The importance of storyboarding

In today's class we were all discussing the importances of doing a storyboard, and how it is so helpful when it comes to filming and editing.

A storyboard is a 'blue print' to your film.

A storyboard is a graphical representation of the camera shots in a film sequence which are connected together to create a 'narrative flow'. It is similar in appearance to a comic strip. The story of the film is visualised by a series of drawings which depict the location, character, props and setting of each shot. Beneath the images there are captions detailing action, camera directions, lighting directions and sometimes basic dialogue. 

A storyboard allows you to translate you visual ideas on to paper, and to the crew who are helping you film. It should be clear enough that if you weren't available on the day of shooting, any cinematographer could take the storyboard and shoot it and edit it precisely.

In the pre-production stage,  the director and the production designer will discuss how to achieve the right look and feel of the film by planning the sets and costumes. Then storyboard artist will then be brought in to draw up the director's rough storyboards adding any necessary details and creating a detailed version with action, camera and lighting directions. Then the director and DOP to see the flow of shots and the movements of the camera and actors. It is better to have too many shots in the storyboard, and then when it comes to cutting it is much easier. It will also enable to see if there are an major gaps or shot which didn't make sense. 

When it comes to showing motion on a storyboard, there are multiple way in which you can do this. You could draw arrows and then simply follow them, or you can draw motion lines, which more subtly shows the direction in which the camera would move. The final way is drawing multiple frames, this way works just the same as the others, but much more detail and more time consuming. 

Your storyboards should always be designed to communicate the narrative flow of the story as clearly as possible to your production crew. The Drawings should be clean and simple, arrows should be bold and helpful, and annotation should be brief rough storyboards can be drawn on storyboards sheets on large sheets of plain paper in sketch books or even on the backs of envelopes. The final drafts storyboards, however should be designed on quality paper with the care and attention that the music video deserves. 

In the post-production stage, it helps with the editing as it allows the editing team see the order of shots and the transition needed at the end or beginning or particular shots. 

Finally, you don't have to be a top artist in order to storyboard. As long as it gets across the order and flow of the film, it's great. Even Steven Spielberg drew stick men!

Target Audience

In our music video we want to target our audience at an age range of 16- 24 year olds.

As our band is young in the music video, this will mean that it will attract girls and also boys who want to like them.

As a group we all agree that the main character who is a girl should be attractive, so this will hopefully grab the boys attention. 

Uni is an important part of the video which attracts and involves young people.

The band is quite alternative and cool so this attracts other young and upcoming bands. The kooks are organic artists so this attracts people who like organic and real artists compared to synthetic artists.

Below is where I have created a audience member who I think would fit to our music video. 

Name: Maisie Trafford 

Age: 17 

Oppupation: Student doing A-Levels

Where do you live? 

At the moment I live in Brighton, but hoping for next year to live in London

What Kind of music do you like?

The kind of music in which I am interested in not the well known music, so I like artists like The arctic Monkeys and Two Door Cinema Club, as they are known artist, but have an alternative feel to them. 

What about the band attracts you?

The bands in which attract me are ones in which are not hugely well know and that they are doing it for the music and performance rather than the fame and image. I like a good band who give it there all in performance, but at the same time give it that chilled look.  

Describe your perfect night when going out?

My perfect night when going out is to have a good time, but in a chilled way. I like to go house parties, which are especially quite chilled and then also going out in town which then I like getting all dressed up. I do also like getting a group of us to go to a concert or festival as they are great fun.

Treatment idea 2:

Concept 2 by SophiaStanway

Treatment idea 1:

Concept 1 by SophiaStanway

Starting our timeline

This week in our lessons we have started to create a timeline of our concept treatment. This process was quite difficult as we didn't have a solid treatment in place, so it was hard to create on what we weren't sure we were doing.
So we started the timeline with a beginning, a middle and then a end. Below is an image of our first draft of the timeline, as we now know on what our treatment is, we can now write up a new timeline with more detail. As a group we all think that we want to create a really detailed timeline, as it will help us when coming to shooting the music video.

New idea

This week we started with a new idea, as our previous narrative was not working, and when pitching it to the teachers they weren't keen. So what we have decided to do is to keep our song choice of 'The Kooks- Naive'.

 

Above is as a group we created two mind maps of a rough treatment for our music video. There is still lots of work needed to improve the whole concept.

So as a group we discussed the treatment for our music video. We like the idea of the performance part of the music video of a band playing in a big open space, such as an old, empty warehouse in which we can have bright flashing lights and big windows. we still like the idea of the band to have the whole vintage look to them, which I think would fit in really well with the performance location.

We then want to have the narrative part of the music video as a story line of a girl throughout her life. We want to display this with having the narrative through doors. We started this process of having two doors in which have two different themes action going on. The first door is were uni and family life is happening, so we have her looking young and innocent, happy, graduating, ect... Then in the second door we have the completely different action of prostitution. we had the whole idea that she gets pick through the window.

We then pitched this idea to our teachers and they feeling more for the idea. Luke then said to us that with only having two door ideas would not be enough for a 3 minute video. So what he suggested to us was having more ideas with the different doors of throughout her life.

