Lip Syncing Interview - screen tests

Lip syncing interview auditions:

As you have seen in our previous blog Alicia and I put a poster up in the common room and have got quite a good response. In our lunch breaks and free periods we have selected the people one at a time and asked them to lip sync "Where is the love". The idea of the music video is to show a variety of different ethnicities and races in our music video to represent the world being equal. 

We have the idea of using different clips of lots of different people of different genders and ages to put them throughout the music video overtime that it says "where is the love".  We originally thought of having all of the people we auditioned to come together in one shot to sing the choir part of the song at the end. The more that we thought about we realised that it would be harder to get a time where everyone that is doing it individually to come together to record it all at once. In addition to this we had then had the idea  instead of having everyone all in one shot when the choir sings we are going to get a clip of them all individually singing and put it all in a collage all at the same time. I believe that this will look really good as it will be easier as we won't have to get everyone together at the same time and I think that it will look really effective and get the emotion across to the audience.

An example of a music video that has successfully used this collage clips effectively is Beyoncé's music video "Countdown":

We have auditioned people of different ages and gender which has meant that we have been able to pick who we preferred. Each of the people knew the song which was very helpful and allowed us to just be able to film them. We asked each of them to make sure that they move their mouths clearly so when we added the music to the clip it would go easily. We auditioned each of the people which went really smoothly. When we got back into class, we uploaded all the songs from my phone to the computer and uploaded them to iMovie. I found the song on YouTube and downloaded it onto iMovie where I cropped the music down to just where it says "Where is the love" for each of the clips of which is what I had filmed for each of the people we auditioned. 

I have uploaded the video to Youtube:

In evaluation, we didn't realise until we put the music with the clip that a few people weren't quite in sync with the music meaning next time we will make sure that we play the music in the background so that the people can be isync with the music exactly. 

Here are some pictures of the people that we have auditioned:

We have taken pictures and videos of all of the people that we want to use in our music video. We like that we have a variety of different people, males, females and younger children as part of the song we are using shows diversity of all different people which we believe can be shown through the use of people that we use. When filming the clips we decided to use a mid shot as we believe that this will look best when on our music video. Overall, we are very happy with the people we have chosen to use and will see what they like when we come to do the final filming.

Location research

Location Research:

Alicia and I have decided that we that going to go to London and film at some of the key places in the city centre. Also, one of the main reasons why we want to film in London particularly is because of the terrorists attacks that have happened on London Bridge and other key locations such as the tube to relate to the lyrics in the song of some of the places where love has not been shown. Also, we want to visit the Grenfell tower and put down flowers as this will be a really emotional moment to connect to the lyrics of the song. Alicia has been to a particular place on the tube and has said that there is a sign of equality painted on the wall which she said would look really good to show equality which is one of the themes that we want to use in our music video. We researched this place online and found the exact place where it is so when we are planning our route around London we know exactly where we are going to film to save as much time as possible.

Planning our route has been one of the hardest part of the location research as we want to make sure that we do as much as we possibly can. I'm not very familiar with the different tubes that you can get and where they go so I told Alicia the key places that would be good to go to and she planned the route.

Some of the locations that we are wanting to film at in London are:

Westminster

St James' Park

Oxford Street

Marble Arch

River Thames (embankment)

Notting hill

Trafalgar Square

Grenfell tower

We have also had to plan our journey to and from London making sure that we get the right trains and tubes from each place. We have made sure to plan so that we don't waste any time when we are up there and we don't have to keep going back and forth. We have made sure to plan route that means we go around in a good order.

As well as going to London to film the majority of our music video we are wanting to film some close up shots of different people singing with clips playing in the background. We have decided to set up a green screen in school and film people singing into the camera. We are going to audition people to see who we are going to include into our video of who we want to sing.

Interview advertisement

Interview Advertisement:

                                                                                                                       

Alicia and I made a poster explaining the interviews that we are wanting and have with people that we want to be in our music video. Alicia and I are going to interview people and see who we think will be best for our music video.
                                                                                   

Initial ideas

Our Initial ideas:

In our music video we have the idea that instead of having someone just singing by themselves we want to choose a song that has a lot of meaning behind it so we can include stories of important things or subjects that are happening in the world and having lots of different people in the music video. Our key theme when looking for a song to use is equality to bring people together as we can come up with lots of stories that are happening in the world that we can add to the meaning of the song. Some examples of our song ideas are: 

• Sia – Breathe Me – Our reasons behind having this song as a choice is that we both saw the song in the film “Cyber bully”. The song is extremely powerful and the words have a meaning behind them of which we think would be a good way of getting a story out to make the audience connect to the song. The song struck to us as a powerful song which related to the themes that we wanted to create.
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• The Black Eyed Peas – Where is the Love – This struck to us as a song that would be really good to use as things that are happening in the world are bad. Especially, terrorist attack which are happening more and more often and showing that there isn’t love between all people. This made us think of different ideas of going to these places and holding up signs saying “Where is the Love” to show that people should all love to relate to the lyrics in the song which are very powerful to do with this.
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After some thought we have decided to choose the song “Where is the Love” as we have lots of different ideas like going to London that would look really good.

