Name: Olivia Searle & Naomi Doddridge
Working Title of Music Video: Out of the Woods - 1989
Title of Song/Performer: Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is signed to Big Machine Record Labels, and has been since the beginning of her career back in 2006. Big Machine Records is an independent American record label specializing in country music artists. Despite Taylor's newly released pop genre album,
1989, she still continues with Big Machine records. The current top-selling artists working on Big Machine are Tim McGraw, Rascal Flatts and various other country artists who are well known in the industry.
Big Machine benefits because it has artists like Taylor, who gets a lot of terrestrial radio airplay, and who are now receiving payment for being played. Taylor's most recent album,
1989, both her and Big Machine are on the verge of reaping their greatest sales accomplishment, comes word that label, founded by
Scott Borchetta, is up on the sales block.
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Target Audience:
The audience that myself and my colleague Naomi Doddridge will be targeting mostly is teenagers. The song we are using,
Out of the Woods, is a song that Taylor Swift wrote and produced for her newly released pop album,
1989. This album is the fifth studio album that Taylor has recorded, and is her first documented 'pop album'. Unlike any other album, 1989 is built over drum programming, synthesizers, pulsating bass, processed backing vocals and guitars. Its lyric content is based mainly on Taylor's style of writing about love, the album's content frequently discusses the complexities of relationships.
With this knowledge, we will be targeting the video at teenagers so they get the most out of it. Ranging from around 12-22, we'll have a number of shots that are quite similar to Taylor's previous video also set in the woods, Safe and Sound. We will be recreating some of the shots in this video to involve Taylor Swift's own creativity within ours, and this will hopefully be noticeable to some of her fans who have followed her throughout the years.
The thing I really like about these shots is how Taylor herself blends in with the colour scheme of the woods in the background, even though she is clearly the main focus. The distant look she gives creates a mysterious feel and this is hopefully what will be achieved in our video. By not looking at the camera, we will be creating a linear categorized video in the sense that I will be telling the story through the chorus', and Naomi will be acting it out during the verses.
Synopsis:
The storyline of the music video is fairly straight forward. Naomi would be acting out the versus in the woods, and I would be singing the track in a black studio. There are a number of videos like this out there and the contrast of the two locations work really well and I enjoy watching those videos more. When it's all based in one location, I find them to be quite boring and dull, but cutting to different shots and settings could work.
There will be a number of anecdotes during the production as we couldn't physically match every lyric to what the audience would see. We will use logs as a couch, cardboard for a table and dominoes for building. We think this will be quite quirky and when we do our individual edits, we can create an absolute masterpiece from these and then work around any problems we face.
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There will be a number of elements throughout the video that will indirectly suit our target audience without obvious recognition. Like Taylor Swift's videos that she's produced over the years, our video will have a linear narrative with a clear cut between the verses in chorus'. Throughout the first verse, there will be multiple shots of myself singing in the woods, and Naomi telling the story through acting within various locations. We're not going to match every single line of lyric in the narrative viewing, as this will be cheesy. Which is something we're just not going to do! By matching a few up, it gives the story some sort of chronological order which allows the viewer to understand the message that the song and lyrics are portraying.
Myself and Naomi are responding to this song with a narrative because we feel the lyrics of the song can be fully experimented with during both the verses and chorus', and with the swap of location, we can portray the lyrics in the correct environment and atmosphere. Within the locations, we will apply filters in post-edit to create a dull and upsetting scene as this is what the narrative of the lyrics are during the performance.
In terms of pre-production, it took us approximately 2 days to create a pitch we would display to other colleagues and our tutor, Neil. Quite informal, sitting around a table with a MacBook in front of us, discussing our idea with the group listening and answering any questions they had. The good thing about pitching is that they will happily fill you in with bits you may have missed, and their knowledge can interact with ours and create an even better video, with their suggestions. Our pitch lasted around 10 minutes, and we accepted any questions at the end. Overall, myself and Naomi were happy with the feedback and took all of the suggestions on board. Some we used, some we didn't. It was an even spread.
