Production Schedule

This is a copy of the production schedule that both me and my partner Bethan and our media teacher have agreed on. We aim to stick to this schedule as much as possible and only go off schedule if it is absolutely necessary. Due to Bethan's weekend job, and the fact that our other actress is still in school from 9 till 3, we have little time in which we can film.
We plan to film the bulk of our video on the weekend of the 6th October. When we have got our feedback from our first cut we plan to re-film over the October half-term, this means that we will all be free as we don't have school and Joe has the week off work. 
We also green-screened the song on Wednesdays lesson, so we have that completed as we need to edit in Bethans lip-syncing onto some parts of the video, which means we can save that for a later date. The boxes coloured green are things that we have done so far.

Animatic

This is our animatic, which shows what we intend to do with our production. When we showed it to our teacher she said we had to extend our shots for the end train scene as it we were spending to long on one shot. We could extend the train scene by having a shot where Beth and Libby are walking into the train station, we could then have a shot of them sitting at the station. We could also do a close up of Libby cuddled up to Bethan, and holding the teddy bear.

Idea Storyboard

We focused on getting our storyboard finished in our Wednesday lesson, and then once we had finished getting our images in the right order, we took a photograph of all them individually which we will then re-size and put together to create our animatic.

1. The Camera starts blurry

2. Eventually it comes into focus and we see a little girl looking out a window

3. Her big sister comes up behind her

4. The big sister puts her arm on the little sister

5. They go to hug

6. They hug

7. The older sister lip-sinc the line 'When all those shadows almost killed your light'.

8.The little sister puts her head on her sisters shoulder

9. The younger sister lifts her head to look at her older sister

10. The little sister lip-sinc part of the line 'Don't leave me here alone'.

11. The older sister then lip-sinc 'But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight'.

12. The little sister goes to the older sisters bedroom door.

13. There is a close up of the sister opening the door

14. She goes inside the room.

15. She gets into the bed with her sister

16. Her sister reads her a book, close up of the book

 17. The sister smiles as she falls asleep

18. Close up of the sister asleep

19. The older sister lip-sings 'You and I'll be safe and sound'

20. The parents are arguing

21. The parents are in focus, the children aren't.

22. The children come into focus

23. The sister lip-sinc 'Don't you dare'

24. The garden changes from being normal...



25. ...To being dead and decaying

26. The parents argue again

27. Split screen of the parents arguing and the older sister plaiting the little sisters hair

28. The younger sister cries

29. The older sister goes to hug her younger sister

30. They hug

31. The older sister covers her sisters ears

32. The older sister lip-sinc 'Even when musics gone, gone'

33. The older sister lip-sinc 'Just close your eyes'

34. The sun sets

35. The older sister is reading to the little sister

36. She gives her a teddy bear

37. The younger sister hugs it

38. The sun rises

39. The older sister lip-sinc 'You and I'll be safe and sound"

40. Flashback in black and white to a happy memory

41.  Flashback in black and white to a happy memory

42.  Flashback in black and white to a happy memory

43. The sisters pack

44. They run away

45. They are sitting at a train station

46. The train pulls away

47. The book is shown with the words 'Happily ever after' written in it

48. The book closes

Pitch

This is the pitch we showed to our class for our music video. Bethan and I have decided to do Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift.

We decided to include Hunger Games fans as our intended audience as this song features on the soundtrack, this also opened up the song to the male audience as they would be interested in the Hunger Games as well as females. Our genre is country and we will use previous Taylor Swift video's such as White Horse for inspiration in our video, we will also use other singers such as Colbie Caillat as she is also a country singer and has worked with Taylor Swift in the past. Caillat's song Bubbly was used as an image for our visual style as the shots of her in the field would be a good idea for our video as the colours used aren't that bright which would go with our colour scheme. We used Bubbly again for the sound style as this is very much like Taylor Swift, it is slow and mostly guitar based, we also used Avril Lavigne's Wish You Were Here as this involves the sadness to which we are working with in Safe and Sound.

