Production Treatment

The music video: Long Way 2 Go – Cassie

Duration: 3.45 minutes

Audience: The main target audience of our songs is females aged 13-18. We think this is the right targeted audience because the song was released in 2006 when the members of our group were 13 and we remember that the song was very liked by females our age. It even made it to the top 20 in Ireland, New Zealand and United Kingdom. The type of songs the artist sings mainly appeals to young females. It is very difficult to live without music especially if you are in your teens, because music revolves around us.However it may also appeal to people who like the r&b genre as the beat of the song is very catchy.

Resume: The song is about a girl who is very attractive and gets a lot of male attention. She isn't really interested in any of the guys who are trying to get her attention and is only interested in herself. The original video shows her getting ready for a girly night out and her being dismissive to all the guys that try to talk to her and send friend requests on the internet. The song also talks about when guys say things to girl to boost up their reputation. e.g. you claim that your so hot, and you say you got skills in the bedroom. At this line of the song we plan to show guys trying to get in touch with her using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace which relates to our target audience as social networking plays a big part of communication in modern society. At the end of the song there is an instrumental bit that we are going to use to develop the narrative of the song. we are adding a twist to the video because the song is about guys having a 'Long way to go'. we are going to make our main girl act as though she is interested in one specific guy but then in the end she is going to change her mind and says he's got a long way to go.

Suggested Elements:

Performance: We plan on having various performances in our music video. We have female dancers and male dancers. We have our main girl who will be just performing the song in front of the green screen and we will get just various shots of her singing the song. We are going to have our main girl and the main guy dancing in a dance studio and in front the green screen also.

Costumes: We have an idea for the dancers to wear a colour and then have the same colour on the green screen. Our main girl will be wearing very stylish clothes, which are in fashion today. She will have more than one outfit, one for the scene at her house, a different one for when she is in front the green screen and other scenes throughout the video. The main guy that is trying to get her attention will be wearing the average fashionable clothes of teenager in todays society.

SFX: We have ideas of various effects we want to use in out music video. We are going to be using the green screen. This will enable to change the background to different images. We plan to mainly use this for our main girl when she is just singing the song in different outfits. Also we are making the dancers dance in front the green screen and we would like to use an effect which makes the background the same color as what they are wearing.

At the end of the video we would like to show fast clips of all the guys who tried to get her attention in black and white to signify that it happened in the past. We also discussed that at the beginning of the video we could play the video backwards very fast so it shows what happens at the end at the beginning and then shows how the ending happened I think this could be a very good effect to use to build up a bit of suspense and keeps the spectator interested in the narrative.

Some Screen Shot From Original Music Video

This lesson we are looking at similar videos to the one we have chosen (cassie - long way to go) and we are trying to get ideas of shots that we can use in our music video which will help us to follow the conventions of the genre and style of the song we are doing.


Here are some some screen shots from the original video to our song choice.

This shot shows the girl in her room, relaxed being girly on her laptop. In the original video she is on the internet and there are close up shots of different guys tryin to email her and sending friend requests. And she is singing, 'think twice coz' you got a long way to go'. We are going to try and do a similar scene where our actress will be gettin different texts from guys and facebook replys, and she is just not interested. We plan on showing her disinterest by showing shots of her throwing her phone and rejecting people on facebook and turning off her laptop. We would like to make our video relate to average teenagers our age (16-18) who go through the same thing, we would also like to add a fun part to the video so it is not entirely serious.

In this shot there is a mirror effect of Cassie getting ready and dancing in the mirror. This is a good effect to use as you can see the physical body and then the reflection. We will make our actress be singing to herself in the mirror to show she has a lot of pride in herself and she is independant as there is a line of the song which says 'i buy my own bags, my purse, my jeans'. This could be an example of why she rejects alot of the guys that try and get her attention, because she has high standards for herself. For this scene we can set up more than one camera at different angles so when we are editing we can use the different shots but the action is exactly the same.

