Evaluation

Q1.  In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We wanted our video to be more abstract and unconventional, so we decided to include more abstract shots, specifically these ones of water and ink. Since our song is an indie rap song, I think it fits nicely as it goes against the grain of standard rap videos, fitting with our specific subgenre.

We felt that if our video was completely abstract we would lose the attention of potential viewers, so we included a large selection of shots featuring our star. As he lipsyncs to the song, it fits with the lyrics. Some of the shots featuring him performing directly to camera and others as if he does not know the camera is there, creating a voyeuristic effect.

We also featured shots of other people dancing, since the song has a slight dancey feel to it. However, we abstracted these shots slightly, by altering their speed and occasionally reversing them, again going against the grain of standard music videos.

 We included an abstract shot of an egg splatting into a jar, first in slow motion and reversed, and then at full speed, with an earthquake effect added in Final Cut. The impact was timed to coincide with the first beat of the chorus, creating a strong and interesting visual effect

At a point in the song the lyrics go “I take a pull and wonder why the Beatles break up” in reference to smoking cannabis. We fitted our video to the lyrics by having our performer mime taking a pull of a joint.

We once again referenced the notion of looking and voyeurism by featuring an extended series of shots where Emily is looking at the camera through a variety of coloured filters.

We added product placement (Nike trainers) as part of the demands of our record label.

Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
 I believe that our abstract, arty music video goes well with our ancillary products, which both feature a similar arty style. Colour is an important feature throughout our video, both in the ink shots and in the lighting of our performer, and this sense of colour is carried through into our ancillary products, with our digipack featuring different panels each featuring a cartoon-style character (the front cover of which is a cartoonised version of our star) and each has a specific colour background, which features very strongly. Our advert is also the front cover of our digipack, but with added information such as release date, reviews, where you can buy the product, and a link to our star's twitter page.

Q3.  What have you learned from your audience feedback?

(Make sure annotations are turned on)

Q4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Blogger: Blogger was a very helpful tool throughout the different stages of our music video. At first, we used it as a sort of ideas scrapbook, showcasing music videos and star personas that interested us, allowing us to go back and gain more ideas from each reference. Following on from that, we used it to plan the general ideas for our shoot, followed by more specific and practical details such as when, where and what we would need to film. Throughout this process, we continued to blog influences as they came to us. Finally we used it as a tool to post feedback for our rough cut, allowing us to closely focus on areas that we needed to improve.

Final Cut: Final Cut was probably the most important tool in the creation of the music video, as without it we would have had no way to edit our footage (except possibly on a more basic program such as iMovie, which would have been much less successful). We made use of a multitude of effects, such as the ability to fade between shots, colour correction which we used to drastically change the colours of certain shots for an abstract effect, as well as for more simply making the colours of our less abstract shots really stand out, and key frames, which we used to move some of our static shots around the screen, making them more exciting and not look awkward in comparison to shots where the camera is moving.

Photoshop: We used Photoshop in a slightly different way to most groups, choosing to draw in our digipack and magazine advert from scratch, rather than editing an existing photo. We used the standard paintbrush tool to draw out our characters, and then added a noise layer over the top, set to a low opacity and on multiply, to add a grainy, lo-fi feel to our ancillary products.

Digipack and Magazine Advert

Digipack

Magazine Advert

Editing Our Music Video - DRAFT

Possible CD designs

In this blog post we're going to look at possible designs for our digi pack.

The Gatefold CD.

Our digi pack is going to be four sided and will consist of photo's of our star that are advertising his style and promoting his album. we could have either pictures that were taken from filming or pictures we have used of josh on our blog already. We as a group will make sure that the colour's and images all match and blend well together. Our aim is to make it look as professional as possible and to attract consumers to our product.

Comments about feedback

Overall we were very pleased with the feedback we got from the other groups about our music video. From the feedback, we now know what we need to improve on, for example, we were told that we should add more lip singing in towards the end of the music video; this is very true and we will work on this next time we film. Also we were told to improve on some shots as they came across shakey.

