Planning the Roles

On the first day of school, our teacher introduced us to the A Level Media Studies syllabus and informed us that we would need to make a music video for our A Level Coursework, and we had the choice to go in teams or alone. As there were two separate media studies classes and my friend Michelle and I were the only students in one of the classes, we decided to work together as a team of two. We have worked together countless times in the past, including our Media Studies AS Level Coursework and I enjoyed every bit of working together with her, so I thought that we have pretty great team dynamics and collaborating together one last time for our A Level coursework would be the perfect way to end my high school journey. 

We were presented with the different roles each of us had to take on for the making of our MV. It was similar to the roles in AS Level - director, co-director, editor, creative (costume and set designer, and more creative roles), and technical. Back in our AS Level, I took on the creative role and have enjoyed doing it a lot, so I chose to do the same role as I have grasped it pretty well. 

Here are the roles we assigned ourselves:

• Director (creating the story and directing other crews): Michelle Nathanie Sutanto

• Co-director (assisting the director): Quinella Erinn Soedjiono

• Editor (editing the music video): Michelle Nathanie Sutanto

• Creative (costume and set designer, other craetive roles):  Quinella Erinn Soedjiono

• Technical (cameraman and setting up equipments): Michelle Nathanie Sutanto

Selecting a Music Genre and Song

Michelle and I chose to pick a song based on the R&B/electropop genre as we listen to most songs in this genre and are very familiar with its conventions as well. I have been an avid listener of The Weeknd (an R&B and electronic music genre artist) since I was 10, so I thought that I would understand the R&B/electropop genre pretty easily and would also be able to create a similar music video with its conventions. 

After choosing the genre, we chose to make our music video based on the song "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd. This song was released in 2019 and the reason why we chose this song is because we are very familiar with this song, and because this song portrays the consequences of his actions, conveying a moral lesson about addictions, which I believe would be beneficial to be taught to our society.

Because of the title "Blinding Lights" I visualized the music video to be set in a bustling city, or have many neon lights featured in it. Before moving on to set a color palette, I would conduct further research on the music video's conventions and watch the music video as well. 

Blinding Lights Album Cover

Planning

After watching the original Blinding Lights music video repeatedly, I was able to derive a few meanings from the lyrics:

• The artist is going through a heartbreak.

• In order to alleviate the pain he suffered, he engages in substance abuse (alcohol abuse) which he overdoses on. 

• The overdose led him to be intoxicated, hence leading him to hallucinate.

As we decided to centralise the lore of the music video based on intoxication, we decided to name the album INTOXIC8. Naming the album INTOXICATE would be too long, and in order to make it more unique, I decided to use the number 8 to replace the word "ate" because they have very similar pronunciations. 

We decided to choose a green colour palette for our music video as toxicity is commonly associated with the colour green, as seen from Snow White's poisonous substance being green, and because radioactive substances are green. 

As the title of the song is "Blinding Lights", I envisioned the setting to be set in a big city as it contains many well-lit buildings and also many cars that emit light, creating a bustling atmosphere. 

Making the Storyboard

Michelle was far better compared to me when it comes to drawing and was also able to brainstorm many ideas for the scenes of the music video, so she created the storyboard while I gave her feedback on her ideas. 

Creation of Visual Moodboard

As the costume and prop designer, I had to come up with outfits and hairstyles that suit the theme of the music video. I also had to decide on the design of the digipak and its social media as well.

Link to our visual moodboard: https://pin.it/1GisTLsks

Here is a preview of our moodboard:

Choosing the Outfits

I prepared a few outfits to be chosen for our MV. Here are the different outfits I have chosen:

Character Profile and Cast Selection

As we do not have a lot of male friends, it was pretty difficult for us to find an actor for our video. However, we tried brainstorming a couple of people to choose from for our music video based on these criteria:

Character profile:

• Aged 17 - 30

• Gender: Male

• Appearance: One that doesn't look too innocent, preferably has a "bad boy" look

• Height: 168+ cm

• Background: The character is intoxicated by alcohol (substance abuse), resulting him to be unable to distinguish reality and his hallucinations, so he thinks he is still in a relationship with his girlfriend but it isn't the case in reality as they have already gone separate ways.

After considering the criterias above, we thought of choosing one of our friends, Denzel, as his appearance matches our chosen criteria. However, we still decided to post an instagram story about our actor search in case there are other people who would want to apply to become our actor, and to increase our number of candidates to shortlist.

This is the Instagram story posted by Michelle on her account.

Coincidentally, Denzel replied to her story and was interested on taking the actor role. We briefed him on his role and what he was going to do as the actor, the outfits he was supposed to wear. Fortunately, he agreed to be our actor, and had a pretty flexible schedule as well so we were glad to be able to work with him. 

Location

Our MV setting should be able to depict a city, so we picked the location to be at Jalan Tunjungan, the heart of Surabaya. Jalan Tunjungan is the perfect spot as it has a lot of shops, restaurants, and many buildings as well. 

Here is what it generally looks like:

We mostly plan to film on the streets as it can clearly depict the lights.