weather is becoming less favourable. We had hoped to film the flashback scenes in the park of a sunny day, thereby emphasising the connotations of warmth and happiness. However, due to delays in the organisation of actors and availability, we seem to have missed some of the nicer weather we were due. In part, this could work to our advantage, as it would accentuate the feeling of dreary gloominess that we were aiming to achieve, although the dimmer lighting may create visuals of a much poorer quality than we had envisioned. Luckily, we still have some time left, so if we need to go back and film the flashback on another day with more suitable weather, this is still a viable option for us.

Planning: Locations

We plan to shoot the majority of our video tomorrow, or at least the entirety of the interior scenes. Overall, we require three locations: Two interior - that of a bedroom, and a kitchen or dining room of some sort, and one exterior - that of a park or a playground. When considering interior locations, we had a pretty clear idea of the layout and image we wanted - for example with the breakfast scene, we wanted a long dining table, preferably positioned parallel to a window. We felt that visually, this would create the best effect, as for one it doesn't leave too much empty space in the frame, but additionally would be crucial when it came to the utilisation of natural lighting in our video, used to promote the feeling of realism. Fortunately one member of our group, Kuda, suggested using his house which turned out to look almost exactly like we had imagined.

He has confirmed that his house is free for us to film tomorrow, meaning we should be able to get all of the interior shots done in one go.

The park that we had originally intended to use was Victoria Park, fairly near to college. However, seeing as there is a large park roughly ten minutes away from Kuda's, we have decided to film as much of the exterior shots as we can there tomorrow, weather permitting.

Planning: Costumes

From our own experiences with the style, combined with the findings from our research, we were able to create a number of different outfit and costume ideas for use in our music video and ancillary texts. We felt that costume was a key factor in the portrayal of generic conventions, in both our adherence to and diversion from them in some manner. As our video is solely narrative based, we rely heavily on mise-en-scene such as that of the costume to communicate with the audience, creating a recognisable link with conventions that may be familiar to them and their own personal style, thereby creating a connection with the intended target audience.

When researching Gabrielle Aplin and her music, we found that she could fall under a range of different conventions, including the more indie stylised image as well as the highly feminine, folk image. We deduced that as her key target audience is primarily teenage girls due to the lyrical content of her songs, to market the image of the actors in our video as a down-to-earth, relatable and familiarised indie like style, which would be reflected through the use of costume.

We found that one of the staple clothing items from this type of genre was that of the checkered shirt. It is an article of clothing widely recognised as being pigeonholed in the indie-ish clothing style. We felt that is was important to include articles of clothing that would be widely familiar with the target audience and would effectively communicate the style we wanted to convey on a broader level than perhaps a more innocent and floaty folk like style would have been able to express.

We have devised 3 costume plans, for use in various stages throughout our video.

COSTUME A: SLEEP ATTIRE

• This is not incredibly significant for the female actors costume, as we don't see much of her in her sleepwear - she remains under the bed covers, and In the next scene she is already dressed. However, to truly set the scene and communicate our ideas, we have asked her to bring along some form of sleepwear of her own discretion, in order to promote realism, and support continuity should we happen to actually see any of her costume in these scenes.





• This costume is slightly more important for the male actor, as we physically see him get out of bed, and he remains in his sleeping attire during the dining room scenes. This is to show a certain level of apathy to the character, who now had given up caring in the relationship, perhaps suggesting that he acts like a slob now as he doesn't feel he has to impress her, highlighting the dejected state the relationship is in. We have asked him to bring along a pair of pyjamas, which would serve to further emphasise the element of innocence and perhaps naivety that we created for the characters. When we see his feet kicking over the guitar, he is likely to have a pair of socks on, which perhaps show a certain degree of laziness and lethargy both reflective of the character and his views of or participation within the relationship.

COSTUME B: MODERN DAY / MISERABLE

In order to elevate the feeling of misery and gloom that is supposed to be a recurring theme throughout the main narrative, we hope to play on typical colour connotations to convey this feeling to the audience.

