Task 8- Research and planning

Music video

progress

audience feedback

As we decided not to show our music video to the class yesterday, we have to independently get feedback on our video.

 After showing one of the other media teachers 'Rob' our music video, these are some of the points he made.

"The use of the fire effect in the video was really good ... "

He "understands the motif behind using the rabbit graffiti footage, however, it would be good if we could transition it better or add some effect to it, so it doesn't look like it's just stuck on there .. "

"Also, with the part where you filmed portrait with one of your phones, it makes the size of the screen change and orientates it when it comes to editing .. Clearly it doesn't look right so what would be a good idea, is to film someone sitting there watching the video on their phone (that way it looks like the portrait orientation of the video was done on purpose). "

So in response to this feedback, we are currently in the process of getting someone to act out this part, and then quickly edit it into our video before the deadline this week.

progression

We have added more scenes to the audio but still have little gaps to fill. We encountered some problems with the new footage when filming which was that some parts were a bit shaky so using youtube we learnt how to stabilize it on premiere pro cc so the footage wasn't shaky. In addition to this we had to sharpen some clips and colour correct but we still have to add in more transitions that they use in the case study. Our biggest problem is that when filming stunna's part (one verse) the camera died so we had to use our phone, instead of filming it landscape we filmed portrait for most of it. So when it came up on premiere pro cc some of the footage was cut out so you couldn't see the top of the artist head. The actor is no longer available so we have to change the narrative to make the music video make sense and to enable us to cut them scenes out or we have to refilm it wit another actor. The new narrative would consist of a actor watching the music video on his phone and dancing.
To ensure we get this all done by the deadline we booked times in the media room for where we are going to edit outside of lesson in our free periods. The times we booked was Wednesday lunch, Thursday period three and lunch as well as Friday period one and lunch. We couldn't book too many slots as we were sharing a hard drive with another group so we ensured that they also had time to edit.

audience feedback

testing the smoke pellets

filming main star start

On the 31 we started to edit our scenes of the main star

summer task

Research

I analysed similar products. I looked at Dave – Wanna know, and Abra Cadabra- Art of war which are both music videos in the genre of rap. This was useful as it gave insight to key conventions of the type of things a rap video would have for example they will all wear tracksuits or be filming on an estate and usually have their friends (around 3-6). This let me know basic things I needed to include I’m my rap music video.  The genre I picked was useful for me, as I know how to appeal to the target audience as the audience for the style of music is aimed for my age group and the demographics of my peers in college who I interact with on a daily basis.  I feel like my skills in researching real media products have improved since last year. I say this because if you look at the amount of research I did you can see it isn’t sufficient, so I wouldn’t of have known…(things my research for as didn’t tell me) (get images sc of case study music magazines and music video and give specific examples of how I improved).

Research

As I said our target audience was our peers (due to the fact that the majority of them listen to that genre of music) so we decided to

Logistics planning

actors

I felt like at first we didn’t organize our actors as well as we chose people who were from different areas and sixth forms so getting their timetable to match and finding a location that was close to all of them was difficult, we also picked people who was un reliable as they would drop out last minute or tell us last min their plans which made it hard to organizes a day they everyone could meet on. If we reduced the amount of people in the video that would of made it much easier to organize. However because we had so many people that wasn’t needed, it meant that if someone dropped out it was okay because they would fill a main persons position.

location

We planned our locations well as it was accessible to everyone and within reach only one person travelled far but that is because that was his song so he wanted to be in the video. We also made the different locations in the same area which was Stratford, canary wharf (on the train it is less than 5 stops) and Woodford. The different locations within the areas was walking distance from one another. When deciding locations we took in any ethical problems or problems in general such as if people would be okay to us filming and how they would react/ feel towards it. For example we made sure when filming near flats we didn’t film too late or in areas where are gangs.  We used location release forms to guarantee access to our privately owned locations it made us plan the time we had to be there and what days to film as not all were available all the time. For example the shisha lounge was only available from 12 am-1am so we had to find actors that were legally allowed to be in there and lived close so could get home quickly and safely as well as the bank we want to use does not open on certain days as it is a small branch and closes early on some days. Doing the risk assessment made us think of the possible risks and how to overcome them. For example one prop we are having is smoke so we made sure the location we will be using will have an open space.

