Planning Cinematography

Long Shot 

In our music video, we'll use various long shots that show different locations such as the forest and London. This will help our audience get a good look at the setting around us and where we're based. We'll also use long shots when the artist is performing directly to the camera - this gives the artist the opportunity to show their fashion and style which shows the target audience what the artist is all about and help them decide whether the look of the star is conventional to the usual genre that they listen to/watch. I think lyrics in our song such as "My way through London, Americana" could benefit from long shots as they're all about scenery and build a visual of a glamorous, fast paced location in listeners minds that we want to come to life in our video. Also, the chorus of "Roc The Life" may also be complimented with long shots as this is where we're currently planning to use the majority of our jump cuts and therefore we'll be able to clearly show we've moved from one location to another. "Roc the li li li la la la li li life" is repeated a lot throughout the song and with the beat also in mind, cutting from one long shot to another may help us create that image of a busy, fast paced life which is also full of glamour and modern day fashion.


Close Up 

Since our music video is partially narrative, it'll help for us to have close-ups as our audience can see how our artist and other actors feel about what's happening throughout the story and how they're reacting to it.
Hopefully this will also result in placing more emphasis on certain lyrics and verses of the song and convey emotion from the song onto our audience. I think that the use of close-ups also makes the atmospheres that we're wanting to create easier as the emotion of the artist and other extras can be read easier. "Write my name on the stars, so you can see it, wherever you are please believe it" are the opening lyrics to the bridge which are arguably a lot more heart felt than the rest of the song which is why close ups would be the best for capturing the emotion of the artist and allowing the target audience to connect to them on a more personal  level. We also want to use close ups for our performance side of the video for the same purpose.

High Angled/Low Angled Long Shot 

High and Low angled long shots also work the same way as our usual long shots, they give the viewers a better look at the surroundings and what's going on. However, the difference between the long shot and the high/low angled long shot it that the angle places the viewer in either a position of authority over the character in the frame, or make them feel inferior compared to the character in the frame when the angle is low. As in the paragraph on close-ups, "Write my name on the stars" might be a good line to use a low angled shot as stars are high in the sky and it'll give an effect that our artist is also on a level with them which makes a direct connection between lyrics and visuals, which supports Goodwins Theory on music videos.


Mid-Shot 

I think Mid-Shots are going to help us with our narrative when we want consistency. For example when the 'Alice' persona is following the fashionista through the forest, we want the editing to look persistent but not have too many things in the frame that'll distract our viewers.
Following that, since mid-shots are consistent and help tell a story, we'll benefit from these because our video is partially narrative based. While it's hard to pin point any specific lyrics in the song where a mid-shot will work well, we're planing to show the journey of discovering London and it's culture in our narrative based side of the story so lyrics such as "I'm off the chain, you gotta love it, I can't express enough, how bad I want it " may be a line where a mid-shot may come as  beneficial because there will be a lot of cutting between actors walking through fields and forests so we want the editing to be straight cut so that it seems realistic and the narrative moves along smoothly.

Camera Shots used in our Music Video 

Extreme Close-Up: I used an extreme close-up to film the mouth of the artist lip-singing the words "Roc The Life" which were used just before the chorus during the track. I chose to do a close-up as this didn't only work with the performance aspects of the video but it also placed emphasis on those lyrics which is also the title of the song. This means the viewer may remember these lyrics more than others and therefore remember the title of the song. Also, it eliminates any possible distractions from other things in the frame leaving the audience with no over choice but to focus on the words of the song.
Another example of an extreme close up is when we zoomed in on the messages on the stars and within the novel, like with the lips, it gives our audience just a snippet of what's in the overall setting which leaves a lot to the imagination. This keeps interest in our video and helps the narrative unravel nicely without bombarding the viewer with too much information which would make watching the video not as enjoyable.


Close-Up: The Close-ups in our video were used on various shots in the narrative but more specifically of the performance aspect when the artist is singing directly to the camera. Doing this creates a bond and understand between the audience and the artist. This helps the audience make a connection of the artist and become familiar with them which is important as our artist is a rising-artist and isn't established, so their face needs to be memorable. We decided to do this after researching many other videos of the Pop and R&B genre such as Rita Ora, Beyonce, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Flo-Rida and established that this was a very popular technique in all of their videos.

Mid-Shot: While mid-shots weren't as obvious in our video, they still appear during the narrative when doing a shot reverse shot between two characters, for example when the White Rabbit appears on the stairs. Mid-Shots were used to enable the narrative side of the video to flow consistently and naturally without any extreme close-ups in the shots used which may have made it look odd, off frame or give it bad continuity editing.

Long Shot: Long shots in our video were used a lot to capture location and various settings that we decided to use within our group. Long shots came especially in handy when capturing the London shots that we wanted to use, which were later put in the chorus for the most part. Long shots complimented the London scenes best as we wanted to capture the life and vibes of the city and the best way to do that was by getting as much as we could in the frame as long as it was relevant to the kind of glamorous and high-life theme that we wanted to capture. Therefore we took a lot of shots in the likes of Bond Street and Oxford Circus to get the most out of the long shots that we'd chosen to take.