Call Sheets and Shootboards

28-29/11/14
Our first shoot was a location shoot during the half term. On this shoot we intended to get all of our outdoor location shots done, which was around central London. We didn't make a call sheet, nor be to precise with timings on our shoot board, as we weren't sure how long each shot could take due to things out of our control in the environment e.g. the weather, public, transportation etc. However we did leave two whole days to ensure that either way, it would get done.

Shootboard for the 28/29th October

03/11/14
This was our first studio shoot, and we decided to take advantage of this and schedule in all three main performance shoots and concept shots too.

Call Sheet for the 3rd November

Shootboards for the 3rd November

10/11/14
This was our next studio session in which we a more time-generous approach after our first jam-packed shoot, with only one concept and one performance shot to perfect.

Shootboard for the 10th November

11/11/14
This was a more complicated shoot, with various people coming in and out of the studio for our music video. We thought that by having this short burst of all the extra people we needed in one day early on, that our filming process would be made slightly easier. We had various extras coming in to create the club scene, a dancer for our dance sequence, and a concept shot which involved a lot of water being flicked around.

Call Sheet for the 11th November

Shootboard for the 11th November

19/11/14
This shoot in the studio focused on getting the publicity shots, and one more performance shot. 

Shootboard for the 19th November

22/11/14
This shoot in the studio aimed to get the two main performance shots perfected, altering any mistakes made previously.

Shootboard for the 22nd November

24/11/14
This shoot was our last session in the studio, and so we focused on getting any footage we needed, which came in handy as we had to retake the whole club scene with extra footage. We then delegated the rest of the time to publicity shots, as no other retakes were needed.

Call Sheet for the 24th November

Shootboard for 24th November

Casting

The roles we needed to cast, and those we chose are below:

Roza:

Character profile: The young (21) female PBR&B artist from London.

Actor: Yssy (myself)
We decided that with my acting experience, and experience acting in a music video (the prelim) and therefore ability to lip sync, that this would be a suitable choice. Not only this, but we felt it would be more efficient to keep the roles within the group.

The boyfriend:

Character profile: This is the boyfriend of the artist, of whom she has a turbulent relationship. Whilst he must have chemistry and intimacy with the artist, he must also be able to show the opposite, as in various scenes they must be arguing and show really passionately negative emotions towards each other too.

Actor: Harry
Wanting to keep it within the group as much as possible, we thought that Harry, whop is in our group would be a good selection. Another male was also put forward who wasn't from our group, but suited the role and had acting experience. The screen tests are shown below. From these we concluded that Harry and Yssy would be a better couple for the role.








Audition videos for the boyfriend can be seen below, we filmed an argument scene, and then a happy couple scene, to see how well the dynamics were for our happy and unhappy scenes.



We also auditioned another candidate for the role of the boyfriend, and the audition videos can be seen below.


However, in comparison to Harry, there wasn't as much natural chemistry and these videos show a lack of comfort, and were generally more awkward.

We also have a few other roles:
Sillhouette:
We originally cast Matt for this, however, Josh was able to rehearse with me a sequence for this shot, and Josh's shadow looked better as he had a bigger build, and so we cast him instead.









Drummer:
Matt
Back:
Matt

Flat Plan: Website

We looked at various webisites within our genre, to ensure that we had a good idea of the conventions within the PBR&B genre. We particularly liked The Weeknd's website:

It was a very minimalistic style, with a black and white theme. We really liked this and wanted to do something similar with our website.When the mouse goes over the links, for instance, 'LIVE', as shown in the picture above, the title changes for white to grey. This is also something we particularly liked.

We decided to conform to conventions of having a header/banner with an

These are basic flat plans for our website for each different page with the general design we want:

    

Publicity shots

In the image above, I sketched out the type of poses and outfits we discussed for publicity shots, along with photos that coincide with the ideas. It has a very urban feel, without being too sexualised, which is what sometimes happens with females within the PBR&B genre. We didn't want to conform to this convention.

