Paramore - Misery Business

This is Paramores official video for the song we have chosen to do; Misery Business. We have looked at this video a number of times to gain inspiration and to fully understand their take on the song, we shall continue to refer back to this video throughout the process of making our own music video to this song.

Planning & Development: Edited band logo

This is our edited version of our band logo after adjusting and experimenting with different creative ideas in Adobe Photoshop. We added two lines of colour; Mustard yellow and grey to incorporated the bands overall colour scheme into the band logo which we felt worked well and added a modern touch to the logo. We also emphasised the P and E of Paramore to make the logo stand out and add a different dimension to the overall logo. As a group we were happy with this logo, however after feedback from our media teachers they felt that the stroke of the lines needed to be increased as when the logo would be scaled down  for different publications the lines wouldn't show at all because of the thickness of them. We then went away and came up with our final band logo which you can see below:

Planning & Development: Style guide

It's important when designing and creating a media product to be consistent throughout all of the products, therefore a style guide is often created to refer back to and follow to ensure all products follow a certain style which emulates the bands brand further. We created our style guide to show our teachers in our pitch. Here are some screen shots of the style guide:

 

Planning & Development: Band logo

 After researching and trying out different fonts for the band logo, we all agreed on using agency FB as the main heading font. From there, we started to design and create different logos in Adobe Photoshop. These are the drafts we went through before finally chosing our band logo that will be used throughout all of our ancillary tasks.

Planning: Font + Band Logo research

For our pitch we needed to create a band logo in which will represent the band and identify them from other bands. We strarted to look at different rock bands and their band logos. You can see the logos we researched below:

After we looked at different band logos, we then decided to research fonts for our band logo and main writing that will be used throughout the whole of Paramore bands 'brand'. As a group we came up with these potential fonts. The two main fonts that we chose for Paramore are the fonts ticked. These fonts are agency FB and Orator STD. Agency FB will be mainly used for all headings and the band logo, and Orator STD will be used for small informational writing.

Planning: Choosing our song + Pitches

Following on from my first post, here are the steps that we went through before we narrowed down our song choices and the research that we carried out. Before beginning the music video, we all needed to decide on a final song choice for the group, we researched into the different music genres that we like and could potentially choose a song from. The genres we researched were Indie, RnB and rock.

Initially, in our group there was no real pressing song that we had in mind for our music video, so we decided to brainstorm ideas for potential choices. We looked through the BBC chart playlist, our iPods, and music magazines to gain inspiration for our song choice as well as researching different genres of music.

Through this process we came up with several song choices in which we all liked, from there we then went through an elimination process trying to narrow down our choices to the songs we wanted to for our final production by printing out the lyrics and constructing potential narratives. It came down to two songs that we all agreed on, both from the same artist; Paramore. The songs that we narrowed it down too was The Only Exception and Misery Business. These two songs are completely different to each other, The Only Exception is much slower compared to Misery Business however they have a similair narrative to do with love and relationships. We decided as a group to ask our peers as well as pitching both song ideas to our media teachers. Our peers preferred Misery Business over The Only Exception, because they believed it would be a more interesting and captivating video to shoot and watch. We pitched our songs idea last week to our teachers, where they gave their opinion and advised us to choose Misery Business for the reasons being that it would challenge our group in terms of all areas from creativity to production and editing work. As a group we came to agree on choosing Misery Business as our song choice for our music video production. We are pitching our Misery Business song choice and concept to our teachers tomorrow where we will include information about the songs narrative, the style guide, locations, costumes and audience research.

Planning: Our pitch

We pitched our music video idea to our media teachers and presented them with some information, research, ancillary sketches, and storyboards to look over and give feedback on our proposed ideas. This process helped us as a group to think through ideas in more thorough detail, as when pointed out by our teachers we hadn't prepared enough detailed sketches and storyboards than required for the task. It was important to go through this process as this is what many creative companies have to go through when pitching music video ideas to record companies for their artists.

From this point, we have decided to further develop our music narrative which will run throughout the video in order to create a clear and consistent story our target audience will be able to relate too.

Here is the pitch that we presented to our two media teachers:

Planning: Preliminary task - Art department open day video

In order to prepare us for the main task of creating a music video, we were asked as a class to seperate into groups and create a video showcasing a certain area or aspect of Trinity School to show to prospective pupils and parents who will visit the open day. The main reason for completing this preliminary task was to prepare us for the main task, mainly getting us used to the software Adobe Premiere Pro that we will use to edit our video on which proved challenging, but at the same time worth it because we got to understand the different tools and effects that will better our video.

In my group was Alexander Leigh and Matthew Bell whom I worked well with, we were able to delegate tasks equally within the group and come together to edit the videos with the same creative styles in mind. Throughout this preliminary task, I really started to understand the value of time and how you need to prioritise certain aspects. I do believe that as a group we did neglect the initial research and planning stages and focused most of our time on the production and editing.
Above is our end result of our Art department video:

Planning: Preparing for our pitch

Our group has started to prepare for our pitches which are next week. Our pitches have to include the following:

• Preliminary research into the genre and type of project chosen.
• Identification of the target audience.
• Storyboard ideas.
• Location ideas with scouting images.
• Casting.
• Mood boards.
• Ancillary tasks for each candidate.
• Production schedule.
• Allocation of roles.

In todays lesson we researched different song choices on YouTube. Here are some of the songs that we have looked at as possibilities:

                                                           Paramore - The Only Exception

Florence and The Machine - You've Got The Love

Ed Sheeran - The A-Team

Paramore - Misery Business

We hope to of chosen our final song choice by next lesson in order to start preparation for our pitch!

So it begins..

I have created this blog to document the advanced portfolio task of my A level course which will show the progression and different stages that our group will undertake in construction of our music video. My group consists of my class members Georgina Kerwin, Joanna Sibley and Paul Healey whom I have studied media studies with for the last 3 years.

As a group we have chosen to create a music video as we believe that our skills and personal qualities will best excel in this specific task. In Monday’s lesson we brainstormed ideas for songs that we could create a music video for, we then narrowed our choices down in stages choosing our particular favorites. Out of the four chosen songs that we narrowed it down too, we then researched the lyrics of the particular songs and brainstormed narratives for each of these songs. This enabled us to realistically think about concepts, how narratives would fit for each song and the codes and conventions that we would have to consider. In our next lesson, we hope to choose our song that we want to create a music video for after doing some background research in our independent study.