CCR Planning

 My brainstorming on my CCR has begun, and it has been effective to review my music video project. As I had a partner, we shared some parts of the project and it was easier to concentrate on very specific areas and actually consider our creative decisions.

So far, I've been reflecting on:

The impact of research on our project - When we were planning our scenes, we used editing techniques, camera angles, and storytelling examples that we looked at during our research. Every section, whether it was the camera work, the editing or costumes, was informed by that research, and made everything look smooth and deliberate.

Engagement of the audience - We tried to make the video touch and feel real. Choosing small details such as costumes, props, and setting of the scenes were used to reach out to the audience. We had editing and planning scenes and costumes, which was why my partner specialized in editing, and I specialized in planning.

Elements operating as a team - Costume, props, editing, sound, and all elements needed to come up with a coherent style and feel. Collaborating as a team also implied that we could work on our areas of strength and it becomes easier to see the manner in which all the pieces fall into place.

Representation and themes - In our video we tried to make the story realistic and depict the daily life. I will discuss the ways our decisions acted as characters and situations in my CCR essay.

I have also begun to draft the way my essay will go: an introduction on our project and objectives, body paragraphs answering each of the CCR questions and providing examples on my own work and that of my partner and a conclusion on what we have learnt and how our collaboration influenced the process.

Although we are in the initial stages of the project, critical thinking about the project and our decisions is enabling me to realize the rationale behind each choice we have made. I am eager to continue working on those ideas and make them a solid CCR essay.

This is a little funny picture of transporting some of our props from location to another.

Mis-En-Scene Costumes

In this project, there were a total of six outfits since the video occurs over a time span, and not a single day. We had a great idea of what each costume had to be in the story but we gave our actress full creative freedom to make them come to life-and she hit it out of the park.

We decided to have a range of outfits that suited every setting; a cute date outfit, a skating outfit, a baking outfit, a cozy outfit to knit in, and a comfortable everyday outfit. Every dress not only fitted the picture but also her character and made the scenes natural.

The most prominent thing I liked was that the outfits provided a visual story-telling. Though there is no dialogue, you can tell what the mood and what sort of activity is going on just by the way she is dressed. The date outfit is flirtatious, the skating outfit is playful and the knitting outfit is comfortable and relaxed. It actually gave her character more depth and made the video more lively and life-like.

One of the most suitable choices was to give her freedom in her creativity, as now every glance looked only one way or another in her eyes, and the outfits became a real part of the story and not a necessity to be worn by her. Costume design can be considered a minor issue, but in this project, costumes became one of the most important aspects of our time, mood, and personality expression during the video.

Looking back we must of forgot to take a picture of the date outfit but you will see it in the music video!

Filming

Our music video is really doing well in filming. We have already recorded both the verses and all the three choruses that was also a big portion of the project. The coordination of those scenes was extensive, however, everything worked out to our favor.

My partner has also already begun editing and this has assisted us in the visualization of how things are building up. Watching the clips in action makes the video seem more realistic and demonstrates what is yet to be done.

Among the best behind-the-scene moments occurred when we were shooting a scene in which our actress was sad in the shower. We were about to switch on the water so it could look more natural, but we were not entirely confident about how it would look like. Eventually, only her legs were wet, which actually relieved me and my partner somewhat because we did not fully wet her in the project. Nonetheless, the scene turned out quite well and contributed to a greater amount of emotion that we were hoping to create. 

We only have to shoot the bridge at this stage. The larger portion of the video is complete, and as a result, we know very well what we would like in that last part. After shooting the bridge we will be able to concentrate completely on editing and assembling everything.

All in all, we have accomplished a lot and the project is in good shape.

 

Mis-En-Scene Part 2

Now the thoughts we had for the use of the journal, we wanted this journal to be used to write songs within it. My partner and I had the idea to write a song that Annie has written in the same album, as it would be a little easter egg. Once we actually had the journal in our hands we thought that we couldn't start writing in the first page of the journal and we couldn't just skip over those pages cause it would then just be weird. So we talked on the ride home on what exactly did we want the prior use of this journal to be. She thought maybe like a diary where she used to write her thoughts but stopped. And I was thinking more of like poetry so it would make a little more sense on how she knew how to write songs.

