Lighting & Set Design

Lighting

When talking through our ideas, we didn't want any low-key lighting as that would take away from our positive mood. We took inspiration from the following videos when we decided on using lots of different coloured backgrounds to give the video a playful feeling:

Dog is Dead - Do the Right Thing

Mcfly - Love is on the Radio

George Ezra - Budapest

Darwin Deez - Radar Detector

Little Mix - Move

Before production started, we had an opportunity to go into the studio and do some tests with the lighting to see what might work. We worked out that we would need 24 different coloured backgrounds, some of which we saved during the test so that we would have easy access to them during our shoots.

me saving some of the lighting set-ups

The main issue we faced when lighting the set was getting enough light to fill the set and light the performers, but not so much that it washed out the coloured background. This is something that we decided we would be able to enhance in post-production.

Set Design

We decided that we had 2 main set-ups:

1. Performance set-up: This set-up included the drum kit in the centre of the frame and amps on either side of the drum kit. The influences we got for this arrangement are shown below:

The 1975 - Girls

Biffy Clyro - Mountains 

Blink 182 - All the Small Things

Green Day - Basket Case 

Band of Skulls - Nightmares 

Muse - Uprising

We decided to stick to the convention that all of the videos above conform to, which is that the drum kit is always behind the rest of the band. At one point, we considered breaking this by using jump-cuts to move the band around in the set, but this proved inefficient for the time we had. The amps being on either side of the drum kit was also a convention that we picked up on, possibly to not draw attention away from the performers.

We also decided to have me on the left of frame as people usually 'read' images from left to right, and so I am seen first as I am the lead singer of the band. Below is an initial design we made before production to give us a better visual idea of where we would all be spaced on the set.

2. Prop set-up

This set-up is effectively an empty set with us playing with props. Occasionally we will have a table on set for playing Monopoly or if we need to raise something. I main influence for this was the music video for Mcfly's 'Love is on the Radio'.

empty set with props

Casting

Pilgrim is a 3-piece band consisting of myself, Alice and Gavin. We used people in our group to make it easier to organise shoots and as we are all friends, we would look more natural as a band on camera, thus making our video look more genuine.

Kayvon Nabijou - lead singer/guitarist

I am the lead singer and guitar in our band. We decided as I had the most experience from the remake that we made that I would probably be the most natural in front of the camera, and I was happy to do it.

My character is stylish, self-assured, but also modest, which are all personality traits that we have tried and will continue to try to portray in our video by the way I act and my personal nuances and quirks.











Alice Cahill - backing vocals/bassist

Alice is the bassist in our band - we wanted a female in our band to break conventions of indie boy-bands. She also has experience in front of the camera, and can play guitar, meaning she will look more natural when playing the bass as there are similarities between the two instruments.

Alice's character is quite quirky, and acts as a tomboy, shown by the way she dresses and the subtle ways she acts.












Gavin Fraser - backing vocals/drummer

Gavin is the drummer in our band - he is a good drummer and so looks very natural playing the drums. He has also had experience drumming on camera from our music video remake.

Gavin's character is funny and laid-back, and generally quite easy-going, which are characteristics that Gavin already has and so our prop shots will also look very natural with Gavin.

Costume, hair, make-up

Throughout our 3 artefacts, the main aspect that varies in terms of our visuals are our costumes.This was to make the idea of us in a band more realistic as if the publicity shots and album shots and music video were all shot at different times.


Performance Costumes

We looked at many different bands, mostly of the indie genre, to see what kinds of clothes they wear in performance music videos. We found that they rarely wore very striking costumes and it was mostly clothes you would expect them to wear naturally.

My performance costume is a blue and white striped, short-sleeved shirt with all buttons done up, black skinny jeans and Doc Martens boots. We made me look slightly more dressed-up and formal than the other band members for the performance set-ups to make it more clear that I am the lead singer and front-man of the band. 

Gavin's performance costume is a white shirt with the top button undone and the sleeves rolled up. This clearly makes him look more casual than me but more formal than the props costumes. He is also wearing black skinny jeans and Adidas trainers.

