Hair and make-up

Olivia came in to discuss costumes, hair and make-up with us. Since Juliette is going to be the one wearing different make-up styles Olivia tested it out on her to see how it might look.

Olivia testing out make-up on Juliette

50s 
We found that the 1950s make-up style consisted mostly of mat red lipstick and simple black eyeliner. It wasn't too over-the-top or colourful.

Olivia suggested we take inspiration from 1950s icons like those shown below (Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly - despite some of their careers extending into later decades we looked at their 50s style).

We decided to use matte-red lipstick, black winged eyeliner, and light eye-shadow. We also found that common 1950s hairstyles included "victory rolls". Juliette tried this out on herself at home:

 70s

Looking at make-up in the 1970s we noticed a lot of pastel colours being used - sometimes more than one colour being used for eye shadow - as shown in the make-up adverts above, as well as nude lipstick, so this is what Juliette recreated:

She also wore a bandana, which we might have her wear in our music video as it fits with the 70s era.

80s

When Olivia tested out 80s make-up on Juliette, she drew inspiration mainly from 80s icon Madonna:  

Olivia made up Juliette using bright coloured eye shadow and glossy pink lipstick, inspired by Madonna:

However, in our music video we are referencing the 80s using The Breakfast Club and costumes that represent the more casual side of the era - what ordinary people, not world-famous pop icons, would wear. We decided then that it would be better to go for a different, more toned-down look with make-up.

Allison Reynolds from The Breakfast Club influences our 80s make-up

To fit with this, Juliette's hair is going to be loose and not so obviously styled.

90s

We decided for our 90s make-up we would mainly reference Cher from the film Clueless:

90s make-up wasn't often particularly bright or extravagant, and this example is a good reflection of that. Inspired by this Juliette is going to wear light eyeshadow and brown/red lipstick, with maybe a little eyeliner. She tried this style at home:

To match with this quite simple look Juliette is going to have her hair down, also like the character in Clueless.

GIRL BAND MEMBERS
We want the female band members in Sticky and the Melonheads to be viewed in the same sort of way as the male band members - we don't want their make-up to suggest that their appearance is more important than the boys'. Their make-up therefore will be simple - nothing much beyond eyeliner and mascara, demonstrated by the artists below:

Elena Tonra, lead vocalist of Daughter

Haim

The female artists pictured above also have their hair down, so we are probably going to do that, too. We might straighten or clip it back so it looks styled.

MALE BAND MEMBERS

We don't want to do anything particularly to the male band members' hair - Brandon has very short hair that can't be styled, and Jacob's hair is also quite short and as an indie artist, wouldn't conventionally be too obviously styled. The images of bands below show that their hair is generally left quite loose and natural-looking:

Indie band Vampire Weekend

Indie band Everything Everything

Indie pop band Foster the People

For the 50s era, the lead's hair will be inspired by the Greaser image, hair gelled back like Danny Zuko from Grease:

80s:

Here are some examples of men's hairstyles in the 80s:

Keith Nelson from Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) (left), pop singer Rick Astley (right)

Brian Johnson from The Breakfast Club (1985) (left), Chuck Cranston from Footloose (1984) (right)

Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

They often had either fairly long hair (like the characters Keith Nelson and Chuck Cranston pictured above) shaped in that specific way, but Jacob's hair is too short for this so we decided on a style inspired by the other three pictures above - his hair gelled to the side on the top of his head, looking longer on the top than the sides.

For 70s, 90s and modern, although we might comb Jacob's hair we aren't going to do too much else to it - this was/is common in the 90s/modern eras and most iconic 70s hairstyles require hair longer than Jacob's. 

Casting

We decided to use ourselves in the music video as much as possible, because it is guaranteed that we will be available and reliable. However, since there are only five of us and six performers are needed (band members: lead singer, guitarist, bassist and drummer, and the lead girl), we need to use an external actor, too.

Knowing that we want to have two boys and two girls in the band, we needed to cast another boy, and decided to do a screen test - Brandon and potential lead Jacob would lip sync and perform to our track so we could see who looked better as the lead.

