Adjustments - More Narration

Our target audience felt that we needed more of a narration in our storyboard to make the video more engaging for our audience. 

At the beginning of the project, we purposely didn't want to include too much of a narrative so that the focus was on the performance, however, after advice from our teachers we feel that for our song, a narrative is necessary. 

Our song has a mainstream sound and therefore we must adhere to some conventions of these videos. In all of the ones we have looked at there is always some kind of narrative element and it is usually an equal ratio of narrative and performance. Therefore I will look at some narrations in video to assess what type of idea we could do. 

Kelly Clarkson's Narration in 'My Life Would Suck Without You'

As I have already analysed the video as a whole I have decided to conduct some deeper analysis into the narrative element. The concept of the song is fairly similar to ours as well as the actual sound of the song. Kelly's video has a similar idea that we had of including flashbacks. 
The song alludes to the idea of two children being friends and we discover that they are the couple in the video- Kelly and her boyfriend. The narrative is able to be identified from the performance through the subtle change of effects; in the picture below the contrast filter is intensified.  

The video fluctuates between narrative shots and performance through cuts however it effectively connects the flashback scenes with the present narrative scenes. One occasion where is shown in when the camera zooms in on the young girl's necklace and then it zooms out to shows the same necklace on Kelly's arm in a new shot. This creates a synergy so that the audience is able to identify the little girl as Kelly. There are other effective ways that the video shows this and this will encourage us to come up with our own ideas from the shift between present and flashbacks. 

The main storyline in Kelly's video links very well with the song as it has a playful overtone. The narrative mainly consists of Kelly and her boyfriend always disagreeing and arguing however the song is quite upbeat and so they are playful with the concept so as to not make it too heavy. Therefore there are such scenes as teasing her boyfriend with his keys and throwing items out of their apartment window. These short pieces of narrative give a reason to the song and they link with the concept very well because even though the couple fall out and have their difference, ultimately '[her] life would such without [him]' (shown at the very end of the song when they make up and kiss). The narrative therefore shows a progression of examples of the song however at the end the concept is resolved and this is something that we need to consider about our piece - resolving the conflict in the song. This follows Andrew Goodwin's theory that the music video is meant to illustrate the audio of a song. 

Therefore after looking at Kelly Clarkson's video is has helped us to consider aspects of our own video. As her song, like ours, has an upbeat tempo we need to keep this in mind when storyboarding the acting that our characters will do, making it more playful so as to not give too much of a serious tone to the song. However our song is different in the way that Kelly's message is that although they argue they can't live without each other. However our song is aimed towards the artist's ex-boyfriend, telling him how selfish he is. Therefore we have the task of showing a fun/upbeat narrative but at the same time showing the couple to be dysfunctional. 

Additionally from Kelly's piece we feel inspired to experiment with shots to show our technological skills in presenting a synergy between flashbacks and narration. Therefore even though we have a mainstream song and may have to use conventions such as a flashback narrative, we still have the opportunity to deviate and play around with ideas of how to move from performance to narrative and other post-production effects. 

Our Initial ideas for a narrative:

- We have definitely decided to use the idea of a flashback however we are still going to discuss what to have in the flashback, whether showing the couple in love, or to show them arguing. 

- We had the idea of a Goose chase concept where the boyfriend would be constantly running after the girl. However we think the idea may be too 'cheesy' and it has already been done before in such videos as Avril Lavigne's 'What the Hell'.

- The idea of a resolution was suggested and we had an idea of showing the girl walking off with a new boyfriend. However there is a concern that this may be a bad influence for teenagers to relate to and the audience may see our artist in a bad light due to the connotations of her being the person to go with someone else. Therefore the idea was suggested to show the boyfriend in a bad light by presenting him to go off with another girl and although it fits with the revenge in the song, there is an issue of the concept being too heavy for an upbeat song. 

- The idea we had of the artist walking along a street link very well with the flashbacks as she may be walking along a road as it reminds her of the past. This also will enable more movement within the frame so the scene is more engaging for an audience. 