Alice's performance costume is a black crop top with an checked, black and white shirt worn on top with the buttons undone. She is also wearing blue, ripped skinny jeans with black converse. The undone shirt and ripped jeans make this costume much less formal than my own and fits her character well as the quirky bassist.

Props Costumes

My props costume is a plain white t-shirt with a brown, long-sleeved corduroy shirt over it, with the buttons undone. I wear the same black jeans as in the performance set-ups and black canvas vans. This is more casual than my props costume which is the look we were going for, as in some of the prop shots I'm not lip-syncing and the whole band are messing about.

Gavin's props costume is a white t-shirt with a print on it, black skinny jeans and Adidas trainers. Again, this is more casual than his performance costume, the reason for which is explained above.

Alice's props costume is a grey jumper with blue skinny jeans with the bottoms rolled up and black slip-on vans. Again, the reason for this is explained above.

Superhero Costumes

The superhero costumes are almost just categorised as another set of props, as they feature in very few shots, to fit the playful nature of the music video, and to make another reference to childhood. We dressed me as Superman, Gavin as Batman and Alice as Green Lantern.

Publicity Costumes

Initially, we had intended to have 2 different costumes for the publicity shots and one for the album cover. In the end, these merged slightly, as we mix & matched some of the shots for the website and for the album digipack. The costumes we used are very casual, as we found when looking at existing publicity shots and album covers. We chose to not use any props in our publicity shots, apart from some we took on the last shoot in which we are holding instruments. Below are the costumes for each of us:

1st Costumes

My costume is a plain white t-shirt, blue denim skinny jeans with the ends rolled up, and black canvas vans.

Gavin's costumes is a patterned knitted jumper, black skinny jeans and Adidas trainers.

Alice's costume is a white crop top with a baggy blue shirt on top with half of the buttons done up and the sleeves rolled up. She also has dark skinny jeans with the ends rolled up and slip-on vans.

2nd Costumes

My costume is a brown corduroy shirt with the sleeves down and all buttons done up, black skinny jeans and black Dr. Martens boots.

Gavin's costume is a white t-shirt with a grey, short-sleeved shirt on top with no buttons done up, blue skinny jeans and brown shoes.

Alice's costume is a white, long-sleeved top, blue denim ripped jeans and black converse shoes.

3rd Costumes

My costume is a plain white t-shirt with a baggy, blue & green checked shirt, black skinny jeans and black Dr. Martens boots.

Gavin's costume is a grey patterned shirt with the sleeves down, black skinny jeans and Adidas trainers.

Alice's costume is a grey jumper with the sleeves rolled up, a black skirt, tights and black converse shoes.

For make-up, things were much simpler. As we were going for a very naturalistic approach, all our make-up was fairly minimal - just enough to cover up imperfections and make sure that we didn't look shiny on camera. We also made Gavin's eyelashes a bit darker so that they would show up on camera. 

The same approach was taken for hair styling. We initially used hairspray to keep my hair in place and not let it frizz, but realised it didn't really do anything, and so didn't do anything to mine or Gavin's hair, as we both have quite short hair and so there isn't a lot we can do to it. Alice straightened her hair slightly, but again, we didn't make any major changes to her hair.

Album Cover Designs

We started to design some of our own album covers using Adobe Photoshop. Alice found some good textures, from which we chose a couple that we really liked and will probably use on our own album cover. We started with the papery texture as the background, before making a second border for the band image to go in, using another texture. We then put the image in and scaled it so that the second texture acted as a border. The text then came in - as our album is self-titled, we wanted the name to be the only text on the album cover. Alice researched some fonts, and we agreed on one, which was downloadable from DaFont.com, called 'Cocogoose'.

We used clipping masks to make the texture of the font the same texture as the border. We then duplicated the font layer to create a shadow in some of the designs. Below are all the 'paper texture designs' we worked on, the bottom 2 rows being done partly by me.

Below are the initial designs that Alice worked on, experimenting with blending effects with the main image and the textured background. I especially like the 3rd design, as I particularly like the texture used and how it blends into the image.

This is another design without any band image on it, experimenting with interesting patterned backgrounds with the text just placed on top without any consideration for blending. I personally quite like this design, but as our album is our debut album, I believe a more friendly, approachable design with the band in it is necessary.