Brandon's screen test

Jacob's screen test

Filming the screen tests

We decided to use Jacob as the lead, mainly because with Brandon having less screen time, he will have more opportunities to work on camera and lighting, and his help actually filming the project will make it easier for all of us and more likely to turn out successfully. Also we decided Jacob has a more 'indie' look than Brandon, and while this is something we can create using costume and make-up, with Jacob it is more immediately obvious, and his performance was also more energetic and fun.

Jacob - lead singer

We cast ourselves as the other band members because we are all confident enough in front of the camera to perform, and we can create an indie pop look for us with costume and make-up. In terms of gender we also liked the idea of two boys and two girls in the band because firstly our genre is dominated by all-male bands, so our band would stand out, and secondly it makes us more relatable to more genders - boys aren't put off by a too female-centric image, and girls could be encouraged by seeing girls in an indie band, and think that's something they could do, too. 

DRUMMER: BRANDON

Brandon - drummer

We cast Brandon as the drummer because even though he doesn't play the drums, he would be better than any of us because he at least knows what the different parts of the drum kit are called and could identify from listening to our track more or less what the drummer was doing, so he could make it look the most convincing.

GUITARIST: AUDREY

I was cast as the guitarist because we wanted to have a girl guitarist. This would be a good idea because in mixed gender bands the girls are usually the lead...

Paramore - Hayley Williams is lead vocalist and does not play an instrument

Daughter - Elena Tonra does play the guitar but is also lead vocalist, and there is another guitarist in the band

...so to have a female guitarist who doesn't act as the lead of the band is something different, and shows that girls are capable of being the sole guitarist in a band.

BASSIST: CHRYSTAL

Chrystal - bassist

We wanted a female bassist for the same reasons as the guitarist, and we cast Chrystal specifically because she is confident in front of a camera and the bass is what she said she felt most comfortable doing.

LEAD GIRL IN MUSIC VIDEO: JULIETTE

Juliette - lead girl in music video

Out of the girls in our group, Juliette is most confident as a performer and was most comfortable with the performance required of this part, e.g. dancing, and lots of make-up and hairstyles. 

Animatic

Once we finished our storyboard, we could move on to make our animatic:

The orange post-it notes are the shots of the band performing the song. Originally these were scattered more randomly throughout the video but we realised in order to give it a better structure we needed to cut more regularly between the band shots and the era shots. 

0:00-0:18: The band are performing.

0:18: We cut to the 50s scene. Juliette is playing the male lead and Chrystal is the girl. The couple meets and he flirts with her. They start off standing on either side of a jukebox, to make the 50s setting obvious.

0:37: The footage cuts to the 70s, a disco setting.

0:45-1:00: Band shots again.

1:00: 80s. He dances (referencing The Breakfast Club), and tries to get her attention. In the video, we will have a bench instead of chairs lined up. He dances across them and throws the book out of her hand, before they both do the Breakfast Club shuffle.

1:18: 90s, coffee shop setting. Juliette is now acting as the girl here. They sit on the sofa, and she flirts with him, putting his coffee cup down so she can kiss his cheek.

1:44: This part is a dance sequence that cuts randomly between all the eras, including the modern era, which the audience haven't been introduced to yet. This brings all the different parts of the video together. We will film the couple doing the same choreography in all the eras and then cut between them, so it will still flow together continuously. We plan for the band to be in the same frame, in the background, while the couple are the focus. 

2:00: It starts to cut between the couple and the band. Cutting between them ensures that both the band and the era are consistently shown and brings the two parts of the video together.

2:15: It cuts to the modern era. We re-choreographed this scene after making the animatic because we weren't clear of exactly what happens. Here was what we choreographed:

The girl walks to the lead singer. Both are on their phones. We chose to use phones to represent the modern era because technology is a hugely significant aspect of our current culture and a stereotype of what life is like now, so it will be easily recognisable to the audience. She bumps into him, and then they look at each other before tossing their phones over their shoulders - an action that will create the sense of their love being strong enough to stop them being on their phones all the time. 

