Development of our digipak

We started out using a template for the digipak, adjusting the photos to fit. Originally, however, we somehow places the front and back photos in the reverse positions and so it ended up back to front.

Developing upon this, we swapped the covers to be the right way round, and placed an image of Jay with his guitar on the back cover to further show off his organic star image. We also created an inside slip for the CD and the CD itself with a picture of Jay on it to make his star image even more recognisable.

After this, we removed the title ‘Best Fake Smile’ from the front of the album as that was the single name and we wanted the album name to be ‘Jay Harper’ so as to help people recognise his name and establish himself in the music industry.

For the next draft of our digipak we changed the font to a bolder, more curved font. The boldness allows his name to stand out which is needed for a new artist, and the curved lettering connotes that he is a relaxed artist and therefore demonstrates that he is indie and organic and so sells his brand as such. In addition, we added the track names to the back cover to make it more professional and changed the inside slip, making the text smaller and adding another photo of Jay to show off his star image more with his guitar.

After realising that we had put the title of the album, his name ‘Jay Harper’, on the back cover for the previous draft of the digipak, we removed it. We also decided to remove the image we had recently added to the inside slip because after we had looked at it for a while and taken advice from other people, we saw that it was too much and was crowding the digipak.

Feedback from our final music video

Development of our narrative

Our narrative started as Jay being a social outcast who's girlfriend, Zoe, is in the 'popular crowd', a group of mean girls who's harsh judgement of people deter her from being herself and showing her affection for Jay in public. He tells her via song that she shouldn't have to wear her 'best fake smile' in order to impress her 'friends' and she should just be herself and forget about them so as to maintain their relationship and end her inner turmoil. However, after reviewing the shots we filmed for this narrative, we didn't think they showed what we wanted them to show well enough due to the poor acting of the popular girls, small range of shots and unintentional cheesy feeling created. We decided not to re-film it and instead changed the narrative as we thought it would be a greater opportunity to get better shots.

This narrative change removed the 'mean girl' plot completely and created a different story where Zoe's boyfriend is a guy called Ben, and Jay is Zoe's friend who can see that she is unhappy in her relationship and wants her to end it. To do this, we had to shoot new scenes with Ben and Zoe together.

We then decided to change the narrative to make it more exciting where Jay and Zoe are in a relationship, and Zoe seeing Ben behind Jay's back. Jay is aware of this, however, and is telling Zoe via song that he wants her to come clean to him and not lie to his face. Although, after reviewing the music video, we realised that we didn't have enough footage to efficiently portray this and so we changed the narrative again to something easier to portray and filmed more shots for it.

This new narrative became Zoe being in a relationship with Ben, but seeing Jay behind Ben's back. Jay can see that Zoe is unhappy in her relationship with Ben as he doesn't pay her much attention, and Jay sings the song for her as a way of telling her to end things completely with Ben as he cares a lot more about her.

However, after looking at the music video and showing it to a focus group, we realised that the narrative was still quite hard to understand as there still weren't enough shots of Ben to demonstrate his role in his and Zoe's relationship. Therefore, we removed all the shots of Ben to eliminate this confusion and changed the narrative to Jay and Zoe thinking about their past relationship together when they used to be happy. This narrative is a lot clearer in the video than previous narratives and although simpler, this simplicity can relate to the indie genre as the narratives of indie videos don't tend to be very convoluted.

Account of editing

Account of editing from SamMullerMedia

Final music video

Planning as a group

We commonly used Facebook as a way of communicating as a group. We created a media group where the three of us could talk together and organise ideas for filming, locations for filming, reminders and many other things essential for the planning of our music video. We also created another group on Facebook where we added our actors as well. This meant that we were able to tell them where to go at what time, what to wear, what to bring, and in Justin's (Jay's) case, the lyrics to learn. All of this helped us to coordinate everything we were doing in awareness of each other, showing how we worked well as a group to achieve this level of planning.

