filming/photoshoot graveyard november 28th

on this date we managed to get access to a graveyard this scene was initially going to be used to represent the death of friends and family that the artist is rapping about in the song we have chosen. one problem we had was that it got dark immidiately as soon as we begun filming and we felt uncomfortable filimng around the graves of people we didnt know. we felt this was a bit disrespectful so we decided not to use this in our video and deleted this footage. We also took a picture which we would like to use on the back of our digipak and put titles of songs over and they will be used as they came out fantastic.

Digi-Pak

The group has looked at pictures for the digi-pak, we felt the pictures need to be eye catching to the target audience and show the genre of the music video 'grime'. We have taken pictures for the digi-pak but needs to be edited to give the grime feeling to the picture. The group has looked at pictures from grime CD covers to give inspiration for our CD cover, also to give us ideas how to show on the CD cover that the music is about gun and knife crime. I felt that inside the digi-pak their should be a massage of what we are trying to send out to the audience so i researched pictures that can give inspiration on what we can put inside the digi-pak.

Target audience

The audience we are targeting for our music video are teens that are going through gun and knife crime or are likely to be affected. The music video is also sending out a message about gun and knife crime. We have put a narrative in our music video to show the audience about stories that can lead to knife and gun crime, a narrative in the music video also engages the audience to keep watching the music video and also let other people know about the video. We didn’t make the lyrics match with the scenes this is because we felt that it would be more affective to the audience if we had a narrative in the music video.

Research

location

location

This is the actual location we chose to use for our music video

MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS: Roll Deep, Badman

(ADD WRITING)

Location

The group felt that the location we choose should have a grime genre feeling to go with the music video; before we filmed we did a lot of research on the location we are filming at. We looked at different music videos to inspire the group to choose the location; the music video that inspired us to have estate buildings was ‘Badman’ from ‘Roll Deep’. This music video has a lot of estate buildings in the background which gives the audience a sense that it is a grime genre. There are also a lot of stereotypical views that estate buildings give the grime feeling to a music video because it is seen to be where most of the gun crime and crimes come from, so putting estate buildings in our music video would give the whole genre feeling of grime and make our music video more effective to our audience.

Runaway music video analysis

   

This music video is Kanye west’s 35 minute music video called “runaway” this music video has a deep narrative which is there to keep viewers interacted in his music. At the start of the video Kanye west is driving through the forest alone then a phoenix falls from the sky and he rescues her and takes her home, this then forms into a relationship where he falls in love with the birdlike phoenix. The world we live in cant except her as he takes her to a big dinner and people point out to him that she’s a bird in an awkward way. She cannot take anymore of our world and leaves Kanye to go back to her own. This video is about being individual and outgoing and going against the norms of society as the theme is that everything that is different in our world we try to take it down or change it. This is why there is also a Michael Jackson tribute in the music video as he was unique and different. The deep narrative portrays what Kanye’s album is about in a more clear and visual way to increase understanding of Kanye west views and what his music is about. This relates to what we want to do s we want the viewer to feel the emotion and perspective of our artist in the exact same way that the runaway video does, we have emotive language of death and how the artist wants society to change, and we must do our best to entail this in our video

CASTING

Our lead chararcter initially was meant to be Rhys, however he had other responsibilties and therefore could not meet our high demands, we then decided that in order to produce a successful music video we had to find an actor who would be avaliable during our desired filming times. We therefore made Jeffrey, (a member of our group) the lead character, Malachi. We all argeed this would be ideal, and so far it has proven successful.

Analysis of a music video

  This is the music video to the song "brenda's got a baby" by the american rapper (who is also seen as one of the greatest if not the greatest rapper of all time by fans of rap and hip hop) the song is about many of the stuggles of living in an area rife with poverty and crime, this song is also based on true events. This music video is heavily dominated by narrative,it does show performance from the artist 2pac but it is intertwined into the narrative, this inspired us in the creation of our own music video and we decided to make a music video also heavily dominated by narrative. This song also has a serious political message which is similar to the message which is being conveyed in our song "Broken Silence". Our song broken scilence also refers to true event and so we thought it would be wise to use some of the techniques used in this music video. The lyrics in this song are directly portrayed visually which helps to add effect and power to the lyrics and the message conveyed. An example of some more similarities between our video and the video for "Brenda's got a baby" are we had a main protaganist which we were taken on a journey through their life with and both main protaganist  became victims to crime

