R&P Post 33: Reflections on my role and contribution during Research and Planning

During the long process of Research and Planning, our group have seen our ideas come to life. It hasn't been long since we were brainstorming concepts and soon we will start putting them all in place. As a team, we have worked together to make executive decisions. We have also been working individually to research our ideas and collect references; strengthening our understanding of underlying concepts.

We delegated roles according to our strengths: Georgina was fast at producing elements such as the shootboard, Gabriel was best at the technological parts and would often go over the viability of our ideas. I mostly excelled at collecting reference points and producing documents that we could refer to. My creativity enabled me to draw a lot of the flat plans that would form the baselines for our construction.

We worked really well as a team

Below, I have detailed my role and contribution during Research and Planning, both as a group and individually:

As a group

Came up with creative ideas

Brainstorming ideas

We all came up with ideas for the music video during our group meetings. I think that I am very creative and so I loved to share my rough designs with the group. We brainstormed some initial ideas before branching out into researching individual sections.

Edited our Steal-o-matic

Music video references
that I found

I was able to contribute a lot to our Steal-o-matic. This was because I had watched a lot of music videos in preparation for the project and was able to come up with a wide variety of references for the video. In particular, I was able to pull up music videos from Foxes and Melanie Martinez which gave us ideas on the notion of looking when Foxes opens her eyes and the idea of being sucked inside the doll's house.

Prop and set design

Transforming our backdrops

Wallpapering
with Gabriel

I worked with the group to wallpaper the boards that would form the background for our dollhouse setup. I was firm on buying real wallpaper instead of printing out and sticking dozens of pink flowers, as was suggested by Georgina, because I thought that it would add to the realism of the video.

I hope that, from the photos, you can see how essential the wallpaper was to the narrative of the music video.

Creating our posters

Posters that we printed onto A2 sheets

Circled in red are the dwarfs that I produced

We printed out A3 sheets of the dwarfs, the WW2 poster and the Housewife poster. We then stuck them onto large cardboard placards and cut out the dwarf outlines. We also created bases so that they were level and stood up unaided.

Filming our test shoot

During our test shoot week, I filmed Georgina as she performed in the Land Girls and Snow White setups. I was also in charge of directing the performance - shouting out cues for Georgina to do a particular movement, or reminding her of the lyrics she had to sing along to.

Acting in the test shoot

In addition to filming our test shoot, I also acted in it as the female doll. This was a great experience for me because I was able to the theories that I have learnt about; regarding direct address and performing to the camera.

Individually

Produced digipak flatplans

Drawing the flatplan for the digipak

I came up with the fundamental concept of the album cover and I drew the flat plan for our digipak panels. The flatplan is vital to the production of our digipak as it was a visual representation of all my ideas and I found that we referred to it constantly during the production phase.

I also did a lot of research into album covers so that I had all of the references that I needed to produce a digipak that conformed to all of the conventions.

I enjoyed working on the album cover and creating the flat plans because I have been able to fully understand and utilise the link between promotional marketing and the production of the album cover. I have used references to learn about conventions so that I could conform or go against them to gratify audience expectations or pique their interest.

The front cover of our digipak that I drew

Drew potential promo shots

I drew the sketches for our promo shots. These were crucial to our project when we took our promo shots for the website and for the digipak. Because of this, the group entrusted me with taking the lead for the task. I was able to direct Georgina to do the poses and convey the right expressions.

My sketches for the poses
for our promo shots

Produced the call sheet

I produced the call sheet that our group used for our main shoot. This was important to our group during that time because it contained all of the information that we needed for our shoot. This included the different roles that we played in the shoot, the start and end times for each day and health & safety procedures.

The call sheet that I produced

Sourced and made references for makeup

I produced the presentation of makeup references for each setup and I sourced the makeup that we used. I have practiced applying makeup on Georgina so that I can prepare for how to do her makeup for each setup.

Makeup moodboard

Our makeup station

A photo of me applying makeup on Georgina

I think that I have contributed a lot to the research and planning aspect of the project. Together with my group, I have completed a lot of research into various aspects of the marketing campaign. With all the knowledge that we have gained, I am confident that we will produce a stunning campaign. The pre-production element was vital to the construction aspect of our project.