While talking about what to write in it we had to think how much we were going to need to write and we settled on a place where it seemed good. We settled that we would do a mix of both diary and poetry, so it would be a brief explanation of her day and then make it into a poem. Which seemed like a nice and simple idea. Now since my partner was leaving over break, we decided that I would take it and write in it. So I went through the days and wrote some nice nonsense. I made sure to write dates, and titles, basically making sure I was using all the correct rules to write these things. Here is an example:

Social Media

My partner created an official Instagram account and then gave me the credentials for it. We then talked about how we wanted the first post to be like. As an intro post we both had the idea to be a simple "hey i'm and i do..." kind of thing. So i got to thinking what could this be that is easy to read and attracts people to read it and follow. Most people on social media don't really want to read a long caption under a post so I had to think of something short and simple. As well, I wanted her to have a little catch phrase that was sweet and made people feel related to. So after lots and lots of thinking i came up with: "hey i'm annie lemasters, i'm a pop singer and i write songs about things i can't always say out loud." As the closing phrase it was "welcome to my little world". My partner thought that it would be good idea to add that to the bio of the account which i think was a great idea cause it matches with the vibe so perfectly. 

For the actual image of the post we wanted it to be a simple selfie picture to be sweet and welcoming. We created a rough of image that we wanted the image to look like and sent it over to her to see if she could try to take it for us to be able to use it as the post. She was able to do it and we used it as the image for our first post on instagram. Also this picture has the colors orange and blue which really represent what we are trying to show within our music video so it was a really great introductory way of full circling the picture to the video. We also of course had to choose an emoji, which with her orange hair we just had to choose an orange heart because it perfectly depicts what we want to convey. 

Mis-En-Scene

Within the music video, the girl is essentially going through heartbreak and trying to find herself without him. She will be going through a series of hobbies to find what she likes to do but in the end none of it works out for her. SOO i had this brilliant idea to put a scene in her room where there isn't much color but there is a BRIGHT journal standing out. The girl will open this journal and start to write songs, she begins to find herself and heal. Specifically in this part of the 2nd verse i knew it would work perfectly: 

Leave behind red for maroon 

But I remember breathing easier 

When I was up in blue

Me and my partner were thinking for this journal to be maybe red, maroon, or blue but there is already a lot of reds going on throughout the video. So ultimately we decided on blue for the journal. That meant the search for the perfect bright blue journal.

We originally went out looking for a plain blue journal. We only wanted it to be bright. We found one and we clung to it as we searched the rest of the store. But then, we found something better. We found a journal the perfect shade of bright blue that we imagined, but it also had a wave pattern on the cover. And Gaby and I knew that it was the one for this project. It had a sense of foreshadowing, as it connects to the finale of the video. This also uses the input I got from my group meeting, which was to connect the beach. throughout the video and not just make a jump cut into it. Here is the picture of me and my partner as soon as we found it. 

 

Finalized Shot List

Truthfully, this shot list is written here because we do not want to be looking at each other mid way down the day and see that we do not know what we are going to do next. We are only two people and our friend, we cannot afford to lose time out to play with the camera or even have to remember that there was that really good shot we thought we had last week. This list keeps us moving. It is similar to a cheat sheet that enables us to tick the things off a list so that we could in fact complete this project on time and not be stressed throughout the entire period of time we are filming.

The primary aim is to ensure that we are successfully getting approximately sufficient footage to produce our vision and actually make it look good to send to our artist. Nothing like making it home and working on an edit and realizing we forgot a close-up or a particular transition that allows the story to actually cohere. Having such a list ensures that we are first after the things that we really need. In that manner, were we begin to get time-starved or our actress makes the call, we already have the key stuff in the bag and we are not scurrying at the last minute.