These were some photographical and sketched ideas for poses with the rose publicity shots. We have a strong link within our music video and within the album cover and so on, between her name - 'Roza', and roses. I think having a link like this can prove very useful, as it directly associates the two, and so when seeing a rose, the artist is thought about and her name is made more memorable. It's also useful that a rose is a beautiful flower, as it associates her with positive imagery and also links in with themes of love - which are present in her music.

To create a strong British identity, I thought it could be fun to do publicity shots like those above, with her playfully drinking tea, or eating 'nice' biscuits - something establishing her as a British or even London girl, and showing her in a more down-to-earth, relatable way. 

I also thought shots like these would be something a bit different and a bit more intimate and personal; having her in a domestic setting, with playful poses, again to create a sens of intimacy and relatability between artist and audience.

One of the first publicity shots we decided on as a group was inspired by an image seen on Jhene Aiko's website (image to the left), and thought that it would be good to have some shots of a similar style, as shown sketched above. The man's shirt connotes themes of love, relationships and sexuality, and so would tie in well with the artist's music.

Most of these require simple studio set-ups, on the white cyclorama and drawing the curtains for a black background; which makes it easy for us to set up, as we can control lighting and our environment in the studio.

We took reference from all of the cut out photos above, but also particularly from R&B and PBR&B artists:

Jhene Aiko:

Below is a compilation of some of the publicity shots we liked and why we liked them.

The simplistic and striking nature of them is reoccurring, and something we really want to capture with our artist Roza, working well to reflect her as an artist.

Tinashe

Below is a compilation of some of the publicity shots we liked and why we liked them.

What we mainly liked about Tinashe was her urban feel to her shots, in line with her genre, and her use of poses and expressions to convey different sides of her artist persona - something we want to do.

Our Storyboard

This is a picture of our original storyboard. As you can see it has a lot of close ups and mid shots in it, mainly when it comes to the artist, to ensure her identity is brought across as effectively as possible to the audience.
There are also long shots scattered across the video, usually before a mid-shot, then a mid-long shot, then the long shot, to ensure the transition is smooth and fluid within our video.

Revised Animatic

Once we had a member of staff critique our animatic, we realized alterations were necessary.
We seemed to have gotten carried away with too much narrative - which we originally wanted to keep minimal in our music video.

Not only was there a lot of narrative in our video - but the fact the narrative shots were supposed to be memories wasn't clear enough; and so we realized we needed more intervals between the memory scenes, and a transition or perhaps grading effect that made it clear they were memories, which wasn't initially clear to those who viewed it.
These changes are evident in the revised animatic below.

We also realized that we needed to ensure that our artist identity was really prevalent throughout our video, as many of the performance shots were towards the mid/end of the music video.
This actually worked well with our other problem above, as we could move a lot of the performance shots around and in between the narrative shots. We simply had to go through and restructure the order of our music video, which is also evident below.

Our Animatic

The progression from the steal-o-matic to animatic included a lot of compromise. Our original ideas from the steal-o-matic would not be in reality possible, to do with equipment, budget and timescale. We had to really simplify our ideas, and be very realistic on what is possible, and what can actually get done within the restraints we had. This meant that lots of the more artistic shots, like the body projections, wouldn't be possible, or had to be changed, i.e. we then decided that a suitable alternative could be body art instead of the projections.
We kept original concepts like the theme of fire and ice throughout, and our narrative became more and more prominent. As we began to think about the loose narrative we wanted to include, we thought of more and more shots that we could include, and the narrative shots grew to become a bigger part than we originally expected. We still wanted our narrative to be obviously past memories, so will use techniques like dissolving and shots fading into shots and grading effects, which are shown to some extent in the animatic.

Flat Plan: Album cover

This is our initial idea for the flat plan - with the artist wearing a different outfit and perhaps holding a rose.

We also think that a good idea for the CD would be to print a rose picture onto it, something similar to the picture below:

Below is a sketch of what the flat plan for the album cover would look like:

Since then we have agreed that the blank space seen in the sketch will be a publicity shot.

