Dear Moderator,

Here is all of the work that we (Komal, Eve and Chloe) have produced throughout this music video project. Please feel free to look through our blog.

Thank you,

Komal Gorasia, Evangelia Zannetou and Chloe Barnham

The making of...

Location Day 3

Today, we filmed the final scenes for our music video. This included the crucial lip-synching and various other shots such as Chloe getting ready to go out.

The locations were Chloe's bedroom and the Media Studies pod. Chloe's bedroom was used for lip-synching, where her and Eve would both lip-synch to the song 'Fashion' alone and then once together. Also shot in Chloe's bedroom was a scence where Chloe has her wardrobe open and is throwing things out as she is pulling out an item of clothing and deciding if it is something she should wear for her day out. When we were in Chloe's bedroom, we also dressed up a mannequin with accessory items such as sunglasses, a boa and necklaces. We thought this would tie in well with our theme as fashion is all about being experimental.

After we finished filming in Chloe's bedroom, we went to the Media Studies pod. We wanted to use the green screen so that we could add effects in the background while Chloe is lip-synching. However, once we got into the pod, we decided it would not be necessary for us to use the green screen as all we needed was a plain background, and since the walls in the pod are white, we decided to go with this option. Chloe was styled as two icons, the first was Audrey Hepburn. Chloe's hair was put in an updo with a jewelled band tied around it so it would imitate a poster of Hepburn. Chloe was also styled as Twiggy. Her hair was again in a simple updo, this time more subtle and her eyes were dark, with eyelashes drawn along her lower lashes.

The problems we faced were not major, however, Chloe's bedroom was quite small, therefore we had to adjust the tripod to make it a smaller width in order for it to be in a suitable position and for it to fit within the space provided. Another probelm was that when we were dressing up the mannequin, the acessories kept falling off and so had to be secured with grips, this was time-consuming, however, it worked well in the end.

What went well was that Chloe had a lot of accessories, so it gave us a lot of lots of ideas to play around and experiment with the mannequin.

Posted by Komal Gorasia

Location Day 2.

This is where we decided to shoot on the second day of shooting. This is where we shot the outside location for the church scenes. Unfortuanetly we were unable to use the inside of the church for shooting, but we were able to use another church near by to get the shots we needed for the video.

Posted by Chloe Barnham

Costume part 2.

These are the outfit choices that we made for our second day of shooting. This is the outfit the church scene.

Shooting Day 2

Weather

As we are shooting outside today we decided that it was important to look at the weather forecast for the day ahead. There is forecasted rain where we are shooting and so we have had to think of ways to either shoot around the rain or to still shooting the rain without effecting our footage. 

Costumes Part 1.

These were the final decisions made on costume for the first part of our shoot. 

Posted by Chloe Barnham 

Planning of video shoot

List of locations:
1) Church (Stanmore) - opening scene in black and white
2) Studio (Stanmore) - Close ups of Chloe in different outfits
3) Bedroom (Chloe's bedroom) - Throwing clothes and shoes out of wardrobe
4) Street or open space (Eve's area) - Walking down with different outfits and shoes.

Main Props:
Four to five different pair of shoes for Street scene  (Eve's and Chloe's)
Bright make-up
Four to five different bags
Various colourful clothes
Big statement jewellery

Props for all scenes
1) Church
-A shoulder padded top (any colour)
- Plain black trousers
- Chloe's black heels
-  Hair all back
- Minimum make-up
- Main shoes which will be 'worshiped' in scene (Eve's)

2) Studio in Stanmore
First shot - DT block female mannequins (2)
Mannequin 1 - Bright pink dress (Eve's)
Mannequin 2 - Sequined dress (Chloe's)

Second shot- Face shot
Hair up
Plain T-Shirt (Chloe's)
Big statement jewellery (Chloe's)
Make-up, like famous Twiggy shot

Third shot
Slogan top (Chloe's)
Black tutu (Chloe's)
Bright make-up
Hair all pinned back
Shoes - plain

Fourth shot
A big mess of random clothes, shoes and bags.

