Props List

Set Design

For set design we drew every scene we had accordingly to which props we wanted in the scene. We also wanted to show how we wanted to look, trying to show the image that is in our heads. Lavinia created this powerpoint that goes with the different scenes we have, to visualize what our ideas we have.

This is a link to a song that Lavinia which has the same traits as our video with the glitter but instead this is with dust.

These pictures show that we are shooting our music video in the studio, with the instruments we are using and the light shows how we are going to backlight our band in the beginning shot to create a silhouette effect of the band.

These images show how the men in morph suits are going to push through the see through material that we thought was foil but we know that it breaks easily so we might change it into some latex form of material.

These images show how we are using glitter during the performance element. 

These images show how we are using a bathtub as one of our mini sequences of people getting drowned and sucked into glitter. The tap picture is there because we wanted to have glitter flowing out of the tap into the bath tub, and the faces are for our face mask sequences.

These images show how we would have the mini city filling more and more up throughout the video, the picture on the bottom right is a good example of what city we want to use, in the style of NYC.

These pictures are for the rest of our mini sequences, where we have hair masks of glitter and a girl washing her face with glitter and glitter coming out of a hair dryer.

These images show how we want the glitter people in morph suits to break through the see through material in the end.

This is to show how towards the end of the song the band is going to be completely covered in the glitter.

Here are some images of our costume choices, because it is rock and roll we want the main singer to have messy hair very heavy make up, wearing a leather jacket etc etc in style of Taylor Momsen from the band The pretty reckless.. For the boys we want them to wear leather jackets as well, with black skinnies and a basic shirt in style of American Apparel.

Deciding on the Final Cast

We looked through our screen test videos together and thought about the different groups we could create. For example we really liked George and thought he had a very great rock and roll look but as we changed our lead singer to Leila their looks did not quite fit together. We wanted them to look as a band and compliment each other in their looks and way of performance. Some of the people that came to see us was not able to “let loose” in front of the camera and seemed quite shy even though the could look the part, we were not able to cast them because we need people that will have a lot of presence on screen and be able to deliver the part.

In the end we decided to go with Theo as the drummer, Maxim as the guitarist and Laila as the lead singer. I think that these 3 people compliment each other in their looks at have the same type of performance style that will appeal to young people which is the target audience. They all delivered on the screen test even though they had never heard the song before, we know that the drummer and guitarist can actually play their instruments and therefore we know they can learn the cords before the day to make the whole video seem in synch. When I filmed Laila, she did not know the words but I told her to look into the camera with a little tint of sexiness in her eyes, which is what we want in our video, to have that sense of rock and roll dirtiness. She performed this really nicely and I love her look, and I am actually very happy that she is blonde because it gives certain brightness on camera and will go very well with the glitter coming down. Also since the rest of the band have brown hair and dark eyes it is a really nice contrast in the group but still looks nice as a whole.
These pictures are taken by me with my Nikon D5000 with an extra lens attached on the top, which we will also use when we take pictures to create our digi-pack.

This is our final cast:

Laila Noeth as the lead singer:

Maxim Baldry as the guitarist:

Theo Bhat as the drummer:

The Screentest

After filming the band, I talked to Sarah and asked her to come in and give a performance to the song we are doing, but after we talked she told me that she was not able to participate in our video. Even though I think she would have looked really good in this, if she was not comfortable doing it I don’t want to push her into it as it would not have looked as good, as it would if she had been more excited about it.

So then we had to brainstorm and think whom else we think could suit the role of the main singer. The girl Leila that we had put on our list as a guitar player is one of our close friends that lives in Anne-Sophie’s and my house. We talked about it in a group and realized that she would fit the part really nicely. She performed in the Hurtwood concert singing a Lady GaGa song and was dressed very rock and roll. Therefore we know that she will be able to do the part. It also helps that she is an actual singer because when she is lip-synching to the video it will look more real if she is actually singing. We have talked to her and she is very willing and excited to shoot the video. We did a screen test her with the song to make sure that her look worked as well on camera as in real life. Here are some pictures from the concert and the screen test we did of her. As she did not know the lyrics for the song we just asked her to move to the music, to try and rock to the rhythm and give a sexy look into the camera which is what we want for the actual video. 

