Costume Ideas and Designs

Today I began collating idea's of the type of costume designs that will suit my production correctly. I put in some further research into the type of style that Olly Murs uses himself and into similar artists  and the genre of music as a whole, including fans. The look Olly attempts to achieve is very much a classy gentlemanly type look, yet keeps his appearance modern and very stylish. This type of look includes shirts, ties, waistcoats, trousers and chinos.

Something that is very apparent within Olly Murs's videos and his public apperances is the use of hats, he often tends to wear hats as part of his look and it has become a very much iconic look for him. I have collated a collection of pictures that show Olly wearing hats, this has been implemented in the form of a slideshowm, shown below.

You can also find my main role candidate sporting some of the costumes in the pictures below, I believe that the type of style I am aiming for to match the genre of music is something that will definitely be achieved with the candidate and costume design I have used.

Casting Selection

Having completed my research and final auditions for the role of Olly Murs in my music video I have selected Dean Houghton to play the role of Olly. Having put a lot of time and thought into my selection I decided to opt with Dean for a number of reasons.

Deans vast experience within media and within performing aswell as producing music videos is something that I feel will help myself in achieving the highest quality of production possible. He is also a very enthusiastic and bubbly person as shown not only through the audition video but in the picture to the right. He is a very versatile personality and can adjust to suit different songs and peaks of a song, his confidence is something that will be key in achieving the cheeky chappy attitude that Olly Murs gives off, he is also a huge fan of Olly himself and very much familiar with Olly's album and the song itself in What A Buzz.

Now that we have selected our candidate we can now begin to look towards filming and getting on with the later aspects of the production. Having done this type of research to achieve the correct Cast for Olly Murs I feel much more confident in myself as I know that I have the right actor for the job. I will begin to look into costumes and ideas for different outfits that can be used for my production.

Main Character - Casting Candidates and Auditions

Main Character Role:

Candidate #1 - Deano Houghton
Firstly, for the main role within my production is Dean Houghton. Like my other candidates, I also have close links with Dean through A2 Media Studies. Dean is well known for being a very confident figure, with his role as head-boy of Kettering Buccleuch Academy to back this up, as well as playing roles in a number of amateur media productions, and directing many others. Dean's clear passion for media is something that he hopes to continue on into his University days and beyond. I believe that the confidence he shows in front of the camera is something that will be vital during certain types of shots such as the lip-sync shots. More on Dean Houghton is explained and analysed during the interview video shown below.

Candidate #2 - Joe Cassidy

Firstly is Joe Cassidy, a fellow A2 Media Studies student as well as a close friend, I have spent a lot of time in Joe's company. I have come to know of his confident nature and his love for media. Having worked extremely close to Joe during AS Media Studies during the time we produced our Horror Film Opening we have come to understand the way in which we both work. This is something that could play an important part in the success of the music video. Being able to communicate and organise the production correctly with my cast is something that I felt helped towards the previous success I had within media and I still feel to this day is hugely important. The video below gives a more in-depth context of Joe as a person, as well as an actor.

Risk Assesment

I have spent the last couple of hours completing an in-depth Risk Assessment. This is for all of our production that will take place on an unspecified as of yet date in January. This document will help us to ensure and maintain that all of our production remains safe and danger free. I had to consider a number of different aspects when completing this Risk Assessment, things such as occurrence probality, how severe the risk is, this amongst a number of different aspects.

Below is what I produced this evening:

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I feel that producing the Risk Assessment has put the myself as well as the cast at rest and makes the whole production that little bit safer. It means that we don't have to have any worries about the health and safety of the crew when filming on location, which will make the whole production run just that little bit more smoothly. Overall I feel I am growing increasingly closer to reaching a point where I are ready to film, I have one final task to complete before I will be able to move onto filming. Last but not least is a filming schedule, I am unable to do this at the moment as we don't have a specified date for filming until earlier than January.

