Update on filming

Since we last updated we have been filming the narrative part of our music video where Amy sees her love interest and also the ending where they finally get together. To do this we used two boys from our media class as we thought it would be more convent instead of asking people to help out in there own time. We used Charlie as Amy's love interest as he fitted the stereotype we were going for. We then asked for the help of Josh as Charlies friend to act as the bully type character. We filmed these scenes on college grounds as it fitted into our idea well.

We now need to film some small scenes as the flashback's we may add later to help progress the video narrative along. We also need to start properly editing our video together and match up sound with action.

Digipak Photos

These are the photos we have decided to put on our digipak....

This will be used as our back cover.

This will be our inside right photo.

This will be our front cover.

This will go inside left.

Progress so far...

So far we have managed to film the performance part of our music video in the T.V studio and edited it into our song. We have yet to film the narrative based part and also we have yet to find a male actor to participate in the film as Amy's "love intrest". We have decided as a group that it would be best to use someone from either our media class or from another A2 media class as it would be less time consuming than going out casting. As a group we have completed our theory part of the task and everything seems to be up-to-date.
 We filmed part of the narrative in Amy's house to match the beginning of the song but decided that we could do better and we are going to re-film shortly. Due to absenses of some of the group members we have to postpone filming to suit the group agenda's.

Copyright Letter...

Due to copy write issues we had to send a letter to the head of Sire records asking permission to use the song 'Like a Virgin'. This is a draft of the letter we wrote him.


Dear Craig Aaronson, President of Sire Records,


I am an A-Level student and I am writing to request your permission to use the track 'Like a Virgin' sung by the artist Madonna in 1984. With your permission this track would be used in my current A-Level Media Project, this involves creating a Music Video for a popular music track, as well as producing a Digi-Pak Cover and Magazine Advert for the cover 'Artist'.


If I received your permission this track would only be viewed by the rest of my media class, as well as my teacher and the OCR exam board; it would not be realised to a larger audience and would not be uploaded to any public video websites.


The Artist and your Company would of course be fully recognised throughout pre-production and the final video itself. A copyright notice, with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full details. 


Sincerely,


Ceridwen Ana Evans. 


The Address we sent the letter to was:


936 Broadway, 5th Fl.
New York, NY 10010.

Inspiration

The narrative idea for our video takes inspiration from the binary opposition between the innocent and the corrupt. We will represent this using costume as our main tool. The fashion inspiration we got was from the 80's and even Madonna herself.

The innocent being shown in white which connotes innocence and the more corrupt (below) to represent more of a bad girl image.

We however are taking a more modern theme on this by using the idea of a shy, quiet girl (representing innocent) turning into a confident more bravely dressed girl (representing the corrupt). Still however using an 80's fashion influence.

Treatment and Final Ideas before Storyboarding...

Once we had decided, as a group, which song we were going to use for our music video we then decided to work on the treatment of our portfolio.


The genre of our music video is pop culture, circa 1980's. We have decided that the target audience will most likely be teenagers and young adults due to the relatability as our star is young and fun. In gender terms, females would most likely be interested due to the high fashion references in our star's clothing, however the male gender may also be interested due to the sexualisation of the artist. Another key target audience would be original Madonna fans, as this would be a cover version of her song and would like to see other artists interpretations of her original classic video.


In terms of the Institution, the artist would be a new artist doing a cover version of Madonna's origianl song 'Like a Virgin'. The label would be a vanity label or perhaps an independant video production company commissioned by a record company. To build up the reputation of the video we would advertise it through on-line social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, then hopefully distribute it MTV Music Channels or music channels such as ChannelAKA in order to appeal to a wider audience. We would also use magazines for advertisement purposes, focussing on high-fashion magazines such as Vogue due to the mise-en-scene of the star image and music video set. Also, there is intertexuality in advertising this in Vogue due to Madonnas imfamous song of the same name and purpose.


The narrative of the video would be more narrative based; rather than performance video based. The theme/ narrative would be along the lines of a good, innocent and virginal girl who turns into a 'bad-girl' in order to bag the man of her dreams. The artist, Amy Brew, will be lip-synching to a narrative based video, and little performance will actually appear in it.


In terms of intertexuality there will be alot of reference in terms of the make-up and fashion styling of the artist, which will be similiar to Madonna's classic 1980's image. Examples of shots that we will use, which we plan to fully decide once we begin the storyboard, will most likely be things like high-angle shots to show her vunerability when she is in her virginal state. also, there will be a wide range of shots and camera angles such as close-ups, mid-shots and long-shots of the artist, to focus the video on her mainly. The editing will also be fairly fast paced, with little effects in order to effectively portray the narrative/ storyline.

Mood Board

This shows the colour scheme we decided would best fit the song would be Red, white and black.

We made a mood board to collect all of our ideas and organise them into different sections including, costume, locations, target audience and colour scheme. We included pictures to help visualise our thoughts and organise our ideas.

This shows our target audience is teenager's and also the make up idea's we have for the shoot.

This shows the possible locations we could use for our video. The ideal's we had were in a bedroom and my a river. It also shows pictures of Madonna's fashion for inspiration.

This shows abit of the narrative idea we had which would be a innocent/corrupt divide and using fashion to show that by wearing white for innocence and black for the corrupt.

Location and prop hunting...

We decided that it would be a benificial idea to search for a few possible locations and props before we designed our storyboard. Therefore, we would have a better idea of where we could shoot and which locations suited the mise-en-scene of our music video.

These glittery high-heels are a good idea for a prop. They represent sex, glamour and style which are all ideas that will be touched upon in our music video.

This funky and unique 80's style bench could be a possible setting choice that would help the mise-en-scene of the set to come off as glamouress, funky and circa to a specific time period.

This Church would also be a good possible  setting; as it would fit in with the virginal and innocent theme of the song.

Star Image pictures

We had to take a series of pictures to create a star image and to then be able to use on our Cd and Digi pack cover's. We went for an image that would suit our music video which is Madonna themed. We decided to take some shots in the Tv studio and then some outside. These are the shots we got.

Introduction

We have four people in our group, Amy, Hannah, Catherine and Cez. Our first idea as a group was to do Madonna's Material girl but had more idea's for the video of Like a virgin instead by the same artist. We then decided that Amy would be the best person to perform in the video.
We'll update this blog with our idea's and progress during the project.