New narrative

After looking at the music video and showing it to a focus group, we realised that the narrative was quite hard to understand as there still weren't enough shots of Ben to demonstrate his role in his and Zoe's relationship. The shots of Zoe and Ben in Wembley didn't seem that interesting to our teacher and various other people who saw it, and so even if we added these clips to the music video to create more shots of Ben, it may still end up confusing the audience which we don't want in an indie artists' debut music video. Therefore, we will remove all the shots of Ben to eliminate this confusion and change the narrative to Jay and Zoe thinking about their past relationship together when they used to be happy. Although this narrative is more simple, this simplicity can relate to the indie genre as the narratives of indie videos don't tend to be very convoluted.

Feedback from our rough cut

Music video rough cut 3

This is the third rough cut for our music video. Although we haven't yet added in the new shots we filmed in Wembley, we are planning to do this after showing our media class to gain feedback on the basic idea, look, and editing of the video.

Shoot day 5

We wanted to film in a place that was less natural than where we had filmed previously with Jay as Zoe and Ben's relationship is not supposed to look so real. We therefore decided to film in Wembley to create a contrast between her relationship with Ben and her relationship with Jay which, as they spend their time with less people around them, is clearly more real. The advance planning of our location and how we would meet allowed us to be better prepared and ready to film when we got there. The filming went well as we got a range of different shots from many different angles. As we had worked with these actors before, we knew how to manage them and so we worked well with them and as a group by listening to each other. As we decided to start filming earlier in the day, around 9:00am, we gave ourselves a lot more time to film and so we weren't as rushed as we have been previously. Throughout the shoot, I filmed from different angles and helped come up with new shots that we hadn't thought of before, such as the passing elevator shot which is quite different to other shots.

New shots to add to video

Music video rough cut 2

Shoot day 4

Our advance planning of locations allowed our group and our actors, Zoe and Ben, to meet us where we wanted to film, King George Recreational Ground, on time, meaning that we weren't wasting any time. Since we changed our narrative, we didn't have an animatic concerning what we were filming, therefore we could have had a small storyboard or a list of shots for this new narrative section of our video to help us prepare for filming. The filming went okay as we got a range of shots, however, on the day it started to rain quite heavily and as we wanted to film outside we were postponed a bit. Unfortunately, since our actors were restricted on time, we didn't get as much footage as we would have liked. Therefore, although while filming we managed our actors well, causing them to listen while we were telling them what to do, the time constraints we had forced us to rush when we perhaps could have prepared better for another day. I was in control of the camera a lot, trying to keep it steady in the rough wind, and also let the actors know what they should be doing. Altogether we worked well as group on the day, but in preparation for the day we were all struggling to find times that we and the actors were able to film.

New narrative

After thinking more carefully about it, we realised that the footage of Jay and Zoe together in the forest looked too happy for her to be cheating on him, which might confuse people. We therefore changed the narrative again where Zoe is in a relationship with Ben, but seeing Jay behind Ben's back. Jay can see that Zoe is unhappy in her relationship with Ben as he doesn't pay her much attention, and Jay sings the song for her as a way of telling her to end things completely with Ben as he cares a lot more about her and wants her to be completely his.

New narrative

We have now decided to change the narrative to make it more exciting where Jay and Zoe are in a relationship, and Zoe seeing Ben behind Jay's back. Jay is aware of this, however, and is telling Zoe via song that he wants her to come clean to him and not lie to his face.

New narrative

Since we got rid of the previous narrative which removed the 'mean girl' plot completely. We have created a different story where Zoe's boyfriend is a guy called Ben, and Jay is Zoe's friend who can see that she is unhappy in her relationship and wants her to end it. To do this, we will have to shoot new scenes with Ben and Zoe together.

