First Storyboard and Storyline

We first started with a rough draft of a storyline, with quick notes annotating the pictures. These pictures are very vague, as we just wanted to get an initial idea of the cut up of scenes, and in which order they would be. We didn't want too many scenes as if it cuts really quickly, it will be confusing for the audience and they may not fully understand what is going on throughout the video. However we did not want the video to be slow paced and boring, so we had a number of scenes which are different, whilst throughout deferring back to the main theme of the story. The pictures help us to imagine the scene, and although they are not professional artistic drawings, they help us relate to what will be going on at that point of the video.

We wanted to make our plans a little clearer and therefore decided to type up out notes and make our drawings more neat and detailed. We were more accurate with what we wanted to portray in each scene in this storyboard, and we decided to cut the scenes shorter, making more. We did this to make some variation throughout the story, as well as making it easier for the audience and for us to differentiate between the different parts of the video. There are 3 main topics which are portrayed throughout the video, leading to the outcome at the end which is where the story finishes. We also thought about how each scene will connect to the next, so we had to think about the editing skills we would use.

Storyline Layout

1st Scene - This will consist of our main actress lying on the floor with empty alcohol bottles and drug packets. It will also the girl passed out, which leads the audience to think whether she is conscious or not.

2nd scene - Following into the next scene it fades to white, as the story has gone back in time, but by the time of the second scene it goes back to normal colour. The scene will show a classroom of girls, following a teacher giving out marked homework. The camera will then focus on the main actress, as the teacher gives her back her homework. there will be a confrontation between the teacher and the girl, as she is being told off about her work.

3rd scene - The girl will then storm out of the classroom and down the road very angrily, walking back to her house and just leaving school.

4th scene - Here she is walking down an alleyway where she reads an abusive text from a "friend" telling her that she no longer has a friendship group and "all her friends hate her".

5th scene - The video will then fade into black and white and show a past memory which she is thinking of, and this will show her hanging out with her friends at school having a good time and sharing jokes.

6th scene - There will then be more footage of her walking down the lane towards her house.

7th scene - She then walks into her house where she is met by her mum. They start to argue and have a massive row in the living room, before the girl storms off to her room with a bottle of alcohol.

8th scene - She then storms into her bathroom, opens her cupboard to find some drugs that she takes off her shelf, and then goes into her bedroom.

9th scene - The last scene will be a repeat of the first scene, as it will again pan across the floor showing empty packets of drugs and empty bottles of alcohol. At the very end her bedroom door will open, showing her mum slightly opening the door, and this is where the video ends.





Target Audience

We have already identified our target audience. However, we wanted to do more research into the age and gender we are addressing to ensure that we reach the audience we want.

We wanted to create a video that was more personal. Therefore, we decided to base the target audience around ourselves, older teenage girls. Depending on how serious our video becomes, we will decide whether to put an age limit on who watches our movie (it would not be acceptable for younger viewers to see suicidal and depressing scenes).

Reasons for our choice in age:Particularly for 15 - 18 year olds, teenage life can be extremely difficult due to hormones kicking in and pressures of school etc. We are this age ourselves. Therefore, it makes the video more manageable to create as we know what we would watch etc.

Reasons for our choice in Gender:For us, going to a girls school has meant that we have had the chance to experience many different problems occur, especially for females. By creating a video that tries to attract the females attention, we hope to target even our own friends. We know many of the issues that can arise and therefore, can use and develop interesting ones of our own.

Relating to other target audiences:Although we are going to try to relate to a specific target market, we hope to attract others through this. By attracting older generations, we can raise awareness of teenage depression. Many teenagers are judged to be 'typical' and 'moody'. However, we want to allow our audience to understand that a lot of the time, there are bigger problems for teenagers.

