First Meeting

We had our first meeting with the teachers on Monday, where we had the chance to pitch our separate ideas and get an opinion on each of our pitches with which we could continue to refine the idea through visual references and plan the marketing campaign.

We pitched  three initial ideas that individual's in the group had: Emily's idea for I Want You (Kelly Clarkson), Mila's idea for Wondergirl (Hey Monday) and Sharlene's idea for He Wasn't There (Lily Allen). In the end, we went with the idea for He Wasn't There, which consisted of a constructed outdoors theme to be shot in the studio. The story in the lyrics was about a girl being glad that she gave a guy a second chance, and so we thought it would be appropriate for the artist to act as the girl, and to also have a male partner in the music video.

Although the initial vision for He Wasn't There was fairly simplistic, during the meeting, we developed and refined the idea so that we could present a narrative that worked in conjunction with the lyrics. In the end, the idea progressed to become a 'one-shot' music video, in which we would have roughly 3-4 outfit and set changes.

 

A real one-shot would be extremely difficult to execute, especially with costume changes, so we decided to have very subtle cuts around 3-4 times in the whole video. In terms of transitioning from one set-up to the next, we would have to make the cuts absolutely seamless, and a way of doing this would be to mask the sets during the cut. An example of the way in which we hope to achieve this is by having the artist twirling in front of the camera and cutting mid-twirl, or by putting a bouquet of flowers in front of the camera and cutting to when she moves it away from the camera, but in a different set-up.

As the notion of a 'constructed outdoors' was part of the initial pitch, we decided to build on that and have people changing the set as the artist performed during choruses. In addition, although the initial vision only consisted of the garden bench/ park set, we also decided to have a café set up and a car set up, whereby everything would look obviously fake and constructed, and where the people changing the set would constantly be working around the two main characters.

There are several things to consider before going ahead with the idea. Firstly, we must be able to draw visual and technical references from a variety of sources, including music videos, film, TV, photography, advertising and art. Some of the references we gathered at the meeting were Alice in Wonderland, Lazy Song (Bruno Mars), We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Taylor Swift) and the John Lewis advertisement from 2010. We also have to start planning logistically by compiling props/ costume lists, choreographing, casting and planning our first test shoots. The earlier we can start to rehearse, the better!