Costumes

In terms of costumes we was organized as we told everyone what to wear after analysing our case study costumes we knew we wanted the starts to stand out in terms of colours of their costume to everyone, we also told the extra’s what to wear. The locations help connote which attire was appropriate for example in the office scene we had the star wear a shirt.

Props 

As were ordering the balaclavas from chine from eBay we decided to order it straight away as soon as we decided that we wanted them and in which colour as despite it saying it will take around 2-17 days from research came to find that it was unreliable and can take weeks. Having the mask early also allowed us to see if it fit the actors and let us try out the make up to colour coordinate. We ordered them on… and received them on … Another prop we used was money, we printed this off to the actual size double sided.  We also ordered smoke pellets (two in the colour white and red ) as we saw this in many rap music videos this would also help with our editing as we will zoom into the smoke and then do a black out or even use its as a fade or transition from scenes.

Throughout the weeks my partner and I made multiple phone calls to the actors to remind them to keep the date available, however some of our actors had zero hour contracts so didn’t know what days they were working, some received last minuet news which mean their availability changed.  We formed a group chat where everyone can say their availabilities and even get to know one another so on the day feel comfortable with acting and lip synching in front of one another.

The logistic planning of the music magazine is different to the logistic planning of my music video as in my magazine, I feel I was less organized as I did not have a group chat or make frequent calls. Only with the main starts I would say I was organized as we spoke frequently about their availability, costumes and the location of their photos n detail.  I did not plan the risks and how to concur them or prevent them. However I did fill location release forms for one the locations which was for the front cover of my magazine.

Add evidence and annotate/analyse if possible

Narrative planning

When making the storyboard we tried to match the words/narrative to the shots if and where we could. This helped to know what location and shot variations we could use to have a range which in turn would challenge and learn new skills. For example we knew we wanted a shot reverse shot, and we only thought to do a over the shoulder shot when he says “F*** them N***** from my past” and do a monotone filter to represent the past.  We made our storyboard colourful and detailed enough where we knew the location just by looking at it, we knew the time we was having them scenes/shots, the angle of them, the editing type (e.g. fade in and out), the transition of shots and the movement of the camera.  Making the storyboarded allowed us to see and make sure we had variety and not just mid shots and establishing shots at a straight on angle.  I was not working in a group but a partnership which meant that there were more task for each of us. As she was good at drawing she drew the scenes out as we both planned the locations of the scene at what time whilst I thought of the shot types, angles, movement of the camera etc. We has problems with making the storyboard detailed, to improve this we could of used a different style storyboard which gave us more space to write.

This was more detailed than my sketches for my music magazine as I had thought of the colour the shot type I wanted any why I want it what it represents.

(have image of both side by side )

I felt our time management was good as we gave our self's deadlines for our preliminary task and made sure we stuck to them, however only one of the task we did not get done on time (storyboard) so intern this delayed us as we was nor able to film until it was done. For this we had to communicate a lot and relies on one another as we were all in charge of certain parts of each task. This made my time management better than my music magazine project, as others were relying on me, so it forced me to do the work straight away to work well in a team.

I have presented my research and planning in a variety of ways using creative technology on my blog for example:

Thing link, Google slides, Google docs, Prezi, Albumizer, Canva and Emaze for this. I am still wanting to use spider scribe, Infogram, Wix and Powtoons. Powtoons was something I used last year and found difficult to use however I feel I have become more familiar with the software since so feel comfortable to use it again this year.
On my blog last year for my music magazine I used creative technology such as:...
since last year I have used more creative technology and know how to work some of the ones better.

