Props (K.P)

Here are some of the props that we will be using throughout our music video which have been photographed by Keira Pain. 

These are some images of the props that we will be using throughout our music video. The chocolate spread sandwich is the first main prop that you will see in our music video. It is seen in the opening of the video as you are introduced to a school child who is vulnerable and isolated while eating his lunch in the school toilets.

The skateboard will be used for the bully to ride around on in school, creating a feel of dominance as he is allowed to get with breaking the rules in school. The skateboard will also be used for the bully to ride on past the vulnerable child so that the bully can push him into the wall.

The hat is the main prop that is featured in our video and it will also have a large significance throughout. The bully will be the owner of the hat and he will wear it while bullying the vulnerable school child. Although when this child starts to rebel, he will steal the hat off of the bully, representing how the child has stolen the power and confidence off of the bully. Which is reflected when the bully is seen to be isolated in the toilets, instead of the young vulnerable child. The boy who was being bullied is then filmed giving the hat back to the bully, showing that he is forgiving him and giving him his confidence and happiness back.

Cast Shots (J.H)

These are all of the actors that we have decided to cast for our music video, they are all students of the school and of a similar age group. We have chosen pupils that we know and/or study drama at GCSE level. Here we have got Jess to take photos of each actor, me and Keira included, to display on our blogs.

The Script (J.P)

I decided that, even though there is no dialogue through out our video as there will be music over the top of it, a script needed to be made. I believe that we were in need of a script just so that we know what is happening and when, the script explains our story board in further detail and helps to make sense of our ideas.


1. Birds eye view School – boys toilets - cubicle

A grubby, unpleasant toilet with graffiti on the walls. Boy is in school uniform.

The young vulnerable boy is sitting in the cubicle eating his lunch as he sits there and cries.

2. Point of view - moments later

A shot looking down on the boys lap as you focus on self-harm scars on his arms, he then pulls his jumper down to cover them from himself.

3. High angle shot - outside of the cubicle

Shot from outside the cubicle, showing the rest of the toilet block.

The bullies have entered the toilet block and have realised who is in the cubicle, they then start kicking on the door and shouting abuse. 

4. Low angle shot - moments later

Shot of the bullies kicking on the door.

Low angled shot of the bullies kicking on the door with the sinks in the background. Looks intimidating.

5. Close up - moments later

A close up of the boys face as he cries, catching a shot of a tear running down his face.

6. High angle shot - flashback

Last shot fades into this shot to represent a flashback. Flashback scenes are also in black and white.

Numerous school children line the corridors as the young vulnerable child walks through; they all then push him back and forth in a ‘pinball’ motion.

7. Long shot/low angle - flashback

Still in the flashback scenes.

Bully is on his skateboard and is skating through the corridors.

8. High angle shot – flashback

Still flashback.

Bully skates past two girls who are his friends, they encourage him in his antics by high fiving him and he continues to skate past.

9. Two person shot – flashback

Still flashback.

Bully skates through a door while the vulnerable child walks through the door, towards him. The bully sees him and then pushes him into the wall as he skates past.

10. High angle shot/long shot - flashback

Still flashback.

Shot of a class in a classroom, the bully sits at the back while the vulnerable child is seated in the front. The bully and his friends then collaborate and laugh as the bully screws up a sheet of paper and throws it at the vulnerable child.

11. Extreme long shot - flashback

Still flash back.

Everyone is on the school field, the bully is with all his friends and the vulnerable child is on his own, the bully then kicks the ball at the young child and they all laugh at him.

12. Close up – reality

Back to reality in the toilet cubicle, the young boy is looking really depressed.

Shot of the young boy back in reality in the toilet cubicle, he is crying and looking depressed from the flashbacks of being bullied.

13. Medium/long shot – moments later

Bullies start harassing the young boy.

The main bully starts kicking and shouting on the cubicle door.

14. Close up – moments later

Close up of the boy’s expression

Close up of the young boys face showing a very angry expression as he realises he can’t take any more abuse.

15. Over shoulder shot – moments later

An over shoulder shot, looking over the bully’s shoulder, at the young boy.

The young boy barges out of the toilet cubicle and pushes past the bullies.

16. Group shot – moments later

Continuing on from the last shot.

A shot capturing the young boy barging past the group of bullies.

17. Long shot at eye level – moments later

Shot of the corridor that leads to the toilets.