Reflect on Music Pitch:
Were you expecting the responses you got?
You know, in some respect, I wasn't expecting anything. Not in a bad way, just because I think it's so hard to make judgement on other people's ideas when you're not involved within the creation and design of the video itself. Obviously I was expecting suggestions, but not to the point where we had to change our whole video around. It's so hard to put on paper what your idea is, when it's crystal clear in your head. It's one of the things I really struggle with. The only thing I had to go into detail more with was what genre our music video is, and who the target audience was. I guess those answers seem pretty self explanatory, but when you're pitching to people you
are your target audience, it's easy to get lost within the storyline. I think they got it in the end.
Were recommendations made?
There were, of course. I think the one that hit me more than any others was their suggestion to film a section, edit, and see how it goes. It's all very well, and on the whole a good idea, but when you've come up with a schedule of pre-production and almost a calendar to make sure you have enough time to film your
final production, it's quite tricky to change it all when you've got your heart set on doing something in a particular order. Another recommendation that I really took into consideration was, "
What would you do if it rained on your filming days?" and I honestly struggled to answer it. We just assumed it would be ok (and thank heavens, it was!), but myself and Naomi did discuss what we'd do. There wasn't a solution, mind, but at least we discussed it!
Are your ideas appropriate to your identified target audience?
Yes. Absolutely. Our target audience is teens, and looking at our chosen artists, Taylor Swift's, previous music videos, we were okay. A mixture of shots of Naomi in the woods telling the story, and myself singing in a studio, there wasn't really a wrong age to watch this video. (My Nan loved it!)
Are your ideas achievable in the given time frame to plan, produce, film and edit your music video?
Absolutely. Myself and Naomi gave ourself at least 2 days to shoot in the woods, and 1 day to shoot in the studio. So overall, 3 days for filming was plenty. Pre production we mainly did separately, so that was kind of in our own time. Editing, again, was completed within 2 days, but separate edits so we could each put our imagination to a separate video. (Oddly enough, they're quite similar!)
We allowed 2 weeks for pre-production as we figured that this part was important and would make the filming process a lot easier if we knew exactly what we were doing, on what days, and the concept of the video would be there in front of us. In these 2 weeks, we completed the risk assessment, storyboard, overhead plan, concept of the video and the pitch.
Pre-production paper-work was a challenge as we were working together and shared it out between us, and had to agree with who was doing what. We worked together well, and considering some of the challenges we faced with mixing our outside life with college work, it went okay. We really wanted to be organised with our paperwork, as in previous assignments, both myself and Naomi have been a bit all over the place. Scanning in was a must, as we wanted them to look as professional as we could, instead of being all crumpled and torn.
Our overall plan was to have all the paperwork done, obviously before filming, so when it came to being on location, we could look through it all and understand what we were meant to be doing whilst filming. This way, we would be ahead of ourselves in terms of time, and the music video would be completed before the Christmas break. In the New Year, we would come back to an organised blog in which we would just have to tidy it up in terms of appearance wise.
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Filming: In the woods
I was really looking forward to getting behind the camera and filming our music video. Our first location we visited was the woods at Manadon, a small selection of autumnal trees perfect for the mood and atmosphere of our desired finished look. We began by picking a basic location in which it had all we wanted; cover in case of bad weather, a log for Naomi to sit on, and big trees to cover any direct sunlight that may be tempted to peer through the trees.
Filming within the woods went quite well. The only problems we came across was the weather, and what we film to have a number of spare scenes, just incase we needed them for filling in instrumental sections of the song. We spent 2 days in the woods, one for filming the first 2 verses, and the other for the last verse and the fill in shots that would be more of a precaution, just incase we needed to use any extras in the final edit.