Filming pics

0n the 28th we filmed the scenes for the third verse with one person who is one of the main stars. We filmed at the planned locations and was on time for our scenes. We kept all of these locations within stratford and they were walking distance away.

Advance portfolio

Dates of filming

We chose to film three days in the half term due to the fact that we will have more time to film more scenes with different locations, as well as this our actors were more available.

On these three date we will be using our own camera but on the 17 th and 1st we will use the schools if we haven't got everything done in the holidays.

Pre Production feed back

Call Sheets

Copywrite clearance

Talent and Location release forms

Yung Stunna- Addicts

To see the annotations click the link down below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSz9B4NGZZbChwQJn-lbGt4tBv2_o_SUMSSVMXdtS3IW2IatQk-CuwccnQNlEj-hNwby0bZM38foKDM/pub

Recce

(Recce) Yung Stunna ft Supreme - Addicts by Antonia

Pre production task five

Todays work

Task 5:

Story Board

Pitch Feedback

Question&Answer
"You guys said you were going to use a motorbike as a prop, who's riding it, where you getting it from and is the person going to be of the legal age to ride it?" - Our response: It's a prop, so no one will be riding the motorbike, it'll just be there for decoration/to set the scene. And as we said in the pitch, we know a guy named Michael, who's 20, that has a motorbike - he said he'll let us use it.

"It seems quite similar to the 'Day Ones - Manu Crooks' music video, how will you make it more unique. - Our response: The concept of our music video will be different, as both songs are about 2 completely different things. We use different/more locations, compared to that music video, so an office, block of flats, etc. And just as a little disclaimer, we already came up with the concept/props/locations way before we saw the Day Ones music video, but we wanted to showed it just as a visual representation of what we hope our music video to look like.

Strengths
"It was good.."

"Your idea's were really good.."

Improvements

Treatment

Picked Genre

Today my group and I (which consists of two other people- Abigail and Tre) decided to pick the genre Rap as we all had the most ideas for it and it was all a genre we had considered as we listen to it. We picked the song I Can by TK.




Narrative
Our music video is about a boy who is being second guessed and proving people who doubted him wrong by showing his accomplishments.



Inspirations
Dave- Wanna know
Nav- Ten toes down
Abra cadabra-art of war
Manu crooks- Day one




Location
- Westfield car park
-Woodford  green Broadmead flats
- Stratford road
-London bridge
-Barclays
-Office






Actors
Chris (main star)
shayna
10 extra boys (4 girls + 6 boys)


props
Balaclava
vape
smoke pellets
money
car




costumes
-girls will wear barlets, head scarfs, jeans with trainers
-The boys will be wearing tracksuits with trainers
- suit
-The main star needs to stand out so he will have a bold colour with on of his costumes when filming in the day time and when we are filming at night he will have a florescent item of clothing.






lighting


target audience

lip synch task evaluation

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12_87zn2LXh3JNOEANRMB5p0xV5g1K_MBO5D3espp1hw/edit?usp=sharing

Final lip synch task

Editing

Camera induction, filming & editing

Today we had a task to film one minute of a lip sync music video which should include  a close up shot, mid shot and long shot. I was in  group of three, we decided to use the song Love Glory by SZA as this is a R&B and we all has this genre of music as an option for our music video. So in order to carry this task out we had to have a induction on using a Canon camera where we learnt how to change the depth of field, focus our camera, white temperature which puts a filter over the camera depending on the lighting for example if you was filming outside and the sky was clear so the lighting would be a bit blue the camera would put a orange tint.

     

We used premiere pro cc to edit our music videos and during the process we didnt have enough variety of videos e.g different locations or different ideas so we had to use every single clip and anything with scenery we used multiple times as it looked bad having just a straight clip of lip synching. When we added it in we slowed down the motion of it so pass time. Fortunately we did get a deep field of focus with a lot of our clips.