Adjustments - Location 1

We are now solely using the black screen as our main performance scene. We feel that this works more effectively within our video as, although more mainstream, it has a more pop/rock feel, so the black mise-en-scene works better. 

We decided to try the concept out in our college but the black screen was not wide enough however this is not the one that we are anticipating to use for the actual piece. Therefore we conducted an experiment with the background but also with lighting. We used two professional white lights and played around as to where they created the best effect on our artist. We tried one of the lights in the shot behind our artist, to create an outline of our artist. This is a similar concept used in many music videos such as my research in Kelly Clarkson's video. From the picture she was able to use numerous lights as they had a big studio however with our resources we will use one light but we aim to create a similar effect. 

Slide 5 of the presentation displays the initial shots that we tried as we had an issue of using a back light but at the same time we wanted to see the actress' face. However we found a side light was too strong as it is evident from the picture so we had to try different ideas. We tried using an overhead light but again we found the light too intense however we found a solution to the problem by solely using the light behind the actress but then having a large white screen facing the artist so that the light reflected onto her front. 

Therefore this experiment was successful in trying out the black background and the lighting. We tried some test shots and did some panning around the actress that looked very effective and professional. Additionally we got a purple glint of the lens of the camera which added to the overall effect. 

We also tried dimming the lighting and then making it even brighter at the chorus which worked well; we will be able to use this in our project to create a faster pace, also using pans to make the overall scene visually appealing to our audience. 

Initial Ideas for Adjustments

My group and I discussed ideas of the changes that we want to make to our storyboard so that it is more engaging. 

These initial ideas derive from the audience feedback that we received and our personal opinions on what needs to be changed. 

Our group has already agreed that our video needs a greater emphasis on narration. Although at the beginning of our project we wanted to base the video on a performance, we feel that it is necessary because of the nature of the song. Therefore as a group we have been listening to the song and looking deeply into what type of narration we want to achieve as well as looking at existing music videos which include narrations. 

We also had an idea to include another location which the artist would be walking to throughout the video and then the ending would be that she arrives there. However, due to the cyclical nature of videos (discussed by Bjornberg) we have the opportunity to play around with time so she is seen recording in the studio before we see her actually arrives there. We thought a recording studio would also look authentic however there is an issue that we would be using too many scenes. 

We have decided to increase the use of lighting effects. This was due to the fact that in our research, many existing artists use this effect, such as Kelly Clarkson. This would enable us to create more of a pace in our piece, dimming them before a chorus to create a greater effect in the chorus. This also applies to our audience research as they said we needed more of a pace in our piece.

 We also have decided that we want more movement in the camera, rather than it being fixed throughout the video. Many existing music video do this and there are rarely any shots that do not pan or track. Therefore we will conduct some experiments into this and we think that this will make our video look more professional and visually appealing to our audience. 

All of the people we asked thought the strongest aspect of our storyboard was the quick changing background shots. Not only to they quicken the pace but it looks visually simulating for an audience. We had the idea that we could develop this further such as having shots from the side and and having a quick cut to different locations as the artist moves along the frame. 


We are now going to develop some of these ideas which we think will work well in our video and adjust our storyboard accordingly. 

Adjustments to our storyboard

We asked people of our target audience age to watch our animatic storyboard to give us feedback on shots that need to be adjusted.

We then had another discussion as to decide how we were going to adjust our ideas to make them more appealing to our target audience. 

Slide 3 bullet points the more specific feedback the we received from our audience and so we have particularly focused on these areas to improve our music video. 

After we decided upon the adjustments we are now going to go into more detail into looking at ideas and how they will work.

Video Update

Audience feedback

               Our audience research consisted of asking people from around our college to watch our animatic storyboard (below). We gained varied types of feedback positive and negative which we have encouragingly taken as constructive criticism that we feel will benefit our music video. 

