Animatic feedback

Today we showed a target audience our animatic video to gather up some audience feedback before we progress onwards into the final stages of pre-production. The animatic offers viewers a distinct idea of what our video will be about and of all the elements in it, and so is an effective way of seeing whether our music video will be positively received.

 

After watching the animatic, the general initial feedback was positive: people enjoyed it.

In terms of the animatic itself, people thought it was very effective. Our use of colour and annotations (as to make clear what was going on within the shots) was very well appreciated, and the fact that it had been successfully edited to our chosen track helped in terms of visualising our final product.

One member of the target audience described it as “awesome”, believing that we had a clear and interesting idea. Our music video was well planned out in his opinion and would be very entertaining to watch in its final format.

Someone wondered if there was a particular narrative or concept to our piece, but when explained of our anticipation to keep the video as more of an aesthetic piece, he thought it would be successful as the idea that these girls were ‘badass’ came through in the animatic.

There was also worry that the lip-syncing sequences would drag and that the rollerskating aspect may not fit with the rest of our music video; also, they questioned as to whether or not we would actually be able to successfully flood the bathroom. The dancing within our video was not disliked, although they thought the idea of comedic ‘bad’ dancing did not quite fit with the rest of our music video.

However, the video arch of our music video was enjoyed.

Listening to their feedback and developing onwards, we have decided it both most prudent and really rather necessary to film an actual test shoot, trying as best as we can to make the closest possible prototype of what our final product will look like — otherwise, we will not know if the lip-syncing sequences get boring, or if the comedic moments such as with the rollerskating and dancing jars with the rest of the video.

We also need to arrange a risk assessment of our location and talk to the owners of the house as to see what we can definitely do and make sure that we know as to which of our desired activities we will actually be able to perform so that there are no unfortunate surprises on the shoot day.

Despite that, however, we are very pleased with the feedback and reception from the audience. It is important for us to note that the members within the target audience were of both genders but between the ages of 17 and 18, which, relating back to the research I did regarding conventions of the indie pop genre, is the sort of audience we expected would enjoy our video and thus whom we are targeting the video to.

Things needed to do before we shoot

With our shooting day confirmed in three weeks time, we made a list of all the things we need to achieve before such a time to ensure the day runs as smoothly as possible:

• we need to ascertain all the correct permissions to make sure our cast is available for the shooting day.
• we need to sort out a risk assessment of our location to ensure that we will be able to shoot there.
• we need to arrange a test shoot of our video to make sure we can successfully anticipate the type of outcome we are hoping to achieve and continue rehearsing our lead singer so that she is the best that she can be and perfect for our video.
• we need to research possible makeup ideas for our cast.
• as our shoot day is quite far away, we need to start creating both our website and digipak beforehand.
• we also need to get some lessons as to how to most effectively use the cameras we are going to film with to ensure that we are as confident as possible on the shoot day.

Planning individual costumes and hair

Now having a very large wardrobe full of potential clothing for our cast of 5, we have come up with a rough plan as to whom should wear what.

For each girl we have prepared one hairstyle and outfit, with the exception being for our lead singer Juli whom has three. In the upcoming weeks we will arrange a date for our cast to try on such items and have a proper costume fitting — at which point we may swap clothing around and try out new ideas from our existing costume collection. But for now, it is useful to have a rough plan and idea of who will be wearing what and how our group of girls will look.

Further practise of the lipsync

Wanting to ensure that our main singer is perfect in our music video, we decided to rehearse her again in order to better familiarise herself with the lyrics and become more confident when performing the song.

Whilst by no means perfect, in comparison to our first rehearsal she has undoubtedly improved and become more confident in front of the camera. Over half term, she has given her word to us that she will perfect her knowledge of the lyrics, and once back at school we will rehearse yet another lipsync rehearsal, as well as a test shoot to hopefully give us a realistic idea of what our final product will look like.

Animatic for our Music Video

After drawing out our storyboard, I took photos of each individual shot and cut it to our track so that we could visualise our idea and see which elements worked well, and as to what areas need further development and improvement. However, after having shown the group, we are all quite pleased with how the animatic has turned out, giving us hope as we progress forward towards our final product.

Storyboarding the Music Video

Between the three of us, we all drew 50 seconds worth of our music video in storyboard form. Fran did the first third, Hannah did the second third, and I did the final third. We did this in order to plan out as to what our music video would look like.