Music video pre-production

 1) Music video treatment

You may already have a finished music video treatment from your summer project and/or preliminary exercise - definitely use or develop that if it works with your project. 

However, you may need to update your treatment or even change it completely now you have finished your preliminary exercise. The original example from the summer for music video treatments can be found here.

Scene 1: Opening shot of Obaida in the toilets looking at himself in the mirror. Putting on his boxing gloves and shoes (sponsorship) looks a bit anxious and afraid from the looks on his face.  

Scene 2: Him coming out the toilets and getting into the ring. About to fight his opponent a big guy who is twice his size. 

Scene 3: Obaida and his opponent start fighting. Obaida losing the match getting beaten up badly some spit comes flying out from his mouth.

Scene 4: Obaida loses the match and gets knocked out. After the match everyone begins talking and whispering behind his back talking about him and Obaida keeping his head down not making eye contact with anyone and leaving the place. 

Scene 5: Next day, Obaida begins working out harder, begins to have a serious and determined look in his face. Does not want to back down. Pushes himself and begins shadow boxing trying to push his boundaries and be more fitter for the next match. 

Scene 6: Obaida looks at his calendar at home where a big red circle is on one of the dates labelled "REMATCH".

Scene 7: The big day comes, Obaida's rematch is here. He goes back into the same toilet and puts on his boxing gloves confidently has a serious and angry look on his face. Determination. 

Scene 8: He comes out standing tall and goes into the ring, same people who were watching him before surround the ring. 

Scene 9: Obaida begins swinging punches and not backing down. Startling his opponent his opponent having a dazed and confused look on his face. 

Scene 10: Obaida dodging all his opponents punches. Obaida throwing punches to his opponent's body and then getting a knockout. The people around the ring all start shouting and cheering for Obaida. Obaida lifting his arms in the air his smiling being victorious standing over his opponent's body who is still knocked out. End. 

2) Mise-en-scene planning

Plan everything that will appear in front of the camera in your music video - and this is vital when it comes to music video and music genre. 

Remember CLAMPS: Costume, Lighting, Actors (cast, placement, movement, expression), Make-up, Props, Setting.

Costume
What will your artist wear? What other costumes will be required? What is the costume supposed to communicate to the audience? How does this link to genres or constructing representations?

Costume: My actor will wear boxing gloves, shorts and a tight t-shirt. This will be used when he is in the boxing ring. The reason why I have chosen these clothing elements for this scene is so my audience knows that Obaida is about to go out and get ready for a boxing fight. For another scene (working out in park) Obaida is going to wear tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt to show to my audience he is going to work out. Try getting into shape so for the next time he wins the fight .

Lighting
How will you light the different scenes in your music video? Day or night? Interior or exterior? If outside, can you use streetlights, shadows, reflected sunlight or other creative techniques to achieve the lighting style you want? If inside, experiment with creative lighting techniques using windows, blinds, artificial lights, phone flashes, ring lights and more. You may also want to use our professional lighting set-up with a white or greenscreen background depending on how you plan to conduct the interviews - speak to Mr Ray if you want to arrange this for an after-school filming session.

Lighting: I will use a mix of high key/ low key lighting. High key lighting will be used when Obaida is in the boxing ring fighting his opponent and when he is working out in the park. I will use low key lighting when he is in the toilet and putting on his gloves and looking at himself through the mirror to communicate to my audience that there is almost "no hope" in Obaida winning his fight in the beginning of my scene. However then I will use high key lighting only specifically when Obaida looks at himself through the mirror to once again communicate to my audience that "He has got this". 

Actors/performers
The first thing you need to plan is your cast - who will be in your production? The key casting is obviously your artist but you may have other characters too. Try and cast people who are reasonably similar to the character or performer they are playing (both in age and personality). Next, plan their placement and movement in key scenes - how will the audience get to know them? How do you plan to position the audience to connect with your artist?

Main actor - Obaida Khan. Has the most similar build as to the person who I want to create for my audience to understand. 

My audience will get to know Obaida personally as the audience will "invade" Obaidas personal life in the scene when he looks at his calendar at home where it says "rematch" and then we see the change within Obaida how he gets the determination and hunger within him and that how he can not lose the rematch. 

Make-up
Plan any make-up you require - this can be very important for music video.

Make-up: Sweat on Obaida's face and some on his body that will be noticeable within the camera shots when he is working out. This will help to show how hard Obaida is trying and how intense he is going with his working out and training.

Another make up element I will use is slight cuts and bruises on Obaida's body when he gets into the ring and fights. Help to make the fight look more realistic and want my audience to feel like they are inside the boxing ring almost a part of the match. 

Props
What props will you require? Remember, you can't use anything that might resemble a weapon in a public or school location (this is VERY important). Well-planned props can help to communicate genre and narrative quickly - vital in a music video where you can't use dialogue

Props: Boxing gloves. Helps to communicate that the genre of my music video is going to be action and sports. 

Setting
This should already be largely planned using your music video treatment. However, now is the time to specify exact locations. For external locations, try and take pictures of settings or use Google Maps and Google Earth. Spending quality time planning your locations can make a huge difference to the professionalism of your production. AQA also seem to prefer external rather than school-based locations - particularly for a brief like this.