• For the female actor, we have listed a number of ideas revolving around the ideas of bland, bleak and dark clothing, perhaps baggy and unflattering to suggest a lack of concern with her appearance - highly unconventional for the genre, where there is emphasis on the polished and the preened, therefore further implying a dejected state as enforced by the narrative content. We originally made a brainstorm of different ideas for the female outfit in these scenes and have showed this to the actor, asking her if she owned anything along those lines. She has managed to create an outfit pretty ideal for the representation of dreariness we hoped to achieve, consisting of a deep blue and grey striped hoodie, black skinny jeans and biker boots. We feel that this collaborates effectively to create a dark outfit that can successfully connote feelings of misery, as well as portraying the important relatable youthful element.





• We had a number of ideas for the outfit of the male character, mainly revolving around the whole stereotypical indie dynamic we wanted to portray. However, we didn't feel this style would be suitable and fitting for our new actor, so re-devised his costume plan. We wanted to keep his outfit quite simplistic, perhaps in reference to his character, and not conforming to a particular social group. Having said this, we still wanted to create a portrayal that would be somewhat relatable to the genre in some ways, so tried to portray him as conventional in some ways. One way of doing this was through the representations of theme of misery, so we decided on a costume of dark jeans and shoes, a white vest or shirt and a black leather jacket or hoodie. None of these garments alone would be particularly reminiscent of any particular clothing style, but we feel they will work together overall in this context.

COSTUME C: FLASHBACK / HAPPY

We wanted to make the costumes for the flashback scenes much more conventional in style, perhaps overly so in order to create an element of humorousness. This also gave us the scope to play on colour connotations in order to best represent the characters, the narrative and the genre.

• For Beth, we chose a fairly stereotypical outfit that would be immediately cohesive with the genre of music - the outfit will consist of a red flannel checkered shirt, jeans and red shoes or trainers. It is a fairly simplistic outfit, thereby reflecting the raw and simplistic element of the folk genre itself. The bright colours of the reds serve to heighten the vibrancy of the shots in stark contrast to the preceding clips, emphasising the difference between then and now. Alternatively, the connotations of the colour red could be representative of anger and danger, perhaps in a forewarning of the dangers to come within the relationship. Even in the happier scenes, she will not wear any make-up, in order to convey the conventional representation of females in this genre - they tend to be very natural and raw, in line with the type of music they create.

• To enhance the feeling of harmony between the couple, Oscar will also wear red, in the form of a red vest. This again is a simplistic garment, but juxtaposed along side the female actors outfit creates and harmonizing the two outfits together, in reflection of the union of the couple.

Planning: Actors

Tomorrow we plan to begin shooting our music video, having finally been able to find two suitable actors who were free. As the basic idea for our video revolves around a relationship between a boy and a girl, we required both a male and female to act in our video. We wanted to keep them relatively young, in the late teens bracket, in order to capture some of the youthful innocence in line with Gabrielle Aplin's music and the lyrical value of our chosen song.

These were the two original actors that we had chosen to be in our video. We selected them as we felt that their image was pretty much perfect for the style that we wanted to convey. In terms of representation, we felt that it would be best to stick to the idea of youth and naivety in order to best represent the genre of music and the artist herself. We felt that to go down the more glamorous and sexualised route associated with the Pop genre would not be fitting for the song, and could potentially have a detrimental effect on the artist. Instead, we felt the style more fitting for Gabrielle Aplin and her sound would be that of the more conventional young, pretty girl. When researching the artist and the genre, we found that a lot of the focus in the images fell on the face and the hair of the female, so evidently these were key attributes we took into consideration when finding a lead female actor. Additionally, we felt that it was important a certain amount of chemistry existed between the two, in order to make the visuals flow more comfortably. We felt these actors fitted this role almost perfectly, in both image and style - they dressed in a typically indie fashion, which would immediately be recognized by the target audience of the video. Unfortunately, due to work and family commitments it became impossible to use these two actors in our video.

