Timeline ~ Jess Hitch

Timeline

15^th Sept. – 27^th Oct. = Research and planning blogs.

-       Define music videos - To help us understand what goes into a music video and what makes it different from other texts.

-       Types of music videos and examples - To better understand the types of music video within the genre and help us decide what path our video will follow.

-       History of music videos - To help us understand how the music video was born and how it has improved to the present day. This will aid us with creating a video that will better fit in with the current climate.

-       Narrative structures in music videos and effectiveness (Propp, Todorov, Levi-Strauss) - Will help us to know and understand the different narrative structures used in music videos and what and how big an impact they make on an audience.

-       Star image - To grasp how everything about an actor can affect the audience and the video so we can better choose our actors according to our direction.

-       Semiotics - To comprehend the signs and motifs hidden in music videos designed to create meaning so that we can use signs and signifiers effectively in our own production.

-       180-degree rule - To understand how this rule was formed and why and also how in certain cases it can be broken.

-       Auteur Theory - To be aware of what kind of images can be created within a text and how we can apply these to our own effectively.

-       Is meaning created at inception or consumption phase? - 

-       Audience issues - Target audience, metanarrative, reception theory, uses and gratification theory. Knowing who are audience is and what their interests are will help us create a successful video that will appeal to them.

-       Intertextuality - References to other texts within a text. This will help us include a wider rage of techniques to include in our video and appeal to our audience.

-       Historical Context (zeitgeist) - 

-       Grain of voice - Voice has evocative powers, able to create associations, especially with fans. This will help us understand what affect a recognizable voice can have on the audience and a text.

-       Mise-en-scene - To help us understand placing within the frame and how this can affect the way the audience views a text.

-       Synesthesia - To help us understand what happens when something else occurs and how we can include this fluidity in our production.

-       Editing - 

-       History of stop-motion - Since we will be including stop-motion elements in our production, we needed to better understand the history of stop-motion animation and how it has evolved over the  years so that we can make use of it effectively and create the situation we want to create.

-       Electronica - Genre, aesthetics, metanarrative, mise-en-scene. This will help us understand more about our genre and what kind of things make it unique from other  music genres so we can portray the genre as it appears in mainstream music.

27^th Oct – 5^th November = Storyboarding and decorating set

-       Flashing lights - Gathering lights, flashing objects and glow-in-the-dark objects to scatter around the room to create an electronic and disorganized feel.

-       Various electronic objects - phones, laptops, ipods, keyboards to further support the futuristic and modern day feel.

-       Gathering filters -Using cellophane to create a desired filter on the camera can drastically change the atmosphere of a shot. We will mostly be using cool coloured filters like blues and greens to reflect the coldness of technology.

-       Making light reflectors - Light reflectors can make a good alternative to expensive lighting equipment as it can be made of tin foil and cardboard.

5^th Nov – 21^st Nov = Filming and animating

-       Maximum time to spend on stop motion aspects: 7 days

-       Software: Boinx TV – istopmotion - We are using this software to capture the stop motion aspects in our video because it is specially designed for stop-motion animation.

21^st Nov – 9^th Dec = Editing

-       Software: Final cut studio

-       Can also work on it at home, during free periods and lunch-breaks if necessary.

-       Make sure of timings, syncing, lighting, colours and effects so that it looks as professional and effective as possible.

3^rd Dec – 17^th Dec = Evaluation blogs and general blog tidying.

-       If desperately needed: Redo some stop-motion/takes in between blogging (editing for these must be done too).

18^th Dec = Final deadline for everything.


Setting: Will's bedroom because it is fairly plain and we can decorate it easily to suit our needs without causing too much damage. The objects we place in the room will also show up better against the plain walls, making it easier for the audience to see our purposely placed motifs. The plain setting will also appeal to a wider target audience as a plain bedroom would appear to have no obvious gender since it doesn't have any gender specific colours (ie. blue, pink).

Instruments: 

• x2 light up-keyboards that can play the melodies on their own whilst showing which keys should be played with red lights.
• Online music player (ie. itunes, spotify) so that we can 'play' the song from the list, adding to the technological feel.

Actors: Our main actors will be Will as the room we are using belongs to him. He is also a good actor with a very natural atmosphere about him. We also have a puppet that looks similar to him which we intend to have them 'transform' into each-other to create a sense of fantasy and surrealism. The puppet and Will will also provide breaks in between the stop-motion shots with some fluidity to vary the texture of the production.

Props: These will either be turned on and off to the beat of the music, used to decorate the setting or used in the stop-motion sequences.

• Coloured lights
• Rotating disco-balls
• Bright desk-lamps
• Laptops
• Phones
• Ipods
• Computer mice
• keyboards
• Computer monitors
• Puppets

-Jess Hitch