Setting: Rectory Park for Obaida's working out.

Boxing gym in Southall. 

If you have a bit of budget to work with you may want to look at booking a rehearsal studio to get more of a band or performance feel to your music video. Pirate studios are an example of a rehearsal and recording studio with several London locations.

3) Shot list

The final aspect of your pre-production planning is to write a comprehensive shot list for every single possible shot you plan to film for your music video. For three minutes of music video, that is going to be a LOT of shots - quite possibly more than 200.

Remember, a shot list is a full list of all the shots in your video with information for each of them (shot type, action/movement etc.) Creative shot choices aside, it’s easy to forget that a shot list is a strategic document. Creating a shot list is essentially like creating a shooting gameplan for the day.

Your shot list needs to contain EVERY shot you plan to film for your whole music video AND additional shots to create flexibility when editing. These additional shots are often close-ups, cutaways, alternative angles or similar. Cutaways are important as music videos generally have fast-paced editing so you'll need a LOT of shots.

We advise using a simple table on Microsoft Word or Google Docs to set out your shot list - you can find an example from a short film here. It makes sense to write your shot list by scene or location rather than a huge list of every shot in the promo video in chronological order. 

If you're artistic, you may want to sketch out your shot list in the form of a storyboard. You can find a storyboard template here that you can print and then sketch if that's your preferred way of working.

Scene 1

- Close up shot of Obaida putting on the boxing gloves and then him looking at himself through the mirror in the toilet.

- Medium Close Up Shot of Obaida looking at himself in the mirror. 

- Extreme Close Up Shot of Obaida putting on his shoes (Nike shoes which is the sponsorship)

Scene 2

- Wide Shot of Obaida coming out the toilet and walking towards the ring getting himself read. 

Scene 3

- High angle shot of Obaida's face looking from the viewpoint of opponent. Signify how much stronger he is compared to Obaida.

-Low angle shot of his opponent through the eyes of Obaida showing this big towering giant that he is about to face. 

Scene 4

- Medium Close-Up Shot of Obaida fighting his opponenet in the ring showing the blows and punches and where each blow and land hits on each other's bodies. Helps show the audience the full effect with what is going on. 

- Close up shot of Obaida's face showing the painful expressions on his face almost like he has given up hope in trying to succeed. 

- Close up shot of the amount of cuts and bruises around Obaida's arms showing how much in pain he is. 

- Extreme close up shot of Obaida's mouth getting struck with a punch and spit flying out from his mouth. 

- Medium long shot of Obaida getting knocked out of the match and losing. Showing his opponent winning the fight. 

Scene 5

- Wide shot of Obaida working out in the gym showing us clearly what exercises he is doing.

- Close up shot of Obaida's face showing sweat from his forehead showing that he is training hard trying to get stronger. 

Scene 6

- Medium shot of Obaida at home holding his calendar in his hand looking down at it. 

- Over The Shoulder shot (OTS) of Obaida reading the dates on his calendar.

- Extreme Close Up Shot of a key date on the calendar circled in red reading out "Rematch". 

Scene 7

- Establishing Shot of the boxing ring. The day has come. 

- Medium Close Up Shot of Obaida looking at himself in the mirror with fire and hunger in his eyes. 

Scene 8

- Wide shot of Obaida almost as if running out the toilet and into the ring.

- Close up shot of Obaida sizing up and looking straight into his opponents eyes. 

- Low angle shot of the opponent looking straight at Obaida.

- Low angle AGAIN used for Obaida looking straight back at his opponent. Wicked smile on his face.

Scene 9

- Medium long shot used for both the opponent and Obaida to show the swings and punches that are landing on each other. 

- Close up shot of Obaida's face still having that smug look on his face.

- Close up shot of his opponent this time having the same facial expressions as Obaida in Scene 1. 

Scene 10

- Close up shot of Obaida delivering the final blow onto his opponent.

- Get the same shot from different angles to try and emphasise the amount of power that went into that blow.

- Handheld camera shot of his opponent falling to the ground. The audience is put into the position of the opponent's view when the blow from Obaida hits him. 

- Low angle shot used for Obaida looking down at his opponent who has fallen to the ground. Towering over him. 

- Wide shot of Obaida putting his arms up in the air cheering. People surrounding him celebrating his victory with him.

* For lip syncing of my chosen song: Hall Of Fame there will be quick jump cuts coming back to me lip syncing some of the words which will be constant throughout the whole 3 minute video. 

4) Shooting schedule

I shall be filming this week from Monday 11 November to Sunday 17 November which I will be filming around 3:00pm and then on the periods I am free around 12:00am or earlier. 

Production filming window

Film everything you need for your three-minute video production.

Filming window: Friday 18 October - Monday 18 November. This means you need to film everything between these two dates.
Deadline: Monday 18 November

Video rough cut deadline

Full three-minute edited and exported rough cut (first draft) of your production uploaded to YouTube and linked on your blog. 

Deadline: Monday 9 December

Tutorials
While you work on the above deadlines, you will have another tutorial with your coursework teacher looking at your pre-production planning, statement of intent and checking your project is on track. For those who film early in the filming window, it will also involve checking the 'rushes' (the film clips as they come in).