Role Allocation

As a group, we came up with different roles that suited us and shared them between us to be able to create the best music video that we possibly could.

Director- Beth Fowler
Producer- Kirsty Guy
Camera Person- Beth Fowler and Kirsty Guy
Editor- Beth Fowler and Kirsty Guy
Music- Kirsty Guy
Location Scout- Beth Fowler and Kirsty Guy
Director of Photography- Beth Fowler

For the casting of the music video, we needed both actors and performers.

Carrie Underwood- Blown Away Analysis (By Kirsty Guy)

'Blown Away' is a song produced by Mark Bright, a producer based in the country genre and was written by Chris Tompkins and Josh Kear. The song was recorded in 2011 by American country pop artist, Carrie Underwood, and was eventually released in 2012.
The lyrics of the song talk about how a family has been ruined by an alcoholic father and now the house is full of sins because of all the pain and misery he has bought to his daughter. Underwood sings about her drunk father and her mother being an "angel in the ground". She believes that there's not even enough wind or rain in Oklahoma (a well known state to be brought down by natural disasters in Southern America) and that a tornado may destroy the house, but the memories will still remain.
The narrative of the video is clever in the way that it links and compares to, not only the lyrics of the song, but also other popular media productions (The Wizard of Oz). The opening shot of the  video is a two shot of Underwood and her drunk father in the kitchen of their house in the middle of nowhere. The lighting of the shot is dark and black and white effect suggests that her life is dull and it also sets the mood of the whole narrative and shows the negativity in the atmosphere within the broken family. This first image, shows Underwood pushing her father away when he is trying to help her with her history homework, she doesn't want his help because she doesn't want to thank him for anything because of everything he has put her through. The costumes of the characters in the narrative are typical for country people. Underwood wears red boots which relates to the musical, The Wizard of Oz. In the musical, Dorothy's home gets blown away in the wind of a tornado, and Underwood sings about this not affecting the fact that the memories will remain in the same place forever, no matter how many tornados, or how much rain there is. There is a dog at the end of the video which also relates to this idea and theme. However, it also represents a friend for life, and even after being through so much, she still has her best friend who will never let her down like her father did.

Role Allocation

Role Allocation

Below are the roles we have allocated for our production.

Director: Beth Fowler
Producer: Kirsty Guy
Director of photography: Sian Ryley
Camera person: Beth Fowler, Kirsty Guy and Sian Ryley
Editor: Sian Ryley, Beth Fowler and Kirsty Guy
Location scout: Beth Fowler and Sian Ryley

Casting

Kirsty Guy: Performer

Casey Hawkes: Mistreated Girl

Michael Robson: Father

Sian Ryley: Mother

Neighbour: 

Beth Fowler: Music room friend

Group of people in the reception area. 

Final Proposal (by Beth Fowler)

For our advanced portfolio we have decided to create a music video to Emeli Sande’s well known ‘Read all about it part 3”. The reasons for us choosing this song is because we wanted to do a cover as one of our group members has good vocals and plays a wide range of instruments making this the perfect opportunity to do a cover of a song. In her music classes Kirsty (group member singing cover) has been practising Emeli Sande ‘Read all about it part 3’ therefore we decided to choose this song for our music video as it does not mean her having to relearn a song and take up much needed time to do other tasks such as recording the video. The working title of the music video is ‘Read all about it: Part 3 – Kirsty Guy’.

   We have decided the best music channel for our production to be broadcast on is MTV. We chose this channel as it is one of the most successful worldwide music channels of today and therefore our music video would be well known for being on there and boost sales dramatically. Our song is a pop song and MTV features all genres of music video according to the channel (MTV Hits, MTV Classic, MTV Rock etc) therefore our production can meet its target audience. The target audience for our production is those who enjoy listening to pop music. This could apply to a wide range of people of many ages, backgrounds etc. However in a general term our production will appeal to a target audience of teenagers and females. In terms of background it will appeal to British and American from all social classes. The lyrics send a message to all those who have been through a struggle or are going through a struggle in their lives and the technicality of this is that everybody has had a low point at some time in their lives.

  The genre of the music video is pop. We have decided to create a music video that is performance and storyline/ narrative based. The reason for doing this is because when I and my peers analysed the lyrics to ‘Read all about it part 3’ we realised the deep meaning and strong emotion in the song. We then decided that our production has to have some type of storyline that conveys the meaning and struggle the lyrics explain. This will play on the emotions of our target audience and make our production memorable. As well as there being a narrative we have also decided to feature performance scene in the video. These will be of Kirsty performing on a stage in the theatre, the reasons for us choosing to do this is because a combination of both lip singing in a performance with storyline/ narrative also creates a bigger impact for the audience as they get a wide variety of visual in the video to suit all audience members preferences. It also shows the emotion and feeling the performer has for the song creating a connection to the characters starring in the narrative.

  When planning the style of music video we wanted to create I and my peers decided a wide range of camera angles were needed to convey the characters story, this will mean some additional planning in order to decide how we will carry out shots such as crane shots and birds eye view shots of the scene. For the performance based scene we have decided to set 3 different cameras in areas of the room. The reasons for doing this is because we do not want Kirsty to have to re-perform the song many times as there are risks of shots in the scene not fitting together. If we have different cameras it limits the amount of times she will have to re-perform as we will have plenty of coverage from different angles.

  The colour when filming storyline scenes will be made dull to emphasise the characters struggle with negative tones. The performance scenes will be colourful, we have planned this to be done with the performance lights available to us in the schools theatre. The reasons for us wanting to make these scenes colourful is to show the clear contrast between performance and narrative, the change in scenes has to be noticeable. We would likes to use many different techniques to show the scenes change, cuts will be used however we would like to steer away from using these too often as it will not show our capability. Slow motion will be used in some scenes showing the detail and characters emotions so the viewer understands what is happening and how the character feels. This slow motion scene will be nearer the end of the storyline as this is when we see the main character in a positive light and we want to emphasise her happiness and the reasons behind this. We are also debating whether or not to use a slow motion scene in some of the scenes closer to the beginning of the video however we do not want to over use this method.

A very British gangster (by Beth Fowler)

Opening sequence analysis

A very British Gangster is a documntary series filmed and carried out by Donal Macinyre. It follows one of Britians most dangerous crime families, focusing on the leader Dominic Noonan. The documentary was converted into a 97 minute film of the footage from all documentaries in one, telling the families story. 
    In the opening sequence we see an establishing long shot of the urban enviorment at night. This symbolises that a majority of bad crimes are committed at night especially in this enviorment. The film is based in the white, working class, northen town of Manchester perhaps living up to stereotypes.