The weather was our only main obstacle throughout the two days in the woods, as we had to have regular and annoying breaks because we couldn't risk damaging the equipment. 80% of the time, the weather was just really crisp and cold, but it did rain every so often which put a slight spanner in the works.
During the filming in the woods, we used a number of shots that would differentiate from any that we've used before. We filmed every scene we wanted to use twice, so at least we had a choice when it came to editing. Long shots, medium, close up, point of view and panning shots were all filmed during our time in the woods, but not all of them were used in the final edit.
Filming: In the studio
For the chorus', I would be standing behind a mic, almost narrating the song and story through a basic studio performance that would be used as cutaways during Naomi's woods' scenes too. For the studio shots, lighting was the most important thing we could use to make it look professional. We hired out a Dado Kit - which consists of three LED panel lights, with an option to make them as bright and dim as we needed. We also hired out a mic and mic stand to make it seem realistic, as if I was actually singing. The positioning of the lights was mega important as we needed one behind me to create a silhouette, one to the right of me directly onto my face to create a shine, and one on the upper left hand side to light the top of my head.
We had 3 cameras in total; 2 were on tripods, and the other was connected to a FigRig, which Naomi was operating to create some handheld shots from a number of different angles during the video. We occasionally changed the lighting on 2 separate events, to add more depth to the video, and so when we inserted the studio shots into the final edit, we had a number of lighting techniques to play with.
When it came to recording, I suggested we filmed the whole song, not just the chorus', just incase we needed to fill some gaps that we couldn't fill with shots from the woods. Whether that be chorus, verse, or instrumental. I said it would be quite strange if I just popped up at the chorus', people would be watching, thinking "Who is she!?"
The positioning of myself was the key to getting some really good shots in the studio, as we discovered that even slight movements away from the light, looked amazing on camera. Naomi filmed these shots approximately 10 times over, just to ensure we had more than enough shots to choose from when it came to editing it all together.
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Editing
Myself and Naomi gave ourselves 2 days to edit together the whole production. We each did separate edits, so we could each explore the different designs and concepts we both have of editing. There were quite a few clips we had to import into Premier Pro, and organising them took the longest! I started off by importing the clip sin which we filmed in the woods, and organised and positioned them roughly on the timeline as to where I think they would sit best. I then began important the mountain of studio clips we had, but ended up using 2 camera angles for the whole video. In my personal opinion, the clips that were hand held looked a lot better than the stand alone ones on the tripod.
The trickiest part about editing the whole production was the lip syncing. It was something I had never had to do before, so it was quite a challenge. You had to match up the clips with the song at the exact time they met, otherwise it looked absolutely ridiculous. I got the hang of how to do it in the end, which was good. I decided to alternate studio shots within one scene, so this made it a lot more interesting, but also a lot more difficult to edit! Never mind, what's a music video without a challenge?
Our original idea was to have me singing in the chorus, and Naomi acting out the verses in the woods. This was the case, but with such a direct cut between the woods and studio, it got a bit repetitive and boring - and matching up the lyrics with the video, at some points, looked incredibly cheesy. That was where the studio shots came in handy, just to slot into the verse sections we couldn't fill with the shots from the woods.
Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. I think if I was to ever be in charge of a music video again, I would have it all filmed in one location. I liked ours, however some of the shots were just ultimate cheese factor and made me cringe watching them. Matching the lyrics up with the actions of the actress in a music video DOESN'T always work, people. Be warned. I'd also, maybe, have played around with the colour scheme of the whole thing a bit more. There was such a sharp cut from woods to studio, none of it really seemed to blend in when I look back on it. All in all, for my first music video, I'm pretty impressed.
It was also fun working with my best friend, too. Check her Blog out!
We're out of the woods.
- O
{Sources:}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Machine_Records
http://www.bigmachinelabelgroup.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzhAS_GnJIc
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6304343/big-machine-taylor-swifts-label-reportedly-considering-a-sale