At 2:32 she then pulls him closer by his shirt and then pushes him back. Then they break out into another dance sequence, which goes on until 2:55. Again, this cuts between all the eras.

The video ends with three more band shots - the guitarist, drummer and bassist, to keep the band as a whole prominent in the audience's mind so they remember them as well as the lead and the girl - and then the couple walking into the distance.

Storyboards

Once we had an idea of our music video's structure, we went on to decide the details by making a storyboard. We came up with shots together in production meetings, suggesting ideas that we then discussed as a group before deciding on. Knowing exactly what each shot would be meant we could start thinking about what props we would need - for example, we decided that the 50s shots would include the couple interacting around a jukebox, so we knew we had to find a jukebox to use.

50s set-up shot - couple with jukebox

We found the best way to begin coming up with ideas was to organise our shots by era or set-up rather than chronologically:

The different colours are the different eras (and orange for the band shots). This helped us make sure we were giving similar amounts of screen time to each era, and doing it this way rather than in chronological order of shots meant we could focus on deciding what would actually happen in our video before worrying about the overall structure and details of it, which made it an easier process at this stage.

After we had decided on the shots we then organised them into chronological order:

When this was done, it was much easier to visualise our ideas, because by putting the shots in order we had a clearer sense of what the video would actually look like. We could also then see if the shots would flow together well. Once this was done, we could then move on to make the animatic.

Lyric breakdown

Chrystal and Juliette time-coded the lyrics, writing down ideas as to when we might include certain set ups, and in a production meeting we went through this as a group in more detail:

Chrystal and Juliette had established some possible references we could include for different eras, such as Dirty Dancing (which we decided would be too difficult) for the 80s, The Breakfast Club for the 80s and Friends for the 90s (both of which we had agreed earlier as a group), and Soul Train and Time Warp for the 70s. As a group in this meeting we discussed these ideas in more detail and came up with a clearer structure, which you can see annotated onto the lyric sheet. From this it would be easier to come up with more specific shots.

Publicity shots ideas

In the production meeting in which we discussed our ideas for the album cover and website design, we made these notes:

We ended this meeting by briefly discussing ideas for publicity shots of the band.

Because our track is fun and upbeat, and our idea for the music video includes playful and fun moments, we are constructing our band image to fit with this, and publicity shots are an essential part of that. 

These were our ideas that we brought to the next production meeting:

These were my ideas. The picture in the top left hand corner shows the lead singer in a typical serious rock/pop star pose, oblivious to the band goofing off in the background. The one underneath is more serious, but the band would maybe be smiling or our colouring/lighting/clothing choices would give it a light-hearted, fun feel. The top right hand drawing is supposed to have the other band members in it, too, dressing up the confused-looking lead in clothes and accessories from all the different eras costumes, linking with our music video.

Brandon's suggestions include the band members giving each other piggy backs, the lead boy and girl from the music video with their arms around each other, and the band members carrying the lead as shown in the bottom left drawing

Chrystal's suggestions - lead in the centre, with other band members poking into the shot, making silly faces (first drawing), band members all playing the wrong instruments, confused (second drawing), band members lifting up instruments crazily (third drawing)

Juliette's suggestions (explained on the drawings)

We didn't make final confirmations as to what ideas we want to use specifically, but we did decide that some ideas we liked the best were the band members wrapping the lead in microphone wire, dressing him up in the eras clothing, "taking a selfie", giving each other piggy backs, and the lead serious in the foreground with the band members messing around in the background.

5 Seconds of Summer's photoshoots were a major influence when coming up with our ideas:

We are influenced by the way they are posed as messing around and having fun, giving an impression of the band's personality, and making them accessible to fans of a similar age or slightly younger who then don't have to take them so seriously. The lighting and colouring are also influential, because it isn't too high-key or overly bright and vibrant, but still bright enough to convey that sense of light-heartedness that we are aiming for.

What we did decide officially was that our publicity shots will include promo shots for the music video (to promote the video and the single), behind the scenes promo shots, with the girl from the music video included in these as well as the band members, and promo shots for the band and their album as a whole.