Music video rough cut 1

Studio shoot days

We knew that we wanted to film in the studio for the main performance element of the video, and so we were prepared well in advance. As we had already filmed a short rehearsal of the lip-syncing with Justin (Jay) and sent him the lyrics to learn, we were confident in his ability on the day. However, although our animatic helped us as it showed us the basic shots we wanted to film, which we were able to expand and develop on when filming, rather than coming up with all the shots then and there, Justin still only knew the lyrics in parts, needing reminders throughout the song of which part was next. This meant that there were many different clips for the same shot and it all became quite messy. We especially saw this in editing where it was jumbled as demonstrated by clips from a certain angle only joining up to form half the song. Therefore we decided to film the studio shots again by preparing in the same way, but making sure that Justin learnt more of the lyrics. When filming, we found that he had learnt more, and although it was a mainly successful shoot, when reviewing the footage we thought that the studio shots would look more professional if he had a microphone and speakers. This meant that we had to film the performance shots in the studio again, organising where to borrow equipment from in addition. These shots that we filmed were a lot more successful as Justin knew the words better and so we were able to film longer shots which were more exciting. We managed Justin well on these days of shooting as we would have the lyrics on our phones if he needed to use them and we would also tell him how to perform to the camera. We managed our time well as we were able to film these three shoot days in three different lunch breaks, and so we tried to work as efficiently as possible without rushing. We worked well as a group, with someone on one camera, someone on another camera to get a different angle of the same performance, and someone overseeing both the cameras and Justin. I was responsible for getting the equipment, both the microphone, the speakers and the guitar, and I set up the studio lighting, to be prepared for the beginning of the shoot. In addition, I was in control of a camera for a lot of the shooting and also guided Justin through his performance to get the best result possible.

Change of narrative

Our narrative started as Jay being a social outcast who's girlfriend, Zoe, is in the 'popular crowd', a group of mean girls who's harsh judgement of people deter her from being herself and showing her affection for Jay in public. He tells her via song that she shouldn't have to wear her 'best fake smile' in order to impress her 'friends' and she should just be herself and forget about them so as to maintain their relationship and end her inner turmoil. However, after reviewing the shots we filmed for this narrative, we didn't think they showed what we wanted them to show well enough due to the poor acting of the popular girls, small range of shots and unintentional cheesy feeling created. We decided not to re-film it and instead we want to change the narrative as we think it would be a greater opportunity to get better shots.

Websites of indie artists similar to ours

Photoshoot for the digipak

Bianca Shirk's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Taking pictures for the digipak

Looking at street photography for the album cover

Setting up the studio for our music video

We set up the studio in this way to prepare for the performance studio shots in the music video where Jay is singing and playing the guitar. This lighting would help to create a more cinematic, visually pleasing and professional music video that could be compared to those of other indie artists.

Vlog of shoot days

This is a vlog of a mixture of our main shoot day which took place in the forest, by the lake and at the viewpoint with the artist and actress, and of the shoot day in the bedroom only with the actress.

Shoot day 3

We planned in our group and with our actress, Zoe, that we would do more filming after school on a certain day in Miriam's house. This advance planning helped with setting up the shoot day as we all left school together and were able to start filming as soon as we got to the location and so didn't waste time. The animatic helped with our shoot day preparations as we knew what we wanted to include in some shots and so we were quite organised. The filming went well as we got all the shots we wanted and more from a variety of angles, giving us a large range of choices for different shots when editing. It was easy to manage our actress as we had worked with her twice before and we were all used to it. We worked well as a group as we all took turns with the camera and we listened and allowed each other to come up with new ideas such as other angles to film from. We also worked well together as we worked efficiently without delay, and we therefore managed our time well. I was on the camera a lot and came up with different ways of filming shots that we hadn't thought of before, and so played a key role in our group.

Account of the main shoot day (shoot day 2)

Shooting schedule

Risk assessment

The shot list for our outside filming day

Shoot day 1

To depict the narrative of the girlfriend character being in the mean, popular girl group who are shunning Jay as he isn't popular, we planned to film them in school by the lockers. We told our actors where and when to meet a few days before, and so we were organised in advance instead of having to organise it on the day. The animatic helped as it meant that we knew what we wanted to show in the shots and we also knew how much footage we needed to film. However, we could have thought about the different shots we wanted to film beforehand as we could have had a wider range of shots, and we found ourselves deciding what shots we wanted to film while we were filming, The filming, therefore, became slightly disorganised. Although we managed the actors well, we found that when acting the specific scenes their acting didn't seem as good as previously and became a bit stale. The location also formed a problem since we were filming in school at lunchtime, since this was when the actors were available. This meant that there were students roaming the corridors and wanting to pass us while we were filming which would get in the way and interfere with the shot. We overcame this by asking politely if they would wait till we finished filming a specific shot, and then they could pass, where we would continue filming afterwards. Unfortunately we couldn't stop all interruptions as people would also come from the other side of the corridor and therefore it would already be too late and they would be in shot. We managed our time well as we were able to film the scenes all at lunch, although this made us feel slightly rushed. Additionally, we worked well as a group as we would take turns with the camera, telling the actors what to do and we would come up with decisions of what to film once we all agreed. Personally, I was in control of the camera for some of the shoot and I gave my ideas for camera angles that we could film from. I also played an important role in preventing passers by from entering the shots.

