The Big Blog: Out of the Woods

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!

http://naomi-doddridge.blogspot.co.uk

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

The Big Blog: Phantom TV

Channel Genre: Paranormal

Potential Channel Names: Unknowable TV - Spirit TV - Mystery TV - Abnormal Channel - Fantasy TV - Phantom TV - Paranormal TV - Cryptic TV - Unknown TV

Target Audience:

When it comes to creating a television channel, it's really important to start with deciding your target audience. When you've decided who you want to watch your channel, you can then begin designing the logos, names, idents and programs to fit the specifications. With me creating a channel specifically for paranormal programs and films, it was pretty clear as to what age range I would be aiming this at. Through personal experience, I began watching TV shows like Most Haunted from the age of 9. This may seem pretty young, but staying up late on a Friday night with my Mum on Halloween, watching a bunch of people talk to ghosts was awesome.

I will be aiming my TV Channel at Adults 16-34. This target audience group has some factors that I have taken in to consideration, such as:

• 16-34 Adults watch 2 hours and 44 minutes of linear TV a day, 2 hours and 2 mins of this is commercial TV
• Young adults unsurprisingly time-shift more than many other audience groups, yet 91.6% is still viewed as the same day as the live broadcast
• Spend more of their time watching TV whilst using other devices than the average adult

It's quite hard to justify why I chose this specific target audience, as I guess it's not just adults within this age range that watch it. My ident, logo and trailer will be a very dark and mysterious theme, which will contain *beeped* out swear words if necessary. This then gives the audience a slight insight as to what the TV channels will contain, and may not be inappropriate for the younger generation. Not only due to the fact there are possible swearwords, but it may also be quite scary, as I plan to put horror films on the channel after the witching hour.

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What my ident will say:

Font and Use of Text -

The font I will be using for my final logo is Albertshal Typewriter, which I downloaded off dafont.com. This creates a old-school and haunted font which will obviously fit in to my television channel. Although it's quirky, it's still easy to read and identifiable. I will only be using 'PHANTOM TV' in my logo and throughout my ident, as I feel this is quite catchy and easily rememberable. 

Throughout the ident, there will be a set font that I will use, no matter how many idents I proceed to make. I want there to be a strict theme throughout, as like I said before, I want the channel to be indentifiable. For example, when people see the fonts, I want them to think of my channel or a certain programme straight away.

Graphic Imagery:

As such, there will be no graphic imagery used in my idents. Adobe After Effects will allow me to experiment with certain design aspects for my third ident idea. My first and second won't be needing any graphic imagery. I plan on making my idents quite simple, as I'm a perfectionist. So if I make them simple, yet effective, then I can perfect them and make them look as professional as possible.

Size of Text vs Size of Image:

The text on the ident that I plan on producing will be situated in the centre of the screen. It will be easy to read, bold and the centre of attention as this is the main part I want people to remember. The text will be white, with an outer glow of a green noise and this will contrast well with the background.

Colour Scheme:
The colour scheme of my ident will be a night visioned video with very dark and gloomy colours. The logo on top will be white so it contrasts and stands out.

Movement:
The background of the ident will be the 'walking through the woods scared', so this will happen quite quickly, as if it's a victim running from something. The logo will be slightly jolty to give it extra movement on top of the background, as I feel if it didn't move, it will look quite dull compared to the background.

Soundtrack:
Sound effects will be downloaded from various different sound effect sites. There are a number of sound effects I would like to try but it all depends on how the filming goes, and what sort of shots I film, and I will then work out what sounds and timings I use from there.

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I uploaded this image to my social networking sites to ask people to give me a number, choosing their favourite, and I would then use this for my final logo. Almost like a survey, people responded pretty quickly. There was a clear winner when it came to the viewers choice, and that was number 1. I feel like this is the right decision and my favourite, because the logo is focusing mainly on 'Phantom', and not TV. Number 2 and 3 were too crowded and didn't have much depth, where as Number 1 worked well and would look good in any ident, and on other pages of promotion such as social media, websites and posters.

I altered it ever so slightly by making the outer-glow larger and adding more 'noise', which creates the static effect and ties in with the 'ghostly' theme the channel has. The 'TV' is less prominent and this would mean if the logo was to ever change for promotional pages, or I completely dropped 'TV' and just stuck with 'Phantom', it wouldn't affect it too much.

