Well, ONLY's journey is over (for now)! In retrospect, this project was just as trying as it was redeeming. I'm very proud of the rest of the group and myself for the work we put into this project, and I learned a lot about music videos, brands, and their development throughout this entire process.
The brainstorming process was somewhat tedious. Making the decision of which song to choose. When we first heard the songs in the country folder, we were scared as to how we were going to develop a brand, artist, and music video from the material that was given to us to start off this project. However, as soon as we heard "Need You Now", I knew that this was the song that we HAD to use for this project, as it was what we considered to be the most accessible song, and gave us the most potential for a brand.
During the brainstorming process, we thought it would be easiest for our artist to be a duo, as the song is sung by a male and female singer. When coming up with the image and the brand as a whole, we wanted to embrace some factors of the country genre but also start away from it to make our artist stand out and serves as a progression in the genre rather than fall right into the borders of country. We wanted the image, color scheme, and vibe of the brand to definitely have a more modern look to represent the youthful image of the artist we were trying to create. We decided to go for a black and white monochromatic color scheme and a modern font for our logo and brand. When it came to brainstorming the name, it got to the point where we were almost so hopeless where we just started blurting out words. I said "Only", and decided that it could work as a name. We figured that it could serve as an acronym for the two members' names, so we came up with the names (Oscar Newbourne and Lila Yeager). Logan and Santiago began coming up with and designing merchandise ideas for the brand.
That day, we came up with a 4-point plan to fame that included a backstory of our artists, marketing and distribution strategies, as well as morals and basics that we wanted the artist and brand to have. More than anything, we wanted ONLY to represent a new wave of country music; an artist with a sleek and modern image. I took it upon myself to create the social media sites, since I had quick access to the logo and would collect the most behind the scenes content from this whole project, and I have experience running the social media platforms of numerous clubs at Cypress Bay, so I knew I could create a cohesive social media presence for our brand.
The official ONLY Instagram,
From there, we began brainstorming plans for the music video. We decided that since the lyrics of the song told an easy story to follow, we could turn the music video into a storytelling and a promotional one. That day, I went home, and spent roughly 4 hours storyboarding the music video, and THAT was the point of this project where I begun to despise "Need You Now". During the storyboarding process, I wanted to create a video that told a simple, relatable, and accessible story that also presented the artists to the target audience in a great way.
Image from storyboard for "Need You Now"
When it came to conducting the research for the country genre, I actually was very interested in a lot of the information I found. I specifically focused my research on Kacey Musgraves' latest album "Starcrossed", which was one of my favorite albums of 2021. However, I had never given much thought to the marketing strategies she used to promote the album and grow her fanbase in this era of her career as an artist. I wasn't aware of the extreme visual approach she took to promoting the album, especially in creating a film to go with the album.
Filming the music video itself was perhaps the most tedious part of the process. I luckily had my friend, Isabella, be in the video with me, which made the process really fun and also allowed us to grow closer. Since I was the one who created the storyboard, at first, it was difficult for Luis, who was filming, and I to see eye-to-eye when it came to how certain shots should be used to tell the story, but while filming the video, we came up with newer and better ideas to develop the story we wanted to tell. Luis brought different lenses to improve the quality of the footage, and they definitely did help. We filmed at three different locations mainly: my house, Markham Park, and Town Center. Filming in the outdoors during what's supposed to be the coldest weekend of the year in Florida was not the best idea, especially at night, when it got extremely cold. However, I feel like this motivated us to try to get each shot done quicker so we could all get back into the warmth of our houses sooner.
Filming by the lake at Town Center.
Filming the first and final scenes at the Markham Park Levy.
BTS picture from filming at my house.
While I, personally, didn't do any of the editing skills, I need to give a HUGE shoutout to Luis for the editing job he did. He put in a TREMENDOUS amount of effort into the making of the video, especially when it came to synching the video with the chorus of the song.
As for the presentation itself, I felt that it was best to keep the black and white color scheme and the modern feel. I downloaded a monochromatic and modern presentation template online, and from there, we begun to develop our final product. We split the presentation up between Logan, Santiago, and I, so we would all work evenly. I believe that our presentation went extremely well and that we convinced the audience that ONLY would be a successful music artist.
I looked at the comments left on our presentation, and we seem to have gotten a mostly positive reaction from our classmates. I am proud of the product we have created, and I learned a lot about working with others, especially the power off of capitalizing on each group members' skills and fortes when it comes to a project like this one, I learned that hard work gets you very far, even if it means getting out of your comfort zone and spending 4 hours drawing and planning out a music video or pretending to be in love with one of your best friends. This project was in no way rushed, and we took our time to carefully plan out every single portion of it. I felt like for my upcoming portfolio project, I have to keep that same attention to detail extremely active. I have to put in 110% of my effort and energy into it in order to get a good result and most importantly, be proud of my work. If I end up working with a partner on the AICE Exam Potfolio project, I know that it is crucial for me to capitalize off of both our strengths to produce the best film opening possible. Since we have more time to plan out our project compared to 2-3 weeks for this one, I definitely want to put an extreme amount of attention to detail and have sufficient time to create and edit a project that I can be proud to put my name on. Overall, I'm glad I had the opportunity to work on a project like this one, I've always been entranced by music videos as a form of media, and finally getting to see the ins and outs of the process of making one was extremely interesting and I learned so much from this experience.
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