Boyband Shoot Preparations

Boy band was a hard shoot to prepare for as we had to prepare costumes as well as to learn a new dance routine. This post looks at some of the different aspects that we had when preparing for the shoot.
As well as creating a shot list and a shoot schedule we also had to choreograph and learn a 'classic' boy-band routine. We looked at our previous research for any dance routines to pick out specific iconic boy-band moves. Our detailed research focused around 'Bye Bye Bye' by N Sync. This was a famous video which was later parody-ed by The Wanted in their video Walks like Rihanna. Throughout there video there are continuous boy-band stereotypes such as a specific joint look and group dance routines. Dance is one of the stronger themes within this music video.

We started practising about two weeks before the shoot so that we were able to be confident with all the moves as well as being in time with each other. As our main inspiration was the Bye Bye Bye video we looked at a dance tutorial from the video to pick out specific iconic moves that would be easily recognisable by our audience. Whilst was used the basic counts from the tutorial we also added our own dances moves from other iconic videos.

In terms of other preparations for the shoot it was relatively simple. We needed boy wigs so a few weeks before the shoot to allow plenty of time for them to arrive. We chose reasonable cheap and tacky wigs in order to promote the idea that it was a parody video and we were clearly girls dressing as boys. The set was simple as well. We used one stool and 5 back lights to connote a typical boy-band music video. We had a test shoot with the lights to check that we knew the settings for all the lights and how to work them on the day of our shoot. 

As far as costumes we also planned this a few weeks before our actual shoot in order to allow time in case we needed to find any additional costumes. We all took inspirations from different videos but we decided as a whole group so that there was a continuos theme/look. We all dressed very casually as the scene was already very comical so we did not want to over do it with costumes. All our costumes were borrowed from boys within our year as we need big shirts and baggy jeans. We practised dancing in our costumes so that we could get a feel for the routine that we would have to perform on the day of the shoot. One thing we had to work on was making the movements very manly be doing harder punches and making all the movements bigger and more aggressive.
Practising the dance early on was truly helpful as it allowed us to focus more on the filming on the day rather than learning and preparing the dance.