Day plan

We have decided to film our music video over the course of a couple of days. We have split the shoot into days depending on the location, for example, we want to film from the view point and the lake on the same day because they are close together. As we want to film part of our music video in school because this will help us demonstrate our narrative, we need to be in school to do this, therefore, we will do all of this on a separate day.

In order to ensure that we know exactly what we are doing and that we work efficiently, we have put together a plan for the day. We have made one for the days that we will shoot outside of school and one for the days when we will film in school.

TIMINGS FOR OUT OF SCHOOL FILMING

9:30 - Group arrives and goes over what we want to do in the day, check that we have everything we need for that day

10:30 - Cast arrives and group tells them what we are going to do

10:45 - Costumes, hair and make-up

11:30 - Go to location 1, run through, then film

13:00 - Lunch

14:00 - Go over what we need to do in the afternoon

14:15 - Go to location 2, run through, then film

15:45 - Review footage

TIMINGS FOR IN SCHOOL FILMING

When we film in school, we will need to be considerate of the fact that other students will be around, and may even be in lesson. This means that we may have to keep the noise down as well as the fact that certain parts of the school may not be suitable to use at specific times of the day.  We will also have lessons during the day, the members in our group will all have different lesson times and so will the members of the cast. This therefore means that we will need to find a time that is convenient for everyone, this means we may have to film during lunch time.

We will film during lunch time or during free periods, therefore we will not have a full length day plan for this. Instead, we will meet the cast and quickly discuss what needs to be done, we will then make sure they are in their costumes. Following this, we will begin by doing a run through and then start filming.

Closer to the day we will devise a more accurate plan for the filming in school.

Experimenting with the footage

Our artist's practice performance

Questioning our artist

Our perfect audience member

This is Max Saunders. He is our ideal audience member. He is 21 years old and so is a young adult who fits into the demographic of Jay’s target audience. From his profile picture, we can see someone who could be regarded as ‘indie’ since he is wearing clothing which is comfortable, rather than particularly fashion trendy. In addition, the silly nature of the photo demonstrates that he doesn’t care about image, and just wants to be himself, which is similar to the star image of Jay.

Max clearly enjoys listening to indie music and understands what it means to be an organic artist as he plays his own instrument which is a ukulele and so appreciates authentic music.

At the moment, Max is studying at university which again matches the young adult demographic of Jay’s target audience and also conforms to the expected VALS of Jay’s fans, as he is studying Business Management to develop skills, wanting to make his mark in society and showing that he is an innovator.

Max’s choice in films also indicates that he is in Jay’s target audience as he enjoys some films of an indie genre, like how Jay is a singer in the indie genre. This signifies that Max values passion and originality in different media forms, and so can be seen to admire Jay as an organic artist rather than just due to liking his songs.

From Max’s music choices, it is evident that he is part of Jay’s target audience as he enjoys music by artists similar to Jay such as Hozier, George Ezra and Tom Odell who are also indie artists. They are all organic which implies that he doesn’t like music by synthetic artists and so doesn’t like artists who are constructed, and prefers them to be more down-to-earth. This insinuates that Max is quite casual and relaxed like Jay, and so his music should appeal to him.

As Max is Jay’s perfect audience member, we would expect him to share Jay’s products and posts from his social media to help spread word-of-mouth and promote him in order to increase Jay’s fan-base made up of other people from his target audience.

Analysis of the casting

From testing people to be in our music video, we saw that finding the right people would be more challenging than we initially thought.

