Pre-Production: Test Shots

Test shots on location

Norden Farm:

Pre-Production: Shooting Schedule

Our chosen date

The only date which our whole group would be able to do is Sunday 13th September at 12pm. However, due to another event being held at 1:30pm on our stage we would only be available to us for an hour and a half, meaning that we would be really pressed for time. We will be taking two cameras to the shoot so that for each run through of the song, we could film the children from two different set ups, in the hope that we may be able to get through all of the shots which we had planned in the shot amount of time. 

Pre-Production: Lighting and Colour Research

What colours and lighting would be most suitable for our shoot?

For our shots in the bedroom, we wanted to make sure it was bright but not too bright so that the room looked over exposed. We wanted to create the effect of there being a sort of night light on. This would mean having a small dim light on in shot as well as possibly another light on out of the frame, so that we were still able to see as the light from a small night light would not be enough. The colour scheme in the bedroom which we were going to film in made the room look quite warm. As it would be too difficult to remove a bit of this warmth when filming, we would be able to take some of the red out of the shots in post-production. 

When filming on stage, we know that there will be high quality lighting already available. On the day, we will also have someone there to help us with using the lights. As the stage room is quite dark with black curtains around the stage, we would need quite a lot of bright lighting to make sure we could see all of the performers as well as creating some depth. We also decided to possibly use coloured lighting, to remind the audience that what they are seeing is in a child's imagination.

Pre-Production: Actors Research

Finding actors to represent The Jacques

Finding actors to use to represent The Jacques was luckily fairly easy. We decided to use one of our friend's sister and her friends. Four of our three actors are girls, they would play the parts of the lead singer, the guitarist and the base guitarist and the drummer would be played by a boy. Despite the fact that the entire band is actually male, we didn't feel like using girls would be a problem as had already decided to use children so they we would not be able to easily find lookalikes anyway. Also, as our narrative is based off a child dreaming that they were in the band, using children who do not necessarily look similar to the band would make this day dream perhaps more accurate as we would be representing a fan of the band instead of the band themselves. 

Pre-Production: Costume Research

Planning costumes for our actors 

When planning what kinds of costumes to use, we decided to study what kinds of clothes other indie rock bands wear. Here are some of the outfits which we found particularly useful:



From these images, we decided that most indie rock bands wore clothes which were darker in colour and have more of a 'hipster' look. As we would be using kids for our music video, we decided that we would tell them to wear all dark clothes e.g. black skinny jeans/leggings, black boots and a grey jumper/top. By doing this our band which we would be creating would look more as though they were of the indie rock genre. 

We then looked at the sort of clothes that The Jacques would typically wear and found similar things:


The Jacques also wear a lot of darker and baggier clothing, which confirmed for us what we had planned for our dress code for the children, which we would use in our music video. 

Pre-Production: Props Research

Choosing our Props


After we had decided on both of our locations we needed to make sure that the props we used would fit with our genre but also be linked to how we would use children in our video. 

For the scenes in the child's bedroom, we decided that we would leave all of the props already in the room the same, as we felt that this would provide us with a more accurate representation of a child's room. However we thought that we could add some props to the bedroom which would be a reference to the child's love of music, as they would dream of being in a band. This could include an instrument of some sort, music posters and headphones. 

For the performance scenes on stage, we decided to make our own instruments out of cardboard. Although we could easily borrow instruments from Norden Farm, we thought that, our video would look better if the children had home-made instruments. This meant we would need to make a drum kit and 3 guitars. 

Pre-Production: Location Research

Choosing a Location

The stage at Norden Farm

When we originally brainstormed ideas for our music video, we decided that the most ideal venue would be a pub/bar which looked low budget and as if it was in an urban location. However, one of our group member's mum worked at Norden Farm, which had a few stages which we would be able to use to film on. The stage we would use could be emptied this was ideal as we would probably not be able to record children pretending to play instruments in a bar, in order to do this we would need actual live performers. Using this location would also be extremely convenient, all of our group members know where it is, it is very close to where we all live and it would be free. 