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Another part of my research was to contact someone in the 'Paranormal television' world and maybe get some tips and information from them. I took to Twitter and tweeted Yvette Fielding, producer and presenter of the ever-loved Most Haunted, which has been going for 8 years now. She kindly gave me her email address and agreed to answer some of my questions:

1. What is the main target audience, in your eyes, for Most Haunted?
The target audience was females 16yrs-40yrs but over time and many programmes the audience has changed to both sexes from children up to 60yrs.

2. What is the best way to promote Most Haunted? Is it social networking, a website or on TV?
All social media, press, television and radio.

3. Does the feedback you get from fans of the show almost persuade you to do more? (Especially after your long break away from filming!)
The show is driven by fans, especially the live shows. The reason the programme was brought back was because of high demand from the fans via email and social media.

4. Throughout the years, you have down your own reality shows - Living With / In Bed with Yvette and Karl. Do you think this show has helped your audience figures increase when it comes to Most Haunted?
Filming 'In Bed' was fantastic fun and was very successful with fans. Yes it helped more people to watch Most Haunted who had never seen it before.

These answers have really helped shape my television channel and what it will contain for the viewers. Yvette's answers prove that social media has a huge impact on her show, and in this day and age social media is always going to take a big role in the promotion of televisions shows and channels. I chose to incorporate social media into a possible television schedule which would give the programmes and idents a way to interact with fans online.

Above is just a rough sketch I put together of a possible television schedule that would run on weekdays for Phantom TV. It's pretty basic as viewers that choose to watch this channel won't want much more than the bog standard original ghost hunting programmes which they've learnt to love over the past 10 years or so.

Viewers clips / Behind the scenes:
What I thought about doing here was giving viewers a chance to send in their own personal clips of sightings that they have maybe seen or witnessed with a group of friends. Ouija boards, ghost hunting nights and horror house experiences are such a popular thing to do in this day and age, people are always wanting to showcase them online and get them out in the open for people to see. I thought that people could send in their clips via email/post and Phantom TV could play them throughout the duration of the day, when most of my target audience will be at work.

Behind the scenes clips would work slightly differently. These will be the bloopers and making of horror films that will be shown on the channel later that evening, to give people a taster on what the films will be about. This could attract audiences that are out of my target audience by word of mouth, as there may be a film advertised that someone is watching, and they could let their friends know about it. It's just a case of trial and error.

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My final ident was quite a simple idea, and I would put most of the features in the editing such as music, sound effects and video effects. The general idea I had was I would take a number of different shots of trees, both close up and far away, and incorporate them with different layers in the editing process.

The filming process took half an hour. I took myself up to a graveyard near my house and filmed a number of different shots, such as; a bench, running looking at feet, grave stones, trees, bushes, the grass. I figured it would be easier to do this, then I would have more to experiment with when it came to editing. I filmed with a Canon 600D and used a light on top of the camera, as it was pitch black when I filmed. In total, I took 30 shots and used 10 in the edit. There are a number of things I'm happy with in the final ident, and there are a few things I would change if I had the editing skills I desire!

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my final ident as it's clear what the TV channel is portraying and the audience will be clear on the content of the channel in terms of genre. The most challenging part was adding the logo to the quick pan of the tree at the end of it. I had to use two programmes to make this work - Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe After Effects. On After Effects, I followed a tutorial which would mean the logo would stay in the same place as a particular point I chose, and in my case, it was the centre of the tree in the final quick pan. 

Adobe After Effects allowed me to create a process called 'tracking' which would allow the logo to stay in the same place and almost embed itself into the video and move in synchronicity with it. I followed a tutorial online which made it fairly easy and with the help of a good friend, it turned out pretty good. I feel like this tracking method is something I would definitely use in future productions as it's such a simple technique, yet looks really effective when the whole production is finished and put together.

On Premier Pro, the editing method again, was pretty simple. Putting two different clips on top of each other and lowering the opacity of the clip on top created a ghostly effect that would obviously incorporate with the TV channel's theme which is paranormal.