Filming Part 2

On the  week back from half-term, 5th November commencing we knew we had to re-film some of the music video to fill the content of our video. We once again used the same space as last time. This was a sound proof drama studio. We blocked out all natural lights again and used the effects of artificial light. Doing this gives the feel of being in a music studio. Josh had learned the lyrics  of by heart this time round, so when recording he flowed much better with the lyrics, and looked much more genuine. Additionally this was useful for editing. Not solo relying on lip syncing as a technique in post filming. He raps it so well we don't deem it  necessary. In the first session of filming we had Josh rapping fine, but the lighting set up was the same in all of a long duration shot. The camera height and angel was the same throughout. Taking this into consideration on the second time we wanted to make the video more dynamic. We done this by josh rapping the entire song 3 times. But at different angels and heights. Also every song we would but colored filters over the studio light we used to create a nice affect. Last thing we did was the mise-en-scene. Josh changing t-shirts in the different run troughs.

This a similar kind of set up we used when filming. Using a big tall light, reflectors, blacked out background. But in addition to these we put colored filters over the lights to liven up the frame when shooting.

Our star Josh Oosterhuis

Rough Cut Feedback

Feedback from other groups

Marking Criteria

Social Networking and Star Persona

Social networking is an important tool for getting your music out to potential listeners. To show how important a tool it can be, we have taken some screenshots of the social networks of Kanye West, a successful rapper similar to our star persona.

Twitter

Kanye West's Twitter features his musings on day to day life, as well as a link to his official website. As you can see, with almost 9,000,000 followers he has been quite successful on this front.

Facebook

A quick search on Facebook reveals no official Kanye West page, but hundreds of unofficial, fan-made pages, ranging from thousands of likes to hundreds of thousands of likes.

Official Website

Kanye West's official website goes for quite a minimalist theme, featuring no information about the artist other than featuring a collection of his newest songs and videos to stream, along with links to buy the tracks, and invitations to share on Facebook and Twitter.

Last.fm

Kanye West's Last.fm page shows an impressive amount of 'scrobbles' - effectively a play count - and listeners. The profile also features photos and a biography of West, allowing us an insight into his persona.

Rough Cut Music Video

Goodwin's Points and our Music Video

Here is a plan of how our music video will relate to Goodwin's points.

Voyeurism
We plan to include shots of our star, both of him rapping to the camera and him seemingly unaware that the camera is there, including footage shots in a 'behind-the-scenes' kind of way. We are also planning on featuring some shots of other members in the group, referring to the notion of looking by peering directly into the camera.

Selling The Artist/Demands of Record Label
Our star will be appearing in his freshest clothes, and acting in a cool manner to appeal to our target audience. We will also attempt to appeal to a more arty crowd with our more abstract shots, which should help us sell the artist even while not directly portraying him.

Lyrics/Visuals
Our abstract shots should add to the inspiring, uplifting message of the song, and we are planning to make more direct connections to the lyrics, particularly when the rapper makes a pun along the lines of  'my dream works' we are going to put in a shot of a stack of Dreamworks Studios DVDs, and when he talks about 'great whites' we are going to include a short stop-motion animation of a shark. We will attempt to make more literal links like this throughout our video.

Music/Visuals
Most importantly, we will attempt to edit our video to the beat, which is much more satisfying for the viewer than offbeat cuts. The music is quite chilled out but also at a danceable tempo, so amongst our abstract shots (linking to the calm music) we will also featuring people dancing, raving and generally having a good time.

Intertextuality
As mentioned previously, we will refer to the works of Dreamworks Studios with a shot of some Dreamworks DVDs, linking in with the lyrics. Although not strictly a 'text', we will be referring to clothing labels such as Supreme, which will feature prominently in our video.

Genre
Since the song is part of the hip-hop genre we will obviously feature shots of our star performing, as this is one of the most common elements of rap videos, and we will focus a little on his clothes/material possessions, but not a lot as we want our video to be quite unconventional.

Our Star Persona

Throughout the planning stages of our music video we have been thinking about our star persona: what ideas do we want him to convey and how will we convey these ideas? Due to the actor we were going to use being unable to perform for us (as mentioned in our October 11th Blog Update) we have had to slightly rethink our star persona.

First and foremost, we want our star persona to be 'cool'. Our song choice takes care of a lot of that, being an independent, well-written rap record, but we also feel our star needs to be well dressed and groomed, wearing stylish branded clothing and acting in a nonchalant, carefree manner. However, we want to stay away from the 'gangsta' stereotype of rap music and create a persona more fitting with the uplifting message of our song, so we're going to avoid the usual rap clichés of drugs, violence and misogyny.

