Props and Costumes

Sparkler Scene:
We wanted Scarlett to stand out as the main character so chose shorts and tights for her rather than jeans or plain black like the other characters. We also wanted a warm jumper that were fashionable to make it look realistic that we were playing with sparklers in the dark and therefore it would be cold. The props were the sparklers and the lighter to light them.
Here is a picture of Scarlett's outfit as the main character:

Here are the other characters' in comparison:

The Sparklers (Props):

Police Outfit Scene:
We picked a police costume including dress, hat and handcuffs and bought police 'do not cross' tape to create the look of rebelliousness and carefree fun in this scene. This was the costume for the main character while she was lip-synching. We did not need costumes for the other characters in this scene.
Here is Scarlett in the police costume:

The Police Tape, Hat and Handcuffs (Props):

Party Scene:
We have party dresses picked out for the five girls in the scene. We wanted a brighter colour for the main character to stand out, however, each girl had to look attractive and sexy as that is the theme of the video and it fits better when a group of friends go to a party when they all make an effort to look good. We also needed an outfit for the love interest who in introduced in this scene. We wanted him to be cool and attractive looking, smart casual as boys would dress to a party. The props would be 'alcohol'. The lights and party atmosphere can be created using editing software. We also did the Walking Scene in the same outfits and used Bobby's car to film out of his boot so the camera would move smoothly as the girls were walking.
Here is Scarlett's party outfit:

And the other characters' party outfits:

And the love interest's outfit:

'Alcohol' Props:

Car Prop to help film smoothly:

Shoe Chair Scene:
Only a costume needed for the main character in this scene. The prop was the shoe shaped chair which was dark red and zebra striped. We wanted an outfit that would stand out against the chair and even clash a little, therefore we decided on the leopard print hotpants which would clash against the zebra print. We also liked the idea of continuing parts of the outfit shown in the digipak and magazine advert into the video to continue a familiar theme and create a recognisable link between the three things.
Here is Scarlett's outfit:

And the shoe chair prop:

Close Up Lip-Synching Scene (Make-up Only Needed):
We decided on dark glittery eyeshadow and hot pink lip stick to continue that bold pop look.
Scarletts Outfit:

Settings and Locations

Sparkler Scene:
Field:

Police Scene and Party Scene:
Scarlett's spare room:

Walking Scene:
Road:

Getting Ready Scene:
Chloe's Bedroom:

Lip Syncing Scene:
Shoe Chair:

Focus Group

We asked teenage males and females the questions for our focus group as these are the main target audience for our music video. Their answers would be more helpful than those who we are not aiming the product at.

1.What images come to mind when you hear the words 'pop music video'?

2. What artists come to mind when you hear the words 'pop music video'?

3. What do you think makes a good pop music video?

4. Do music videos influence your decision whether to purchase the song or not?

5. What are some good examples of a successful music video?

6. What kind of music video would you put with the song 'Crazy Sexy Wild' by Inna?

We found out that the main images that come to mind with the words 'pop music video' are things like party, lights, drink, dancing etc. A video with a lot of action and bright colours attracts teenage audiences and when asked what artists come to mind, most of the answers were female. Female artists attract both female and male audiences so voyeurism helps advertise the artist.

When asked if music videos influences their decision whether to purchase the song or not, the majority said no as they purchase for the music instead. However one answer said the video for 'Gangnam Style' influenced them to purchase it as it has a well known dance in it. Another good example of a successful music video was 'Sexy And I Know It' which shows that catchy, dance-filled music videos are popular and successful as viewers will watch them numerous times to follow the dance routine.

Social Media

 We have created a facebook page for 'M&S Media Productions' and a twitter page where people can follow us at @MandSMedia. This is designed to promote the music video and attract an audience for it, it will make people aware of the project and feel close as they can keep track of any updates we publish on Twitter.

Questionnaire Results

After recieving the results from our questionnaire, we found out that the majority of people hear new music from the radio so a good idea would be to promote the song and the music video over the radio as this would reach a wide audience. The results to this can be seen in the following bar chart:

 

We also found out what people's favourite genre of music is as this helped us known what genre of song will be best to choose. We found out that the majority of people like Pop, Rock, Dance and Indie. We decided to go with the Pop and Dance type of music as this seems quite popular and would be a good type of music to make a music video to.