A shot of the boy running through the corridor, away from the toilets and towards the camera.

18. Close up

Close up of a hand opening a door.

Shot of the young boys hand grabbing the door handle and running into a classroom to get away from everyone.

19. Long shot – moments later

The young boy is now in an empty classroom.

Shot of the young boy in a empty classroom, he runs to a table/chair and kicks it over in anger and frustration.

20. Panning shot – later on

Shot on the school field.

The young boy runs out on the school field and runs towards a group of bullies, who have found another victim, the young boy has clearly had enough of them.

21. Long shot – moments later

Still on the field, running towards the bullies.

Shot of the young boy taking his anger out and pushing the bully over.

22. Group shot – moments later

After the young boy pushes the bully over, the other bully victims come together to show they are no longer afraid.

After seeing the young boy face up to the bully, the other victims take strength from him and show encouragement.

23. Bids eye view – days later

The video takes a full circle and we are taken back to the toilet cubicle.

A shot looking over the cubicle door, showing a familiar looking person sitting on the toilet seat.

24. Medium shot – moments later

Still in the cubicle.

We see who is sitting in the cubicle and we find out that the former bully is now the isolated one sitting alone.

During Filming (K.P)

To be able to film our music video, we had to ask for permission to be able to film in the boys toilets, the only time that we were able to do this was after school after the cleaners had finished working. Keira then took 'behind the scenes' photographs for us all to include on our blogs. 

Here is a shot of Jess setting up the tripod so that she could film the scene where Dan, the bully, is seen skating through the corridors and then pushing over Aaron, the young vulnerable child.

This is just an action shot of Dan skating towards the camera as we shot different angles of him skating.

This is a shot of Jess filming as I directed Aaron on what type of shot we wanted and how we wanted him to react after being pushed in  to the wall.

The Full Story Board (J.H)

This is the full story board that was drawn up by Jess, with a little help off me to decide what needed to be drawn and written.

The 6 Main Shots (J.P)

This is a rough draft of a story board that I have drawn up, it only features the main 6 shots with a bit of an explanation underneath. I have done this so that we can get a rough idea of the main scenes that we are going to have in the video, as a group, we all decided to draw our own rough story board and now that we know the main shots, we can now work around this to create a more detailed story board. 

The Narrative (J.P)

For our music video, we have decided that we would like a hard hitting narrative behind Katy Perry's 'Roar', included a young boy who is going through a difficult time in school as he is being bullied. We have decided to go along with this type of narrative as it goes well with the song and the meaning behind it.

'I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath'

Lyrics such as this shows how the young vulnerable boy isn't telling anyone about what he is going through and that he is keeping it all locked up inside.

'I am the champion and you're going to hear me roar'

These lyrics then represent how the young boy has taken too much, all of the anger that he has kept inside is going to explode. 

We have planned that the music video will start with a shot of the young boy in a toilet cubicle, eating his lunch all on his own, the cubicle represents the isolation that the boy is experiencing as he is being bullied. The bully's will then find out that the boy is in the cubicle and they will harass him by kicking on the door and shouting at him. The young boy will then have numerous flashbacks of times where he has been bullied. The flash backs will be represented by fading into shots of a different colour. After the boy comes back to reality he then decides that he cant take any more, he gets extremely angry in the toilets and then barges out to face everyone. After overcoming his fear, the music video comes back in a full circle so that the ending shot is back in the toilet cubicle, except this time, its the former bully who is eating his lunch all alone. 

David Guetta 'Titanium' Analysis (J.P)

Today I have decided to do an analysis on David Guetta's 'Titanium' music video. I have decided to look into this particular song as it has a similar narrative to the one that my group would like to make to accompany Katy Perry's 'Roar'. The theme of isolation is shown throughout the whole 'Titanium' video, so I thought that it would be good to look into for some inspiration as we would like to include a lot of isolation within our music video.

Genre
Pop

Audience 
Both genders due to the fact that it is a male DJ with a main male character but there is a female singer. There is a vast audience range as the DJ is a very popular and one of the best in the world. I would say that it appeals to young teenagers most as the DJ creates chart music.

