Planning

Before we begin filming out music video, we planned ahead and decided which of us will ne doing what. Since we are only two people, it was fairly easy to pick which tasks were for who based off of what we were better at. Similarly to my roles during my As Level film opening, I was assigned the same role as the main video editor as well as director, I also wanted to branch out more and experience something new, which is why I also decided to take up the challenge of being the videographer. I believe I am quite familiar with the conventions of music videos which is why I believe that I am well suited for these roles.

As such, the tasks of my group are as such

• Michelle: Director (create story and direct music video and digipack design), editor (editing the music video), as well as videographer

• Quinella: Prop and costume design, co-director, editor of digipack and social media

I was able to interpret the words of Blinding Lights after seeing the original music video several times:

• The artist is experiencing heartache.

• He abuses substances, namely alcohol, and overdoses on it in an attempt to ease his anguish.

• He was drunk from the overdose, which is what caused him to have hallucinations.

We called the album INTOXIC8 because we wanted to focus the storyline of the song video on intoxication. I chose to replace the word "ate" with the number 8 to make the album more unique because their pronunciations are so similar. Naming the album INTOXICATE would have been too long.

Since green is typically connected with toxicity—as evidenced by the green color of Snow White's poisonous substance—and because green also happens to be a color associated with radioactive substances, we decided to utilize it for our music video.

Since the song's title is "Blinding Lights," I assumed the scene would be in a large metropolis because of the abundance of brightly lit structures and the numerous light-emitting autos that give the place a busy feel.

We decided to create the costume design based off what we had and to match the character we wanted to create through the music video - a heartbroken man who makes use of unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to rid of his emotions. We have compiled our ideas in a single pinterest board (click link below) This is also to help further editing processes and filming as we will get the gist of how we want our final product to look like.

We chose the color green as it means revitalization and rebirth whilst also meaning illness and poison. We chose this as the character in our music video is slowly poisoning his soul and body through substance abuse, despite his seemingly alive and energetic nature all throughout the music video.

As the main director of this coursework, I created a draft storyboard of how I wanted the music video to go, alongside notes of what shots to use as well as the cuts and transitions I would use for each shot.

I used the app Procreate on my iPad

We had a hard time finding an actor for our video because we don't have many male pals. Nevertheless, we made an effort to come up with a few candidates for our music video based on the following criteria:

Profile of the character:

• ages 17 to 30

• Male 

• Physical attributes: A somewhat rugged, almost "bad boy" appearance

• Height: more than 168 cm

Context: The individual believes he is still in a relationship with his girlfriend, but in reality, they have already broken up because he is too drunk (a substance abuser) to distinguish between reality and his hallucinations.

Since we planned for our music video to depict our city's busy night life, we picked Jl. Tunjungan which is a very festive street right in the heart of Surabaya. It was also perfect as the locations needed in relation to our earlier storyboard was present in the street in walking distance to one another, below is an image of what Jl. Tunjungan looks like.

One of our filming locations is a sober bar called Club Metro, which in addition to having the retro vibe we were going for as well as a photobooth which was in our initial list of locations. It was also perfect as they sold mocktails that look similar to real cocktails which represent the use of hard alcohol to cope.