 

When watching this footage back, we saw that all the girls, apart from the one with the short red hair seemed quite nervous in front of the camera. It is important that the girls don't look nervous and aren't camera shy because they will be playing the part of the popular, slightly mean girls at the school. To portray this effectively, the people who we will cast need to be confident in order to play the part convincingly. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will cast any of these people as they either don't have the right look, or are not confident enough to be able to play the part in the way that we want it to be done. This has helped us in seeing what we should be looking for in terms of acting ability as well as what the cast need to look like.

 

We could only get a couple of boys to appear in this casting video, however, this still allowed us to see what we needed in terms of look and lip-syncing/acting ability. While the boy in the blue top seemed to be a bit shy and unsure of himself, the other boy in the tartan shirt was over acting. We saw the importance of the fact that the boy knows the lyrics to the song, particularly as he is the artist and should know the lyrics to his own song. This is because without knowing the lyrics properly, it isn't possible for the boy to give a convincing performance and make the audience believe that he is passionate about his music. Neither of the boys seemed to have good musicality which is important because they need to be able to say the lyrics in time with the music to lip-sync, therefore using the music as a guide. Additionally, neither of the boys had the look we want our artist to have as the boy in the blue looks too young and the other boy simply doesn't have what we were looking for. Neither of the boys are able to play the guitar which is a problem as to highlight that our artist is organic, this is something we feel as though we should show in the video, especially because you can hear the guitar in the song.

 

Following this, it is clear that we need to re-evaluate what we are looking for. We need to ensure that whoever we cast as the girlfriend and her friends are confident in front of the camera to be able to portray their characters effectively. For the boy, it is evident that we need to have someone with good musicality, and can play the guitar. We can also see that the boy needs to be able to learn the lyrics and be able to lip-sync well as well as accurately.

 

The next thing we will need to do is screen test some other people who we think would be able to play their parts more accurately. We will use what we have learnt from this to help us do this.

Casting for our music video

Use of the forest in indie music videos

Shots inspired by music videos

Our editing timeline

Analysing the results of our survey

Analysing the results of our survey from SamMullerMedia

Feedback on our idea

Our animatic

Analysis of our storyboard

From doing the storyboard, we structured and planned our music video by looking intricately at each shot and composing and drawing it to make it clear.

The storyboard was a moderately hard thing to develop to get all the ideas onto many pages through drawing. The storyboard was composed through the timeline, which was made at around the same time as the storyboard. The changes in the timeline ensured the storyboard would have to be tweaked. This resulted having to re-draw certain frames to make sense and flow as a storyboard.

The storyboard is going to be the most useful when it comes to editing to get what we had in our initial vision and also helped us realise as a group the importance of the studio shots and how we will compose the artist in the studio with the lighting. The storyboard had to be drawn with 60 shots and the idea of paying close attention to shots, such as close-ups of the guitar and close-ups of the artist being key.

The storyboard overall allowed the music video to come together and united all the ideas into pictures to give a visual idea. The storyboard helped us think about issues where our group debated things such as whether we should have the singer singing in other locations or just in the studio. This became clear from other indie music videos and fitted well in the storyboard where memories of dates are shown whilst the performance element is closely tied within the storyboard through the studio.

The storyboard will not link to the way we will film. This is because on shoot day we will film a various range of shots which we may come up with on the day. This means that we will not follow the storyboard exactly when editing as it won’t be totally precise. However, the storyboard has given us a good solid foundation to help us get started. 

Our storyboard

Audience profiling

Checklist for the locations

Check List Overview For Each Location from Beshirk

Props for our music video

Props For Our Music Video from SamMullerMedia

Costumes and make-up for our music video

Questioning people on James Bay

Feedback on our music video idea

Layout of music video narrative

Characters in our music video

Media products with similar ideas to our music video

Photoshoot of the locations for our music video

The star image of our artist

The Star Image of Our Artist from SamMullerMedia

The star image of George Ezra

The star image of Paolo Nutini

The star image of Tom Odell

The star image of Hozier

'Best Fake Smile' lyric analysis

Research and development of our idea

Research And Development Of Our Music Video Idea from Bianca Shirk

Analysis of indie artist album cover - Jake Bugg 'Shangri La'