When casting people for our music video we realise as a team that it is important to make good choices, ensuring everybody that we use is reliable, and so they won't let us down throughout the process, as with no star act, the music video won't be a success and it could cause various errors such as missing deadlines. They also have to be desirable, and so they need to fit the role in what we need, for example if we have a pop girly song, there is no point getting an old man to lip sync. Finally, they need to be available in the time period that we wish to film.
Firstly, we have decided that we wanted the singer of the song 'Over Night' which is George Bills to appear in the video as he has a good stage presence, is very confident and the main thing we want him to do is the lip sync part in our video. As he is the writer and performer of the song, he knows it very well and we feel that this will be very beneficial for our music video. As the song means a lot to him, it will also look very sincere and real, we hope that this will create a relationship with our audience and they will feel exactly what he is trying to say within the song, which is what we want to achieve by the video.
We asked George, firstly if we could use the song, and secondly if he would appear in the video, we did this by text, (which is shown below) and then later talked to him face to face when we took the pictures for our Digi-Packs for further conformation.
A copy of some of the text messages can be seen to the right:
He later agreed that we can use him in the video as we explained all we really wanted him to do was sit and sing the song so we could use him for our lip sync exercise.
When we saw him whilst taking photographs for our digi-packs on the 20th November, we had a quick talk about what he had to do, where, what he had to wear etc. Below are the minutes which I have wrote up after the meeting -
George: so what do you actually want me to do then?
Sam: basically all you need to do is, like sit and sing that's literally it, its because we need to have an aspect of lip sync in our video and because you know the song well and you have experience in singing it and so will be very confident and things with it, you'd be the perfect person to do that. And obviously the voice is your voice, and so it would match.
George: yeah i get you, yeah I could do that I guess!
Sam: cool! We would be filming January sort of time so are you available round then?
Jess: yeah like probably near the start, but we'd have to do a few different days so that we can capture everything that we need for the video.
George: Yeah well I'm out of work at the minute and with Christmas coming up I doubt I'll be employed by Jan so that's freaky with me guys
Sam: haha, goodo!
Jess: yay! We were thinking of doing it partly in your house, and partly in Sams, however we will probably do some parts outside too
George: well Sam lives next door to me so that's cool and easy, the outsides bit are okay too but man i better haver a jumper.
Sam: Oh my god ino, we won't make you wear any crazy costume, don't worry, if I'm honest your usually gear is probably fine as we want to capture as much as the artists personality and image as possible, but we will get to the finer details and let you know if we want any particular dress code nearer the time.
George: El presco lets do this
Jess: I'm excited!!
The transcript above shows George agreeing to appear in our video whilst maintaining the 3 suitable thing that we were looking for in our performers, availability, describable and reliable.
On the right we have taken some photographs of George -
As you can see there is a dark theme in these photographs and this is how we plan to use him in the music video, as there will be quite a dark theme throughout. In some we have altered the lighting by using a yellow LED light, by adding a yellow gel, and we quite liked this effect as we thought it gave his face a nice glow, we also like the bottom photo as it shows his emotion in the shot, which we hope to get across frequently in the video.
We have also looked at some photographs of George singing, so we can get an idea of what he is actually like when performing and to the left are some of the images that we found and thought we could incorporate in our music video.
As you can see he is holding a guitar in each of these and he is very devoted to his music, therefore we think that he will be perfect for this part of the music video. We will get him to hold a guitar in many of his shot, playing it as well as singing as this is the actual performance element of our video.
George is a very friendly guy and he is very reliable and so we are sure he is a very safe option to cast him in our music video. He is Jess Kelly, (who is my partner in this task) close family friend and so we both know him very, therefore we have no issue of parent consent of legal issues when filming with George as we socialise with him in our spare time, outside of college anyway.
George has quite a scruffy appearance, and we hope to keep this element of him in the video as relating back to artists in the same genre of ours, that we looked at in our research, like Ed Sheeran, they prefer to stay quite scruffy and 'normal' in their videos so their singing is noticed more than their star image. We plan to entwine this in our music video. George has just finished university at Bournemouth and so is currently out of work, therefore he is available most of the time and will happily be available when we require his assistance. Fortunately George lives in the same small town as me, which is Cleobury Mortimer and so he will be easily accessible to us if we ever need him on short notice. As George writes his own songs, and is extremely talented on the guitar, and at singing, he is the perfect person for us to use in our music video, as he is so talented, we trust that his performance in our music video will not disappoint.