This is a video of the screen-test that i have edited together:

Choosing Our Cast

The first thing we wanted to cast was the “background” band, the drummer and guitar players. We went to the music department and got a list of all the students that were signed up for playing those instruments. We had an idea that we wanted it to be all girls, but we wanted to wait with making decisions before we saw the people that we could cast. 

We wanted people that could truly play the instruments we needed because then our music video would look more professional and especially for a “rock band” the performance element is very important as in real life this is what sells tickets.Following our teacher let us on to the school page where we could find the face for all of the names we had of the student musicians. We then printed them out and discussed as a group who we would want for a screen test and who we did not think had the right look. This is how our decision turned out:

(click to enlarge image)

For our lead singer we would really like a girl from our class called Sarah to “sing”. She has a really great look that I think would be captured really nicely, she has a certain stage presence and as I have seen her style over the past year, I know that she can rock a leather jacket as that look would lean against her normal style but with more rock in it.

After choosing our candidates we sent them all an email where we explained that we were aware they could play an instrument and we were interested in having them in our video, like this email:

Timeline

After coming up with all of these great ideas and scenarioes for our video we wanted to create a timeline to create a sense of where all of the different scenes would fit in and how. We started by using yellow stickies so that we could right the different sequences and move them around.

Following we wrote down what sequences we wanted in what order which was more finalized.

And finally we created a proper timeline as an outline for what scene order we would want to edit in post-production.

Glitter Research

Before we went any further with our idea of glitter everywhere we decided to research the actual price of glitter, as we realized it can be pretty expensive, so before we decided to storyboard a glitter-canon in our video we wanted to research further. We started google’ing and found that the small glitter you normally would use could be pretty expensive, so we started to search on glitter retailers and who was in charge so that we could ring them and maybe get a better deal for a lot of glitter, but then we did find a site where you could get 10 lbs for a 100 pounds which we were willing to split between us. Then we fell over “Confetti Glitter” which we realized was larger, cheaper and would probably have a much better effect on camera. Here are a couple of screenshots from the webpage’s we were on:

Other Glitter Fans

We started researching past moments of “Glitter” and we found glam rock, which is a direction we were looking at but we want to do a more stylized way of showing that, so it’s more fashionable and appealing to young people. As we are dressing people in a “Rocker way” but having the contrast of “nice” glitter. Today as we researched we were introduced to Marc Bolan who actually did start coming on stage with glitter on his face, which became a trademark. Like this:

Rather than below

Marc Bolan with his glitter cheeks

We also fell upon this Kylie Minoque video as someone thought they remembered being in it, even though there wasn’t we fell in love with the mike she was using. That’s then what led us to thinking that our singer, in our video should have a similar mike, because it goes with the twisted look between glam and rock which we are going for. Here are some pictures:

Filling the idea in

I knew from the beginning that we had our performance element set with the band playing and we would have glitter falling on the from above with lights on them to make the glitter sparkle. I thought about having the sequence with the performance element with the glitter and then having a lip-synching element as well created also in the studio with glitter falling down. Then I realized these to elements were to similar and you don’t want your audience getting bored while watching this video, because a music video is something that should be enjoyable to watch over and over again. Because we chose not to have a specific narrative we would have to do something really creative. As I’m looking around the room trying to think of other elements I see the poster from “The Pact” movie on the wall, with this picture:

When I saw this, I suggested to my group that we should use see-through foil like the one you use in the kitchen, and create a wall of this, behind this wall we would have people pushing against it as in the picture above and they would be covered in glitter as well, this idea fell through really well and we all built on it. From this sequence an idea of gimp suits sparked out. We had a chat to look and were talking about all of this glitter, he said that we shoud think about the glitters meaning and why it actually was coming down, yes it would look good but what would the audience interpret as. Since the audience is the most important we started to think. We created this idea that the glitter is taking over the world and it has to do with people being vain and as the song time is running and everybody is getting drowned in this glitter. This is when the idea sparked. Instead of having to cast people besides the band we came up with the idea that everybodt should look the same. We did some research and came up with the idea of using Barbie masks or doll face cut outs. Like this:

But then we decided to buy gimpsuits and first cover them in glue and then stick glitter everywhere on them creating this atmosphere of people getting suffocated in glitter. This will also be used for the people trying to push through the wall of foil, so they all look the same and I want to have close up’s of there faces pressing through and glitter rubbing off on the foil which I think will give a great visual look on camera.

After the idea of the people pushing through the wall and the idea of glitter taking over we tried to think of small sequences we could use to intercut with as a third element. This is when we though of having small scenes with people getting “eaten” by glitter. We had this idea to start with of a bathtub. The bathtub would be filled with glitter, coming out of the tap as well. From this we decided to use everyday tasks but replace then things with glitter. We want to have someone getting a facial with the cucumbers on their eyes and then instead of having the mask put on someone who is smothering them with glitter. Following we would also have a hairdryer sequence, a hair mask, champagne popping with glitter instead of drink etc etc.

Choosing an Idea

After getting feedback from our audience test, we had to make our own decision of which idea to choose out of the 4 different ones. We all discussed for a while and we all liked each others ideas, but we realized in most of them the storyline didn’t fit the song or there was need of a third element to film or the moral was not very capturing. Through my group and our audience feedback my idea had very positive response, and as this music video is aimed at teens mostly it was great to hear them being very interested and was saying “that’s very cool, I love it” to hear that as a 17 year old girl wanting to make a video is a very good response. 

My idea was actually quite simple but blown up to be something big therefore we can make the best video possible, because we are not thinking about a narrative as so, it is a very entertaining concept with the glitter and as it has teens in it, it’s easy to cast as our school is filled with them and we can hand pick whomever we like. The rest of my group were intrigued by it as well as the glitter concept was very exciting and I knew that it would look good on camera. My group ended up following my idea in a natural way, we did not really discuss as much as in lessons we would rather discuss the element of that idea rather than going further with others, it was very natural and everyone seemed happy. One person in our group was persuaded to create a different video made by one of the other groups so she as switched and my group is now Lavinia, Anne-sophie and I. 

(Lavinia to the left, me in the middle and Anne-sophie on the right)

We are very happy to work together on this project as we all are great friends and therefore know how to compromise and work well together as we all want to make the best music video possible.

Making of prank CD cover

For my powerpoint presentation on my idea, I showed a prank CD cover which i had made myself. I'm a photography student and I therefore have a Dslr and an extra flash which creates the blowout effect. I had cherries one day and decided to play with the fact that our bands name is "Cherry Dust". I took the picture of myself that you can see below, I brought out the reds in the Cherry and made my lips a bit paler by using my editing program Aperture. This was to show how the album cover could look and how the "Cherry" could become a trademark of the band and could also help sell merchandise.

Following I cropped it down and fit it into a picture of an empty CD case.

I then added the parental advisory sign in the corner and the name "Cherry Dust" written down the side and vóila!

Mindmaps

This is a couple of pictures of the mind maps we created during our exploration further into our Music Video ideas.

In this one we put "Fast Editing" in the middle because we wanted to explore what music we could use for that type of editing. We wanted something fresh, fast and that would attract teens.

This is a further mind map we made that explored further into my idea of the songs Cities in Dust or Sour Cherry, which have the same sound to them so the video could fit to either one.

In this last page we looked at what convention they used in other Music Videos which style was similar to the one we wanted to create. We watched a couple of "The Pretty Reckless" music videos with lead singer Taylor Momsen, we did think it was a good video and we got some inspiration from some of the styling that was in her clothes and make-up but decided that the video's in themselves had a too dark image than what we wanted to send as a message to people.

MY IDEA

LAVINIA'S IDEA

ANNE-SOPHIE's IDEA

CHUFFY's IDEA