Initial group planning ideas - Miss Georgiou

My group consists of 4 people;

• Myself
• Sophie Elliott
• Lucy Nottage
• Shaun Mcfarlane

In our first meeting we discussed what artist and song we would use from our chosen genre, we had many different suggestions such as Sam Smith, Lana Del Rey, Ed Sheeran etc; however we finally came to a decision of Paloma Faith - Only Love Can Hurt Like This. We came to this decision because we felt that it would be a easy song to reinvent as the lyrics had deeper connotations and is suitable to the soul genre. The lyrics to the song are;

I tell myself it don't mean a thing,
And what we got, got no hold on me
But when you're not there,
I just crumble.

I tell myself I don't care that much,
But I feel like I'd die till I feel your touch.

Only love
Only love can hurt like this
Only love can hurt like this
Must have been a deadly kiss
Only love can hurt like this.

Said I wouldn't care if you walked away,
But everytime you're there, I'm begging you to stay
And when you come close, I just tremble.

And everytime, everytime you go
It's like a knife that cuts right to my soul.

Only love
Only love can hurt like this
Only love can hurt like this
Must have been a deadly kiss
Only love can hurt like this.

Only love can hurt like this
Your kisses burn into my skin
Only love can hurt like this.

But it's the sweetest pain
Burning hot through my veins
Love is torture, makes me more sure.

Only love can hurt like this
Only love can hurt like this
Only love can hurt like this
Must have been a deadly kiss.

Only love can hurt like this
Only love can hurt like this
Your kisses burn into my skin
Only love can hurt like this.
Only love can hurt like this.

Save me, save me
Only love, only love

'Cause only love can hurt like this
And it must have been a deadly kiss. yeah

From these lyrics 'But i feel like I'm dying' we annotated that we could show she's in pain by having her facial expressions very distressed and emotional, our artist/character would have fragile body positioning to portray that they are hurting inside. From the lyrics 'Must have been a deadly kiss' we would have the characters kiss to create a relationship between the lyrics and visuals, this is a conventional aspect within the soul genre as the songs are normally telling a story of the artists previous experiences. We would repeat this with the lyrics 'Your kisses burning through my skin' we would show her looking upset as he's love for her is hurting her physically as well as mentally.

We then filled out a A3 piece of paper which had several sections including;

1. Mise-en-scene- The costume would be old fashioned to show the antiqueness of the genre and the style of the target audience and the makeup would be very elegant and presentable.
2. Cinematography- There would be many closeups to show the facial expressions and in turn the emotions of the artist/character within our video to conform to the stereotypical soul music video.
3. Style of music video- The video would consist mainly of a narrative concept as we would be telling a love story through this, there would also be an element of performance as the artist would be featured in the video singing at certain times.
4. Target audience- The target audience of our music video is younger adults, male and female, preferably female aged roughly between 16-50.
5. Music video inspirations- Calvin Harris & Rihanna - We Found Love and Sam Smith - Not The Only One.
6. Artist representation- We would represent our artist as very emotional and hurt as the song is describing how love is causing her pain.
7. Editing- The editing of our music video would be slow to have a relationship and be in time with the music as it is a very slow song.
8. Codes and conventions- An old fashioned theme would be used to conform to the soul genre as it reaches our to our target audience, as well as slow transitions and closeups with are very stereotypical within this genre.
9. Music video theory- Closeups of the artist would be used to help promote them as recommended by the recording label. There would be a relationship between both the lyrics and visuals as well as the music and visuals and this would be used to help make the video rememberable and more professional.
10. Annotation of lyrics- Through the lyrics we decided that the song involves a lot of pain and isolation and that the story involves two people who are in love.

In the next meeting we had to construct a email in which we sent to the recording label of our artist in order to get permission to create music video for our chosen song.

From my individual analysis of our chosen artist and also other artists from the soul genre I found many conventions for this genre which we could use in our own music video and found out how to incorporate them with our own ideas. Conventions include things such as;

• Closeups of the artists face to portray her true emotions and set the mood of the song. 
• Vintage mise-en-scene such as old fashioned clothing including boots and a hat, as well subtle makeup with red lipstick.
• Voyeuristic representation of the artist. 