The top image is the opening shot of the original video, this sets the scene already showing that it is in the city, so when we see the girl on her bed in her nice room, it immediately gives a clue to the audience that she is a popular well liked girl. We have spoken about duplicating this idea by using an openings shot of salford quays. We would like to show shots of our actress walking across the bridge singing and shots that we could use as slow motion just lookin out into the water etc.

Analysis Of A Music Video Similar To Our Chosen Genre

While looking to choose a music video, we looked at R n B artist Paula DeAnda with the song Easy. It is in the same kind of category as the one we have chosen to do but looking at the video, if we choose to do this music, whatever we do will be almost the same as the real video.

This was when we came up with the idea of choosing a song that could fit our idea, a song like this so that our video will not be seen as copied, that’s why we have chosen to do long way to go by Cassie because the video we are looking to make will go very well with the song.

Looking at Paula DeAnda’s Video, right from the beginning you can tell its about her as the first thing you see is an extremely close up shot on her face and through out the video there will be a series of shots for example close up on her face, long shot when she talks about herself, mid shot to show her movements etc, and this shows a very big similarity to Cassie’s video as she is shown dressing up and looking to go out just like in Long way to go. The close up shot wasn’t only to her face but to all of her jewelries and shoes etc, this is to show that she isn’t just any normal female but one that isn’t short of money. The mise on scene blatantly puts out the color purple as its been used as the background and her eye lashes are also bright purple. Different locations helped show that no matter where she goes, she till has boys chasing her. The start of the video is set in the day as she is going out for a drive and straight away you can see how boys are getting careless because of her, dropping boxes and chasing her, trying to get her, and looking stupid, hence the name of the song easy. This is similar to our video as the boys are doing the same to the female used in our video. As u can see in the video, the long shot is also used as she is about to dance, this will also be used in our video. This shows all the ranges of the dancers movements. Apart from her dancing, there are also professional dancers doing different dance move so we also have arranged for a professional dancer to do a bit of dancing for us in the video

The car seats are all white while the outline of the car is black and the color of the car is dark red, this is done to highlight her as the main feature, this is just like in the Long way to go video when Cassie was on the bed and the background was all white and bright to highlight her, which is why we are going to do almost the same thing, we'll make sure the background on the girl is light to highlight her.

In this video just like in Cassie’s Long way to go, Paula uses the very good looking type of boys of different races for example Caucasian, black, latino etc. this symbolizes no matter the race, if your acting too easy, she wont be interested in you but when Wilmer Valderrama came through she was interested although none of them acted on it, but the concept of it was if you don’t act so easy you’ve got a chance and we also have chosen to put this in our video by choosing a variety of races to appear in the video all wanting to get the girl. Instead of using a straight cut, a jump cut editing is chosen every time she is approached to show in little details, very fast what the story behind the music is but the lip sync is still excellent. But as soon as he went, the group of guys who came in their car were all trying so hard again to impress like the guy who done the back flip out of the car but again, it just shows how easy they are which makes her loose interest.

This was the same situation all throughout her time in the club aswell, this was until Bow Wow came in.The graphics from the green screen when the drops of purple liquid were flying up also highlighted how much she liked purple.

Here is the video by Paula DeAndra featuring Bow Wow- Easy

Paula DeAnda featuring Bow Wow - Easy on MUZU.

Decision Time

Today we are looking at the two videos we have chosen out of a variety of musics, these two are Cassie-''Long Way To To'' and Ciara-''Never Ever''. Since we can't choose which one to do, we have decided that we will make up a story for both musics then choose the better storyline and do the music video with

it.

We have chosen to do a R&B type of song which is why we have chosen those two type of musics. Although they are both R&B, these two musics are different as Ciara's never ever is about loving someone for so long and realising that if they haven't loved you back after all these time then they will never love you. On the other hand, Cassie's long way to go is about her telling the guys who like her that she is not easy, they cant mess her about because they have a ''Long way to go" before they can get her.

This is targeted to an audience from about the ages of 14 to 21 and obviously, R&B music applies to a lot of people so hopefully it will attract the older age groups as well and also mostly to the females as it is about females restricting themselves from getting hurt from males.