Meeting with Luke and Set Designers

Today we had a meeting with Luke and the set designers to discuss our initial ideas for our set design. We explained our concept to them and showed them some pictures of our set design ideas for the 1920's jazz club, the modern club and the shipping container lab.

Their response was quite positive and they seemed to be excited about the idea, although they did have some suggestions about things that may need adapting and how it was going to work logistically.

One of the first problems we came across was the fact that some of the musicians that we have contacted aren't able to participate and so we have been struggling to find alternatives. Luke suggested his friend Mike Elvin who plays the double bass and would hopefully be available and willing to participate. We decided that because Izzy Pelling can't be there to play the violin in our video we thought that Evelyn could play the violin in the video as she is a talented violinist. however, this may be difficult as Evelyn is part of our production group and therefore we will have to find a balance between her helping within the filming elements ad her performing in the video.

They suggested that we develop the idea and instead of having the dancers in a modern element, change it to a futuristic element to make it more imaginative and also this will help us to create a stronger contrast between these elements which may make the concept clearer to the audience. We are thinking of changing the furniture and the lighting in this section to reflect this, however we will keep the same people and the same space to make it clear to the audience that it is the same space just in the future.

Another thing that I discussed with Luke was the fact that 2 of the people that we have considered for the mad scientist either aren't able to do it or don't think that they are right for the part. The one person who said that they were interested was curious as to when we will be filming. Luke said that our group would most likely be within the second or third week of the filing schedule, Here is the email I sent to James Hartman to pass on this information that he had asked for.

Here is a picture of the notes that the set designs made during our meeting:

After our discussion with Luke and due to the fact that he said that I should be responsible for sourcing costumes and asking the wardrobe mistress at school about what our options are I decided to go and see Elizabeth who is the wardrobe mistress at school to explain what was going on and what our idea is. Luke suggested that I told her about the concept and what kind of costumes we think that we might need and explain the time frame and when we will need these things. I explained all of this to Elizabeth and I said that I would email her pictures of the kinds of costumes that we are looking for and she said that we can get everyone's sizes etc and go through the costume cupboard a few days after the half term break as this will still give us some time to source some costumes if she doesn't have something that we need.

A make-up artist was another thing that was brought up in the meeting as the use of makeup will help to establish what time period we are in as there was a specific makeup look that was prevalent in the 20's. In addition, the use of metallic and quirky makeup for the other dance element will help to establish that it is a futuristic element. I am going to contact Laura Smith who is a student at school who is very interested in doing makeup for further education and see whether she would be interested in being the makeup artist for our shoot.

 

Luke suggested that we have a look at William Robinson science lab stuff as he had a really good idea that we create the madness in the science lab through the use of lots of wires, test tubes and light bulbs. I really liked Luke's idea of using light bulbs and projecting imagery of the jazz band members onto he light bulbs. I thought this would be a very good idea as this would be a very interesting way to link the various elements of the video. 

Another thing that Luke suggested that we have a look at for inspiration as to how we can create the madness within the shipping container is some of Public Broadcast System's music videos as they incorporate elements of bureaucracy, science, madness etc.