Music Video final planning and details

 

[27/11/22]

Time was passing by fast and we had to finalize the mood boards for our music video, as instructed by our Sir. Ask already discussed with my team mates, we were aiming for a sad yet sassy birthday party theme for the first half of the video, according to the music, it would be up until after the first chorus. As for the second half, we were aiming for a grunge hipster type look and vibe. We all selected pictures from Pinterest that we all personally thought fit the vibe for the music video section and then made these collages: 

To be able to visualize the kind of shots we were already confident with, I decided to make a storyboard including the glamour close up shots of our actress putting her makeup on. 

Yumna self-scouted an AS girl who agreed to be our actress. Turns out it was my acquaintance where we've interacted a few times in our college. Her name is Aimen and she was the perfect candidate for our music video. She was the Vice-President of the Music Society, was a great singer, participated confidently in school events, wasn't afraid of the spotlight and looked like a Bratz doll. These are a few of her selfies , consensually taken from her account. 

Due to each section being different concepts, I had to come up with two different stylizations that would fit the actress in terms of outfit, make up and hair. For the birthday scene, I wanted her to give a bold but soft hearted girl whos been hurt by the world too many times. This made me think of a red dress so I started browsing the internet for classy, chic but elegant that made an intense impression. In the end, I would've chosen any of these outfits if I was part of a Hollywood music video and culture wasn't an issue. 

This dress caught my eye the moment I saw it. The lyrics, about having youth being stripped away and being forced to abide by the cruel society, are very sad poetry pieces wrapped in bold and memorable beats, melody, and instrumentals, which is exactly what I see in this red dress. Red portrays boldness but I wanted the audience to wonder why she felt the need that she had to put up such a cold front. 

The jacket reminds me of warmth and softness which is what I think is her wanting to go back to her old soft but it will now only remain as a small part of her. As an accessory. The cream color emphasizes this as well.  These are all reasons why I personally would've chosen this dress for the birthday section. 

Runner up dresses (to give a basic idea of what I wanted) were: 

Now since we had cultural and religious aspects to consider, these are a few alternatives I came up with: 

The first option is a very decent alternative that would've gone well with the concept too. The second one would be great too, paired with black tights. 

Fortunately for us, Aimen already had a dress she owned that fit the concept really well and I take it as a win, even if it's a little different that what I wanted but we had to work with what we had:

For the second half of the music video, we wanted to do it at a local amusement park. For that I wanted a grunge looking outfit that basically screams 'don't interact with me'. So in turn, I looked up 90's grunge/skater girl outfits and this is what I decided to go with : 

For this, I've allowed Aimen to wear whatever she feels comfortable in this style, as she normally dresses like this. As for makeup, since the first setting is going to be a birthday party, i wanted bold sparkly makeup that would compliment the red dress. For the second scene, a simple wing liner would do well to fit the concept. 

As for the settings, since we didn't have the budget to make our own set, we needed an chic bedroom and an already furnished classy dining area where we would shoot the birthday cutting scene as well as other small clips. At first, I offered my house, as it be easier for me to get clearance from my parents, however, the kitchen was being renovated at that time and it'd be more of an inconvenience to clear everything out and make it perfect for the scene. That is when Azka offered her house and when she sent pictures of her bedroom and dining area, we knew it was perfect for what we had in mind. 

The dining:

The bedroom:

Deciding on one location, we started brainstorming for our second one, where we wanted to shoot the grunge concept. As a result, we thought of our local amusement park and decided for the longest time that we'd shoot here. 

However, Yumna and Azka both realized we'd face a few difficulties with lighting and crowds if we choose to go there, as well as money issues. Therefore, we decided to choose a popular park to use as our set. These are my own photos I took during my visits there. 

Lastly, we decided to use our school swimming pool to shoot the last few ending scenes of the music video as we wanted more settings. The lighting worked perfectly there and the blue tones would fit the music video well. Aimen would be filming the scene in her uniform too, which also works well according to our concept and song lyrics about youth. 

Props that were required for each setting scene were needed to be decided as well. For that we started planning in detail what we'd need which included newspapers to burn, a birthday cake, a butter knife, sprinkles, birthday decorations, funky colored lighting, and a few empty cans. 

After discussing my outfits ideas to the team, they all approved and we unified our ideas that we all wanted for the music video. As I provided the basic outline of the mis-en-scene, we were able to advance in our planning for the production aspect.