3) Bedroom *performance*
White top
Leggings
Hair in rollers
Make-up is plain and simple

4) Streets/ open space
Outfit one
Basic black top
Plain black trouers
Black waist coat
Blue tights underneath trousers for colour
Shoes with red sole (Eve's)
Sequined belt

Outfit two
Leopard print leggings
Ankle boot heels (Eve's)
Bright pink jumper
Plain black T-Shirt

Outfit three
Leopard print faux fur jacket
Bright blue tights
Nude colour wedges

Outfit four
Tartan print tights
Black military style boots (Chloe's)
Blue and black prom dress
Black T-Shirt

Outfit five
Tartan print tights
Black military style boots (Chloe's)
Blue and black prom dress
Black T-Shirt
Black sequined belt
Red and blue big chain necklaces
Bright pink fluffy cross body bag

Posted by Eve

Deconstruction of Madonna's Material Girl

This the video from Madonna’s single ‘Material Girl’, released in 1895 and is taken from her album ‘Like a Virgin’. The video was directed by Mary Lambert, who also directed videos for Annie Lenox, Mick Jagger and Janet Jackson. She also directed Madonna’s videos for Borderline, Like a Virgin, Like a Prayer and La Isla Bonita. Throughout these videos you can see how Madonna’s star text, something Goodwin says is demanded by the record company, was being developed through her music videos, as her appearance in all of the videos except for La Isla Bonita was as her dressed in the typical clothes that we would have expected to see Madonna in the 1980s. There is also a reoccurring theme of the car in the videos for Borderline, La Isla Bonita and Material Girl. The song has become synonymous with Madonna, being one of her biggest selling hits and she now even has a clothing range called Material Girl.

There is a clear relationship between the lyrics and the visuals in this video, with her being surrounded by expensive material things, such as diamonds. The relationship between the music and lyrics is strong and does help to reinforce what she is telling us and what she is singing about. It also reinforces the message at the end that she doesn’t pick the man just because he gives her lots of expensive things. There is also a relationship between the music and the visuals as this is a pop video, and so the video is fun and tongue-in-cheek.

The key part of this video is the interstitial references, where Madonna is clearly recreating scenes from Marylin Monroe’s performance of the song ‘Diamonds are a girls best friend’ from the film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’. In the videos both women have blonde curly hair, a floor length pink dress on a elbow length dinner gloves on. Aside from the women’s presentation the setting for the videos are also similar. They are both in large blank rooms with red backgrounds and red steps. They are also surrounded by men dressed the same and the men in both videos are holding red hearts at certain stages of the video. Madonna also goes as far as to copy the dance routine used in the original.

What we want to take from this video when were making ours is the fact that she has a story before the music begins, something that we want to do in our video. We have also taken ideas from this in recreating the shots, like she has with the ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ shot.

Posted By Chloe Barnham

Location 1.

This is the location for the first part of our shoot. WE decided to shoot in this park in Dollis Hill as it was close to one of the groups houses and therefore easy and convenient for us to get to. We also liked the park because it was relatively quite during the day, although with it being a public place there was still some people around which made it difficult to shoot. We thought that this was a good place to shoot as the scenery was quite simple but still looked pretty and effective. 

 Problems with where we were shooting: 

Because we were shooting in a public place there were people that were coming in our way of shots, however this problem was minimal as we shot in the middle of the day on a weekday, when not many people were in the park. 

Where we was shooting was close to a road so we had traffic noise on some of our shots, restricting the amount of natural noise that we could have in the video, however this was not really a problem as we didn't want to use any of the natural noise anyway. 

Posted by Chloe Barnham

Group Meeting 3

In this meeting we discussed ideas for costumes, locations and we decided that we needed to set out a shooting scedule so we knew when and where we would shoot each shot. We designed how we would set this sheet out and decided when and where each shoot would take place.

In this meeting we also discussed how we would neeed to write to the people who own the copyright to our song and ask for permission to use the track we had discussed. We also decided that we needed to continue to ook at other album covers and music videos so that we were sure that our video would be appropriate for this style of music. We agreed that between us we would look at Pink's video for 'Get The Party Started', Madonna's 'Material Girl' and Wigfields 'Saturday Night'.


