Planning
The first part of the planning phase came for me through another questionnaire, which several of my peers filled out through social media sites like Facebook and Snapchat. The questionnaire was created using Google Forms, and was used to give me more of an idea of what image I wanted to give my audience in terms of marketing (font usage) and personal image (style/outfits). Overall, the responses were very helpful, with a couple of people not taking it as seriously as I would've hoped, but it helped me by giving me a basis to work off of in terms of my planning.
I already knew what song I was planning on using, and had this set in mind for a while.. The song I was going to use was "Heaven In Hiding" by the American alternative artist Halsey, meaning I had to email or phone the record company in order to try and get permission to use this audio:
As you can see, I tried several ways of contacting them, including via telephone (which unfortunately I could not get a recording of), but the record label did not get back to me.
The next part of the planning stage came with choosing the font I actually wanted to use, based on the results of the questionnaire.
As you can see from the results shown above, Epic Ride and September Five were the most popular according to this questionnaire, so they were the two fonts I went with for my particular project.
Epic Ride
September Five
As shown above, there is already a set colour scheme in place. When I was initially doing my research with my questionnaires, colours like blues were a popular choice for many people as colour schemes, and the blue shown above in particular matches the same kind of blue that was on the front of the digipak for Hopeless Fountain Kingdom and for Badlands, two of the digipaks I analysed. This colour scheme is important and will be a key part of both the digipak and website, in order to build up the image of the artist and allow for synergy with cross-media promotion.
With regards to the two fonts shown above, it is important for me to go against the normal artist font and imagery, meaning that the fonts I use must be different to the normal fonts other artists will use for their products. Many alternative artists will use serif styles that are less cursive, which is why I chose these fonts, as although it allows for an element of femininity, it also sets my artistic personality apart from the personalities of other artists and makes my product more eye-catching to the audience, meaning that they are more likely to purchase my product as a result of this.
To the right here is the shot list for my music video, which gives me an idea of the type of shots I need to get for my music video. Some of the notes in the brackets are just things to help me remember what kind of shots I'm actually hoping to get, and are more for my personal benefit than anything else (because they allow me to show my thinking, and are free for annotation and new interpretations).
The slideshow on the left here is my storyboard plans for the music video. The narrative for the video is set at a house party, and is between two people mainly, who are part of rival groups (mainly gender vs gender). Both the male and female know they aren't good for each other, but continue to see each other behind their friends' backs, due ultimately to the high levels of lust shared between both of them, which we can see in earlier parts of the storyboard itself.
Above is my shooting schedule. I am hoping to get my filming done in 4 days, although this is open to change in case people can't commit to these days. The main people who I need for the filming are the male and female protagonist, who are still undecided as to who they will be, due to my peers being unsure as to whether or not they can commit their time. I haven't finalised dates yet, either, but am hoping to film during early to mid November. The shot numbers correspond to the shot list shown below, and help to give me an idea of which shots I'm looking to film on that day.
Hardware, Software and Props
In terms of hardware, I will be using an iPad Mini to film my music video, and to take promotional photos of the artist, as the filming and photography quality is good for the purpose of this music video and the subsequent ancillary products that will be created. As the video is a day-in-the-life style video, it is more natural for me to just film handheld, as this creates the illusion to the audience that they are going through the day with the artist and that they can see everything taking place.
Software that I will use for the film and ancillary products will be: Adobe Photoshop CS6, Sony Vegas Pro 13, YouTube, Wix and Spotify. All of these pieces of software are tools that I have used before to create products, especially sites like YouTube and Wix, meaning that I am well-versed in how to create sites from the tools given to me, as shown above, and can easily upload and integrate created content into a user-friendly interface.
With regards to Adobe Photoshop, that will mainly be used in order to help me with image reworking for the promotional images and the images that will be found on both the website and the digipak, if the images are too dark for example. Sony Vegas Pro is a piece of video editing software I have used before, and am well-versed in once again, meaning I can easily put the clips together, and use transitions between the clips to keep the flow of the video.
YouTube will be used as my main platform for actually uploading the video as I've used it before, and it is easy to create multiple accounts for this particular purpose. Wix is another site that I will use, with this same idea, and there is already a URL I have saved for the purposes of this media project, which will be made public when the website is fully ready. Spotify will be used, finally, as my main audio source while filming in order to allow me to keep in time when it comes to editing. The audio will be edited out during the editing process, but it helps to have it in there for the filming process to begin with.