filiming 20th november

Our group managed to film half of the protagonists journey all in one day! we took time to focus on bedroom shots in which the main character "malaki" writing a letter to his victims greaving mother apologising for what he has done, he takes time to reflect on his life and decision making, and ponders over whether he should be carrying a knife or weapon. also we show his journey through his housing estate on his way to make ammends with the victims mother, and some shots of him on the bus. these shots work well as we managed to envoke emotion and struggle into the video, i think this is a good thing as the audience will feel his pain, personality and views on events that have taken place and about to take place.

DIGI-PAK INSPIRATION

We began thinking of ideas for our digi-pak by getting inspiration from other album covers, the two album covers in particular that I really liked, where Wiley, playtimes over and Example, won’t go quietly. I feel that both these album covers feature elements we would like to explore in our album cover! My favourite was the example album cover, because not only is it achievable, it is eye catching and tells a story! I like the grid affect and how different sides of him are shown, I think that if we where to use this idea we could perhaps show the artist from different viewpoints in their lives, because our album will be call "Freedom of speech" elements such as the megaphone and the duck tape around the mouth are very good ideas, that helped me to generate ideas of my own, we could use the same grid affect however display different methods of expression, the two central grids could feature the artist and the surrounding could be random people or random, objects that express freedom! I thought this idea would be both achievable and very eye-catching and be a true representation of what we hope to portray! The other album cover was Playtime's over by Wiley, I like the gloomy aspect to this album cover, it suggests seriousness which is a factor we aim to bring forth in our album cover, as a group we thought that we could shoot the album cover in a public place such as a graveyard or a park, and we could edit the picture to emphasize the level of seriousness! I have displayed the two album covers that have given me inspiration, I like idea of a grid the most, today I am going to take pictures of Jeffrey and Justin who are the two artists, we will try a series of shots and determine which ones best suit our image, market and aim!

STORYBOARD PART 1

I drew a storyboard for the first part of of our music video, outlining brief plans for shots, this is not highly detailed but it will provide us with the foundation we need to produce a successful music video!  

LOCATION INSPIRATION

In order to make our music video look truly realistic we had to take inspiration from famous estates within London that are notably grimey and run down! I have selcted pictures of flats from Peckham and Brixton although we are not going that far out to film, we aim to find estates locally that are similar to these ones. A key feature of these estates that I truly like, is the streotypes that are attatched with the estates, the estate is obviously largely populated and suggests, that it is full of deviance and wrong doing.. I believe if we find an estate that is similar to these, we will be able to say a lot of things about our protagonist without having to actually say them.  

Research

I researched a music video called 'To The Homies We Lost' from R Kelly that has the same genre as the music video we are doing 'Broken Silence' from So Solid Crew. I used this video to research, plan and give ideas for the music video we are doing. It helped me to see what I can put in my music video to link the genre and the stereotypical views to see in a grime music video. In the music video I researched has a story line simpler to the storyline we are doing in our music video, about people getting shot and stabbed and how it affects people around them, such as their loved ones. The music video shows different memories from the past of the person that got killed to make the audience feel the sadness of the story being told, some scenes in the music video shows the artist singing at a church next to a coffin, we took this idea for our music video to have our artist sing at a graveyard, we felt the locations are also important as it helps to create the genre of the music video and have a affect on the audience. We felt the scenes in the music video should have a message to the audience and link to the lyrics in the song being told, this would make the audience see the genre more clearly. The audience is looking for a music video that would entertain them and show a story within the video which would make them want to watch the music video more than once. The researched helped me a lot to make ideas for the genre of the music video and to stay on path of what we are showing to our audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgiPzzcsqc0&feature=related