When asked what they liked to see in a music video we found out that dance routines are popular so we intend to include one in our music video as this would give another reason for fans to watch the video multiple times as they may want to learn the dance routine. Many people also said they like music videos to have a storyline as it gives more meaning. Our music video will include a storyline but still be fun at the same time as this will suit the type of song we have chosen. Another popular answer was that fans like to see the singer in it which was also the reason as to why peoples favourite music video was their favourite, because someone famous they like is in it.

Questionnaire

We created a questionnaire to find out how people discover new music and what they like in a music video. Here are the questions we asked:

We gave this questionnaire to a variety of people, both male and female within different age bands. However, we mainly gave this questionnaire to the type of people we were targeting so we could find out the types of places it would be best to advertise, and the things we could put in the video which would appeal to them.

Intended Institution Analysis

Our chosen genre is related to Britney Spears, Rita Ora and Kesha as shown in our textual analysis. This means that since our chosen music is similar to that of these artists, the song would be played by the same institutions as these artists songs.
These artists are usually played on music channels like 4music, MTV and Viva. These kind of channels have playlists of songs that are in the charts, new music, party tunes and themed playlists eg: 'Best of the Girls'.

The artists will also be played on radio stations like Kiss, Capital, Radio 1, and sometimes even Heart (along with other varieties).

The artists songs will also be promoted in the charts by institutions like the BBC Official Top 40, the Vodafone Big Top 40, The MTV This Week's Top 20 and the Billboard Hot 100.

All of these institutions are 'mainstream' and once one institution has played a song, more and more people hear the song and request it at other institutions making it popular and then more institutions play the song often to get the most airplay and attract as much as a certain audience as they can, hoping that they will stay loyal to that institution in the future.

Intended Audience

Intended Audience

Knowing your audience is extremely important as institutions and audiences work together and wouldn’t work at all without each other. Knowing the size of and the reaction from an audience is a way of showing success. A target audience is defined by age, gender, interests etc.

The intended audience for our music video are mainly females aged 13 – 30 as this is the age group that are most interested in pop/dance music. We are mainly aiming the video towards females as they can relate to the artist who could also be a role model to them however because of voyeurism we could also target this video at males as well.

We are targeting young outgoing people as this means they can relate to the video and enjoy it more. This helps us know where and how to advertise as we know the type of places they may spend time at.

Here is an audience profile of the type of person we are targeting:

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard for our music video:

1. Girls getting ready in bedroom for a night out and having fun

2. Close ups are shown of girls applying make-up, putting shoes on etc.

3. Lyrics start, artist appears with a background behind, lip syncing to lyrics

4. Cut aways of the girls posing against bars, walls and random locations

5. Girls dancing with disco lights in the background - could be edited in

6. 5 girls walking down a street, close ups of their heels

7. Close ups of alcohol, drinks, other cutaways to show their fun

8. Shots of sparklers, fireworks to go with lyrics - slowed down

9. Dance routine in front of bright coloured graffiti wall and bright outfits

10. Shot of the boys with girls, getting close

11. Girls dressing up in costumes - police outfit to contrast rebellion

12. Song slows down, glitter thrown in the air and falls in slow motion

13. Boy and girl about to kiss but turn when the music gets faster

14. Steal police tape and wrap it round to show rebellious side

15. Dancing with girls and boys - big crowd

Other Ideas:
- Group on a beach, fully clothed in sea having fun
- Fan blowing in artists direction, hair blowing in wind

Moodboard

Here is a moodboard that gives off the image we want to create in our music video. The background is leopard print as we want to include animal print in our video as we think this goes with the 'wild' aspect of it. There are some locations such as a beach, sunshine and grafitti wall which are some of our inital ideas. A lot of props are also shown here including ideas for costumes which is important as this shows the artists image and helps promote them. There are also other props which we plan on using in our music video including bright lights which are often seen in pop music videos so this goes with the codes and conventions.

Pitch/Brief

Key Words

Wordle generates 'word clouds' which make the words that appear more frequently in the text, larger and stand out more. This helps us with our music video as we can see the most used words in order to help us know what to put in our music video. I typed in the lyrics of our chosen song into wordle.com. Here is the outcome:

The words that stand out the most are 'sexy', 'wild' and 'baby'. This shows that the song is fun and we want the artist to appear sexy and wild in the video, as the song says. Also the words 'touch' and 'body' are in a fairly big font which suggests the song would suit a video including voyeurism. The word 'dance' stands out as well so we are planning to have dancing and some dance routines included in the video.