Background Information on the Song

Safe & Sound" is a song by Taylor Swift featuring country/folk duo The Civil Wars, and a promotional single from the soundtrack for the 2012 film, The Hunger Games. Safe and Sound was written by both Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars. The song also went platinum in the USA with over 1,000,000 sales.

Premier of the Single and the Music Video

Swift premiered the song via Twitter. Even before the release of the song, Swift had tweeted "Something I've been VERY excited about for a VERY long time is going to be happening VERY soon (and I'm not referring to Christmas)," later adding: "And this is it, the big surprise... Go get it!". The day of the release date (December 23rd 2011), Swift tweeted the link to the song, which is being sold exclusively on iTunes.
Not long after tweeting the link to the song, "Safe & Sound" became the top-trending topic on Twitter in the US and number two worldwide.
The song's music video, which is directed by Philip Andelman, premiered on February 13, 2012 at 7:54 p.m. ET on MTV.The video features Swift, walking barefoot through a forest in Watertown, Tennessee, wearing a long white gown. In between scenes, The Civil Wars are seen inside a cottage house sitting in front of a fireplace as they sing along to the song.

Critical reception

Amy Sciarretto of Pop Crush said the song is "breathy, ethereal and heady, not frothy and lite. Swift writes her confessional and heartfelt songs for a young audience, but here, she's exploring her dark side. The song's twangy guitars, and the icy, layered vocals make it sound like it could be sung around a campfire in the woods when you are telling scary stories that aren't exactly fake."Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone gave the song four out of five stars, calling it Swift's "prettiest ballad."

Chart performance

The song entered the Billboard Hot Digital Songs tally at number 19 with 136,000 sold in two days.The song debuted at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100. In its second week it dropped to number 31.
After the release of the song's music video, it re-entered the Hot 100 at number 56. Prior from the released of the album, the song rebounds from number 71 to number 35 in its 11th week. As of April 2012, the song has sold more than a million copies in the United States.
"Safe & Sound" also appeared in some countries outside the U.S. The song peaked in Canada at number thirty-one, in Australia at number thirty-eight, and in UK at number sixty-seven. "Safe & Sound" attained its highest position worldwide in New Zealand at number eleven.

Music Video Song Choice

I am working with Bethan and together we initially decided to use Mary's Song by Taylor Swift but after trying to plan out what we would do, we decided that it would be to difficult. This was because we couldn't get enough actors or have the timing necessary to film together so we had to scrap the song. Eventually we decided on Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift, this was an easier song to do, as unlike her other songs it isn't a love song or about a break up. After going through our ideas and initial thoughts on the song we decided to do a broken family story, this was more plausible as we needed fewer actors. Our actors now consist of my mother, Joe, my next-door neighbours child Libby and Bethan. My mum and Joe will be playing the mum and dad Libby and Bethan will be playing the sisters who will run away. We also decided to use black and white as our colour scheme but we will also use some saturated colour for the flashbacks we intend to have in our production

The Audience

The audience for our film is aimed primarily at fans of Taylor Swift, because she sings about relationships and is a young female, the audience will be female dominated. However due to the fact that the song is on the Hunger Games soundtrack and is featured in the film, the song might appeal to those who like the film. This would bring in a male audience as the film would apeal to them due to the violence.
The audience will be young as an older audience might not know who Taylor Swift is or have seen the Hunger Games. So our audience demegraphic is teenagers and young adults (13 - 22).

Analysis of a Professional Music Video

This is my analysis of a professional music video, I chose to so Taylor Swift's 'The Story of Us'. I chose this song because it belongs to the same genre and artist that our chosen song for our music video does.

The Story of Us is a song which is typical both to her genre (country) and her other songs which are usually about relationship whether it be breaking up or in love. The Story of Us is about a couple falling out of love and avoiding each other, however the girl clearly has feelings for the guy which is put across in the lyrics. Taylor Swift doesn't use dance routines much in her videos as she focus' more on the story line in her lyrics then on dancing.