When discussing the outline of our music video we decided to use narrative as our main theme, which would consist of a love story between our artist and her ex boyfriend. Throughout the video we would reminisce on memories of their relationship and then show how she is coping in the present day being apart from him. We believe this is very conventional approach for the soul genre as it allows the audience to connect to the artist using her past which many of them can relate to, it is also a very popular idea used within many existing soul music videos. We also chose to use a performance theme, as our artist would be acting throughout the whole music video and during the choruses she will be singing which allows the audience to be aware of not only her personality but her talents as well. Both these themes were considered and chose because of the primary data we collected through the questionnaires we gave out to people. 

In our storyboards we decided on what each shot would consist of including lyrics, setting, characters, mise-en-scene (lighting, costume, makeup) and many other technical choices, it would a struggle to get timing right when estimating how long each shot would last however we prepared ourselves for subtle changes. Creating the story boards made it easier when planning our production process, as we were aware of who was needed at what location with specific iconography and when the filming would take place. Each of us were in charge of different areas, Myself arranged the filming so that it was suitable for all us, as well as what sections we would film on each day. During filming each of us had our own strengths and weaknesses which we found our during our first attempt of filming, this is when roles began to change. However we equally changed roles so that we could all experience how to carry out the filming from different perspectives. 

Date	Action	To be done by	By whom	Discussions
15.09.14	To decide on an artist and a song	15.09.14	All group members	Various ideas were discussed and a mindmap was created by the group. Eventually we decided on creating a music video by…and the song…..
16.09.14	Wrote a letter to our chosen artists record label, asking for permission to recreate the music video.	16.09.14	All group members	As our artist belongs to two record labels we discussed which one we were going to write too.
17.09.14	We annotated our lyrics to find out what we could incorporate into our music video.	17.09.14	All group members	We discussed what lines had a deeper meaning and created ideas which we could represent throughout our recreation.
22.09.14	We decided on the mise-en-scene we would use for each scene.	22.09.14	All group members, however did individual posts.	We discussed what the conventional locations and iconography would be for each scene within our music video.
25.09.14	We decided on the different camera angles we were to use for each scene.	25.09.14	All members, however did individual posts.	We discussed which camera angles were most effective for the scene.
01.10.14	We decided on how we wanted out artist to be represented.	01.10.14	All members, however individual posts.	We discussed what our artist would wear and look in order to attract our target audience.
07.10.14	We decided on what editing styles we would use throughout our music video.	07.10.14	All members, however individual posts.	We discussed what editing styles were most effective in order to build a relationship between the music and visuals.
13.10.14	We created storyboards in sequence and chronological order of our planned music video.	13.10.14	All members, however individual posts.	We discussed many different aspects of our music video eg; iconography, setting, editing.
18.10.14	We made up a schedule of when we were going to film our music video.	18.10.14	All members, however individual posts.	We discussed what times we were available to film certain scenes of our music video and planned what days we would film at each setting.
23.10.14	We created a risk assessment for the filming of our music video.	23.10.14	All members, however individual posts.	We came up with specific accidents that could possibly occur during our filming and assessed how we could avoid them and what we would do if they did occur.
30.10.14	We filmed our music video.	30.10.14	All members.	On four different occasions we filmed at different settings the footage, which we used in our music video.
03.11.14	We created a photoshoot post including different photos captured during the filming of the music video.	03.11.14	All members, however individual posts.	We selected different pictures from the footage we had taken and analysed why they were conventional to our genre and how they would appeal to our target audience.
07.11.14	We planned our group digipak.	07.11.14	All members, however individual posts.	We combined our ideas as well as ideas we got through inspiration from existing digipaks from artists within our genre.
14.11.14	We planned our group magazine advert.	14.11.14	All members, however individual posts.	We combined ideas to create a magazine advert for our artist album release.
18.11.14	We created our music video rough cut.	18.11.14	All members.	We edited all the clips and material by cropping them and adding transitions in order to create a rough cut for our music video.

Meetings and discussions are important to carry out throughout the whole planning of our music video and ancillary texts as it allows us to contribute new and different ideas that will allow us to create final pieces that are most conventional to the genre and appeal to our target audience. As there are four of us, there will be a lot more ideas that we could consider using, which will avoid wasting time during group discussion stages. I believe our group worked well together as we all have different skills and abilities that we merged, Shaun had good experience and knowledge of how to edit, Lucy had most of the creative ideas, Sophie had useful thoughts for conventional decisions and I had directional skills that made us work time efficiently.