Lyric Analysis

Email To Universal Records

Here is the email we sent to Universal asking permission to use the song 'Crazy, Sexy, Wild' by their artist Inna:

Music

Here is the song we have chosen for our video:

The song is upbeat, danceable and has room for us to create a narrative. As the song doesn't have a direct meaning or message to it, this means we can be more creative and think of our own storyline rather than a more detailed one that the lyrics suggest.

We have also decided not to watch the official music video until after creating our own as we don't want to be influenced too much by it. This shouldn't be a problem as it's not a very well known song and is unlikely to be shown on TV.

Textual Analysis of 'How We Do' by Rita Ora

Rita Ora - 'How We Do (Party)'

The video opens with shots of people dancing in a club-like area to show the atmosphere the song brings. Many pop music videos include dancing in them, especially if it is an upbeat song. Various party scenes are shown throughout the video, matching the lyrics as the song is about partying.

The costumes worn are bright coloured, and in some cases very little clothing as this is the typical type of clothing scene in pop music videos. The artist, Rita Ora, wears a variety of costumes throughout the video, some more revealing than others. This is to give sex appeal to the male audience, ensuring that the product caters for all. She is also seen doing seductive poses to help attract the male audience. In one scene, Rita Ora is scene sitting on a bed which could be taken as being quite suggestive. Many close ups of the artists face are shown to promote her.

The use of props helps set the atmosphere as drink is shown in the video along with random things such as animal heads, silly string and a snake. Many pop music videos include random scenes that don’t necessarily go with the song, to help keep the audience interested.

A variety of locations were also used, including the artist, Rita Ora sitting in a flower garden which doesn’t have anything to do with the song but is a bit unique.

Towards the end of the video, we see a party scene where everyone is dressed with UV paint. These bright colours go with the codes and conventions of a typical pop music video as this attracts the audience and keeps them interested.

Here is the music video to 'How We Do' by Rita Ora:
 

Textual Analysis of 'Tik Tok' By Ke$ha

This video is about Ke$ha being young and living life wanting to party and have fun all the time while being carefree and having no responsibilities. There are many close ups of her to show that she is the main character and the storyline revolves around her, but also to show how much fun she is having and how carefree she is. This is a convention in music videos as she is the selling point and the close ups show that she is the star. Other characters are shown as background singers/dancers/extras and they are shown in the background of the frame as they are less important that the star. Most music videos have conventions of using this type of framework. This is what we want to portray in our music video as the song we've chosen in about partying and having fun too. We want to show the main character having fun in a sexy way so we plan to use close ups similar to how they are used in this video.

The video uses special effects. The first one is to emphasise the word 'tipsy' but throughout the video, there are 1 second shots that turn the scene into a black and white film. These shots are good to keep the audience interested.

There are extra actors used in this music video and this boy is used to create a sexual innuendo which appeals to the target audience. This creates a comedic and cheeky character that is entertaining for the audience. In our video we hope to bring some sexual moments as implied throughout the song 'Crazy, SEXY, Wild'.

This video is similar to an idea we had for ours. We decided we wanted our video to be rebelious and daring and had ideas to involve the police in some way. We wanted to get police tape, handcuffs and a sexy police costume in order to portray the rebeliousness throughout the video. This also provides us with ideas for many different costumes and locations which are needed and demonstrated well in this video.

This is also similar to our video as we wanted a scene where glitter/confetti would rain down on the characters creating a fun party atmosphere. We think we could have a lot of fun with it and get a really good unique shot like in this shot. This shot also shows us another costume change for Ke$ha and we hope to have as many costume and location changes as we can to keep the audience engaged. This is done well in this video.

This shot portrays another costume change. Although there are some random things in this video and not all shots are matched to the lyrics, this is one of the few where the lyric does match the video: it is a shot of her entering the party just as the lyric says 'the party don't start til I walk in'. Another example of matching lyric/video connection is when she sings about Mick Jagger and someone dressed as Mick Jagger pulls up in a gold car. We hope to create a mix of matching lyrics to shots but also having a bit of random fun shots in there too to keep in entertaining and not be too predictable.

The last scene is very similar to what we want. We want to end in a house party style similar to this shot. This draws the whole of the storyline together as Ke$ha was partying during the day and continues into the night implying that she doesnt stop, doesnt want to stop and doesn't need to stop. This gives the audience a meaning of 24/7 carefree fun which is very entertaining to watch.