Cast Update

Originally our boy band consisted of 4 members. Temour, James. Matt and Jack. As previously said in our audience feedback we were advised to re-shoot our performance, this was due to many reasons for example the boys clothing could of been better and more of a typical boy band and one of the members didn't seem to be taking it seriously and it was therefore bringing the performance down.

The prospect of re-shooting has meant that some of our original cast members cant continue because they have commitments  so we have recruited two new members form our 6th form. Kieran and Jem and we are keeping Temour from the original cast. 

We will still be using our original footage using the two actors in our narrative. Sophie and Charlie. We now have to re-shoot everything rather than just get more footage we understand that this is going to take more time.

Sopihe

Charlie

Jem

Kieran

Testing Digpak Ideas

Digipak- First Draft

For part of our coursework we have to produce 2 ancillary texts, one being a digipak and the other a magazine advert from the digipak. We have to research digipaks and gain knowledge on the common types of conventions and also to gain ideas for what to do for our own digipak.

We are doing a boyband song and therefore need to look at current and past band digipaks.

This is our first draft of the front panel.

We have done a number of shoots and i took pictures at these that we could possibly use for our covers and back. We have decided what we what to put the picture in black and white, this reflects the video and parts of that are shot in black and white and also is common for a slow boyband track. The original video is entirely shot in black and white. The idea to have the boys on the moor was partly ease as we where there shooting and also the background of a grey sky reflects the mood of sadness from the video. 

We wanted to have the boys spaced apart so that they fill the picture. A sticker has been placed in the bottom left corner so that it doesn't interrupt the image and it is done in a deep purple to stand out from the black and white. The purpose of the sticker is to highlight that it is a digipak and that the video is for 'Gone'. 

Contacting The Record Company

This is Similar to the one on my blog, however just giving our production and update, in the progress. 

We previously contacted the Sony Records through their feedback page as we could not find an email address linking directly to the licensing company for Sony Music. However there reply to our feedback gave us an email address to their licensing company to contact in order to ask for permission to use the song for our coursework. 


The email address we have now contacted is www.licensingny@sonymusic.com.
This will hopefully be the last time we have to contact the record company, I am now awaiting a reply. 

All- Sample Scene

This is the sample scene we provided for class feedback. This is a 1 min clip.

Digipak Idea 1

We have been sitting down and talking to our media teacher. We have come up with a rough idea for our Digipak, however we have not yet put this idea together on photoshop or anything to see if this works just yet. 

So there is a relationship between the front and the back of our Digipak we are thinking of have a picture of all the band maybe standing on the Moors or maybe sat on some rocks we haven't yet decided. Then for the back cover maybe have the same image but this time from the back, so they have their backs facing us. We got this idea from a Linkin Park Digipak for "Minuets To Midnight". 

We also liked the idea of having them looking in the water and then maybe because it has been almost 10 years since our band N'Sync split have them looking in the water wearing clothes maybe they wore in the late 90's when they were popular

and then on the back have them looking in the water wearing clothes they would wear now, showing the time passing and the new generation of N'sync. 

As there has already been a N'sync Greatest Hits we are looking at naming our Digipak maybe something along the lines of N'sync 'The Hits' or N'sync 'Best Of' and then just include the songs which were made hits. 

We are thinking about having a pull out of a lyric sheet maybe, or a pull out sheet of information on the band maybe where they are today. Or a sheet with picture from behind the scenes or something along those lines. 

For the inside panels of the Digipak we are thinking of having something that links to the narrative so maybe the grave yard location and then super impose the band members into the shot, or different flashback scenes cropped and then merged together. 

Below is an example of a superimposed image on a Digipak : 

We are not yet decided whether we would like a 2 panel digipak : 

Or we may be using 3 Panel Digipak we have not yet decided : 

Setting & Location Update

For our performance we are going to mainly be using settings around Ilkley including : 

• The Moors
• The Swing Bridge 
• The River 
• Ilkley Park .. Maybe 
• Ilkley Tarn .. etc 
• Cow and Calf Rocks 

All of these locations are very scenic especially the Moors and The Cow And Calf Rocks, they are very quiet locations and The Moors have different parts to film on. We got the idea from filming on the Moors from last years video by Emmie and Megan Backstreet Boys "As Long As You Love Me" as this location seemed to have worked very well and was also included on the digi pak. 

For the narrative we are going to be using Sophie Dixon's house which is situated in Ilkley. We are also going to use others locations such as: 

• The Grave Yard .. Probably not going to be in the Grave Yard but maybe outside the gates
• The Park .. This will be used maybe as a flashback to show how they first met. 

Filming Update

From editing footage we had already filmed, we noticed that we have to re-film. 


Friday 27th January we are planning some more performance footage of our boy band after school at 3 before it begins to become dark. Due to one person from our original line up of our Boy band being busy and time being a key issue for us, we are having to use another boy Tom Wardman instead, which ultimately means we are having to re-film all of our performance footage. 


Monday 30th January we are planning on filming some more narrative which again we are going to have to re-film everything due to our main narrative boy Ty Abraham going back to university. So we are now using Sophie Dixon as our main girl for the flashbacks in the narrative and Charlie Dellar for our lead boy in the narrative. 


Hopefully then we can begin editing these bits of footage and producing a rough cut of what we hope will become our final piece. 