In our music music video, the narrative is about a boy and a girl who have broken up and the girl get's really upset and goes a bit of the rails, therefore the boy is singing about the girl. Most of the music video will be focussing on the girl's story, with some small inputs from the guy - (George).
Therefore, the second person that we needed to cast is the girl in our music video - for this, we had two options, and we weren't sure which to use - Below are two pictures, showing the two different girls:
On the left, we have Milly Pain, she is a close friend of mine and she went to the same school as me and Jess, she also lives in Cleobury which would make her a very suitable candidate for our music video, however there is a 2 minute drive to her house, as she is currently in part-time education Milly has a lot of free time and so she would be easily accessible if we needed her at short notice, Milly is a very pretty girl and her and George suit quite well and so I think this would make the music video look very believable and sincere which is what we are trying to achieve by the video. Milly has a part time job at the golf club in town and so she is very friendly and good to work with, she is very reliable, and I trust that she wouldn't let us down with this project, she also has a keen interest in music, especially in acoustic tracks as she also plays the guitar and has a beautiful singing voice, therefore she has had many recent gigs at local pubs.
The second girl that we are considering is Corrine Broome, she is also very attractive and so she may be somebody who would appear in many videos, the downfall we had on Corrine is that maybe acoustic isn't the right sort of genre music video that would suit her as she is in to drum and base and other sorts of music. This aside, Corrine lives in Cleobury too, however she only lives 2 minutes away frommy house so she would be easier to reach that Milly. Corrine is also very reliable and she has a keen interest for media and as she is taking the course herself she would be very devoted to our task, and she would put her all into making sure this music video is a success.
As we are torn between the 2 girls for our music video, we decided to ask our focus group which girl they thought would be more ideal - we put the results into a tally, and the results are below:
MILLY PAIN //// 4
CORRINE BROOME // 2
As the results show, 4 people thought Milly would be better to use, and only 2 people thought Corrine would be better to use, therefore, with this in mind, we have decided to ask Milly to appear in our music video; a conformation of her agreeing to this is shown in the print screen of the text below -
We also had a face to face meeting with Milly on the 25th November at my house where she agreed to be in the video - I transcribed this below:
Sam: Milly! I need to talk to you about our music video.
Milly: Oh my god yeah what's going down?
Jess: well, you 100% keen to do it?
Milly: yeah i'll do it for you
Sam: okay fab, basically all you have to do is simple things, you'll be fine
Milly: okay cool, when?
Sam: it'll be sometime earlly Jan probably, may take more than one shot though so be prepared!
Milly: haha okay well I have no plans in Jan so sounds good
Sam: perfect!
Having 2 girls who would be suitable in the video is good for us as a team, as if something were to go wrong with Milly we still have some one who is willing and appropriate to fall back on - hence as a team we are very prepared for any potential problems.
Contact Numbers/Details for each member of the cast and team are stated here, we thought that it was important to get the details of all of the important people within the process, so they can be easily contacted throughout the music video task:
Sam Slingsby - team member - 07799300500 - s131281@wsfc.ac.uk - sammslingsbyxo@googlemail.com
Jess Kelly - team member - 07813177128 - s1312872@wsfc.ac.uk - jessica__kelly@hotmail.co.uk
Milly Pain - woman casted in video - 07709995630 - millypain07@hotmail.com
George Bills - performer casted in video - 07891872810 - georgebillselg@gmail.co.uk
We are going to be filming our club scene in the Games Room where I live, a photograph can be shown to the right:
George Lives in Cleobury Mortimer in a house which is located approximately 2 minutes walk from my house, which is the location many of our shots will be filmed. To make this clearer, I have print screened and edited the two houses on Google maps to show both our houses to put into context how close they are. As shown, George's house has a blue circle around it, and Mine has a red. Therefore, with the short distance between us it will be very easy for George to get to my house at any time whether we need him in short notice or not. George also has a valid driving licence and a car to make this even easier, if we decide to film at a location further away, at a later date.
We asked George, firstly if we could use the song, and secondly if he would appear in the video, we did this by text, (which is shown below) and then later talked to him face to face when we took the pictures for our Digi-Packs for further conformation.
We have also looked at some photographs of George singing, so we can get an idea of what he is actually like when performing and to the left are some of the images that we found and thought we could incorporate in our music video.