Emily Tedrake

Emily Tedrake is a video commissioner from Polydor records which is part of the universal music group, (Time Warner conglomerate). Emily started her career with fine art painting and then photography, in which she did thought she wanted to be. She then got offered an internship at Polydor, in which she was not getting paid for but it was a great opportunity for gaining work experience. She then got offered a job at Polydor to be the point of contact with the artist and the record label in which is part of the process of making the music video. Since being a commissioner she has commissioned music videos for music artists, such as Ellie Goulding, Lana Del Ray, ect.. 

The Music video commissioning process:

The commissioning process in which Emily had to under take is the budgets in which the record companies give her to work with. This vary from £1,000 to a £100,000. The budget will shape the content Once they know in which song choice. She will then put out tender to directors who once selected they will submit a treatment. Emily may have 10 contact 10 clients who may want to shoot , depending on bids/concept. This whole process is worked closely with artists and Repertoire and researches directors.

We then looked at one of Emily's concepts ( Ellie Goulding- Burn) in which was shot in June this year. This treatment was images used to suggest the content and theme, but also realistic on behalf of the director. There were specific references for the look of the video, location, how the band are going to look like, what props will look like, then the casting ect for the narrative. then you have to consider weather Ellie will have the right star image and styling for the narrative drawn up.
The treatment covers most of the important parts are creating a music video, so you have to make sure that this process is well thought through.
After watching Ellie Goulding single Burn. I thought that the video was really well put together, as it had a simple narrative which made it really effective.

 

The next video and treatment which Emily had to show us was James Blake- 'Overgrown', which is one of Emily's favourite video. This treatment was not visual with no images. It was shot in Los Angeles over a two day period. There was a £30,000 budget, with one of the top named directors. This video had a lots of post production afterwards, which was highly stylised with lighting. There was a cabin build in the studio, green screen on windows, and then the uses of time lapse. The cabin on the hillside was put in post production. She hired professional backing dancers, to give it more of that edge. The video gets across a fantastic star image and this has to match the music. This is were Emily has to scale the energy and colour as James Blake is an elegant and simple artist.





 

The next video Emily had to show us was 'White Lies' by First Time Callers. This video was shot only 3 weeks ago and it was only got released this morning. The director of the video was a French director and had a budget of £15,000. This treatment of the video had a synopsis and image of the concept. The French director interpret the song, and provide a music video breakdown ina few paragraphs. There was lots of image based theme, with location of performance in Paris, France.

Before making this video there were two versions- a band performance based video and then a re-shot a 16mm performance under Emily at Polydor this year.  

 





Music Video powerpoint presentation

In today lesson as a group we presented our music videos ideas as a PowerPoint to Jason and Luke in which both will be helping us create the music video, ditpack and website.  So we started discussing our whole concept of what we wish to create. There were of course mixed reviews on the whole idea, as Luke found that the whole concept not original at all. He found that the idea of having a Alice and Wonderland narrative a good idea, but he was saying that it needs to be more fantasy world, to have a different look and feel from the original Alice and Wonderland. We did also show in which song we would use, and they liked that we had chosen that song, but then again they were worried that the song was too well known with a good original music video.

As we all take all the discussing which took place. We feel as a group that we will go back and carry on creating and taking on board on what both the teachers say, and then hopefully we may have a really strong concept at the end of it.



Song Ideas

In today lesson as a group we were discussing on the song ideas in which we have which could fit our two different initial idea narratives. So the process started with each of us looking at our phones to which songs we had which would fit well. This took a long time to come up with songs which worked and that we all liked. Below is a image of all the song idea which we came up with.

From the list above there were of course songs which worked better than others. As a group we all agree that for our first initial idea we like the song 'Naive by The Kooks'. 

Then our other initial idea song choice is 'Alex Clare- Too Close'. 

Initial ideas and treatments

Below is were as a group we created a spider diagram of our initial idea, this process was really successful, and we ended up with two really different strong ideas.

IDEA 1: 

Our first initial idea: 

A location of the woods

A indie vintage looking boy band 

Fairy lights/ lanterns 

Festival/ gig look (bright colourful power paint) 

Mad hatters tea party narrative 

IDEA 2: 

Our second initial idea:

Location of bedroom/sitting room (dark, old room)

Smashed up picture frames of memories 

Flashing backs of character past (relationship problems) 

Slow motion of smashing glasses/ vases/ picture frames 

Messy look (messy hair, dirty clothes, not much make-up, ect..)

Uses of the green screen and studio at school 

My Music video ideas

In my research and planning for music ideas of a concept, which includes a song choice and then a narrative on what is going on in the video. I did find this process really fun, as you are looking at several songs and videos, in which you feel could work. But then of course you also worrying if it would work, is the song too well known, is the official video so good it would be difficult to produce a good enough one, ect... 

So below are some of my ideas in which I will bring forward to my group and hopefully they maybe like aleast one of the songs or the narrative I have created. 

Introducting A2

As we move from our AS work and moving up to a higher standard of work for A2, I am very much looking forward to what this year with bring.
So this year as groups we have asked to create a music video, of what we create a ditpack too, which means that the band we have chosen will have an album cover and then a website too.

My Aims for this year, is to get 100% in my coursework, and then to do my best in the written exam at the end of the year, which then hopefully will give me a overall grade of an A or even an A*, in which I would love. I would also like to achieve an award at the end, as all the hard work will pay off and get all that satisfaction awarded to us.

In today lesson we have also chosen our groups and I can happily say that I feel that we have a very strong group, in which we hope to produce some fantastic work.
Here is a picture of us as a group...