Story Boarding Process

Today we started to storyboard. Each of us has a different idea of how the pop video is going to look so we decided to each do separate storyboards to get more material and allow each of us to show the other members of the group what we had in mind. I did quite a lot of performance storyboard shots because the band are new so their first video needs to be more performance based so audiences can recognize them and it exhibits their talent to record labels etc.. In the meeting with the band they expressed that they would like to be known and recognized as a local band. So seeing as they are local to Guildford we have decided to possibly shoot in Guildford, however non of us have started to storyboard the context of the video, we have only looked at the performance.
I have done generic performance shots such as CU’s of the guitar and the guitarists fingers and the singer and the drummer and drums. I also did several wide shots of the entire band and I also drew single wide shots of each band member with the coloured rain behind each of them.

Story Boarding Process

We had our meeting with the band today. They are a group of four guys with a kind of indie look.

However as a group we have decided to adapt their look so they will be more unique and different but still fall into the indie/alternative genre.
We pitched all of our initial ideas and got feed back from them. They really liked all of our ideas, especially the use black and white with one colour object. They came up with a couple of ideas also which they pitched to us. They thought about shooting out of a train window, which we then had to say wouldn’t be possible for us to do because of the permission we would need to get to film on a train. So after going over the initial ideas we began to colaberate with each other and the band on expanding the initial ideas, this is when we came up with the idea of having to footage starting off in black and white and then slowly throughout have coloured rain slowly bring back the colour to the footage, so that by the end it was no longer black and white but colour. Now that we have more of an idea of what elements we want in the video, next lesson we should be able to develop the idea further and start to storyboard the our ideas ready to edit the storyboard to the music on Final cut pro..

Story Boarding Process

We looked at the whole groups ideas and images after listening to the track and decided together on how we could combine some of the ideas and build on some to create the video. Initially we really like the idea of having black and white with one thing in the frame being in colour. The idea of using black and white is to create an edgy look and also as a visual metaphor for how we want the bands image to reflect, so the black and white makes their look a bit edgy and out of the ordinary to make them stand out from similar bands. The idea behind the single object in colour is to have something relevant to the song or band, this idea is currently a work in progress. The whole of this idea was expanded and we decided we like the idea of having coloured rain as well as having a single image in colour. the coloured rain will be used as a device to slowly come out of the black and white. We thought the rain could wash away the black and white throughout the video restoring colour. We also liked the idea of doing blurred light, for example…




However, we are not sure we have to time or technical capability to do this and we also thought it may be one devce too many.

After coming up with several initial ideas we started planning how we were going to pitch the ideas to our band. We are lucky as a group because we are working with a real band, so it is our job to help create them a video that reflects their image as a band and that makes them stand out from other bands for record labels to see. We are excited about the possible reactions to our ideas from the band and are hoping to get some initial ideas from them and their ideas on our initial ideas.

Beginning of the Story Boarding Process!

The song we are using to create our pop video is 'What we See' by a new unsigned band called Now is Everyone.
Before we were able to story board we had to come up with initial thoughts and ideas that came to mind when we listened to the song. These are my ideas
Now is Everyone – ‘What We See’
• Rain Drops
• Paint drips
• Mirrors of different shapes and sizes
• Looking up into the sky or in a forest and spinning round and round
• Cars on a motorway or in a city in fast forward
• Paint dripping onto a canvas and running down it. More and more drips drip onto the canvas in more time
• Day to night – sunrise to sunset or just sunrise or just sunset.
• White walls
• Strong spot light lighting.
• Concert stage.
• The Sea – Waves, beach (British beach)
• ECU of guitar strings
• Mid shots of Singer
• Stop motion journey of band running to get to concert stage (Pen story??)
• Stop motion of them playing instruments
• CU of guitarist playing
• CU of drummer and of the drums
• Fast forward footage
• Stuttered footage
• Rain clouds building up in the sky. In chorus first rain drops fall until it’s a down pour.
• Rewind of the bands day
• World around the band is frozen in time. The singer is the only one who can move. Finds other band members and un-freezes them. There music slowly un-freezes the world but then toward the end of the song they slowly freeze again. (Freeze in time, not as in ‘ICE’)
• Members of band in chorus where backing comes in different frames on the screen, for example…
• Band playing in an open field or in a forest
• Jumping around a stage.
• Black and White footage. Possibly only instruments in colour or BAND SYMBOL.

Here are some of the images I found on google so that my group could visulise what i had i my mind:

Time Line!

Now that we have finished working out the time line we are now going to work on the story boards and try to fit them to the time line ready to edit on final cut pro.

Richard Dyer

Richard Dyer Stars and Stardom • In order to understand the relationship between the music industry and its audiences, it is important to consider the roles of music star. • The term ‘star’ refers to the semi-mythological set of meanings constructed around music performers in order to sell the performer to a large and loyal audience. Some common values of music stardom • Youthfulness • Rebellion • Sexual Magnetism • An anti-authoritarian attitude • Originality • Creativity/talent • Aggression/anger • A disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour. • Conspicuous consumption, of sex, drugs and material goods • Success against the odds Richard Dyer • Dyer has written extensively about the role of stars in film, TV and music. • Irrespective of the medium, stars have some key features in common: A star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg. Advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music]) Stars are commodities produced and consumed on the strength of their meanings. • Stars depend upon a range of subsidiary media – magazines, TV, radio, the internet – in order to construct an image for themselves which can be marketed to their target audiences. • The star image is made up of a range of meanings, which are attractive to the target audience. • Fundamenally, the star image is incoherent, that is incomplete and ‘open’. Dyer says that this is because it is based upon two key paradoxes. Paradox 1 • The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary for the consumer. Paradox 2 • The star must be simultaneously present and absent for the consumer. The Star Image • The incoherence of the star image ensures that audiences continually strive to ‘complete’ or to ‘make sense of’ of the image. • This is achieved by continued consumption of the star through his or her products. • In the music industry, performance seems to promise the completion of the image, but it is always ultimately unsatisfying. • This means that fans will go away determined to continue consuming the star in order to carry on attempting to complete their image. • Finally, the star image can be used to position the consumer in relation to dominant social values (that is hegemony) • Depending upon the artist, this may mean that the audience are positioned against the mainstream (though only to a limited degree, since they are still consumers within a capitalist system) or within the mainstream, or somewhere in between. The Star Image QUOTE: Richard Dyer (stars, BFI, 1981) • “In these terms it can be argued that stars are representations of persons which reinforce, legitimate or occasionally alter the prevalent preconceptions of what it is to be a human being in this society. There is a good deal at stake in such conceptions. On the one hand, our society stresses what makes them like others in the social group/class/gender to which they belong. This individualising stress involves a separation of the person’s “self” from his/her social “roles”, and hence poses the individual against society. On the other hand society suggests that certain norms of behaviour are appropriate to given groups of people, which many people in such groups would now wish to contest (eg. Gays in recent years). Stars are one of the ways in which conceptions of such persons are promulgated.”