Initial Brainstorming

At the beginning of any project, the brainstorming of initial ideas is crucial. We found that the best way for us to articulate together and to one another was through the use of a mind map. this clearly allowed for us to shows different ideas for each different parts of the song. Not only did this include ideas for the storyline but we also began to look at different shots which we could use for the bit we were talking about. The timing of each verse and how long are shots need to last also fell into the brainstorming. Locations were also discussed in this session with us trying to think of local places which indeed related to our genre of rap. The main theme of our song which we discussed was anti-bullying as this is quite commonly linked with music and how people express themselves through song during hard times. We believed that with the genre of rap we could really make this work, so that is what we did and we began to base most of our ideas of this main core. We knew that at some point we would have to have an exchange of words or a fights between the bully and the victim, but then we needed to either finish the song on a positive or a negative note.

The easiest bit for us was to think of an ending for the song with us coming up with multiple ideas, however this meant that it was quite difficult for us to fill in the middle section of the brainstorm with us having to "scrape the barrel" with our last ideas. The middle section of the song was much easier for us to put onto storyboards so we could start developing a path to our ending of the song. Our brainstorming made us think of many questions such as us not just coming up with the ideas but also how to stretch it out over the time period we needed too, and does our ideas and shots match the lyrics being sung, and do we need to have any lip-syncing involved from our main actor? These were questions which arose and admittedly we did not anticipate the enormity of the job at hand. In terms of timing it did take us longer than expected because of things like I have just mentioned but also with the time in which we were brainstorming and creating our idea in which we were writing our personal statements for universities and had lots of other things which had to be done. This may have caused us not to be as pro-active with our idea as we'd of liked.