Posted by Chloe Barnham

Behind the scenes Day 1

A few initial for costumes

These shots are some of the ideas that we have had for costume for our video. 

Group Meeting 2

In our group meeting we decided that the next step for us would be to create an anomatic for our video. This would give us an idea of how the shots will look when they are edited together and how they will fit in with the music. In our group meeting we also made some decisions regarding the costumes and props we are going to use in the video. 

Between now and our next group meeting we plan to upload our finished storyboards to the blog and produce an anomatic.

Posted by Chloe Barnham 

Treatment

Initial Treatment 

1. Opens with the girl walking into church.
2. Series of fast edited shots. 
3. Performance.
4. Shot of Shoes- running (chorus)
5. Performance.
6. Throwing clothes out of the wardrobe.
7. Covering the camera with clothes. 
8. Performance. 
9. Shot of shoes- running (chorus)
10. Series of fast edited shots. 
11. Performance. 
12. back to church. 

Second Shot List for Music Video

Second Shot List:


1. Establishing shot of church.
2. Long shot of girl- See her whole body as she walks up the path.
3. Front shot as she walks up stairs towards church.
4. Close up of face as she pushed door open.
5. Reverse shot of her walking through door.
6. Close up of shoes from behind as she walks down aisle. Follow this shot as she walks.
7. Kneels down
8. Mid shot of her in prayer (so we know what she's doing)
9. Mid shot from behind. Raises up to see a pair of shoes which she is worshipping.
10. Close up of shoes.
11. Close up girls face.


*SHOTS 1-11 SEEN BEFORE THE MUSIC BEGINS


12. Shot fades into close up of 'Twiggy shot'
13. Mid shot of mannequins
14. Shot of model posing
15. Shot of her in slogan top
16. Repeat of shot 12
17. Repeat of shot 13
18. Repeat of shot 15
19. Repeat of shot 14
20. Repeat of shot 12


*SHOTS 12-20 ARE A MONTAGE WITH QUICK EDITS


(A few of the shots 12-20 are repeated to fill up the backing track along with a shot of her outfit changing in the four different areas she stands in)


21. Performance shot of the girl singing
22. Close up of shoes
23. Performance shot of the girl singing
24. Mid shot of girl in church singing to the camera
25. Shot of shoes
26. Performance shot of girl singing
27. Girl throwing clothes out of her wardrobe
28. Girl covering camera with skirt or dress
29. Long shot of the girl walking past three lampposts and changing outfits or her bag
30. Performance her singing
31. Mid shot of mannequins
32. Performance shot
33. Her walking past lammpost again
34. Performance shot of the girl
35. Performance shot of her singing close up
36. Close up of shoes running (quick edit)
37. Girl posing like Blondie album cover, also performing song
38. Montage of mannequins, model pose, slogan top and shoes
39. Girl goes back to church
40. She leaves
41. Close up of her looking back
42. Close up of her shoes
43. Close up of her feet as she walks away for the church


Posted by Komal Gorasia

Group Meeting

During our lesson, we decided that we should swap the shots around and add more as the initial treatment was far too short. To get an idea of how many more shots we needed, we first wrote how long each shot would last next to the shot number. We then listened to the track and as we had an idea of what the audio we would hear when seeing the visuals. this helped us make more adjustments to our initial treatment and shot list as we were now able to think about how long each shot will last and if that fits with the music.
Between now and the next meeting we plan to finish off our storyboards.


Posted by Chloe Barnham and Komal Gorasia

Initial shot list for music video.