The Story of Us clearly show a link between the video and the lyrics as it has been filmed in a library and books are constantly being referred to. At the very start of the video we see a book entitled The Story of Us, which is what the couple wanted to have at the start, the lyrics "I used to think one day I'd tell the story of us.." clearly show this.

There are lots of close-ups of Taylor Swift during the video which conforms to Goodwin's characteristics. Also conforming to Goodwin's characteristics is the fact that Taylor is lip syncing the song. The camera cuts between 'story' Taylor and 'lip syncing' Taylor, this is so the audience get to see her acting out what has happened and then now that the relationship is over.

The framing of the shots in the video shows Taylor surrounded by books, once again emphasizing the fact that the relationship is just a story now. When the couple are happily together they are framed to the left, this could be because this is the past and just a memory. There is also the fact that as the relationship progresses they are separated by things such as books, this acts as a divide to which they cannot cross.

Taylor is wearing a school girl uniform when lip syncing and regular casual clothes whilst acting, this is to distinguish the difference between the singing and acting. Taylor is never put in revealing clothes, which some female singers like to do such as Britney Spears, this is to keep with her image of the innocent but beautiful country singer.

Skills Evaluation for the Foundation Production

Evaluating the foundation production

I found creating the blog to be relatively easy; updating the blog was harder because I had problems with my internet connection at home so I was only able to update the blog at school. The way I uploaded the pictures made them appear cramped which made it difficult to see what was in them. I never uploaded the animatic of the storyboard because I couldn’t find the video; I should have uploaded it as soon as I had the video. I didn’t include hyperlinks to film extracts because I didn’t know what films would fit the production.

I am confident using the camera controls; however I wasn’t in control of the camera during shooting for the production. I found uploading the videos from the camera was easy as I knew how to work the programs. After the filming I realised that we hadn’t gone for many shots which grab attention, the meant we couldn’t get a higher grade. We also could have used more dramatic camera angles to add effect to the overall production. I also found the even though we learned the skills for example match-on-action we didn’t actually use them.

Once I knew where everything was in Premier I found using it was tricky but manageable. Importing and exporting videos and images were easy, but the titles we used were slightly harder because we needed them to be in the correct file format. We were experimental with our titles and captions this was because we created our titles in fireworks which allowed us to add images with the text. Through the editing we were able to establish the contrast between past and future; this was done but the cuts to the school photo. We used lots of transitions to help the production feel sadder; however it also made it less dramatic which we didn’t want. The son choice changes a lot from the start as we were originally going to use Ed Sheeran’s ‘A Team’, but due to copyright we had Bethan sing the song. However after we tried Bethan’s version we decided to scrap the song all together, we then decided to use the piano score from Evanescence’s ‘My Immortal’. This song also helped create a sad mood as the piano is soft and haunting. When it comes to framing we used conventional and safe framing, thinking back I realise that we should have been more adventurous with the framing. The voice over should have been redone as there is a buzzing sound which can be distracting.

The plot and script of our production of our production doesn’t have a lot of originality, this is because we didn’t really think about being original when planning the production. The production does have some form of a twist as the audience what happened to the girl which lead her to being killed. We used different locations to establish a sense of place, so the link between past and present is there. Props were used to establish the murder weapon and also to help with stereotyping.

We used stereotypes in the production so we could easily get across that the murderer is a delinquent, which is achieved by the hoodie and the cigarette. To represent the age of the murder we used the hoodie, as this is generally associated with young people. We used short, revealing clothes to represent the age of the girl, these clothes make her seem young and more like prostitute.

A2 Production Planning

For our A2 production I am working with Bethan Harvey and we are going to do a music video for Taylor Swift's 'Safe and Sound'.
For the planning stages we will include posts about:
AS Skills Checklist
Music Video Analysis
Annotated Song Lyrics
Production Pitch
Animatic/Storyboard
Recce Shots
Research into Song
Audience Profile