Location Research and Planning

Today I began considering locations for the production, I knew from the off that I want to focus my production very close suited to the genre and style of music Olly Murs produce, a very stylish and modern feel. Knowing this I began looking over all of their video's, I also used Spotify's 'Similar Artist Search' tool in order to find a list of similar artists, who of which I viewed their music video's to try and find inspiration on location. The screenshot below shows me viewing Conor Maynard's music video for 'Can't Say No' which was produced in back in 2011. I found this good inspiration due to it's use of modern, fresh locations such as the shots inside the party.

Knowing the locations I had in mind I set out in task of collecting pictures and recording's of these locations, to my surprise along my walk I came across a number of other locations that I believe would be perfect for my production, these pictures are shown below -

 

In the meantime I am going to continue to collect images and recordings of the type of locations I can find, putting them into a video to showcase them, these will be found in a later post. I believe that having done this task I have put myself in a stronger position in terms of locations for my production as I now have a clearer understanding of where I can film and the types of shots available to myself.

Planning Shots IC

I have spent this afternoon going through Spotify and finding similar artists and artists and bands who have similar music style to Olly Murs. By doing this I have created a formative list of bands who I believe I can use as inspiration. Once I had created the list shown to the right, I then searched thoroughly on Youtube, finding all the different music video's that they have created in the past and looking at different shots, angles, editing and different techniques they have used in order to create a successful music video.

 I have downloaded the different clips that I believe I can use for ideas, to re-create or even for inspiration in my production and collated them into a compilation of clip.

I believe by creating this video I have helped myself to gain a clear understanding of the genre Pop as a whole and I am not given a variety of different ideas and inspiration for my production. I believe this will help my production suit the style and genre of music and will increase my standard of production and overall grade in general. I will now go on to come up with a plan of shots and look to storyboard them in the near future.

Animatic Storyboard IC

Now that I have fully completed my paper copy of my Storyboard I believe that I am in a suitable position to move onto my digital version of a storyboard, animatic storyboard. This is when you take pictures of the sketches you created for your paper storyboard, put them in order on an editing software such as Sony Vegas 7, overlay music and create a more realistic feel for the storyboard by making it into a sketched music video. I have done this by downloading my MP3 of 'What A Buzz' by Olly Murs from iTunes and using Sony Vegas 7 to edit together my pictures and music, I then used the simple 'Upload To Youtube' button that is part of the Sony Vegas 7 software and embedded it from there, this is shown below -


I believe that having created this Animatic Storyboard it has put me in a much stronger situation as I now know what I have to do in order to create a high quality production for my music video. Creating this Animatic has allowed me to visualise the actual production and notice any problems I would face in creating the video, I have most become aware of the amount of editing that will come with this music video and the different shot ideas I wish to include, this is something that I am fairly inexperience with as last year a lot of the editing was passed over to the strongest editor of the group meaning I haven't had a lot of time editing and the quality of my edits won't be as strong as others. This is something I aim to overcome with lots of practice of the coming months as I aim to perfect my music video and the editing that comes with this. The next step for me is the Location research and planning, I will be looking into suitable locations and finding places that I believe go well with my genre of music.

Storyboard IC

I have been collating a list of shots I plan to use in my final production of a music video for 'What A Buzz' by Olly Murs. Having come up with a fairly intensive list of shots I wish to use I believe I am at a good position to start Storyboarding my ideas to give me a clearer idea of what my final production will look like. Obviously this is a very very basic view of what my production will appear as but it helps for me to visualize the vision I have for my music video and also notice anything that would or wouldn't work for my Indie Rock genre music video. Below is the music video ideas I have for my production.



Having created this storyboard I believe that I am now beginning to move forward towards a good position in which I can begin shooting for my music video. However I do believe that I have a long way still to go before I can start the production phase of my music video. The next step of my pre-production would have to be to advance this storyboard concept and move on to creating an animatic version of this storyboard, overlaying music to create an even more advanced version of this storyboard and give me a further vision of what I am aiming to create.