Location

Through the annotation of lyrics as a group, we felt that we were comfortable exploring the different locations in which we could shoot. Thinking of me by Olly Murs is very much a feel good, reminisant song which we wanted to portray through our use of camera shots, angles and very importanly, location. To do this we had to decide as a group where it would be best to film and we were already given a head start as the song mentions two locations, Waterloo and London in general. With this we also came to the conclusion that shooting some scenes in places such as Greenwich, Erith Riverside and Camden would enable us to get the best out of the video and conform to generic codes and conventions of music videos.

Deciding on who would feature in the video and their character functions are key aspects, as their roles play an important element of the music video production. With this is mind, we sat down as a group and created a list of names of people, who could potentially feature in our footage. We had to consider the role of Olly Murs well and decided that Sam Robinson (a member of our group) would be well suited to be play Olly Murs. We also decided on 1 extra character within the video footage, a girl, who features as the 'romance' figure. Keeping it in the group we decided to have Faith Brackstone playing this character.

Group Pitch

On Thursday 13^th October the group presented a pitch based on their ideas and the different thoughts about their chosen song for their Music Video. The group presented a powerpoint underlining the key point, "WHY?"


Why was that particular song chosen?
What genres are used?
Who is the target audience?
Does the song have a mass appeal?


...and


How was the group going to portray these things?


This led the group onto their ideas about the iconography and mise-en-scene of the music video which they explored in depth. Feedback given to the group was based on the ideas presented which related to Gaze Theory and how this was going to be applied to the final product.


The pitch continued with the presenting of mood boards showing different album covers from both genres, Reggae and Pop. These showed the type iconography and themes of Reggae and Pop album covers that the group wanted to shine through in their final product.


A storyboard was also shown, outlining the ideas of shots and camera angles the group wanted to add to their music video and this helped portray the ideas the group had.


The group wants their media product to challenge forms and conventions of existing media products and hopefully set the benchmark for future products. The song the group have put forward being "Thinking of Me by Olly Murs" has an ideology based on adventure, remembrance and the seemingly never ending quest for love, which the group wanted to re-create.


With this the pitch came to an end after careful evaluation from the groups teacher, constructive criticism and feedback was given which was to help the group progress with their concept and overall the pitch was passed with minor changes.

Chosen Song

This is a video showing the song "Thinking of Me" by Olly Murs. Uploaded from Youtube, this video is a good indication as to what we want to recreate and also gives us an insight into the mise-en-scene and potential iconography. With these things in mind, as a group we felt that we were able to go about preparing our pitch.

This video highlights the mise-en-scene we wanted to recreate from looking at this video. This video is a great representative of one using minamal props and set and being set in a maximun of two locations. What makes this video is the use of camera angles used to portray and tell the story whilst including elements of narrative theory. The camera angles used make you think he is in a number of different locations.

The image below is a presentation feature created using Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/) and this highlights two artists we were considering recreating (Olly Murs and Ellie Goulding) and the genres involved. Also in this image are words given back to us from our target audience which impacted our final decision. 

Preliminary Task - Open Day Video

For the Preliminary Task the class were split into groups and given a task which was to create a video for the school's Open Day. Each group was given the opportunity to choose 2 aspects of the school to focus their video on and the group I was a part of decided collectively to focus on Special Events and The Curriculum.

As a group we went out and collected information based on the 2 aspects we had decided to focus the video on such as what special events the school had been a part of and all parts of the curriculum. With the ground work sorted, we fond that for special events in particular, we would have to refer to stock footage left on the school system.

We created storyboards and carefully mapped out the shots and iconography that we wanted to feature in the video. When we felt that sufficient progress had been made, we sought feedback and moved on to the next stage.

The group used the program Premiere Pro to make the video's come to life and the skills of the group were tested heavily. In the end the group were able to come away with 2 good quality video's and the skills of the group in Premiere Pro were enhanced.

This task was a great help because the group and I felt confident moving on to the next task which is the A2 Advanced Portfolio in Media. Below are the 2 video's created by the group on Special Events and The Curriculum.

Research & Song Choice

After deciding on basing the music video on the song "Thinking of Me by Olly Murs" over "Your Song by Ellie Goulding," the group and I set about researching the genres involved not only with the song, but with the artist in general. These genres were Pop and Reggae.

The group began debating the qualities of both songs as well as discussing the potential iconography of them. The group were thinking mainly about how the song could work and how the mise-en-scene would play out.

After this, the group created a questionnaire to gain some much needed audience feedback on what song would be best to produce a music video on. The group used certain areas of the school such as the school canteen to address their target audience. Our target audience was from the very bottom of the school (Year 7) to the senior teachers.