Narrative
There is a narrative throughout the music video of a young isolated boy who is made outcast and then chased and hunted down by police. The young boy starts off in a school where all the corridors are trashed and ruined, you then see a teacher who is on the phone (possibly calling the police) who then shuts the door so that the boy cant see her. The young boy then runs out of school and cycles, at an incredible speed, away from the school and through multiple streets, the speed in which the boy is going out, gives you a suspicion that something is not quite normal about this boy. He then ends up at, what might be his house, when he sees on the telly, a news broadcast which says 'a supernatural occurrence at a local school'. after seeing this he then rushes to pack a bad, in this time you then see people creeping around his house and looking through the windows. The young boy then rushes into the kitchen and towards to the back door which wont't open, this is when the police burst through the door, armed with guns. You then see the young boy struggling with the door, you then get shown the boy using some sort of supernatural force to make the keys fly into his hand, this is when you get more hints for you to believe that the boy is not normal. The police then burst into a room and find teddy bears suspended in mid air, constantly rotating, giving more of an insight to the supernatural abilities of the boy. The young boy then runs into the forest to get away from the police, he is then found by them when it goes dark, you see him running through the trees being chased by police with torches and guns. He is then circled by multiple officers and police cars, with loads of guns pointing at him. The boy then crouches in a ball on the floor and explodes, flowing debris and all the officers into the air.

Representation And Analysis
To show the use of shots that add up to the representation, I have decided to include a few gifs (moving images) in my essay.

Throughout the music video, the young boy is represented as an isolated child, but is also shown to be supernatural and out of this world. This is all represented by close ups of the young boy with his head in his hands and then close ups of all the supernatural elements that are included in the music video.

Here are some shots that represent the isolation that is shown throughout the video, close ups of he boy with his head in his hands and then the loneliness of him being the only child in a destroyed school corridor. This all shows that he is on his on his own with no one to help him.

Here is more evidence of the isolation that is shown through out the video. As the young boy is walking through the corridor, a teacher is shown to be on the phone, which we find out later on is the police, she then sees the boy and then shuts the door on him so that he cannot see her, even though he seems rather harmless. 

There is also a lot of supernatural elements towards the end of the video which proves to us that the boy isn't quite normal and explains why he might have been made to be isolated.

Here you can see the boy, after he struggles with the door, using supernatural powers to get hold of the door keys. This is shown with close ups of the boys face and close ups of the keys moving and then flying into the boys hands. 

There is also more supernatural elements shown here the boy threw some soft toys into the air while packing but we didn't see them land at all. Then later on when the police go into his bedroom, we see that the soft toys didn't land and that they have been left suspended in the air, slowly rotating. 

Just before the young boy shows us how big his supernatural ability is, we see more shots that prove the large isolation that the boy is feeling. He is being chased through the woods by the police when a police officer kicks him, a small vulnerable child, to the floor and then aims a gun in his face. 

He then shows us how vast his supernatural skills are when he is isolated and confined by the police and then crouches in a ball and explodes. This just shows and reflects what can happen when a child is bullied and outcasted, they can keep it all inside and let it build up until they explode, this is what we would like to try and get across in our music video.

Requesting Permission (J.P)

Before mind-mapping ideas for our music video, I have decided to ask the artist, Katy Perry, for permission to use her track for our A level work. I decided to use a popular social networking site to request permission, so I used Twitter.

This is the tweet that i sent to Katy Perry, requesting permission to use 'Roar' for our A levels. I doubt that she will reply, but if she does then I will also display the screen shot of her reply to us.

Research Into The Decided Song (J.P)

After looking at the questionnaire results, we have decided that we would like to pick a chart song, as that is what is more popular within our target audience, which we have decided will be people aged between 12 - 16. We have also decided that the song we will pick, will be by a well known artist, as they will have a lot bigger fan base than someone who is new in the music industry.

As a group, we have decided that we will pick one of Katy Perry's songs that has been released from her new album, we have decided to choose her as she is a very well known and popular artist who has had a lot of number one hits in the charts, she also sings quite influential songs that have a strong meaning behind them, we want a hard hitting song so that we can create a meaningful narrative to go with it.

After looking into Katy Perry's recent singles, we have chosen to use her new song 'Roar'. This song was number one in the charts, meaning that it was her fourth number one in the UK charts and her eighth number one in the US charts. As it stands now, 'Roar' is currently seventh in the charts after being in there for nine weeks. Her new album 'Prism' is also currently second in the official top 40 album charts.

