Production: Day One of Filming

Today was our first day of filming. Today, we filmed all of the performance section and a large proportion of the narrative section. This took us around six hours, starting at 9:00 and finishing up at about 15:30.

 

Planning: Risk Assessment

Potential Danger	Potential Outcomes	Actions to avoid potential outcomes
Leaning over bridge, leading to falling.	Very serious injury.	Keep at a safe distance, do not lean over walls.
Obstructing pedestrians with our equipment.	Others' injuries.	Filming when it’s not very busy in the town.  Someone watching passers by
Standing too close to cliff edge when filming on Whitcliffe.	Very serious injury.	Keep at a safe distance, do not lean over edge.
Working in road, with cars.	Very serious injury.	Road safety, green cross code and staying on the pavement as much as possible.
Dropping camera.	Equipment damage.	Use a camera strap when handheld, or ensure camera is secured to tripod.

Planning: Test Shots

Planning: Makeup Tests

 

This is a basic sketch that I produced when coming up with ideas for the 'tattoos' that will appear on both actors skin during the video.

 

'Octane OK' hand tattoo for final shot.

 

Using eyeliner to draw on motif.

 

Final motif (part of) for male performer.

 

Final motif (part of) for female performer. Using ink. More delicate.

Planning: Casting

When selecting our actors for both the narrative and performance sections of our video, it was important that we considered our target audience. For example, we felt it was appropriate for our actors to have relatively plain hair colours with no extreme haircuts or hairstyles, as this would be a similar style to that of the audience of the idie/pop punk music scene.

Planning: A Theoretical Approach to Pop Punk

Our chosen song ('The One' by Octane Ok), fits within the pop punk/indie genre. This post hopes to identify fitting elements for this genre in a theoretical manner.

Conventions of the Pop Punk Genre:
Location:
Pop punk videos are regularly shot in towns or calmer, more rural areas near towns (eg. forests with houses set into them). This can be seen in many of the videos I've studied so far. Eerie forests seem to used regularly.

Props:

The videos which show all of the band in the performance section (not just the frontman), generally include instruments. These tend to be the only props included.

Costumes:

Costume in pop punk videos are usually relatively basic - usually consisting on dull, monochrome themes (black, greys, etc.). The males are mostly dress in skinny jeans and tshirts to keep with the casual theme. The women are sometimes dressed up a little more. This is shown perfectly in the clothing styles of bands like PVRIS.

Lighting:

The lighting varies widely in music videos within this genre, depending on the themes of the song and the general house style of the band. For example, despite both being three pieces with female vocalists, Paramore has a far lighter theme than PVRIS.

Narrative and Performance:

The majority of pop punk videos contain both narrative and performance at a ratio of around 60:40 (narrative:performance). However, some videos (eg. 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' by Futures) are exclusively performance, those these aren't as common. There are very few pop punk videos that use conceptual videos.

Shot types:

Pop punk is one of the few genres that include a lot of long shots, or shots that show most of the subjects body. As well as this, the shot types are usually extremely varied. Close ups are regularly used in the chorus performance parts of these videos.

Editing:

Pop punk videos usually stick to the general conventions of most pop music videos - meaning that the editing cuts to the beat of the song.

Goodwin's Theory:

Which areas of Goodwin's theory we intend to include:

• Synaesthesia. We hope to link our visuals in the narrative to the lyrics.
• Genre characteristics are sensible to use, so as to appeal to our target audience.
• Close-ups of the main artist during chorus, to reinforce to band identity.

Areas we will do NOT intend to use:

• We won't use male gaze in our video, as pop punk generally doesn't sexualize women as much as other genres.

Planning: Five Sections of Our Music Video

Section One:-
- Male performer introduced.
- Sequence of implicit shots of his body.
- Gradually showing more of body - portrait becomes clearer.

Section Two:-
- Walking begins.
- Not clear where he is going or why.

Section Three:-
- First marks appear on his skin.

Section Four:-
- Walking to more destinations.
- Acquiring more marks.

Section 5:-
- Couple meet.