This time round with editing we wanted to put the name of the song in the video so we had to cut it in. It took many attempts and tries as it was our first time but eventually we got there.

 

 

Case Studies analysis

All my case study you can find in my previous blog post

Analysis for case for rap case study

Dave- Wanna know

Type of video

This is a typical rap video as it a mixture of narrative and performance based. With this song especially he talks about how nobody wanted to know him before he started to do well for himself and the video doesn’t give clear indications that it’s narrative as there isn’t anyone acting out the story line/ what he is saying however there is some indication as the film wasn’t filmed in England which is where UK rap videos are normally filmed but this one is filmed in Italy which indicted his financial growth and success which he talks about in the video. I say it’s also performance base as the start and extras dance to the words in some clips for example when Dave sings the lyrics “and all my man will be running to the money like ahh” they all do the running man. By mixing narrative and performance it makes the music video interesting to watch as it is different to other UK Rap music videos, which means more people would watch it which could potentially increase the amount of views. This music video got 13,919,969 views on YouTube in 11 months and 85,020 likes which is good for a video of its calibre.

Representation of stars
The main star is presented as unique and successful through his costume. As he is the main star he is always in the centre (forward) of the shots to emphasize his importance as he was the one who wrote the song, further more when in a group with the other stars he wears bold colours hoodies one has florescent green and the other is bold red while they wear neutral colours like white black grey and navy. The main star has gold teeth which denotes wealth and success however unlike many rap videos he is not wearing any gold chains so that fact that he has a little gold could represent that he is doing well but not yet where he aims to be. Instead of the wearing a chain he is wearing the rosary which shows his faith which could suggest to the audience he is still grounded this idea is then supported when he said “I used to spend a grand a week stunting on some ho** but Prada boy retired I don’t rock designer clothes”…”I told my mum I will give her everything I own” This is the reason why all the stars are wearing Nike as some things Nike sell can be pricey but is affordable compared to Prada or Tommy Hilfiger and this humble representation could be seen as postmodern. This is something that the target audience can relate too as they will also be wearing brands like Nike and Adidas which can convey that he is still himself before he got the money he has now.

Camera

There isn’t  a variety of camera angles used in this music video at the start of the video it uses a worms eye view looking up to the sky and buildings then it does a fast cutting rate between that shot and another location which is in sync to the beat of the clicking sound  which is repeatedly done throughout the whole music video  and from the on the camera continues to be straight on this can be symbolic of the fact he started fro the bottom and worked his way up and the reason they haven’t used birds eye view may be because he isn’t as high as he wants to be.

Target audience

I would think that this music video has a target audience of the ages of 15-21 mainly males with a afro/Carib ethnicity. I say this due to the genre of music, the attire of the stars which appeal to that age and there isn’t many profanities used. The fact that the stars look like their target audience will encourage their audience to buy the record as well as protection the video has received.

Elements i'd like to incorporate 

This relates to my ideas for my music video if I chose this genre of music because i would have a main star and extras in the back like in this video, singing and dancing along as this is so common its almost a conventions of a rap video.
The editing technique that I like so will be incorporating from this case study to my music video, is having the cutting rate dependant on the beat for parts of the song as this makes it more interesting instead of having a straight cut.
Furthermore i will having simular costume attire as "Dave-wanna know" because this is a convention of rap music so just by the look of the music video before playing it, the attire would attract my intended target audience, and they would automatically assume the genre of music to be rap. However like this particular music video the main star will be awarding a bold colour.

Analysis for Afro beats case study

Mr Eazi leg over

Type of video

This music video is more so a performance based video than narrative as in the lyrics he isn’t telling a story but talking about a girl he likes however there are clips which give narrative like when he is with one girl and it looks as if they are having a conversation (he lip synches to her). In the majority of the scenes there is an ethnically diverse large group of women who are dancing. Many afro beat song are performance based due to the upbeat music and not many have a clear story line. There aren’t many themes but I would say the motif is the women in the hall dancing as the majority of the cuts seem to be of the women dancing when there isn't narrative clips.