After doing this research into the artists, I have realised that she is a very well known artist and that her song would be a good one to choose to create a video too as she has a huge fan base. Her fan base is now so huge that she has now overtaken Justin Bieber on twitter with her amount of followers, she is now the most followed person on twitter and is thought to be the most likely person to achieve 50 million followers. 

After looking into the artists singles and popularity, I have decided to take a look into her music video for her hit single 'Roar'. 

The first video to be produced and displayed is not the main music video for the song. She first released a lyric video as a teaser for the final music video that everyone was waiting for and anticipating. The lyric video contained shots of Katy Perry in her everyday life as she was texting her friends in a group conversation. The conversation included the lyrics for her song with 'Emoji's' replacing a lot of the words.

After the lyric music video was played for a few weeks, the well waited for video was then released, a video of Katy Perry in the jungle, playing with wild animals. The music video represented the lyrics well as it showed a vulnerable Katy Perry being dominated by a man while they were in the jungle.

The music video starts off with some high tech editing of the jungle in animation, looking slightly cartoony, with the words 'Roar' displayed across the screen which gets ripped to reveal tiger stirpes, the animation then gets faded out into reality.

The man was then attacked by a lion and Katy Perry was left to defend herself in the jungle, she then matures and stands up for herself amongst all the wild animals and problems that she has to face while being stranded in the jungle. 

I have looked into the video in slight detail to get some idea about what the lyrics mean to the artist, I also looked into what she did within the music video so that ours could be completely original and nothing to do with what the artists has already done.

In the group, we have decided that we would like to create a hard hitting narrative to the track, we think that it would be good to create the narrative based on a school child being bullied. We will brainstorm ideas together to try and create a narrative. We came up with this idea after looking into the 'Hypodermic Syringe Theory', hoping to be able to include a child being bullied and then fighting back, hoping to inspire other bullied children into fighting their fears.

Mind map (J.P)

                               

This is a mind map that I drew up to map out all of the groups ideas about our narrative for Katy Perry's 'Roar'. We have definitely decided to go along with the idea of a young school child being bullied and then exploding within to fight for himself. 

Research Into Different Record Labels (J.P)

A record label is a type of branding or trademark that is linked to the marketing of music artists and their products, such as their actual songs, music videos, albums and tours. The better the record label that the artist manages to get, the better the production, manufacture and distribution, they will also get better funding.

Right now, there are two different types of record labels; major labels and independent labels.

Major Record Labels

Major record labels have a lot of money and power to make themselves a good reputation in the industry. They are able to spend a lot of money into the promotion of their artists so that they can release albums successfully. They use a lot of digital media to promote all of their artists, radio and TV being among them. They also use magazines and newspapers to promote artists, so that people who prefer reading can see the artists. Showing that they cover a lot of different media so that they can reach out to a vast audience.

There are a few disadvantages to belonging to a major record label, a few artists believe that they rip off their artists with unfair deals, rewarding the the business team more than the artist who created the music. They are also known for promoting unoriginal music so that it is safer for them, they don't like taking risks with someone unique and different incase the audience isn't as big and successful as mainstream music.

For 2013, there are three main Major Record Labels that have dominated the music industry, them three being 'Universal Music Group', 'Sony Music Entertainment' and 'Warner Music Group'.

Independent Record Labels

Independent record labels (indie) work in a very different way to the major record labels. Independent labels work very closely with all of their artists to help develop and promote their music, helping the artists to create the track that they had in their mind. This is very different and unlike major labels who are run by business executives, only thinking about the profit and not the thoughts of the artists.

The downsides of independent companies is that only recently have music consumers been recognising how much independent companies do for their artists. Independent companies also don't have as much money to fund their artists as major labels do, which will obviously effect how the audience of the artists music, due to not being as advertised as other artists. 

Questionnaire (J.H)

Here is the answers from our questionnaire, we decided to create one so that we could gather information to see what the most popular codes an conventions are for modern music videos. 

We have found out that are target audience is young females from the age of 12 to 16, but I thing that 17 to 25 year olds could also be included. We have also found from our research that people prefer the pop genre, this will be a big influence on what track to use as it will be more appealing to our target audience, I also think that pop is the most liked genre as that is the main focus in recent chart music. 

We have also found out that people prefer to see a live performance within a music video instead of a narrative, I think that we will decide to go against this and create a narrative. We will do this as we will like to create a hard hitting story within our music video, this will appeal to the audience more and give a bit of a moral to the songs story.