shooting schedule

    Finally starting to think about filming! We're really close to having all our shots developed, and we even already filmed the last chorus of the song! We would have waited a little more to develop it better buttttt since it was going to be during the sunset and we got a time change this weekend, we hadddd to get that part done because if not then the sunset would be at like 8pm and we didn't want that.

    Anyways here's the shooting schedule that we made for our music video (it might change a lot):

March 6th (5-7 pm): shooting for beach (last chorus)

March 9-11th (3-6 pm): shoot verses and bridge

March 27-28th (3-6 pm): shoot choruses 

This schedule might change around a lot because spring break is coming up and we are not completely sure which days we will be able to yet or what we can get done with filming each day, but we will try our best to stick to it!

    We were able to complete the shooting day for March 6th and I'm really happy with how smooth it went! The sunset was absolutely gorgeous. I wish we could have gone to the west coast to actually get the full sunset but we didn't have time. 

    I got home and put most of my clips onto my laptop so I can maybe start editing this part of it!

(doesn't it look so good)

OUR FIRST GROUP MEETING!

         Earlier this week, we had our first group meeting for this project! I heard so many different ideas and I'm really excited to how all of them come out! 

    Here's a little breakdown of what everyone is doing. 

    Renn: coming of age short film that highlights friendship and growth by using a plant growing and changing as a metaphor. I found this story really cute and I'm excited to see it

    Joaquin: dark comedy short film (Satanist Crusade) about a girl who's tired of the world and joins a cult to spread satanism and is aided my a mysterious character. This story really confused me but apparently it is much simpler than it seems!

    Robbie: short film in which a guy with a dad as a famous tennis player tries to be as good, but he fails and becomes homeless in a park, when he hears that there is someone impersonating him trying to make money from tennis. The ending is still not decided but we gave him ideas of possible ways to turn it into a comedy

    Zach: meta dark comedy/ rom com short film about a love angle between a camera and two subjects. This one is specifically tricky because it would be hard to make it obvious that the camera is a camera rather than a POV

    Samara: documentary about hispanic culture and how it brings everyone together. The episode she would actually develop would be focusing on music and dance as that is the most contacts that she could have for it. We gave her a suggestion of making each episode be specific to one or two countries so that it wouldn't feel like it was just listing things

    Ryan: thriller/comedy short film about a custodian late at night in a school who finds a body that died due to him forgetting to add a "Caution Wet" sign, so he tries to hide the body because he has a daughter to take care of. we told him that his film needed a little bit more because it could get boring if half of it is just him dragging the body away

    When it was my turn, I told them my idea and the problems I'm having and they really helped me! They reminded me to overshoot by a lotttt so I would have a lot to work with and they gave me ideas of what I could do for the social media page. They also told me that I could add lyrics into the video at parts, so I'll have to consider that to see if it's something I would want to incorporate!

introducing our idea!

    The time is here!! It is time to actually say what our idea is. When I sat down with my partner to listen to the album to decide which song we could use, we were between two songs: "ode to the industry (cough syrup)", or "i'll call you when i've made it." We listened to them back to back to back so we could like write down our thoughts while we listened and we came up with ideas for both of them. When it came down to choosing between the two of them, what influences our decision the most (or at least for me) is that for one of them, we would have a scene filmed at the beach during sunset WHICH I REALLY WANTED TO DO. Soooooo, we are doing "i'll call you when i've made it."! Since Annie lives in Nashville, our video will have to be a purely storytelling video instead of promo, which is pretty annoying because a lot of ideas that were coming to my mind included her singing it BUT ITS OKAY, because I still have faith that this music video will come out like we want it to.

    This here is the start of the brainstorm process. This is all a rough draft and rough ideas. There's a lot of things that we might not be able to do because we have been unable to find a guy to play her past love interest, so we're trying to make it a video focused only on her, while still talking about the relationship. 

    In addition to the annotated lyrics, we compressed our ideas into a google docs so that we could write out kind of a shot list for each line so that we could organize our ideas a little better because they really are all over the place. 

    We're splitting this idea up into different sections, which we're still trying to figure out exactly what they would be, but here's what we got so far:

[Verse 1]: this would be the heartbreak part, in which we show her crying and everything while having some flashbacks of her good times with him

[Chorus]: ok so we don't really have a concrete idea for this chorus but we want to show her being successful without him, so we might show kind of like montage videos of her studying a lot and achieving something (most likely debate related)

[Verse 2]: we want this verse to go back to the heartbreak part of this, and we might film this in a bathroom to not only make it more dramatic but also follow the lyrics

[Chorus]: again, not sure, but this chorus might focus on some of her hobbies, which shows how she's slowly moving on from the relationship

[Bridge]: a mix of heartbreak seen as memories and her already completely over him, might add some car scenes

[Chorus]: BEACH TIME, this is the part where we would show her completely free from the relationship, shes having fun at the beach

    We still need to develop it a lot more and actually come up with shots so that we can move on and start filming!

social media research!