Filming

After our disruptions of filming in the Christmas holidays we drew up a new plan for filming.

Last Friday we filmed what we hopefully want to be our performance footage for our music video, to do this we filmed in several outside locations including The Swing Bridge, The Ilkley Moors and around Ilkley Tarn. We used four boy member for our boy band who were James Crowther, Jack Hanson, Temour  Ahmed and Mathew Frost.

Yesterday we then filmed some of our narrative for the music video, which we based around a couple and his life without her after she has gone. We are hoping to show this part through various flashbacks. 
However we had to film with two cameras a HD one and a Normal Camera as we filmed our performance with a normal camera due to their being no HD ones around, we had to film with both just in case there was a massive difference, this way we still have the footage and we can avoid re-shoots if there did appear to be a massive difference. 
Even though we have filmed most of our narrative we still have at least two more scenes to film for this part which involves our last scene. 

All- Amimatic

This is our animatic- A video of each shot of our call sheet with voice-over annotation.

Filming Disruptions

During the christmas holidays we were hoping to have filmed parts of our music video, both the narrative and the performances. However due to work commitments, bad weather and transport disruptions on the trains lines we had to cancel both our filming days. 


We are however hoping to film wednesday for the narrative part, and the performance part hopefully on saturday morning or monday if saturday fails. 

Schedule

We are hoping to eventually put together a schedule for filming our first selection of scenes for our music video over the Christmas holidays period between the 16th and 23rd of December during the first week of the holidays, as this falls perfectly within when our actor for our lead boy for the narrative part is back from University in order for us to see if this person can actually pull of the lead. For the lead boy and girl we are going to be using real life couple, Bronte Duxbury in Year 12 and Tyrone Abraham, Mel's brother. 

We are hoping to have finished our Animatic for the end of the week Thursday or Friday, as this gives us then a rough planned story board for us to follow when filming, in order to gage the order of shots when filming.  An Animatic is a moving story board of our idea for the music video scenes in order, which we will then record ourselves for the voice over in order to explain what will be happening in the scene, once we have put the story board together we will then be editing the Animatic on Final Cut. 


Below is an example of an Animatic taken from Youtube : 

Changes To The Music Vid Production

After presenting our sample scene to the class, we learnt we had to make some changes to our original idea. To begin with we were going to have one main lead from the band, as our lead role for the narrative idea of the couples break up, however after showing the sample footage of our idea, from audience feedback we have realised it would be easier to have a separate couple and male lead for the narrative and have the band as the performance aspects, maybe in location such as the moors, the park and maybe a different house to where we are filming the couple. 

We are also going to try and film more sample footage through the week, this time we are sticking with the beginning but trying to fit in our montage of picture of the couple hopefully before the music begins, in order to see if our montage will fit in this place or whether we will need to place it somewhere else.

Our idea from the montage of picture at the beginning has come from the opening of the US Sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother', where they use a variety of picture it some form of slideshow, which is the effect we are hoping to have. We are hoping to end the montage with the last picture being the main girl taking a picture, which we hope to then lead into a flashback of when that picture was taken, or if this doesn't work we are going to develop the bed scene we used in our first sample footage. 

All - Timed Lyric Sheet

Sample Scene - Number 1

Here is our first sample scene for our Music Video, 'Gone' please feel free to leave any comments, Audience feedback is vital :


Untitled from Melodie Abraham on Vimeo.

Filming Sample Scene - Plan

21/11/11: 
Today we are going to plan our sample scene and filming schedule, we would have preferred to have filmed over the weekend, however to due work commitments and difficulties finding free cast members we had to push filming the scene back to today. We have sat down and planned our idea and decided on the scene we are going to film for our sample, we have decided to film what we would like to be the first scene of our music video consisting between the timings of  0:15 to approximately 1:00. 
Our scene is going to focus on the lead member of  our band, memorising on his past relationship with a girl, so we are also going to try and film some flashbacks to go in the scene. 


The locations we will hopefully be using consist of the park in Ilkley and a house. 
We will be filming these scenes in order to help us experiment with the black and white effect to see if this effect would work all the way through or just when signifying flashbacks to the audience. As we are filming after school we could have some issues with lighting outside with the nights becoming darker earlier , so if this happens we may just have to film the scene in a different location inside for the flashback. 

MA- Ideas for Cast

We have decided that we want to have a 4-man boy band even though originally NSYNC were a 5-piece. For the narrative side of the video we want to use a boy and girl.

For the boys we want them to be around our age, this is mainly because they are the easiest age group for us to get hold of whilst the age of the original NSYNC was 20-30 at the time of the video they all looked pretty young.

For the narrative we want to use the lead member of the band as the 'boyfriend'. One idea we have is to use my brother and his real life girlfriend as 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend'.

Tyrone and Bronte

For the boyband cast we want to use my brother and 2 additional members, we have had some ideas of this but non have been confirmed so far.

MA- Coursework Brief

The Brief


A promotional package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video , together with two of the following options.


1. A cover for its release as part of a digigpak (CD/DVD package)
2. A magazine advert for a the digipak (CD/DVD)

MA- Use of Production Blog

This is our production blog and we plan to use it to keep record of the production of our coursework and the 2 ancillary texts- the magazine advert and the digipak.