My Premier Pro set up was pretty straight forward. Import the clips, import the music, and put them on the timeline and make them work with each other. It took a while to get the timings right, and work out which clips looked good on top of others, but after 6 hours at the computer screen I finally mastered it, I think. I just chose two clips that I thought would work well together, and put one on the above layer, lowering to opacity and making it a higher frame rate. This insinuates that it may be the point of view of a person 'running through a woods' like in a generic horror movie.

I added the night vision as this is also a key factor in paranormal television. It emphasises what the channel will consist of and give viewers an idea of what is upcoming on the channel. Television shows like Most Haunted and films like Paranormal Activity will be the overview of what will appear, and with both of these being predominantly in night vision, it portrays it well. To create the night vision styled filter, I added a green layer over the top of all of the clips and again, lowered to opacity.

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Incorporating the final ident to advertise television shows was quite tricky as there was a specific theme I wanted to keep to and the font seemed to be hard to read no matter what position I put it in. The layouts proved to be quite tricky as there are a number of obstacles that I had to overcome, but the main one was the tree. As tree was the main feature of the ident, I had to work around this and try and make the text readable to all viewers. I still wanted to make the ident a 'scary' and 'paranormal' theme to incorporate the upcoming shows and again, give the audience a taster of what's to come.

The safe-zone is practically non existent in the above idents and I completely forgot about it when I was designing them. The safe-zone is a really important feature that all television channels must bare in mind as it could make or break their idents and advertisements. It's where there is an invisible boarder around the edge of the frame to ensure that no matter what viewing platform the ident or advertisement is being viewed on, none of the important stuff is cropped out (i.e. text, important images). So for example, if the above idents were going to be aired on television, there is a high chance that numbers 2 & 3 wouldn't work, as the text is so close to the left and right hand side of the frame.

This is the type of design I would use as an ident to advertise what show was coming up next. The ident would be around 10 seconds long, with moving text and a short clip of the upcoming show (shown above). The voiceover will be a crystal clear voice, as this will be easier for my target audience to understand (especially as it's possible that the older generation will be watching) and this way, it gets the right message across.

Voiceover:
"And now get ready for some scary scenes with Yvette and her paranormal team as they indulge into their next spooky location. Some scenes may contain strong language and flashing images."

These idents are well situated in terms of the safe zone as they're all very central based and will in no way overlap, no matter what the viewing platform. I also decided to mix up the logo, as the original one was very long and was an awkward shape to add any more text onto it. People should easily identify it as all I've done is make it a little more quirky and slightly changed the layout, so it's three letters per line. I focused on keeping the font the same throughout all the advertisement campaigns as I feel it's quite distinctive, and I want people to see the font and instantly know it's Phantom TV.

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Overall I'm quite pleased with how this project turned out. I feel like I have improved my editing skills on both Premier Pro and After Effects. The tracking method is something I would definitely use in the future and it's a really simple feature, yet works really well.

My favourite part of this whole project was filming shots for the ident and picturing how they would all fit together in editing. It took around half an hour to film the shots in a local graveyard and editing them took a little longer, as I wanted to make it the best I could. 9 seconds isn't a long time so I wanted to make it as good as I possibly could, so it looks professional and to the best of my ability. 

- O

Production #1: Walk Towards Camera

Our first production of Year 2 was to recreate that generic "cool" theme that's often seen in films and television shows to portray a character in a certain manor.

It all began with us choosing our groups in which we would film individual shots in, at our own location. Most people chose the outside, as it was a sunny day and would be a better backdrop. This would make it look more professional when it came to editing. After watching the 'inspiration' behind our own productions, we then ventured out and experimented with our own walks. 

Myself, Naomi Doddridge, Sam Shaw, Matt Jury, Kim Noot and Chloe Binding all chose a location which was situated not far from college. It was an abandoned road that had a cobbled floor, which made the shot look quite quirky and interesting. 

All Night Long - Walk Towards Camera

When it came to editing, myself and Sam decided to edit together. As it was quite a simple thing to do, we decided to try and make it more enjoyable and put a humour-like twist on it and have the footage in synchronicity with the music. 

I really enjoyed producing this video, as it was quite a fun and light-hearted production to start Year 2 with!


- O