For our second location, we decided to use one on of our group member's little sister's bedroom. As we were using children, we wanted to make sure that the location where the child was shown at home was a place where a child would spend time, particularly when they listened to music, like the child we choose would be doing during our music video.

Pre-Production: Shot Lists

Pre-Production: Storyboards

Pre-Production: Risk Assessment

Risk Assessments

Our Final Idea

Picking the Final Idea for our Music Video

When trying to chose a final idea for our music video we had to chose something which we thought would accurately represent the band, conform to the indie rock genre and be relatively easy to achieve. At first we decided to use our idea of including a narrative where the lead singer is late for their gig. We planned to show some mid shots of the lead singer Fin waking up on a wooden table outside a pub with an empty pint of beer next to him. He would then frantically look at the time, realising he is late for his gig, before picking up his guitar and running to the gig venue. We would switch between shots of Fin running and the band playing without him, showing Fin bursting through the venue doors and making it up onto the stage just in time to start singing. The remainder of the video would include fast cuts of their performance to keep the pace of the music video up. 

However, when trying to organise a day to film with the band so that we could try and chose a venue, we found out that the band would not be available until way after our filming deadline. This meant that we had to start our storyboards and planning again. 

The idea which we then decided on was to use children to represent the band. This meant that we would not need the band for filming at all and we could still go ahead with using a performance. In the end we also decided to keep a narrative but we chose a different one. At the start of the video we planned to show the child representing the lead singer, Fin, in her bedroom putting on her headphones to listen to Weekends by The Jacques. After he/she has put on a pair of headphones, we would transition to shots of the children representing the band in some performance scenes. Throughout the video we would cut back occasionally to the scenes in the bedroom. This should hopefully make it seem like the performance scenes are in the child's imagination as if she dreams of being in the band herself.

Initial Ideas

Brainstorming our initial ideas

Now that we have chosen our track 'Weekends', we decided to start off by brainstorming a few ideas for our music video:

As mentioned in the mind map above, we had an idea to use Polaroid cameras in some way, as there is reference to them in our chosen song. One idea which we particularly liked, was to use the border on Polaroid images around our music video, however we were not sure how we would achieve this when editing our music video together. 


We also decided that we would use a low budget venue. As well as this being a benefit to us as we would not to have to pay as much for our venue, it would also conform to a convention of the indie rock genre, as well as being something which The Jacques often use themselves. We decided that a preferred venue would be a small pub/bar. 

As I found when researching into indie rock bands, a majority of them base their videos mainly on performance so we decided that our video should also conform to this stereotype. Despite this, we did have a few ideas where we could combine a performance with either a narrative of a concept. For example, we had an idea to have the lead singer of the band wake up somewhere and realise that he is late for their gig. We would then show him running to the venue, making it just in time to start singing, cutting between him running and the band playing without him. 

Lyric Analysis

Our Chosen Song- Weekends

After confirming with the band that we could make a music video for one of their songs, we needed to decide which song we would chose. In the end we decided on 'Weekends'. After choosing our song, we decided to analyse the lyrics of the chorus of the song, to try and get some inspiration for our music video, and to make sure there were links between the lyrics and the visuals.

Approval From Our Artist

In order to get approval from our chosen artist The Jacques, so that we could use one of their songs to make a music video, one of our group members who knows the band, messaged the lead singer on Facebook. 

Artist Background Research

The Jacques 

Our chosen artist to make a music video for is The Jacques, an indie rock band, from the Bristol area, who formed in early 2014. The band is made up of two sets of brothers, who have played at many venues including at the Dot to Dot Festival and Glastonbury Festival as well as being a sport act for The Libertines at Hyde Park. The band was signed at Hyde Park by the drummer from The Libertines, Gary Powell. 

We decided to use this band as they were a friend of one of our group members so we knew we could easily get permission to use one of their songs for our coursework. They also go to university fairly locally and when they aren't at uni they are only as far away as Bristol, so it should be fairly easy to negotiate a time when we could meet and record with them.