social mediaaaaa

    Today I wanted to focus strictly on social media because we havent done muchhh and we needed to have it done asappp. I wanted to do a make shift Instagram account and have it look as real as possible. 

    I thought this was gonna be hard to make it look real but I had the idea of taking a screenshot of an actual account and lowering the transparecny so I could add my own elements on top of it. After I finished making the overall look for it and getting it ready, we started putting in the actual posts and writing the captions for all of them. Here's what we've got so far, and I feel like it's looking really good and cohesive with the branding!

second filming day!

     Today was our second day of filming! The goal was to finish filming, and we almosttt did, but we had to cut it short because both me and my partner had to be somewhere at 5. We have only one outfit left to film and we're planning on doing it one of these days so that we can finalize filming. 

    Anyways, filming was honestly really fun. We did a lot of things that I would do in my free time and I was getting so excited throughout the whole process because since I'm the one recording, I was seeing how it was looking and I was putting it all together in my head. I also went a little outside of my comfort zone (we had to burn some cookies which made me really sad).

    We encountered a lot of challenges such as finding a way to build a makeshift recording booth and make it look like its by a struggling artist but not make it look as bad to the point where its just, well bad. We also got to a point where we realized that we had started filming some shots with the wrong outfit, which really annoyed me because it meant we had to re-film those parts and we were already short on time, but it worked out in the end and shooting those was much easier since we had already done it. 

    Here's a fun behind the scenes video of us getting ready to film a scene! We used a lamp that has many different colors so we could have like an orangey light on her (it's actually the same lamp that I used last year for my portfolio project as well).

cr planning!

    If I'm being completely honest, when our teacher first introduced this project to us and told us that we also had a CCR this year, I panicked inside, because from everything I did for the portfolio project last year, THAT WAS MY LEASTTTT FAVORITE PART. I don't really know why. Maybe it was because the thought of editing yet another two videos apart from the film opening just stressed me out in the time I had left. BUT thankfully, this years different and I don't have to think of a creative non boring yet engaging way to reflect on my project. Anyways enough yapping let's get started. 

    This year, the CCR is basically just an essay, which I prefer because it really allows me to just like talk about what my thought process was in my voice without having to change anything. An essay that's 1,000 words honestly sounds pretty intimidating, but I loveeee to talk endlessly about things I like and am proud of (and so far I am really proud of this project), so I know the word count won't be a problem, or at least a big one. 

Here's what I have thought so far in terms of how I'm going to organize my essay:

• Introduction: theme of music video and overall idea
• Body Paragraphs: research (on other similar artists, their strategies and everything), audience engagement (how did we make sure our audiences would be engaged, making social media personal), branding (how did we create a sense of branding for the artist, and specifically, the music video), social groups (teenagers, relationships, small artists trying to make it big)
• Conclusion: quick wrap up offering closing statement

I still have a lot of planning to do for this, but my main priotiry right now is getting the video finalized.

me because this project is almost

over

costumessss

    OK SO, for costuming, we wanted six costume in total for the whole video because its not something that happens all in one day. It's meant to show that it's different days so that her growth can be seen better. 

    Since we had already filmed the last part of the video, our first costume was already planned and used! All we needed to do was plan the rest for the other parts of the video! We ended up deciding on a cute date outfit, a skating outfit, baking outfit, something to wear while knitting, and then a comfy outfit. This is exactly what we sent our actress because we wanted to give her freedom with choosing her exact outfits but still providing guidance for like the vibes of the outfits because we trusted her styles and we know she would know exactly what outfit to wear for everything. Here are the outfits:

    I just realized we forgot to take a picture of the date outfit but I guess you'll see it eventually!

starting with editing!!!!!!

 I'm finally starting my absolute favorite yet most stressful part of this project!!!!   

    After we finished filming the first part (or actually last part) of the video, I quite literally got home and transferred all the videos into my laptop to start editing. I kinda had an idea in mind as to what clips I wanted with a specific part of the song, so I started by uploading the audio of the song so that I could start the process! 

    I organized the ones I was sure of first and then played around with the rest of the clips to see what looked the best. One of my favorite parts was the part of the lyrics where it says "so break and burn and stare and hurt" because I knew I wanted to match shots with the beat an I think I managed to do it pretty well!

