Final Music Video

After our last draft we checked through with Ms Ghelichi, our Media Studies teacher, to see what we could do to get it to the highest possible mark. From this we made the following changes:

• Zoomed in on the shot of Alice throwing the powder paint, to improve the framing
• Cut out one of the field shots at the end, as it seemed less relevant

After editing this, we have now produced the final version of the video, here:

Third Draft

Here is the third draft of our music video to Shinedown's 'Her Name Is Alice', after we made the improvements:

Feedback Second Draft

We showed the second draft of our music video to a group of year 9 students (who we originally showed our pitch to) and we asked them to right down feedback on a post-it note, containing something they liked and something we could improve on. We got some quite ridiculous comments such as 'The Mad Hatter's hat looks silly' and 'throw a rock at the bass drum and break the skin', which are things we cannot really consider, however we did take into consideration some of the feedback to make some changes and create draft 3. Here is the full list of feedback: http://libertyshawa2media.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/feedback.html

We made a few changes to create draft 3 including:

• Changing the brightness and contrast on some clips to make it seem darker and slightly eerier.
• Moving some clips around so the guitarist had a longer shot compared to the bassist because he could play the song better.
• Added an extra clip of some teacups because there was an extra beat in the song that needed filling.
• Took the flicker effect off one of the clips which we forgot to do last time.
• Changed the saturation with a red filter on some clips towards the end so that my skin tone looks the same in all the clips.
• Changed a clip of the drummer slightly so the movement of hitting the drums was more obvious.
• Zoomed in on some shots of the band and moved some clips slightly so the band look more 'enthusiastic'.
• Changed some transitions near the beginning so instead of fading through black, they fade through a blur, so the clips carry on more effectively from each other and look more professional.

Second Draft

Here is the second draft of our video after making the changes that were suggested by our target audience:

After watching this through however, we decided there still needs to be some minor changes, such as:

• There is still a flicker on one of the band shots that needs to be taken out
• The line 'how it truly feels' isn't synced properly
• The saturation on the end shot of Alice and the band needs editing slightly

We hope to make these changes on a third draft.

Feedback

We showed our finished draft to 2 classes, and asked for their opinions. This is the result:

The strengths that were commented on included:

• Perfect location and weather
• Good use of costumes and props
• Good narrative and concept
• Nice use of the chess shots (the use of masking to make it look like there are 2 Alice's)

After listening to the feedback we made a list of changes to be made. This included:

• Take the flickering shots off of the band shots
• Add in some more 'dramatic' looking band shots to emphasise the dramatic chorus
• Add filters or contrast to the band shots to make them fit with the genre of the song
• Add in some flickers of the book scene to add more of a surreal effect and to hide the glitch that appears
• Make the band and the Mad Hatter on the end shots appear to flicker to look more mysterious
• Zoom into some of the shots to make them look more intense and cut out some of the errors that could be seen

First Draft

Here is the first completed draft of our music video for 'Her Name Is Alice' by Shinedown:

Filming

Yesterday we filmed our 'Her Name Is Alice' video. Overall it was very successful - we got every shot done in one day, starting from about 10am and finishing about 7pm. The weather was perfect and sunny, which allowed the lighting quality to be lovely, and we had all the props we needed. Our friend Jo White came along to help us with the props and setting up of the scenes, which involved carrying up chairs, tables and instruments into the woods behind my house and the arrangement of our smaller props like teapots and cups. We took a lot of shots from different angles and filmed shots in different ways just in case we didn't like what we originally planned, which was done mostly by Liberty on her camera which has amazing quality. In terms of our risk assessment, we didn't encounter any of the risks other than me tripping up a few times due to a combination of my high shoes and the rough woodland floor, but I didn't fully fall over so there was no harm done; Samuel Snowdon who acted as lead singer also took on the role of 'health and safety' manager in order to make sure the location was safe for us to use, which included cleaning up glass and pottery after we smashed it. Today we began editing and we are really pleased with how things have turned out on the video clips, so we just hope we are also pleased with the finished product.