Research Into Soundtrack

Lyrics to the song

Made a wrong turn, once or twice

Dug my way out, blood and fire

Bad decisions, that's alright

Welcome to my silly life

Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood

Miss, no way it's all good, it didn't slow me down

Mistaken, always second guessing

Underestimated, look, I'm still around

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel

Like you're less than, less than perfect

Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel

Like you're nothing you are perfect to me

You're so mean when you talk

About yourself, you are wrong

Change the voices in your head

Make them like you instead

So complicated, look how big you'll make it

Filled with so much hatred, such a tired game

It's enough, I've done all I can think of

Chased down all my demons, see you do the same

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel

Like you're less than, less than perfect

Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel

Like you're nothing, you are perfect to me

The whole world stares while I swallow the fear

The only thing I should be drinking is an ice cold beer

So cool in lying and we tried, tried, tried

But we try too hard, it's a waste of my time

Done looking for the critics 'cause they're everywhere

They don't like my genes, they don't get my hair

Strange ourselves and we do it all the time

Why do we do that? Why do I do that?

Why do I do that?

Ooh, pretty, pretty, pretty Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel

Like you're less than, less than perfect

Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel

Like you're nothing, you are perfect to me

You are perfect to me You're perfect, you're perfect to me

Pretty, pretty please if you ever, ever feel Like you're less than, less than perfect

Pretty, pretty please if you ever, ever feel

Like you're nothing, you are perfect to me

 

Interpretation of the SongFrom reading these lyrics, we can quickly see that the words very much relate to the story we want to tell. The lyrics are trying to portray the use of peoples words and opinions on others, and how it can make them feel. The song is ultimatley about exceptance of yourself and not listening to what others say about you. P!nk was said to have written this song as she was inspired by her husband. She wanted to highlight the effect of self-mutilation, depression and suicide to her audience in order to convey their seriousness. In the original video it shows scenes of bullying, and graphic scenes of self harm, which relate to the lyrics and song itself. The video conveys the struggle of a teenage girl and how her troubles build up to a sad and unfourtunate ending.
Much like the idea we have for our own video, P!nk uses time ellipsis to help tell the story. She uses the end of th storyline at the start of the video to introduce the concept, which is something we feel we would like to incorporate into our own video. The music video then goes on to tell the rest of the story, explaining the reasons for the current situation at the end of the story, ending with the same scene that was used at the start of the video. Although we feel many elements of the original film are similar, we want to put our own touch on the video, and many of the scenes will be different. However we weill use this video for inspiration and ideas when creating our own as we feel this is a very good example to lead by.

 

The artist

 

These are photographs of the musician herself, 'P!nk' who wrote, performed, and starred in the video.

 

 

 

The picture above is her actually performing in the video 'Fuckin Perfect' where she played herself as a character, and was singing the lyrics to the song as well as acting with other actors.

 

 

 

 

 

Initial ideas

We decided the purpouse of the product was to be able to reveal the life of a teenager, and although this may not be the norms for every young adult, it does make people open their eyes to what lives are for some teenagers. To create the idea of teenage depression, we felt we needed to include ideas of drug and drink abuse, bullying, pressure from homelife, as well as many others listed on the spider diagram. As you can see, the theme relates largely to depression, and although it can give an effect of sadness, we feel this is much more effective than an overused love story.

We then thought about our target audience and who we will focus our music video on. We thought, as this is a music video portraying the life of a teenager, that it would therefore relate to people between the range of 15+. We considered a younger target audience however, they may be affected by scenes in the video, as well as being unaware and not being able to understand what is going on. We also thought our video would largely relate to girls as many of the scenes in our video relate to those that a girl could go through. Middle class people would be most likely to purchase and watch the music video.

We lastly focused on what type of music video our target audience is wearing. We decided that it needed to address ideas of teenagers today, as it is telling a story of a teenager. We also need to make it an interesting story, so people are enticed to watch, and will want to watch it again and again. It also needs to tell an accurate story, making sure everything make sense, and follows a path. The storyline is quite deep, therefore the characters within the video, and the things they do, need to be emotional. This will make it more of a successful film as the audience will become attached to the film, creating a bond with the characters, which will make it more convincing.