The new actor for our star persona is group member Joshua Oosterhuis, as we feel he is a good fit for the persona. Although we would have preferred a black actor, which would have been a more realistic choice for the song, we could not find a replacement in time and we think he is more than capable of fulfilling the role.

Example images of our actor

Written Storyboard

We want our video to open up with one of our abstract ink shots, and then when the beat drops and the rapper starts to perform, we will fade into a shot of our actor rapping. This shots will start out focusing on the actor's T-shirt, which will be a top by Supreme featuring Kate Moss on it. This will link into the lyric 'never chase girls chase dreams first', as well as displaying the cool brand.

The shirt we will focus on.

From this point we will cut between our abstract, object related shots, our dancing/filtered shots and the shots of our rapper performing. Specifically, when the lyric 'my dream works' appears, we will feature a shot of Dreamworks DVDs showing off the Dreamworks logo, and when the rapper talks about 'great whites' we will feature our stop motion shark.

Dreamworks Logo

We really want to include an impact shot similar to the one in the TNGHT - Higher Ground video (at roughly 1:35) however our song does not really feature a big 'drop'. For this reason, we are instead going to feature an impact (specifically an egg splatting on the floor) when the chorus comes in.

During the chorus we will again cut between our rapper performing, dancing shots and more abstract ones, returning to the ink. After the chorus we will continue like this. At the second chorus, as the song builds up more and more, we want to feature some of the filtered shots with trippy fades added, to hieghten the experience of the music, before finishing off with more abstract footage.

Analysis: The Chemical Brothers - Let Forever Be

The video for 'Let Forever Be' by The Chemical Brothers was directed by acclaimed music video director Michel Gondry. In the video below he talks about his influences on the video, specifically the filmmaking technique of using a much lower quality camera for outside shots, due to limitations with video cameras in the 1970s and 80s, and the idea of recreating cheesy retro effects, but in real life using real props, rather than cheap software.

Let Forever Be: The Making Of

Voyeurism

The whole video is set up to be a voyeuristic portrayal of a girl's nightmare, with us constantly watching her as she flits between realistic sequences and abstract, bizarre ones, and as the two intertwine.

Demands of Record Label/Selling The Artist
Due to Michel Gondry being such a renowned director, I suspect he was given more free reign by the record label to create an unconventional video, as they knew his fame would attract viewers anyway.

Lyrics/Visuals
Once again quite unconventional, the lyrics do not match up with the video much, expect for the lyric 'to wake up in the sun' which connects with the shots of the girl supposedly waking up. Also, the repetitive nature of the lyrics is echoed in the repetitive nature of the video.

Music/Visuals
The opening shot features a character dressed as a rabbi playing drums to the song, and the trippy dance sequences are on beat and related.

Intertextuality
In the making of, Gondry states that he was trying to emulate the look of old British sitcoms such as Benny Hill, as well as referring to old video effects that were cutting edge at the time but look quite cheesy now. However, he flipped this convention by using real props instead of effects.

Genre
This song is part of a genre known as 'big beat', a form electronic dance music employing old funk and soul samples, heavy breakbeats and distorted basslines. As is common in many dance music videos, the artists themselves are not present, but there are plenty of choreographed dance sequences instead.

Lighting Our Music Video

We already have an idea of what we want our music video to look like: we want a lot of abstract, high-key shots of semi-random objects, with bright, bold colours and patterns. These shots will be mostly close-up and extreme close-up, again to emphasise the abstract qualities. However, for shots of our star, we want a more moody, atmospheric, low-key style. We have looked up some tutorials on Youtube for how to achieve this.

This video is very helpful as it teaches you a lot of tips on creating a very specific, low-key look for your video, while still keeping the star brightly lit and visible. We are definitely going to use this lighting style for our star.

This video shows you a very interesting way to lip-sync your video, by singing along to the song at half speed and then speeding it up in post-production. This creates an interesting look for your video, which we might explore in ours. It also offers some useful tips on lighting in small spaces.