We arranged to reschedule on numerous occasions, but we could not afford to waste any more time so instead have arranged two alternative actors. While both are very different in image and style from our original idea, we felt that they are still suitable for the representations we want to portray. Our female actor, Beth, has pretty much all of the key attributes we were hoping for - i.e. the long flowing hair, pretty face, and typically indie kind of style. Our male actor, Oscar, is very different in appearance from our original intention - at first we had planned on using a typical 'indie' boy with longer hair, who was relatively aesthetically pleasing in light of the intended target audience of younger girls - it is a common feature of audience gratification in this sort of genre to include typically attractive actors, in order to appeal to the younger, female audience that is it's predominant fan base. However, we feel that this could work to our advantage, portraying the male character in less of a stereotypical and conventional light, perhaps heightening the sense that the two are not on the same level, and imposing more of a divide between them.

Storyboard

Due to a number of complications in the preparation for filming our music video (such as the unavailability of actors etc.), our group has had more time to develop a much more detailed storyboard. Hopefully this will work in our favour in the long run, as this should in theory save us time when we actually get round to filming, in that we should know exactly what shots we want and how we want to shoot them.

We have spent a number of lessons drafting ideas in various formats, such as large brainstorms and sketches of ideas:

This is the final storyboard that we have come up with:

PITCH:

We have decided to go for a music video consisting primarily of narrative. After changing our song choice, we also changed our attitude to which we approached the songs - we didn't feel that entirely obeying the generic conventions and creating a stereotypical video would have been very effective. With this in mind, we tried to put a different spin on the typical theme of love and relationships which is so common throughout this genre.

We decided to approach the theme in a humorous light, as opposed to the conventional serious, deep and meaningful approach often associated with this kind of genre.

The main premise for our video is about a relationship gone wrong. It centres around a couple who are clearly unhappy with their relationship. As the artist is a female, the narrative focuses mainly on the females point of view in the relationship, thereby creating some form of cohesion between the lyrics and the visuals. We aim to make the majority of the video in some way illustrative of the lyrics, however these types of visuals can become boring very quickly, so it is not an approach we will use religiously throughout the whole video.

Our video will start with shots of the couple in the morning, both clearly unhappy with their relationship. It then follows them through a trip to the park - a place which it is implied holds a number of happy memories for them. Throughout the video, the female actor will have flashbacks to a happier time in the relationship - for example, spinning around in the park and playing on the swings. We aim to make these quite over-the-top and stereotypical, in order to create a humorous effect, whilst also playing on the conventional themes of youth and innocence in this genre. We hope to create a clear divide between the present day and the flashbacks,which is something we will convey through body language and facial expressions, as well as the use of framing, lighting and costume:

In the modern day, we will use framing to illustrate the divide between the two, keeping them as close to the opposite edges of the frame as possible, thereby implying a separation between them emotionally as well as physically. In the happier flashbacks, the characters will be closer together in the frame, portraying the closeness in the relationship. The frame will be much fuller, and there will be less gaping empty space.

Lighting in the happy flashbacks will be softer, and perhaps a little more romantic. We aim to utilise natural light as much as possible, playing on the stereotypical theme of a love for nature associated with the folk genre, whilst also using the common connotations of happiness and brightness associated with strong natural sunlight. The scenes from the modern day will be comparatively darker, thereby suggesting the darkness in the relationship.

We will need a minimum of two sets of costumes, playing on colour connotations to portray the mood - i.e. darker colours such as blacks and greys for the unhappy modern day, and brighter colours such as reds, oranges and yellows for the happier flashbacks. We will also use costume as another means to portray the genre, as we will decide outfits that would be easily recognisable as belonging to a particular fashion.

The video ends in the modern day, with the couple coming back together having been separated throughout the video, suggesting a reconciliation between them. This is also illustrative of the song's closing lines, "But I know even in darkness, we're more than friends" - we are translating 'darkness' to represent the unhappiness in their relationship, thereby suggesting that they are coming together again with the line 'more than friends'.