Negative Feedback

We asked some girls in our target audience age range to watch the animatic storyboard and they felt that it needed some improvements. They felt that the shots were too long and not very varied which could also be due to the fixed camera. They felt that the ratio between performance and narrative was unequal and that for our song, there needs to be more of a narrative to engage the audience. They mentioned that the pace was too slow and it needs more effective use of pacing so that the chorus is more effective. However they did like the parts where the background changes - showing they like to see more technical inventive shot ideas. What I particularly found interesting was that the girls more than the boys that we interviewed enjoyed the parts where the actress in our video moved more freely. This suggests that teenage girls like more of the interaction with the artist giving it a fun feel which reflects onto the audience. This also stresses the importance of our actress being someone that audiences (particularly girls) can relate to and to see her as a role model. Therefore this negative research has immensely aided us in our planning stages to see the dichotomy between the different genres who watch our video and to identify the parts of our storyboard that need to be adjusted.  

Neutral Feedback

We asked some male consumers to watch our piece which enabled us to see what they thought as our song is targeted more towards females. 

They were fairly positive about the storyboard and were mainly impressed with the technical side of the video. For example, like many other people, they liked the parts where the actress remained in the centre of the frame whilst the backgrounds quickly changed and they also liked the other changing background from the side. This gives us an insight into an outer target audience that we could appeal to at the same time as teenage girls. Although the song appeals to girls if we are inventive with our shots and focus on the technical parts of our music video, we may be able to engage more of an audience. 

This audience research has been particularly helpful in identifying aspects our of music video that will be the most engaging and what we need to improve. We also found after watching the animatic storyboard that there are numerous aspects that we don't like and that need to be changed. Therefore we are going to make some changes to our storyboard that may mean we have to revise our initial concepts to look at how we can engage with our audience more. We feel that all our research liked the changing backgrounds idea and we will work on the strengths of our video and look to changing the pace and particularly the ratio between narrative and performance.     

Positive Audience Feedback

Our positive feedback from our animatic storyboard encouraged us to look at the  parts of our storyboard that are working particularly well in relation to our audience. 

The majority of our feedback said that the quick paced changing backgrounds shot was very effective and we also as a group, feel that this is the strongest part of our storyboard. The lip syncing issue will be resolved in our actual filming and we are anticipating to conduct a lip syncing experiment as well to address the issue and to make it look as authentic as possible. 

Another positive piece of feedback we were given was that the storyboard particularly fits with the concept of the song. They referred to the narrative part of our piece working particularly well and as a group we may want to incorporate more of this to engage our audience with the song. 

The costume question also helped us in our planning stages of our project so that we are able to see what audiences expect from a mainstream music video.

Therefore this positive audience feedback has particularly helped us to look at the strongest parts of our storyboard so that we can possibly adjust it even more to bring out these positive features. Thus we may need to consider as a group the ratio between narrative and performance in relation to the concept of the song. 

Health & Safety

My group and I created a mind map of issues that we need to address and consider when shooting our music video. 

   

Therefore some of the main hazards that we must consider is firstly the lights.

We must be weary when handling the lights as they have three glass bulbs in each light and so we will ensure that we are careful when handling them. 

When filming, we must also be careful in our outside scenes so as to not be in a hazardous place for us and our actress. This issues, however, can be resolved by people in our group ensuring the area is safe to film before recording footage. 

Mood Board of Initial Outfit Ideas

 Floral/ Girly look

Rock Chic

City Look

Red and Black look

Aesthetics of our Artist Discussion

We are currently at the stage where we are bringing the mise-en-scene of our project together which consists of us organising costumes/props etc. In the video below we had a group discussion on the ideas we had for the costume and mise-en-scene of the artist in our video. 

One of the most vital aims of our music video is to accurately reflect and represent the feel and emotion of the song we have chosen. Therefore our discussion enabled us to confirm the look of the artist that will be effective for the video in presenting the artist to our target audience of 12-24 year olds. We will achieve this by the use of costume, with different styles for different scenes yet still adhering to the pop/rock genre of the song. 

The next step in our project is creating the mood boards for the artists costume so that we have more specific colours and clothes to use in our video. 

Video Update