Actors

The actors in our video will be:

Samuel Snowdon (Singer):

Kane Mitchell (Guitarist)

Rosy Armitage (Keyboardist)

Kathryn Snow (Bassist)

Abby Haley  (Drummer)

Alexandra Haley (Alice)

Liberty Shaw (Mad Hatter)

Single Cover

As we are promoting a band with their debut single, I thought it would be best to create the official single cover for the song that would be used in advertising, and if the song were to be used for iTunes or YouTube. I thought it would be best to use some of our props from the video, so the audience can associate them easily with the band and the song, and also to promote the video for the song itself. These props include Alice In Wonderland style objects to fit with the theme of the song - I arranged them to fit the frame and edited it into a square typical album cover shape, and then edited the contrast, shadows text and white balance to make the cover look darker, more mysterious, and to fit with the genre. The brighter version that I originally took looked too happy!

Original photo of mine:

Cropped photo to album cover shape:

Filter edits were added:

The text was then added - here is the finished product:

Costume

As Costume Designer, I was in charge of the costumes of the people involved.


The Band:
We took inspiration from the image of the band 'Shinedown' who sing the actual song, because their image obviously fits with their genre. As the genre is alternative metal/pop-rock, the band are portrayed with quite a dark mysterious persona. This means that our band will be dressed in dark/black clothes with quite a rock edge including jeans or leather jackets. Other typical conventions that we will use is men with longer hair, and the girls with darker make-up on. 

Alice:
As Alice will not be the typical Disney style innocent Alice, we have decided to change her typical costume a bit. We are still having the conventional blue dress to show it is Alice, but it wont be the stereotypical tea-dress and apron - it will be more towards the old-fashioned dolly dress alike to the one in the Tim Burton adaptation, and of a paler blue as opposed to a royal blue. It will also be shorter, to show she is not as innocent in our version. She will also wear knee-length white socks to match her outfit and to help the audience recognise that she is actually Alice. The shoes Alice is wearing will be platform heeled glittery dolly shoes, to match with the image of her outfit and to also stand out as a key characteristic within the video (there will be a lot of shots of her walking everywhere). 
Her hair will be black, like in traditional aspects and in the game Alice Madness Returns, to show a more darker mysterious side to the video, to fit with the genre, and to undermine typical conventions - which could therefore make this a memorable video.
Her make-up will be very much like the Alice in Alice Madness Returns - dark and smoky eyes with pale skin, to adhere to the gothic conventions in the nature of the song.

(Our Alice dress, shoes and hair)

Mad Hatter:

We have chosen to take inspiration from Tim Burton's Mad Hatter to create ours, because he fits exactly right with our genre conventions, in the sense that Wonderland is all in Alice's mind and everything seems quite random and crazy, like the Mad Hatter's image - The Mad Hatter himself could be a representation of Alice's madness. This means we will include the strange abstract eye make-up, the typical top hat with scarf around it, tailored jacket and neckerchief. These are all things that the Mad Hatter is associated with and so the audience will be able to easily recognise for themselves that he is actually the Mad Hatter in our video, and not just a random character.

(Our Mad Hatter costume)

Storyboard

In order to illustrate our narrative, we created a storyboard with every single shot and idea in it so we know exactly what we are doing when we are filming. Here is the first page of our storyboard, and the rest, along with a description of what is going on, can be found, here - http://rosyanncourseworka2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/32-storyboard.html

Shot list

Here is the shot list of all the shots we need and that we will use when filming:

Pitch for our Music Video

We created a pitch for our music video which I put together for a year 9 class, as a base for our target audience, to see what they thought. This is the result:

Andrew Goodwin's Theory in Relation to Our Video

Thought Beats:
The majority of our music video will fit to the beat of the song, for example towards the end on the lyrics 'red knights, white knights, marching into the fight' which has quite a matching beat to fit the lyrics, we will cut each clip directly in terms of editing. On the choruses which are very dramatic and slower in terms of the singing speed, we will have a lot of slow motion 'dramatic shots' to fit with the speed of the song.