    I'm still not 100% done with editing this part but i got quite a bit done! I also added the title towards the end. I wanted the font to feel almost like a handwriting so I went on Adobe Fonts and just browsed for a while until this one called to me and I knew this one was the one, the name of the font is "Segoe Script". 

Crossgrove, C. (n.d.). Segoe Script [Typeface]. Adobe Fonts. https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/segoe-script

digipak braindump

    So this digipak was one of the things that had me the most excited for this project, untillll we found our artist and she lived in Nashville, because this mean it's going to be really hard to make an album cover with her face on it. This is why me and my partner have been thinking of what we could do that wouldn't need her on the cover necessarily. 

    So when brain dumping, I thought of two ideas, one would be a picture and the other one would be more of a digital drawing.... which kinda scares me. 

    Let me break them down for you. So the top one, is the picture one. It would be like a close up shot of an open journal (which is very important to this album I'll probably explain why in a few days when I talk about props) with the title of the album written on the pages. The back would be like the tracklist written out on the notebook paper. It's a simple but solid idea that works well with the album. Now, the one at the bottom, was inspired from the phrase we created for our artist, "welcome to my little world". This one would be drawn, most likely digitally. It's a globe with the land orange to match with the colors we want for the album better and I feel like it gives it a nice twist and sense of cohesion. For the back, I'm really loving the idea of having the song titles kind of like create a spiral. I think it looks really cool and it matches with the shape of the globe, however my concern is that it might make the song titles hard to read.

    We are still deciding what to do for the final cover but this is what we have so far!

social media!

    This week, since I was away, me and my partner tried to focus mostly on the minor tasks of this project. I'll focus on the social media aspect in this post.

    I created the social media page seen here. We decided to use Instagram because it would allow us to reach our target audience in the best way since a lot of pop artists also use it as their main one. The bio was idea of my partner as we felt like "welcome to my little world" really captured what Annie's songwriting is about. We decided to add the orange heart because it really matches the color palette that we are trying to achieve and I also love how it matches with Annie's hair. 

    I wanted our first post to be kind of a small introduction to who our artist is and I wanted it to be short because people tend to not want to read a caption if it's overly long. So my partner wrote this: "hey i'm annie lemasters, i'm a pop singer and i write songs about things i can't always say out loud. welcome to my little world".

    For the actual picture we included with the post, I sent Annie kind of an inspo selfie to show her kind of what we wanted, and here it is. She did change it a little in terms of the pose and smile to fit what she feels most comfortable and confident in.

             

finished our shot list!

 We finally finished our shot list! I’m really excited to see our idea come to life!

