Problems and Solutions

Now nothing ever done goes to plan and I say this because there were many problems we came into contact with. The first problem was that when we drafted our first music video it didn't really promote our music video or the artist James Gomez. Like the original we thought that it would be a good idea to just have people dancing in the background without it being a problem. However it looked more like a montage rather than a music video. Luckily we had time to alter this before the deadline.

Another problem we came across was the fact that not all our video footage was the same quality so we had to film a few of our scenes again. We felt as a group that we could do so much better and because of the fact that we were pressed for time a few of the other group members were a bit hesitant to do so but after we discussed it we agreed it was the best thing for us to do. It took some time and it was enough time to from the beginning.

Storyboard

The first scene on our story boss shows our opening transition. We were going to have the letters "h.a.p.p.y" flying across the screen in a swipe like transition. This background was going to be plain black and our letters were going to be yellow to fit in with the theme of the original artist and black and yellow are contrasting colours so we thought they would go together well. The next shot was to have (myself) James Gomez come out of the sheltered area at dockside signing the opening lyrics.

We thought that we could use the green screen to have the illusion that someone was in a hot air balloon. This was done so we could fit this clip in with the lyric "Hot air ballon, I could go to space." We found that in Pharrell's original he had actions matching to what he was doing in the video so hence why thought we would use this idea and add our own spin to it. We were then going to have loads of people dancing looking like they were having a good time as after all it is meant to be a feel good video.

We were then going to have the various shots of people dancing and we also going to have myself and other dancing dancing at various points to different parts of the song at different areas of The Chatham Dockside Marina as it is a very scenic ovation so this would be nice frames to have. 

Other frames we were going to include possibly if we had time were lots of different shots in the chorus of people dancing, different types of shots close ups medium and long shot to have a range. We were also going to have other people in a line with the letters "H.A.P.P.Y" in different colours and then repeat some of the shots until the video ends.

Questionnaires

Every video has to have a target audience, so this is something that all artists have to do. What is the point of making a children's video and then try and market it to adults, they would not be interested in it and they would not be able to relate to it either; this is why finding out your target audience is so important. Before we started with our video we wanted to do find out who our target audience is and once we established that it is for all ages young or old we want do a questionnaire to find out more about our target audience. 

As we can see the above questionnaire represents the adolescent population. The above group like Hip-Hop the most out of all the different genres out there. They represent the type of people who only very rarely listen to music and spend a maximum of 2 hours listen to music and they say that having a good music video will help the track sell. 

The above questionnaire represents the teenage population, it also represents the population that prefer Pop music the most. It represent the group that are casual music listeners who listen to a maximum of 5 hours of music in a week. These are just you're average music fans that only listen every now and then, this population also think that having a good music video helps promote not only the song but the artist.

This questionnaire represents the adolescent. It also represents the population that are into Pop music and those who listen to music more than the minority. These group of people also think that s good music video is essential to promoting the artist. What we have gained from these questionnaires is that it doesn't matter what age you are, regardless of whether you are male or female, most people listen to music and at some point whether on the radio or on television you will hear pop music at some point and all of those we asked told us that it is essential to have a video that promotes the artist as they are more likely to remember the video and that means they will talk about it and thats how the artist will eventually get the recognition they deserve. This is why we need our video to be recognisable and catchy.

Letter to the Record Company

We wrote to Columbia Records to ask for their permission to use happy for our music video. We had to this because of copyright and infringement issues as we did our research and some of the videos on youtube that have done covers of songs have stated "I do not own this video" or "No copyright infringement intended" and as our video was for education purposes we as a group felt that it was only right to do the same and put it in an informal letter stating our intentions.

Character Profile

James Gomez

Born and raised in Brooklyn, 21 year old James Gomez was scouted whilst busking on the streets of his hometown and signed a record deal with label School Boy Records. James has always had humble beginnings, living with his grandparents up till the age of 18 as his parents couldn't care for him. 

'My gran and gramps did everything they could for me but I still didn't have all the fancy stuff the other kids had, music was my only escape'. James began learning to play guitar after starting middle school and soon realized his passion for music through a combination of playing the guitar and song writing. 

His first gig was at a local jazz bar not too far from his home aged just 15, where he performed one of his earliest written songs 'My Town'.Now James has found fame with hit 'Happy' the sky is the limit for this new star.

Gomez feels that with the help of music he can help restore peace starting with his home town of Brooklyn. With the help of his youth initiative 'Vibez' he can use music to get the upcoming youth of today off the streets and using that energy to learn new instruments and new skills.