STORYLINE

We have decided to partly base our music video on narrative, as a group we have devised the storyline as follows:  Malachi is a 17 year old male, who has a shady past, he shot another guy dead! Throughtout our narrative, we will represent how killing someone has haunted and taken over his life. We aim to portray Malachi initially as a good guy, however forced to conform to typical black sterotypes because of the area he lives in! We plan to use flashbacks to represent how the killing has effected him. Ultimately Malachi dies due to the boy he unintendingly murdered friends, seek revenge they corner Malachi and shoot him dead before running away leaving him to bleed to death. In the early part of the story the audience will be introduced to Malachis mother, which will hopefully evoke sympathy on to the audience as she only wants the best for him! Malachi will be leaving his grimey, criminal prone estate which suggests he's prone to crime. A key feature of the storyline which will help us to present Malachi as a good boy is a letter, Malachi aims to write a letter to the boy he killed mother! He infact will be on his way to deliver the letter, when he is confronted by the boys who shoot him dead! Malachi will be a smart young man, who attends college and lives just with his mother. At the end and the beggining of our narrative we will show how everything will end, we will aim to create a crime scene with Malachi dead on the floor, and onlookers staring!

Inspiration for digi-pak

The mane influence for our digi-pak design was a design used in the album "Play time is over" by the artist wiley. We used the artist wiley because he is of the same genre of music as the music in our music video, he is also very popular and one of the top artists in his genre so we thought it would be wise to exploit some ideas he has used. In our picture we took at the graveyard we tried to capture darkness simalarly to this however our music group has a different message, therefore there were bound to be difference, for example instead of having just the items in the photo dark we shot the picture in a dark atmosphere to represent the message of a dark and dangerous society which is being portrayed in the song. We also changed the location from a playground to a  graveyard which are to completely polarised places, this also helps the message of a dark broken society to be delivered.

Myspace

We have put up some binus videos on the myspace of our music group first genesis, for their fans, this is very common with the artists of thye genre group our music group is part of, we thought this was a good idea because it creates a stronger connection between our music group to their fans, it also gives the artists the oppurtunity to gain feedback from their fans and create material accordingly

Final Filming

We are planning to have completed filming our entire music video  by saturday, its going to be emotional because we've put our heart and souls into this project, hopefully it all goes as planned and after that we can start editing and start to put form to our music video.

Bonus videos for our artists myspace

We decided to shoot a behind the scenes interview of our artists, we thougt this was a good idea because it allows our artists to connect with their fans, the artists talk about their inspiration of their song and the message they are trying to convey.

On set on the grave yard scenes

We doing some more filming of our music video for our new single Broken silence on saturday, we're looking forward tot this and we hope we please our fans, the video has a deep message just like the song does. This is a picture of us on set, filming the graveyard scene, this picture is also going to be on our digi pack.

BRAINSTORMING IDEAS 1

I have brainstormed some ideas that will contribute towards our final video.

INSPIRATION FOR MUSIC VIDEO

I have posted the link to the trailer, 'Bullet Boy' during our planning we were advised to take some time out and watch the trailer and a couple of scenes from the film bullet boy! This film holds strong connections with the narrative we wish to include in our music video, as they both have an urban genre. When we watched the film we were able to come up the lost of ideas, we really liked the idea of a little brother holding a significant part within the narrative so we thought we could interpret that into out video. We were able to see how weapons are portrayed through such iconic urban films such as bullet boy. As well as this, from watching bullet boy we saw how gun and knife crime affects families; this was very ideal seeing as we aimed to evoke sympathy onto the viewer!

MUSIC VIDEO: initial ideas 1

Our class were told for our A2 coursework we had to produce a music video, we where told about the research we would have to conduct in oreder to successfully produce our music videos. We were placed in groups, my group includes Justin, Jeffrey and Aliya. We where initally given a different song, we had a selection from 20 songs and we had to narrow them down and decide which one would best suit us! however we suggested that we change the genre of music, because we felt we could produce a better video with a genre more relatable. Therefore we suggested the song 'Broken Silence' by so solid crew! we felt this would suit us better as we are all quite familar with the genre of grime, and have easy access to the resources that will make the music video believable. My group had many ideas from this song, and we began to brainstorm and decided that a narrative would be very affective. We all established that our main aim was to evoke sympathy onto the viewers, so we thought we could do this through a narrative. Currently my group are further duscussing ideas such as where to film and casting.
Rachellex

Digi-Pack shoot on 3/11/10

We started to film the bonus features of our music group, we shot a behind the scenes interview of the music artist, we did this for our artists to help promote their new album and also to connect more with the fan base. The artists also had the oppurtunity to give a message to the fans that they felt was important which is also the message in the song 'Broken Silence'.