Initial shot list:

1. Establishing shot of church.
2. Long shot of girl- See her whole body as she walks up the path.
3. Front shot as she walks up stairs towards church.
4. Close up of face as she pushed door open.
5. Reverse shot of her walking through door.
6. Close up of shoes from behind as she walks down aisle. Follow this shot as she walks.
7. Kneels down
8. Mid shot of her in prayer (so we know what she's doing)
9. Mid shot from behind. Raises up to see a pair of shoes which she is worshipping.
10. Close up of shoes.
11. Close up girls face.
12. Shot fades into close up of 'Twiggy shot'
13. Mid shot of mannequins
14. Shot of model posing
15. Shot of her in slogan top
16. Repeat of shot 12
17. Repeat of shot 13
18. Repeat of shot 15
19. Repeat of shot 14
20. Repeat of shot 12
21. Back to church. Girl before is giving a service to a small group. Mid shot of her talking.
22. Shot of women.
23. Close up of all the women's shoes.
24. Close up to see that she is reading from a copy of Vogue, symbolising the bible.
25. Recreate opening shot from Breakfast at Tiffanys.
26. Close/mid shot of girl singing into mirror performing song.
27. Close up of girls shoes running during chorus- different shoes and quickly edited.
28. Girl posing like Blondie album cover, also performing the song.
29. Repeat shot 13
30. Repeat shot 15
31. repeat shot 14
32. Repeat shot 12
33. Flash back to shot 28
34. Repeat of shot 27- different shoes.
35. Go back to church.
36. Everyone is leaving the church- being seen out by the 'vicar'.
37. 'Vicar' goes to leave.
38. Close up of her looking back.
39. Close up of shoes.
40. Close up of her feet as she walks away from the church.

Posted by Chloe Barnham and Komal Gorasia

Deconstruction of Lady Gaga's Telephone video.

 This is the video to Telephone by Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce. The video was released in 2010 and was direct by Jonas Akerlund. The video starts where Lady Gaga's video to 'Paparazzi' finished (a video also directed by Akerland), with Gaga being put into prison for poisoning her boyfriend. The video runs like a film, with credits at the start telling us who directs it, stars in, who produced it and who wrote, lasting 9:30 minutes, it is unusually for a music video however Lady Gaga has built up an image around doing things to her videos, music and image that make her stand out from other stars. This is what Goodwin calls 'star-image' and this is something built upon in this video. Close up shots of her are used to show the quirky clothing that she wears, something synonymous with Lady Gaga. Appearances of her in the press of her at performances and in everyday life, have all helped build this image of her being a star who wears odd clothes, which in turn generates press attention and therefore more interest in the star. The outfits have become an iconography for Lady Gaga, often using close ups in her video like the one seen below for her video to 'Poker Face', as she is now expected to wear clothes both in videos and in general that will shock us.





Close up establishing 'star-image' in Poker Face



Close up establishing 'star-image in Paparazzi'





The relationship between the lyrics and images in this video is the reoccurring telephones throughout the video. This reinforces the importance of telephones to the lyrics and emphasises what the lyrics mean. The idea of a reoccurring image is something that we also want to use in our video, but we want to have shots of shoes running through the video, as this is something that is more appropriate for our song. The shot of shoes is inspired by a similar shot used in this video. The relationship between music and lyrics also occurs when she is dancing in jail like shes in a club whilst she sings "left my heart on the dancefloor". She see's this space as her dance floor.

There is also a use of voyeurism in this video, something which Goodwin suggests is a convention of music videos. Throughout there a CCTV shots of inside the women's jail, not only emphasising where these women are but also that they are being watched without knowing in a sexual way as they dance around in their underwear.

There is a lot of intertextuality in this video. Firstly with the use of different brands used throughout such as Diet Coke, Poloaroid and Virgin.

There is also a lot of intertextuality in terms of references to American culture, such as the American diner, fast food, cookery shows and the desert setting, referring to country and western films. In the video there is also reference to Quentin Tarantino's, Kill Bill, with the car that the two girl drive being similar to the one in the film and Michael Jackson with a dance move done by Lady Gaga as she leaves prison. Theses references bring humour to the video as they are done in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way and also it helps create this feeling that you are watching a movie rather then a music video as all these things help to move the narrative along.



Car used in 'Telephone'



Car used in Kill Bill



We have also taken some inspiration from this videos opening as we wanted the video to begin before the music and we also like the use of a number of static shots used at the start of the video used to focus in on certain objects like the CCTV camera.


By Chloe Barnham