Representation of stars
The stars are represented as the ideal woman, in terms of appearance and in some scenes as submissive. In which you can see through the women’s costume which is black heals with black tights and different variation of the same black leotard this connotes a uniform which could denote unity or could be to emphasis his ideal woman as they are all the same as in shape with big thighs and bottoms. Which has been sexualized by the media so by showing off these body parts it emphasises the ideology that women are sexual objects.

At 1:11 you can see an establishing shot where he is sitting down and a woman is standing up in front of him and he has his hand in his mouth this is to show that he finds her irresistible showing that being sexualized is her power over him. This ideas is emphasized with the lyrics “baby girl you distract me with that bum bum”.

Post modern

This does have elements of post-modern as he has gone to the priest to confess his sins as he tells the priest about this woman he has had sex with normally in any music video sex is glorified and so is seeing women as only sexual beings.

Camera

At the start the music video the camera is straight on however when the women start dancing it tilts up to them it does this often when they are dancing this may be to show off their assets, and could symbolise their power over men because they are sexualized. Many of the shots are establishing  and only when you see the location inside when he is in the confessional room the audience realizes he is in a church and the women look like they are dancing in a hall. They use a steady cutting rate which is not dependant on the beat however it is not too slow that the viewer will get bored of watching it. They rotate around the dancers at a low level when they dance on the floor only showing three at a time in one shot. Like most music videos they edited the name of the song and director at the start of the music video in bold white font to stand out.

Target audience

At first I thought their target audience was for African males aged from 15 to 23 as the half naked women would appeal to most males and the genre of the music would appeal to African people,  however if it was just for African people there would have been more native language, so now I think it is for a wider ethnicity. To engage female viewers they had many dancing clips, especially at the end the stars are covered up wearing bright coloured clothes while doing a dance that is less sexual.

Elements i'd like to incorporate 
If I do afro beats what would inspire me about this music video is the dancing and the clips of narration as it is interesting to watch and will keep the audience engaged. Further more the rotation of the camera when the stars are dancing using different levels is something that I would like to incorporate into my won music video as it is different. 

Analysis for R&B case study
Destiny's child Bootylicious

Type of video
The song doesn't have a story per say but is saying empowerment and self love saying so throughout the song they act out what they say for example when Kellie says "swing my hips slap my thighs " she carries out them actions it is narrative more so at the start of the music video when they are all together and then when the location changes and they are being filmed individually it becomes more performance based as they have backup dancers behind them dancing with them too.
there was many recurring themes in this song a is with the editing they would cut from the girls being together to their individual groups with the dancers and keeping cutting between that. Another theme was their location as they were similar as it all had patterns and even the bold colours with their outfit and the location which always matched.






Representation of stars
The stars were represented as the ideal woman (aesthetically pleasing ) as it is what the song is about as they have lyrics such as "looking sexy looking fly baddest chick" and even in the title Bootylicious, although its not a real word we would think that it is a blend of the words booty and delicious which is objectifying them as women showing them to be nothing more than their bodies'. This idea is supported by their choices of close up shots as at 00:30 there is a close up of Beyoncé belly and hips. It has always been ideal to have a flat stomach and wide hips which gives you an hour glass figure, so by having small clips of their bodily features which are seen to be ideal, it is supporting my point and subconsciously telling the viewer as the clips are only seconds long.
 Beyoncé is seen to be highlighted the most, which can infer that she is the more ideal than the other two lip synching actresses. You can see this in many aspects, in terms of positioning when the three are together she is always in the centre she also has the most camera time individually. how they show that all of the women are ideal is through costume as they were all tightly fitted short and cropped revealing a lot of skin and showing their figure which is all a hour glass which is deemed sexy.