Choice of Song

We have decided to use Pink's song, 'Perfect' for many reasons. We like the original interpretation of the video and would like to do something similar to this, however putting our own twist and story to it. The lyrics in the song are also very easy to interpret to a depressing story, which does not have to relate to 'typical' teenage love. We also wanted a slow song with a slow beat, and this song has a slow beat to it, which is very useful and effective when trying to produce a story that unfolds throughout the whole song. We feel this is a good choice of song which we can work well around as a group, and we will be able to produce a good quality music video from this. Shown below is the oriinal music video:




Copyright Letter

To be able to use Pink's song, as a group we had to e-mail the production company and inform them of our music choice in order to gaiin permission to use it for our media project.



Update 18/04/2013
We completed our media coursework before the production company of our chosen song replied to our e-mail. We have had no monetary gain from this product and do not intend to, it was simply for educational purposes.

Specific Video Research

We looked at many music videos to develop our own ideas (some are shown below) which we feel are more suitable and related more to what we want to relate our own video to.


We then looked at Pink's video, 'Perfect' and we thought this was a really good video. We liked the use of the unusual storyline and we also think the lyrics could be interpreted in a number of different ways.


This is another video of Pink's that we like, called 'Just like a pill'. The lyrics can again be interpreted in many different ways, but the song and video are very gloomy, depressing, dark and deep which as a group we think is very effective for a good video and something out of the ordinary.


Adele's 'Rolling in the Deep' video is another very good example of real media to look at when making ideas for our own video. We like the different use of shots in this, especially the use of close up shots of Adele's face when she is looking sad and lonely. The beat of the song is not too fast which is something we will keep in mind when choosing our video as it will allow us to portray our story much slower and clearer.



Adele's video, 'Someone Like You' is a very effective video and as a group this is one of our favourite ones. We really like the use of the black and white effect and think this dramatizes the tone of the video, emphasising on depression, loneliness, and sadness.



'If I Were a Boy' by Beyonce is a video which is useful to look at. We did like this and again the use of the black and white was good, however we felt the story line was a bit too 'typical' of a man and a woman falling out of love, and so in this way we would not want to base our video around this, however the effects and editing used in this is very useful to look at when finding ideas for our own video.


Rihanna's 'Take a Bow' was a good video to look at to see how sadness, frustration, and feeling hurt can be portrayed and how to capture it properly. We as a group liked the slow beat and pace of this song and felt it was effective to portray a story in this way, especially one which is pessemistic and down beat, and again we would want to think about including this in our own video.

Basic Video Research

Firstly we decided to go on to Youtube and search famous music videos in order to see what ideas we could gain from looking at conventions of real media, and understanding how we can interpret this into our own video. From there we will start to be more specific in our research.


We decided to look at the video 'Thriller' as it is one of the most famous music videos of all time. This is due to it's exstensive coreography, make-up and clothing, the well known artist, and the contraversial storyline. Of course, this video is too large scale, and cost a lot of money to make, which is something we can not do. However it is a good example to use to help us focus more on the genre we want.


We then decided to look at a completely different type of video, and watched 'I Gotta Feeling' by the Black Eyed Peas. We thought about having a party type of music video like this, where there are no actors and actresses, and we host a party and film people in a natural setting, and have people playing the part of the band. However we realised this would be much too hard as we could not control factors such as lighting, the state of the scene, how people in the video would behave, as well as it being extremelty hard to find a venue which would be suitable to use. We did like this idea however there were many factors leading us to it being too difficult so therefore decided to abandon this idea.


We then went down a completely different train of thought and looked at a video which portrayed much more of a story than focusing on the artist themselves. This video is slightly more depressing and this is something as a group we would like to incoorporate and include in our own video as this is different from a typical 'love story' with a downbeat tone throughout, however leads to a happy ending.


This video is focusing more on what we would think we would like to base our music video around. This story is focusing on the breaking up of a family, and how every character is effected by the breaking of a family. We as a group like the tone of Pink's songs and think that she portrays the types of stories, and we would like to focus more on Pink's songs.

Introduction to A2 Media

This year I will be producing a music video, a CD cover and a magazine advert for my A2 media coursework. I will be completing this project along with two other students in my class, and we will work in a group to create the best possible product. I will be using blogger to plan, showcase, and evaluate my work throughout the year. It will be regularly updated, finishing with my final products.