 This week, I started researching social media pages of different artists so that I could start making a picture in my mind of what I would want mine to look like. Here is my thought process: 

Media text: Gracie Abrams

Social media tool: Instagram

Description of types of posts:

• Pictures of behind the scenes of music videos

• Announcement of music videos, songs, albums with a lot of enthusiasm

• Types of “teasers” of random pictures with a caption as a yellow heart (included some pictures from filming music videos, or in a recording studio, or with a guitar/piano)

• A lot of teasers for most of the songs (around 17 seconds of a song)

• Track list for album

• Tour announcements

• pictures/videos from concerts

• Random picture of her excited about her album coming out 

Description of how branding is developed (or not):

• While promoting her new album, The Secret Of Us, the branding is seen through the colors that she used on her posts (yellow)

• Her brand is a lot of pictures and videos of her normal life rather than fully a professional account

• It feels very personal

• When she's not promoting an album, it doesn’t look very branded as pictures are very random

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence:

• Looking at this example of a social media page gave me inspiration for how to make mine because it showed me that it can still be personal with random pictures and that it is okay to do that. I really liked the fact that she teased a lot of the songs to create more anticipation, but I think she did it with too many. If I were to tease some of the songs, I would tease MAX 2.

Media text: Taylor Swift

Social media tool: Instagram

Description of types of posts: 

• Music video announcements (with a veryyyyyy long caption)

• Announcement that the album is out (with picture from a music video and again a very long caption)

• Announcement of album release date (with the different varieties of album covers that she does)

• Behind the scenes announcement of music video

• Disney+ show announcement

Description of how branding is developed (or not):

• From the moment I opened her page, I immediately saw the branding

• She does branding per album

• Her cover pictures for her highlights match the color of the most recent album, as well as her profile picture

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence:

• This page helped inspire me by reminding me that highlights are also important to have organized and be consistent with the branding of the artist. Now I know how important matching colors are. This one served as a more professional account, which contrasted with the other one as all these posts were more planned. I want to do a mix of both, leaning towards a more relaxed and personal account. 

Media text: Niall Horan

Social media tool: Instagram

Description of types of posts:

• Lots of short video teasers

• Announcement that the album has been completed

• Release date for lead single

• Music video announcements

• A lot of golf (hobby)

• The Voice (he was a host)

• Teasers for an announcement

• Album announcement

• Tracklist of album

• MOSTLY EVERYTHING ARE REELS

Description of how branding is developed (or not):

• Branding developed depending on album

• For The Show: same font, colors, lighting in pictures and videos

• Feels more personal 

• Page feels very brown, looks very cohesive

Analysis of how you will use this to develop your own social media presence:

• I really like how the lighting of the pictures are the same and how it creates a cohesive feeling to the page, which is something I want to try to incorporate into my social media page. I like the video teasers a lot because it doesn't show a big part of the song. ALSO, something I noticed with most is that they have the link to their website on the bio, so that is something that I will definitely keep in mind. 

research research and more research

    I'm having a lot of fun with this research! It doesn't even feel like work for a project or anything because I tend to watch music videos in my free time a lot! 

"Night Changes"

    Choosing the last music videos to dive deep into was hard because there are so many options, but I feel like I really needed to do a One Direction one being that I have always been a fan. However, they have really random music videos that really wouldn't serve me as well for my research. So I decided to research "Night Changes" because it is more alike to something I would produce. 

    This video breaks the fourth wall, as it basically about them going on a date with the viewer, because they are looking straight at the camera and interacting with it (which was probably really funny to film). It follows the stereotypical perfect dates, such as going out to dinner, going to a fair, going for a drive and walk in the park, or staying home and playing games. However, as the video progresses, everything in the dates goes wrong and it ends up being disasters. 

    This video served for showing me that not all videos have to be serious and there can be silliness in this (such as this picture that was too funny not to put), and I feel like it's really going to help me let go and enjoy the process of this more.

"I know it won't work"

    Gracie Abrams. I absolutely adore her music, but I had never watched her music videos until now! I really liked the post production aspect of this music video and it felt very different from the other ones I'vre researched because of the filter and editing, which makes it seem like it was filmed in an older camera. I really like the zooms in and the focus pulls that were used in this video. Focus pulls are really hard for me to do, but it's nothing that practice can't fix!