1. Close up of her closing door, her falling against door
2. Mid shot of her in her room on the phone laughing and in love
3. Same as 2
4. Back to close up on floor crying
5. Same as 4
6. Mid shot of her walking into the bathroom, camera looking at the door
7. Mid shot of her in mirror
8. Same as 7 (I kinda wanna do a transition that’s like with a door and her running out with the roller skates in her hand)
9. Skate skate
10. Skate skate
11. Skate skate 
12. Bake bake
13. Bake bake
14. Bake bake
15. Other other 
16. Other other
17. Mid shot of her feet maybe trying a trick (if we can get her failing it that would be amazing), shot of failed baking (idk what yet), shot, mid shot of her collapsing on her bed (from an angle to the side)
18. Same as 17, Monet level, slow zoom into a picture on the wall of past relationship 
19. Close up of her getting close to the picture, over the shoulder looking at picture
20. Close up putting picture in a drawer or smth
21. Mid shot of her suddenly looking back towards her bed, close up of phone ringing with his name on it orrrr like a bunch of texts getting there
22. Close up of her breathing deep and going to bathroom 
23. Close up of her crying on the bathroom floor with shower turned on for dramatic effect
24. Same as 23
25. Close up on her on her bed
26. Close up, her on her bed turning to look at journal (WHAT IS THAT SHOT CALLED)
27. same as 26 
28. Close up on blue journal on her desk
29. Same as 28
30. Close up of her hands opening the blue journal to a fresh page
31. mid shot of her working on her desk, front faced
32. close up of the pen hitting the paper
33. extreme close up of the pen tip moving fast across the lines
34. close up of her hand grabbing the guitar neck
35. close up of her agressively playing the strings
36. close up of her fingers pressing hard on the guitar frets
37. close up of her hand ripping old post it notes or distractions off the wall/desk to make space
38. close up of her hands dragging heavy blankets and pillows into a corner
39. action shot of her taping/drapping the blankets to create the “walls”
40. close up of taping the sheet of music up on the blanket wall
41. close up of pen crossing out a lyric and rewriting it above
42. mid shot of her pulling mic into the dark “booth”
43. Chorus ends
44. close up of the guitar cable being plugged into guitar
45. mid shot of her sitting in the booth with the guitar
46. close up of hitting record button(could be on laptop or on mic or something)
47. mid shot of her taking a deep shaky breath
48. close up of her playing the guitar
49. extreme close up of her fingers moving fast switiching between cords on the frets
50. close up of laptop screen showing audio waves
51. close up of her foot tapping a fast beat
52. CAR CAR CAR
53. CAR CAR CAR
54. CAR CAR CAR
55. CAR CAR CAR(can be like her singing along to this song, windows down, golden hour maybe)
56. Mid shot of her getting out of the car and closing the door fast
57. Tracking shot of her running down the pier to the beach
58. Close up of her looking beyond the camera (aka the beach but the video doesn't know it yet)
59. Done here, beach shots start (already filmed)

This was me while creating this

print research

For this project, we have to create a digi pak for our album! We decided to make a vinyl because it’s what we found most of the target audience of these artists to prefer (including me and my partner). We’re starting the research so we can see what we need to include in ours. 

I started with researching Niall Horan because I own all of his albums and he tends to include a lot of inserts in them that I feel like we could use for inspiration. 

This is for the album The Show that came out in 2023. The front and the back of the vinyl match with fonts and color palette. I really like how to back is really like looking at the picture of the front from the back because we see the title in the glass. I also really like how the names of the songs are centered and at the top because it allos for the picture to be the majn focus. Inside the vinyl, Niall included these handwritten lyrics, but not for every song, he only included a random one per vinyl so that fans would be surprised with which one they got. For his past album Heartbreak Weather, he had two different posters and offered signed versions as well. The color palettes for both albums are consistent with the whole vinyl, which is something I really want to incorporate into my vinyl.

Additionally, Louis Tomlinson’s album Faith In The Future is a vinyl pack that has a black and red color palette that also stays consistent. Inside, it has a lyric book that has exclusive pictures as well. It comes as a booklet instead of just printed on the paper that holds the disk. One of the papers holding the disks is checkered black and red, which matches with the jacket he’s wearing on the cover, which I found it to be a very small detail that helped with the cohesive look of the whole vinyl. 

first day of shooting!

Last week we filmed the first part of our music video!! We started filming the end of the bridge and the whole last chorus because thats the part that we wanted it to be at the beach, and since daylight savings was gonna happen we really wanted to film that part before the sunset was too late. 

We made sure to leave early just in cade there was traffic because we couldnt risk getting late to the sunset. There was thankfully almost no traffic so we ended up getting there really early but it gave us the opportunity to plan even better! 

My partner had the idea of writing the title of the song with sea shells for the ending shot of the video, but it would take wayyyy too long with seashells so we ended up doing with seaweed!

Since we got to the beach early, we were able to get some practice shots for some of the ones we wanted, and we were also able to start filming earlier so we could have the video for that part be transitioning from golden hour to sunset! We truly had so much fun filming this and since we didn’t really have a concrete shot list we improvised a lot which made it even more fun and it still came out really good. I feel like the freedom we had with this also correlates with what we wanted this part of the video to represent, her freedom once she moves on from her past relationship and focuses on herself. Overall I feel like this was a very successful filming day and I can’t wait to continue with this project!

This shot was probably my favorite one to film because I was running backwards and almost fell, which got a really genuine laugh from the actress, whom I’ve been friends with since 5th grade!

Some behind the scenessss

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.