Our Steal-O-Matic

This steal-o-magic gives a rough idea of what type of music video we want to make.
There are lots of artistic shots, playing with angles and lighting.
Our video here is performance and concept driven, with narrative taking a more preliminary role.
As you can see, it is still very broad, and we need to pin down exact shots, but this will be done in our animatic.

Our Audience

We thought that there was definitely a gap in the market for alternative genres, and more and more alternative sounds were reaching and appealing to wide audiences. An alternative genre, which has yet to take off in the UK market (as opposed to the US market) is PBR&B, which delves in hip hop, dubstep, R&B and soul. As a group we thought that this was a good combination, and a genre with a combination of genres within it would attract and appeal to more audiences. The images below show our progress in our production meetings:

Notes from meetings discussing our core audience: PBR&B fans, and our secondary audience: British 16-late 20 year olds. We thought this secondary audience group would be a good target as they are young and more open-minded; not having established rigid music tastes generally. As our genre is an accumulation of genres and sounds, this would appeal to them.

Our Record Label

       

Our record label, Raw Sound Records, stemmed from various ideas from various existing record labels. We knew the genre of our artist and track from our audience research, and so went ahead looking at record labels within the PBR&B genre. We started off looking at what record label our original artist is from, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE); we liked their approach as an independent record label, but felt that we should look at British independant record labels, and other too.
So we broadened the search to find other record labels, and the images below show some of the notes from this group production meeting:

 As you can see, we found that many of the record labels that appealed to us in terms of a model, were owned by Universal. Hence, we thought that being owned by a big conglomerate like Universal, but still being an independent record label,, would be the best model. This is because you ave the freedom of an independent record label, whilst enjoying the security and support of a well-established, well-connected and experienced conglomerate.
We finalized our record label like so:

Here are some photos and information about the other types of artists we would have in our record label, some are listed in the photo:

The Weeknd

PBR&B, Hip Hop

Sza

PBR&B, Pop, Soul

Jhene Aiko

R&B

FKA Twigs 

PBR&B, Trip Hop, Electronic

Joey Bada$$

Hip Hop

Our Track

This is our chosen track, 'Teen Spirit' by Sza. We had to find a radio edit online, as it has a profanity in it. The quality wasn't as good however so the track above is the edit or the original track, with the radio edit version in for the few seconds where the profanity is. It is very important to have a clean version of the track, as it needs to be able to be played at any time, especially prime-time.

We chose this track for several reasons:

• Firstly. it was within the PBR&B genre which is what we wanted. PBR&B Has elements of soul, r&b, hip hop and dubstep, and this track fell nicely in line with this. 
• We felt there is a gap in the market for more alternative sounds like PBR&B.]
• The artist Sza's vocals were very soul and we found that this is more of a convention for artists in this genre. 
• There is a gap in the market for female artists in general, especially in PBR&B, in fact, we were quite astonished at how few there were when trying to find a track/artist and researching.
• We thought that the music had ambient elements to it and  straight away whilst listening to it, we all could imagine making a music video in line with what we wanted to make.

The track was released by the artist Sza before she signed to her label Top Dawg Entertainment, therefore she owns the rights to the track herself. We contacted her on her official Twitter and Facebook page to ask for permission. We have yet to receive a response.

Our Artist

We noticed a big gap for UK female artists in the PBR&B genre. For this reason, we thought that a female PBR&B artist would be beneficial. Conventions for these artists usually dictate that the females are more soulful and R&B and males are more hip-hop and dubstep.

We thought a name that would suit the genre would be something that is short and snappy, but also alternative e.g. Jene Aiko, The Weeknd, Sza; and decided on Roza.

We decided that are artist image would be similar to the photos below:

This is quite an urban style, with an emphasis on urban fashion and attitude, which conforms to conventions of the females within the PBR&B genre, and therefore will make her instantly recognizable and distinguished. However, we didn't want to over-sexualize our artist, which is what can often happen within the genre.

This Worlde image shows the type of person we want our artist to be:

                            This is a summary of our key decisions when creating our artist: