Component 3: Artist and Casting

This blog which is written by me (Nayana) which contain the development of our main artist, (star). This has been discussed with my team, altogether but my teammate, Maxi, has elaborated on most of the explanation within these developments. We also included the casting of our side characters as well.

Artist Name

Since we wanted our artist to be a female of Asian descent, the name of our artist had to match her ethnic background. Thus, we discussed some potential aesthetically pleasing asian girl names. However, since we also needed to cater to English speaking audiences, we didn’t want to extend too far into our artists cultural heritage. Hence, we focussed more on more mixed (caucasian/asian) sounding names, with a western first name, and then a more Asian sounding surname. We decided on sticking with a “first name - surname” naming format as it is what the majority of artists in the pop genre, and female artists as a whole tend to have as well. However, we also experimented with shortening versions of these names as well, and seeing how they’d look with different capitalizations, as these are also commonly seen forms of stage names for female artists of the genre. From this, here are a few names we initially thought of:

• Kiara Bel
• KIARA
• Isabel Tan
• Isabel Kim
• Isabelle
• BELLE
• Jasmine Wang
• JMIN
• 伊莎贝尔

Casting of Artist

The idea of what we want our Artist to be like has been stated in our statement of intent, which states that we want her to be a fun, outgoing, and humble individual that fans are able to relate to and feel as if they’re just like them. Since we also want her to be of Asian descent, we discussed potential actors who fit the aforementioned trop, who also look conventionally attractive, as most female artists in the music industry generally conform to modern beauty standards. For this, we decided on the following individuals who we could see being our artist:

Artist (Lead Female): 

• Jasmine May Riadi
• Eugene Evelina Nugroho

Casting of background characters

As mentioned in our statement of intent, we wanted our music video to follow our artist and a group of her friends as they go out, have fun, and make unforgettable memories. For this, we want to have a primarily female cast, as after breakups, girls will often find solace and comfort in a group of her other girl friends, instead of a group of guy friends. Thus to accurately represent this, we want to cast girls who will fit into the group of our artist, for which we originally decided on a list of actors who are already friends with each other in real life, and will thus most likely be able to accurately portray the chemistry found in tight knit girl friend groups, since they themselves already have that dynamic. They are also friends of our team, which will make communicating, planning, and convincing them to be a part of the project far easier. The names of these actors are as follows:

Artists Girl Friends:

• Elvina Laurencia Ryanto
• Chelsea Graciella Liem
• Eugene Evelina Nugroho/Jasmine May Riadi
• Keyla Lisgianto Josono
• Nayana Sumaniaka
• Giann Fico Suwangsa

Artist’s Ex Boyfriend (Male Lead): 

• Han Hyun Woo
• Nicholas Gerwin Mawardji
• Gede Danny Putra Budiada 

FINAL

Artist Name

Kiara

Played By

Jasmine May Riadi

Background Casts

Eugene Evelina Nugroho

Elvina Laurencia Ryanto

Chelsea Graciella Liem

Keyla Lisgianto Josono

Laeticia Adidharma Lee

Male Lead

Han Hyun Woo

Reflection:

My task in this step of the process was more to give ideas on who fits the concept we are going for and fortunately most got accepted. From then I was tasked for casting and communication which can be seen in this blogpost. Some of these names we concluded was a bit difficult to determine which to be our main artist, so we had to discuss together further on their personality and character to see who matches the most which led to Jasmine being chosen as our artist. I also put a lot of thought for the girl friends to make sure everyone has great chemistry with each other which would make our shoot run smoother and more natural.