    The video felt raw also because of the lack of stabilizer in most shots which made it more of a use of handheld camera. However, I feel like this was overused because at one point I got annoyed at how the camera wasn't even showing her face anymore because of how much it was moving. This shot here however, was probably my favorite from the whole video because I loved the contrast that the sunset created with the cool tones of the water and the sand. I really want to shoot part of my video at a beach and I feel like this reinforced that want by a lottt. I loved the sequence right after this shot because it was really fast shots of different things and it served as a really good transition into another beautiful shot of her at the beach with the light reflecting on the lens of the camera. 

All of this research left me with a clearer idea for my video and it really did help me think about how to make my video more cohesive. I'm so excited to share the development of my video soon!

One Direction. (2014, November 21). One Direction - Night Changes [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syFZfO_wfMQ

Abrams, G. (2023, February 24). Gracie Abrams - I know it won’t work (Official Music Video) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIalke0YE_Y

more research!!

    Continuing with the research! Some of Annie's songs really reminded me of Olivia Rodrigo's songs from her album Sour so I thought it would be a good idea to watch some of those to see if I can get any inspo from them!

"drivers license"

    I just realized I actually had never watched this music video before today despite how popular this song was a few years ago. 

    While watching this music video, I think that what stuck with me the most is the lighting in the car. The purples and the blues hitting her face creates a sadder tone. For my portfolio project last year, I played a little with the lights but I believe that I can do it a lot better right now because I have gained a lot of experience since then. 

    Up until before the bridge of the song, I do feel like the shots get really repetitive. However, once the bridge started, I really liked the sudden pick up on the pace for a little bit, and thennn it goes back to the repetitiveness. 

"ceilings"

    Another video I came across was "ceilings" by Lizzy McAlpine. The overall vibe of the song itself doesn't match with what Annie's song that I'm going to use is, but I did see some things in the video that I really liked! 

    

    This two shot of them talking in like a cafe really caught my attention because part of what I am planning on doing is a sort of montage of parts of a relationship in which the people were happy and this really captured what I had in my mind. I really liked how effortlessly this video was a mix of promotional, with the artist singing, to storytelling. It didn't feel out of place and I think one of the reasons was because for most of the time, the artist that was singing wasn't moving around or changing settings often. 

    

    I'm starting to get a clearer picture of what my music video could look like, but I'm going to watch a bit more to really grasp it better.

Rodrigo, O. (2021, January 8). Olivia Rodrigo - drivers license (Official Video) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmDBbnmKpqQ

McAlpine, L. (2023, February 14). Lizzy McAlpine - ceilings (official video) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpMSpFTdzM

Research!

    So today, I'm starting the research for my music video! I know Annie is a fan of Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams and it is obvious in the type of music that she makes. So I decided to do research on some of Taylor Swift's music videos to get an idea of the type of videos created with the music. 

Everything Has Changed ft. Ed Sheeran.

    As I watched some of Taylor's videos, I noticed that most of them are with her singing so I tried to find one that was pure storytelling and I found this! I honestly found it to be such a cute video that showed the innocence that love can have. 

    This video starts with an establishing shot with the bus driving down the street, which helps introduce the subjects of the video as two kids. The lighting as the camera tilts up on the girl is truly beautiful and helps emphasize the innocence at that age. It's a really pretty shot and I want to incorporate some of this.

    The shallow focus on this shot highlights the focus on the two subjects, while still showing that the world is still going on around them. I also really like the amount of close ups that this music video utilizes because it makes it feel much more intimate.

All Too Well: The Short Film

ADDITIONALLY, one of my favorite songs is also a pure storytelling video that is truly amazing. Although, it is technicallyyy a short film, it captures the great storytelling power with the song. 

    I love the way that it starts with the title of the song while the intro music is playing, and it's something that I'm truly considering doing for my own video. The simple font with the trees in the background is a really delicate way to start the video which I think fits it very well. One of my favorite things about this video is how the things happening exactly match what the lyrics are saying in that moments, which emphasizes the story that the song itself is saying. This is something that I really want to incorporate into my own video because I really like the stories that my possible songs are telling. 

    The colors of the costumes change from warmer to cooler ones as the song gets into themes of hurt and betrayal which I found it to be a nice detail to contribute to the overall tone of the song. The occasional flashbacks to when they were happy together served as a good contrast, not only story wise but also with the colors. In the part wher ethe guy is walking at night and he is getting constant flashbacks of her, I like how the fast pacing of the switching back and forth from him to them makes it look like he is being challenged emotionally by remembering what they had. 

    The red scarf coming back at the end gave it a full circle moment!

I feel like watching these videos with a different lens than usual really served me as inspiration and ideas for my music video!

Swift, T. (2013, June 6). Taylor Swift - Everything Has Changed ft. Ed Sheeran [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1oM3kQpXRo

Swift, T. (Director). (2021, November 12). All too well: The short film [Film]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tollGa3S0o8