Todays activity was to review our feedback and decide where changes need to be made. One of the main problems we realised, via peer feedback, is that Domino by Jessie J is not a song that has a narrative itself, so in turn it would be hard to create a video with narrative to a song with no narrative. Therefore as a group we have decided to focus more on performance in our music video. Below is an final version of our updated draft.
Final Treatment For Music Video
Outline of ideas
My music video will be focusing more on the performance of an artist during their music video, as opposed to a narrative concept. The video will open with our character who is representing the artist, performing her song (Domino) in what appears to be a studio. There will be a shot of perhaps studio lights turning on, to indicate the beginning of the song. As the intro to the song builds up, we will use a variety of shots, mainly close to the actor, that put emphasis on things such as make up, clothes, shoes and setting.
As the lyrics begin the video will cut to the artist who will be lip syncing the song, the shot will be perhaps a mid shot that shows the top half of the artist and some of the location. The shot will change every time a new line is intorduced into the song. As the shot changes, so will the location, costume and possibly lighting. This will conform to pop music conventions as the shots will keep up with the pace of the song, making the video more enticing.
For the stanzas just before the chorus, we will aim to make use of extreme close ups of facial features, particularly lips and eyes, to connote phallic imagery, which is conventional of pop music videos.
As the chorus is introduced, as will a new location, for example when the start of the chorus comes is; 'rock my world into the sunlight, make this dream the best i've ever known...'. This location/costume change will often be referred to during the chorus parts of the song.
The character will continue to perform the song, dancing and lip syncing in rhythm with the beat of the song, up until the bridge. At this part of the song, the location will change to an unseen one yet. The setting will be low key lighting, so that the characters silhouette is emphasised. This footage will last for the most part of the bridge, interspersed with the shot fading in and out of black. This will connote that the bridge is a different tone to the rest of the song, and the song is likely to be ending soon. Toward the end of the bridge, the shots will speed up as the lyrics overlap. For example the lyrics include the note 'yeah' repeatedly over the top of the usual lyrics 'oh baby baby, got me feeling so right, oh baby baby dancing in the moonlight'. The shots will cut to the character lip syncing the bridge and the yeah's back and forth until the bridge is over.
The character will not lip sync the entire song, the shots of the character singing will be broken up with body shots, and shots of the character dancing.
After the bridge the speed at which the shots cut will increase, and all of the 'scenarios' will be used, and the cuts will include all the settings that have been seen so far, but thespeed at which they change will be considerably faster. This will indicate to the audience that the song is nearing the end.
As the video ends the character will lip sync the last lyrics, and will walk towards the camera and perform Jessie J's artist motif of pushing the camera away, before the video fades out the music and it fades to black.
During research I discovered that product placement in a music video is a typical pop music convention, thereore we will try to include some product placement in the music video, preferably at the start of the video.
Resources:
Technical equpitment - Tripod, camera, artificial lighting, Final Cut Pro (for editing) and a white screen for the character to perform in front of that will reflect the lighting.
Actors/Costumes - Actor to depict Jessie J, bright coloured clothes - mainly dresses or party clothes.
Locatons/settings - 'studio' setting, we will use our schoold 'oracy space' to film as it is well lit and big, yet also has a place where darker lighting may be used.
Justification for my ideas:
There are a number of reasons for chosing this concept. My group and I underwent a lot of research in order to determine what our target audience wanted to see in our music video. 49% of responses said they would like to see us remake the original domino video, which is total performance, so we will bear this in mind when making our video. A vast majority of our audience are aged 15-17, so this age group are more likely to want to see a performance of their favourite artist as opposed to something more low key. Also when we asked our audience to describe Jessie J, some of the words we got back included; fun and confident, therefore this must be incorporated into our video.
Although 70% of our audience said they would prefer to see narrative in a music video, we have as a group concluded that in order for the audience to enjoy our video as much as possible, we should keep with a perfomance based video. In further research we discovered that performance is a key convention in pop music videos, therefore this supports our desicion to create a performance based concept music video. When our target audience were asked what colour theme they would appreciate in a video of the pop genre, they suggested colours such as pink, purle, gold and blue, which is why we have decided to have a bright colour theme to add some colour to our lighting.
This activity has taught me that it is important to get feedback on your ideas, as you may be blind to some flaws with your original ideas. Recreating this treatment has been useful, because it has given up a detailed guide to follow when we begin filming our music video.
Her first number 1 was 'Price Tag' which was released in February 2011. Her debut album 'Who you are' was released shortly after Price tag and sold 105,000 copies in the first week, reaching number 2 on the iTunes album charts. Below is the album 'Who You Are'. .png)
Jessie's career has blown up following the release of another 5 singles: "Nobody's perfect, Who's laughing now, Who you are, Domino and Laserlight, all of which reached the top 10. This made Jessie the first British female solo artist to get 6 or more singles from one album in the top ten on the charts. 
The main convention that this music video is conforming to is the idea that music videos portray a narrative. It is common for a pop music video to include narrative and/or performance as it gives more of a meaning behind the song. For example the narrative in this video is about Katy Perry who is with someone who changes their mind constantly, and it makes her frustrated. The narrative here allows the audience to have something to watch whilst watching the video. It is apparent that this is a pop music video convention because it can also be seen in Jessie J - Who's laughing now.
Here there is another typical pop music video convention, that the video simultaneously changes from narrative to performance, yet focuses more so on performance. It is an opportunity for artists to make themselves the object of the music video yet include the narrative. This reminds the audience that the music video is from the artists perspective. This is emphasised by the lack of lighting in this screen shot, yet the main lighting is behind the artist to make her stand out to the spectator. It is clear that performance is conventional in music videos as we also see performance mixed with narrative music videos in Jessie J - who's laughing now.
While Jessie J has decided to keep her performance aspect of the music video in the same setting we still see the video cutting to her whilst she performs some of the song. This again makes the audience come back to the artist and are reminded of the intended message behind the music video.
Another typical pop music video convention is produce placement. In this screen shot we see a close up of Katy Perry to emphasise the fact that she is wearing Diesel sun glasses. This is used because it is easy to influence the audience as they begin to associate brands with a certain artist. When the music video becomes popular millions of people will have seen that Katy Perry wears Diesel, which is a strong way of advertisement. It is evident that this is a pop music video convention as we also see it in Jessie J - It's My Party: Here Jessie J is pictured holding the Dre Beats Pill, which again is product placement. This product placement send the message to the audience that this particular product is needed to have a good time. When famous artists are associated with big brands it makes their audiences idolise them even more.
A typical pop music video convention, that is perhaps not so obvious, is the idea that at the end of a video that is partly/all narrative based, a huge collaboration of the music video comes together to dance/party for the last couple of chorus'. I can assume this is a typical pop music convention because it can also be seen in Katy Perry's 'Hot 'n Cold'. I think that this convention is used, as it is the last impression of the music video that will be left with the audience. It is essential that it maintains the upbeat and usually colourful theme if the video. It is also possibly the easiest way to end a music video, as it is generally assumed as a 'summary' of the music video. In both of these screens shots we can see a combination of most of the things we have experienced throughout the video, which summarises the meaning in the video.