Camera
There wasn't a variety of camera angles used in the music video, apart from eye level there were low angles when the actresses were by them self which could imply that they are at the Top (almost like the top of the hierarchy). However there was multiple editing techniques used such as fades to a black screen at the start of the video they allows has a fast cutting rate that was in time to the beat. Then they used a flash forward to show the next actress to be singing the next verse and they did this multiple times. They also used multiple cutaways, this gave the effect that other things are happening as this is more of a conceptual performance the cutaways are of the other stars dancing so this was just keep the audience entertained.






Target audience
I would say that their target audience is women from the ages 16 because that is when a girls body is developed so they will also be able to relate and celebrating their body being "bootylicious". The maximum age is 50 as that is when most women start to lose confidence in their bodies as it is no long the same after things like children. They would have a afro Caribbean background because the genre is typically listened to this ethnic group.
.


Elements i'd like to incorporate 
I have not picked what R&B song I will use but SZA weekend will be narrative based as she has a story line so I will only inco  

Genres I am interested in

Ideas Task-Grime music video

initial notes

touch-little mix


mise en scene
costume- proactive, colour scheme, linked costumes
prop-none
location- multi coloured box
high key lighting - girl group upbeat mood






editing
cutting to the beat
fast pace editing
jump cut


camera
Pan
Track
Zoomed in


sorry- Justin bieber

Evaluation of practice lip synch video

I was in a group of four and we had to half an hour to film the different scenes around the college. We was told the lesson before to come up with a song we would do this practice lip synch video as well as how to film, zoom in and out, focus and other basic skills. My group and I picked Scrubs by TLC but this was decided last min as before we had picked Mariah Carey we belong together. We picked this not only because we all knew the words of the song but also it had a story in which it would be easy for us to re enact especially as we had a mixed gendered group. The rest of the lesson we was taught how to edit and started the editing process.

What I enjoyed was the filming process because I found it fun discovering how to use the camera these skills for the actual task.

What I found challenging was focusing the camera as it would often un-focus as the cast members would move far and near to the camera, so I would say this would be something I would have to practice so that for my real lip synch video it will be focused which would help the quality there for it would look more professional. However if I am still unable to master this I might have few clips of cast members changing their distance inn relation to the camera. When the camera was focused it was a shallow focus. Furthermore the camera was not still

Despite his that what I found the most challenging was editing this is because I feel like there was a lot to learn in a short period of time. In my groups music video there was a lot of black out/ fade out so I would like to learn other transition methods this would of have made the music video more professional

I feel we had strengths having non-diegetic sound as many music videos have non-diegetic sound but lip synch so it looks diegetic. In addition to this I feel like we chose areas to film where there was good lighting so it didn't wash the actors out however still bright enough to look like high key lighting which is what music videos have when singing a upbeat song like the one we chose. To add to this I feel like we used locations that were typical f a music video like stairs and a brick wall.

We could improve by using different angles and different kinds of shots instead of just establishing and close up we could do wide or OSS (over the shoulder). To further improve we could make our costumes (three girls) the same three colors to show unity to convey to the audience that we are a girl group as well as this we could sit at the bottom of the stairs as there wasn't as much light where we were sitting on the stairs. An to improve in regards of editing we could use different editing techniques like a jump cut and make the black out shorter as at the start it lasted for three seconds which looks like a long time. Lastly to fix the issue with the camera shaking we could try us a tripod or move the camera on a pan so it will appear more so still as is it not still the focus will not be on 

Pratice Music Video

Camera induction task

Task: to create a music video for 30-40 seconds using a song of our choice which is for my group Mariah Carey- We belong together from 0:20 to 0:50.

We will be filming in five locations:

-The field 

-The studio 

-Brick wall  (outside orient house)

-The lift 

-Basket Ball pitch

lyrics for that time frame

Welcome Post

Welcome to my A2 Blog, here I will post about a series of production pieces and using this as a medium to produce a music video.