Narrative/Performance:
As Andrew Goodwin suggests, our narrative isn't fully complete. Throughout the whole video Alice is looking for a key, but this isn't clear to the audience until she finds the key. When she has the key she throws it to the Mad Hatter who opens a box, but even then it isn't revealed what is in the box - it is up to the audience's imagination.
 In terms of performance, we aren't using the actual band, we are using our own 'fake band' which we are using as our band to promote for our coursework, but we will make the lead singer lip sync the lyrics and the rest of the band look like they are playing the song. We can't have the lead singer as the main actor in our video like a lot of music videos, because it is a male singer, and obviously the protagonist of Alice in Wonderland is female. The singer sings in third person 'Her Name Is Alice', which is also why this idea works.

The Star Image:
The band will be portrayed as quite rebellious and fun, but also quite mysterious (shown by the use of throwing the powder paint/smashing clocks,but also wearing darker clothes, in quite a mysterious setting with quite a surreal theme). The audience can also associate and identify the band a lot with the use of the performance shots.

Relations of Visuals to the Song:
Our music video will have a lot of elements of 'Illustrate' and 'Amplify', where a lot of the lyrics will be illustrated in the video (such as 'she's unlocked the meaning' will be a clip of the Mad Hatter unlocking the chest). Also there is a lot of repeatability, such as the tea party, band scenes and Alice playing chess, to amplify the meaning of the song.

Technical Aspects:
We will be using a wide range of camera shots and angles to create certain effects within the video and also to create a variety of visuals for the audience to look at and stay engaged, such as close-ups, long-shots, mid-shots, low-angles and high-angles. In terms of editing we can use a range of effects and filters to also make it more visually pleasing to the audience such as grainy, black and white, high contrast, to make the setting seem more eerie and mysterious.

Mis-en-scene will include props related to Alice in Wonderland such as clocks, playing cards, tea sets and 'drink me' bottles. 'Alice' will have dark hair and make-up like in 'Alice Madness Returns' but will still have the conventional blue dress like in the book, and Disney and Tim Burton adaptations.

Band Name and Logo

We have decided to use the name 'Truth Of The Fallen' for several reasons.

• Firstly, in the genre of music our band's music is a part of, the use of several words (that don't always necessarily make sense) are quite popular, and can be shortened to simply initials (where ours would be TOTF). Examples of this are Three Days Grace, Bring Me The Horizon, Breaking Benjamin and Bullet For My Valentine. 
• Secondly, we all liked the idea of the word 'Fallen'. It is quite a dark word, associated with fallen angels (devils), death, defeat and helplessness, which are the kind of things that are connotations of the genre of music we are working with.
• We also wanted to put forward the idea of 'reality' which is ironic to the song choice. We researched synonyms for this word and reached the word 'truth' which we thought was a very pretty and powerful word, and therefore completed the beginning of our band name. 'Of The' just seemed to fit quite nicely in the middle.

Here is the band name logo that I created, which could be used in album covers, or websites and such. We decided to use a dark background to show the darker genre of the band, and white text to give a good contrast and make the name stand out. The font we used also connotes the darker more mysterious side to the style of music, which can be associated with things like horror movies or mystical/fantasy films.

Risk Assessment

Here is the risk assessment for our music video location which I was in charge of writing, to ensure we know all the safety precautions when filming our video. Our teacher has signed it to agree to this.

Permission Request

In order to use a professional song signed to a big record company, we had to send formal emails to ask for the permission to have the song in our project, for copyright reasons, and therefore it was in my role to take on this job.

Here is the email to Atlantic Records, the company that own Shinedown's music:

Here is the email to Disney who own Buena Vista Records, the record label who own the 'Almost Alice' soundtrack where the song can be found:

Disney replied to me giving me the names of the publishers of the song that I should contact instead, and so here is my email to them:

Location Shots

I was in charge of the location as set designer, and so I too some shots of the woodland 'Wonderland' location that we chose for our music video:

There are a lot of safety measures that need to be considered when using this location - people could easily trip up or hurt themselves on things, and the equipment may also be a danger hazard. More about the risks and how to prevent them can be found in the risk assessment.