Some rough ideas of songs we are interested in using are: 

Black Eyed Peas – “Where is the Love” – We originally looked at using the original song as it is more upbeat but we were struggling with what to make as the story and meaning behind the song. We felt that the meaning behind the song is what we wanted but we wanted something to really connect to the audience and make them feel lots of emotion. I decided to look on YouTube to see if there is a slower version that has been made of the song. I found the new remake of the song which was slower and more emotional. I showed it to Alicia and we decided that this remake of the song was better and we could think of more ideas of stories that we could use to connect to the audience.

We have looked at the updated music video which was released in 2016 and saw how they have changed the meaning of the song to include things that are happening in the world. The music video made both Alicia and I very emotional and we started to look at how we could use this video as a template and do something similar to this. We started to think of the significant things that have happened in the world recently and came up with the terrorist attacks that have happened in London and the fire that happened at Grenfell Tower. We then thought about going up to London and filming at these places putting flowers in memory of the people that lost their lives. Looking at the music video we realised that they have used black and white to make it even more emotional for the audience. We are interested in doing this as it connects the audience to what is happening even more. In the remake of the music video they have used green screens to show close ups of different artists to make the audience really connected to the emotion that they’re singing about. Alicia had the idea of having some of the terrorist attacks happening in the background when we have some people singing.

In the remake of the song there is a choir at the end which made us come up with the idea of having lots of different people of different genders and races altogether to show the unity that the world does have. We are going to ask some of our friends to be a part of our music video.

Band and artist Biography

The Black Eyed Peas:

Alicia and I as a group are interested in looking more into the genre of pop as we enjoy many artists and bands who fall into this genre. We are interested particularly in looking further into the Black Eyed Peas song "Where is the Love?". The Black Eyed Peas were originally under the rap genre but many of their songs fall into the pop genre more up to date.

The Black Eyed Peas - 

The Black Eyed Peas are an American group, consisting of rappers will.i.am, Apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie. Originally an alternative hip hop group, they subsequently changed their musical sound to pop. The group were founded in LA in 1995 however, it wasn’t till the release of their third album Elephunk in 2003 that achieved high record worldwide sales. Their first major hit was the 200 single “Where is the love?” which topped the charts in 13 countries, including the UK which spent seven weeks at number one. Furthermore, as a result of this singles success it was labelled Britain’s biggest selling single of 2003.

Their fourth album “Monkey Business” had even bigger worldwide success and was certified 4 x platinum in the U.S. The singles that were released from this album were significantly popular; “Don’t lie”, “My humps” and Pump it”. In 2009, the group became one of only 11 artists to have simultaneously held the No.1 and No.2 spots on the Billboard Hot 100, with their singles “Boom Boom Pow” and “I’ve got a feeling”. These were the most popular singles in The Black Eyed Peas history as it topped the chart for a record number, 26 weeks. Following on from this, they later released “I’ve Gotta Feeling” which became the first single in the UK to see more than one million downloads.

Overall, the group have had massive success and have sold an estimated 76 million records, making them one of the world’s best-selling groups of all time.  The Black Eyed Peas are currently on a hiatus and doing individual things. However, in 2017 it was released in the media that Fergie has permanently  left the group to pursue her individual career.

2  singers in the group have had solo success:

Will.i.am: 

William James Adams was born on the 15^th March 1975, better known by his stage name will.i.am. He is an American musician, rapper, singer, songwriter, Dj and producer. He is best known for being a member of The Black Eyed Peas.

Will.i.am has released four solo albums. The first one “Lost change” was released on October the 2^nd 2001 through Atlantic Records and is an original album. The second album “Must B 21” was released on September the 23^rd, 2003. The third album “Songs About Girls” was released on September the 25^th, 2007. He released his fourth studio album “Willpower” which was one of his most popular albums. Will.i.am is also a music producer who has produced alongside Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Kesha, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, David Guetta, U2, Rihanna, Cheryl, Lady Gaga, Usher, Justin Timberlake and Nicki Minaj.

In collaborations and with the Black Eyed Peas, he has a total of 41 top-40 entries on the UK Single Chart since 1998, and has sold 9.4 million singles in the UK.

Fergie: 

Fergie Duhamel, born Stacy Ann Ferguson; March 27, 1975 is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is best known for being the female singer of The Black Eyed peas, with whom she has achieved chart success worldwide. Her debut solo album The Duchess which was released in 2006 was a major commercial success on the charts and gained three Billboard Hot 100 number one singles; “London Bridge”, “Glamorous” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry”.

With The Black Eyed Peas, she enjoyed a series of hits and albums before she released her solo debut album in September 2006 to success. The Black Eyed Peas enjoyed further success with the release of their third album with Ferguson, The E.N.D (2009) they attained their first string of Billboard Hot 100 number one songs.

She continued success with The Black Eyed Peas and they released the album The Beginning (2010), which featured three singles, including two number one songs. As Ferguson's five solo singles and six singles with The Black Eyed Peas have reached two million downloads in the United States, Ferguson was the artist with the most two-million sellers by the beginning of 2011.