Questionnaire

On thursday 11th of October, our group went out within lesson time. Interviewing a variety of people at long road sixth form college. These kind of people range from 16-18 years. With a even mixed gender. We have designed these questions to help us understand what we need actor-wise, but also to help woth the digital packs and CD covers.

1. What would expect to see in a rap video?

- I would expect to see a variety of 'hot' boys and 'hot' girls

2. What is your view of a stereotypical rapper?

- Black and muscular

3. Do you like rap music and why?

- I have a mixed response to rap music, i don't like all rap music.

4. What attracts you to this type of music?

- The beat and the lrycis; you can relate to them.

5. What normally attracts you to buying a rap album?

- The reputation of the artist; i.e. if i've heard they're good

Our star

                                                                Tinashe Tee

Storyboard to complete...

This is our storyboard for the music video. (think josh has) (upload)



task on board
you must complete a storyboard and upload a picture of it. And then blog it with shot lists on it.

Our Music Video - General Plan

Our music video is going to be divided up into 4 different shot types, taking inspiration from the music videos we have looked at. The first is footage of ink droplets in water, similar to the fan-made video for Baths - Aminals. We are also going to do some shots of random objects and objects relating to the lyrics of our song, similar to the abstract style of the video for TNGHT - Higher ground. Our third shot type, influenced by the videos for Rusko - Everyday (Netsky Remix) and The Internet - Cocaine, will feature people dancing and generally enjoying themselves, but with coloured filters and disorientating fades throughout. Our final and most important shot type, influenced not by a particular video but by rap videos in general, will feature our star persona rapping to the camera.

More influences

Spaceghostpurrp - Osiris Of The East

We really like the abstract way of presenting the star, Spaceghostpurrp, through a variety of different colour filters and abstract shots, including extreme close-ups and heavily distorted visuals.

The Internet - Cocaine

We particularly like the sequence from about 1:55 onwards, where a strong green light, odd camera movements and trippy fades between shots create a sense of confusion and weirdness. A rapped verse then comes into the song, which fits with the visuals both directly (rapping about taking drugs; we see drug use in the video) and in a more abstract way (the cuts becoming a lot faster and more jarring as the beat comes back in, the whole scene becoming a lot more menacing with the addition of the deep-voiced rapper rhyming about drug use).

Lyrics to our song

Never chase girls
Chase dreams first
Motion picture drive
I concluded that my dream works
So I pace right
Never see my break lights
Never trust a person
But damn too many great whites
Never work without merit
Never live but don't cherish
'Cause we only born to perish
This is a luxury tariff
Here to preach a sermon Eric
And it's hysteric
They say you too pretentious don't get into that
Never the same, out in left like a democrat
I would like to present you with this rap award
And now I got more gigs than an apple store.
And yo you whiling boy
You ain't even stylin' boy
It's like I'm on a boat
Feelin' lonely on this Island Boy
My life'll never be the same
If never ever was
You'd probably feel my pain

(Chorus)
This is forever
This beat is on black pepper
You could get shook
If you lookin a little extra
Never fall off just make it a little better
And when you think it's sunny
That's when we change up the weather
And when you say you better
I bet I say never
And If you say you better
I bet I say never
And when you say you better
I bet I say never
And If you say you better
I bet I say never

I never do as I'm suppose to
Give me the Light, Sean Paul, 02
At homecoming
Yeah I went and brought my whole crew
I thought I killed it
Though they could not hear my vocals (Damn)
And they say why you roll that grape stuff?
I take a pull and wonder why the Beatles break up
Imagination is magic so when I wake up
Feel like I'm lookin' up at Hogwarts
Would it be wrong to have meetings in my ball shorts
The flow excessive
Like cops when they usin' whatcha call force
Xaph is beast you prolly shoulda brung the west
I swear I'm never like a nun when it comes to sex
And yeah I po-po-po-po-ker face the best bet
Frequent flyer miles
I'm tryin' to jet set
It's gonna take me higher
Might even make me flier
Life is a box of chocolates
That's why I prefer Godiva

(Chorus)
This is forever
This beat is on black pepper
You could get shook
If you lookin' a little extra
Never fall off just make it a little better
And when you think it's sunny
That's when we change up the weather
And when you say you better
I bet I say never
And If you say you better
I bet I say never
And when you say you better
I bet I say never
And If you say you better
I bet I say never