Half Term Homework

Advanced Portfolio Half Term Homework:

You must think seriously now about how your music video works in combination with your magazine advert (advertising the digi-pack) and the digi-pack cover (at least 4 sides).

Answer the following questions:

1.       What is your finalised star persona? Include a photograph of your star that best communicates their persona. Discuss what ideas/ideologies they communicate (materialism, rebellion, innocence, the cultural “ideal”, alternative to the “ideal” etc.). How do they communicate these ideas? How is their persona expressed visually? (costume, hair, makeup, bogy language, lighting, framing etc) How is it expressed through lyrics, genre?

2.       How are you going to ensure continuity between the 3 products? Remember your digi-pack cover cannot look like a single (can’t be images from the music video) but an album. Compare your ideas for the digi pack cover with professional promo images. A digi-pack is a combination of audio and video (a cd and a dvd with special features such as a few music videos or concert videos)

3.       Write down all of your individual or group ideas for the digi-pack cover and magazine advert. Ideas for costume, setting, lighting, colour, hair, makeup, Photoshop special effects etc. If you can do some mock ups of your own, or experiment with effects in photoshop.

Word count : 500 words minimum

ALSO Catch up with your blogging. Make sure Target audience work is complete and you have done at least 25 individual posts since the start of the project! It is not just the amount that counts though but the content!

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.

Song lyrics interpretation

These are the lyrics for Chiddy Bang - Never:

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


Typical of a rap song, the word count for the 2:25 is very high! The original rapper to this talks about himself using clever puns, and rhymes.

"Never chase girls, Chase dreams first" - These two lines instantly show the audience that he is interested in girls. And that he has a very high standard. Chase dreams first. 

"I swear I'm never like a nun when it comes to sex" - talking clearly his sexual behavioral  With this line it shows that he's really outgoing and doesn't care about something personal like this. Stereotypical "MAN" rapper.

Blog Update

We filmed on the 15th October 2012. I bit behind schedule  Filming was put back a week due to various problems mentioned in my last blog update. Today we didn't film our main footage of the rap artist rapping, but filmed the very effective "Water-ink" piece  To do this myself (Joe), Josh, Emily and Delia. Each with various bits of equipment  Lights x 2, Camera, reflector, jug, water, ink, were used. The set up of this is in the image below.










(Josh - cameraman, took the photo.)

All members of the group were happy with the outcome of the shoot. The first shoot of the "Water-Ink" was out of focus. But we thought it could look cool, having a non-focused shot slowly building into a fully focus shit for effect. Also to show progression through the song. Take two was also out of focus, due to it being hard to tell with such a close zoom. Take 3 was in focus, and it looked aesthetically pleasing. The detail of the image is what i personally liked.

This is the video that had influenced us. And i think this was achieved to a very high standard.