Ancillary Tasks (Magazine Advert)

When Designing the advert, i felt that the simple colour scheme of black and white was more effective than the choice of several different colours as this may not stand out as well, the advert is very plain and simple which i feel is most effective and will really help in grabbing the audiences attention. the only item of colour on the advert is the Itunes logo, this is due to it being a trademark logo.  the use of the artists picture in the bottom left corner helps to give the advert a personal feel.

The reason we have used, Black and White colour scheme is because the artist 'Example' he often uses black and white. His name is usually white text on a black background this is the reason why the colour scheme was chosen.

Location and Setting

We have chosen to film our music video around the area of Brentwood; we have chosen this location based on the reason that the area has all of the resources that we need, in terms of mise-en-scene. For one of the scenes we are able to access a podium, at a Go-kart track, which will be used to film the scene where he wins an award. We felt that this was appropriate as it gives the viewer the idea of him being a winner. We have decided to shoot the main part of our film down a straight road with small terrace houses on one side to give the idea of him being a simple character; it also gives impression of him being isolated. We also may use a betting shop as part of our video as the song features the lyrics “if i had a coin for every time we could be millionaires” the use of the betting shop shows a link to the “coin” and reflects the luck of the character. In our locations etc. We hope to get across the persona of the character and the type of person he is. We want the character to come across as an ordinary character who just lives an ordinary life.

Music

As a group we have been deciding what song we want to use to make our music video. We have EXAMPLE Millionaires that we would like to use; here is a sample of the song. As you can hear that the music is very slow spoken/rapped. We as a group liked this music as we felt that it would be easy to use the Lisp sing Kit. We also looked at the artist Lily Allen. We thought that the music video for lily Allen’s songs is well known and it would be hard to create a good video, without it being compared; Whereas EXAMPLE’s song Millionaires isn’t well known to the general public and doesn’t have a music video for it. This would be easier to put our ideas across and experiment in the video.

Song lyrics

Yo
I know what im tryna say
its on the tip of my tongue
Its like my thoughts have been araised, talk as if i was dumb
Should of met her when she asked
but i was out getting plastered
She waited for my speech but the cat got my tongue
Acting like i've gone and won at the oscars, speechless, careful with my words there's no way i could cheat this
Lost 'em again now someone give me a pen
I need to write these lessons down and maybe give 'em to friends

I cant promise that i wont be a fool again
but i never had cruel intentions
Put me in detention as long as you want
Then you'll see..
Theres a million ways but its never enough
I say i love you im sorry but still i get stuck
if i had a coin for everytime we could be millionaires
but you dont need the diamonds cause i got a million ways to show you that i care

She isnt in it for the cash flow the girls independant
she dont expect pendants or remnants or necklaces
she only wants to trust me and dont want to fuss me
but all this depends on if i behave wrecklessly
i never ment to lie to her the truth wouldnt hurt
but i just dig myself into a hole and she goes beserk

lost it again who'd have thought that us men would break down and behave like we're 10

I cant promise that i wont be a fool again
but i never had cruel intentions
Put me in the dog house as long as you want
Then you'll see..
Theres a million ways but its never enough
I say i love you im sorry but still i get stuck
if i had a coin for everytime; we could be millionaires
but you dont need the diamonds cause i got a million ways to show you that i care

Brief ‘About a Girl’ Analysis

We analysed a short video before we decided to make a music video. The controlling behind the short video is; a girl that is neglected and she has been brought up tough. At the start of the film the girl is shown in a big white coat, with her hair scrapped back and big gold hooped earrings, we find out that her parents have been divorced and the father neglects her. The girl is only 13 years old and comes across innocent and vulnerable. She doesn’t seem to have much guidance and has brought herself up. We find out that she has got ‘good at hiding things’ and she talk about the ‘worms being in the toilet’ this all foreshadows hiding things.

Throughout the short video she sings Brittany Spears, she has a dream to become ‘someone’ and imitates her. The lyrics symbolise how she is feeling about her life ‘my loneliness’ the sound of irony ‘I’m not that innocent’. Ambient sound making it more in-depth and the emotional engagement shows she is lonely and bitter and that makes us feel sorry for her.

The location of the short film is set near a canal which is dark, cold, depressing, the graffiti shows the type of area she is in. after her deposing of her child she feels relief and can move on with her life.

Questionnaire Analysis Graphs

Ideas for Costume

Everyone who is aware of Example is aware of his crazy style. We were going to attempt to create his style but without copying it.

As Example has either spiky long hair or he wears a hat we decided to go for the hat as this would hide the charters face who is trying to play Example and make it more believable for the audience, that it is actually example in the video.
From examples website we can see his clothing range and what he wears and we can see it is very different from the normal. For the top half we decided to dress our character in a hooded bright adidas jumper, this is typical of example to wear bright cloths and stand out. Also we went for a hooded top so he can put the hood up or down to create the desired effect.

Example also usually wears bright trainers which are also very different to what other people would wear. We are lucky enough that we have access to a wide variety of vans which they make in many colours which we are going to use to make the character look even more like example.

Shooting Schedule

This is our proposed planning schedule to film our music video, due to weather and other circumstances this may be due to change. If change has been made, note to be taken and published. Other dates and times still not to be confirmed just yet.

Questionnaire

The above picture shows the questionnaire which i prepared and handed to various people, as to gain insight to what the intended audience like and want in a music video. I was able to identify who fell most specifically into our target audience by making a question which showed the people who's favourite music video genre was hip-hop/rap.

Promotion of the video

Promotion of the video

As there is not already a music video for the music piece which we are doing it has not been advertised, I was going to have a look into how we would advertise it so our intended target market would see it. Through our groups independent research we noticed that music and music videos are not advertised on T.V but on other sources such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, magazines, and word of mouth. We also noticed that it was not actually the video that is advertised but the song itself and the video just follows. In the magazines it was not the new songs that were advertised but the release of the artist’s latest album or single. Depending what the intended target market for the song was, would decide on what magazine it would go into. Artists are ‘followed’ on twitter and if they release a new song they would post it and people would follow the post and obviously the more people that follow it the more popular the song will get. Another way is through Facebook where artists would post a status about their new song or new music video and people would ‘like’ the status and again the more people that like it the more popular the video/song is. Facebook also has small adverts in the corners which sometimes advertise and promote artists.
As our target market is people aged 15 to 30 we feel the best place to advertise our video and promote the song would be through Facebook, Twitter and through magazines. We would have to advertise it on the artist’s profiles and in the right magazines for the correct target market to see it. As most of our target market would watch music channels anyway it would be easy for them to accidently watch it without realising what song it was, if they liked it they would talk about it to their friends and the video would be watched by many. If people rely liked it they would type it in on YouTube and watch it via YouTube and the video would get lots and lots of hits.

Brief/Synopsis/Pitch

We are going to have one main scene and one main character throughout the video. The bulk of the video is going to be based on an ordinary long street, but on the street unordinary things is going to take place. The video is also going to cut to other scenes but it will always cut back to the road scene, we will use continuity editing to help the video flow. We are going to follow the song lyrics in order to create a great video to complement the song.

Inspirations/Influences

By watching music videos all the time and listening to music, we as a group have a lot of ideas in our heads, from which the ideas have inspired us into creating our music video. The music video that we looked at together as a group was ‘Eminem: Just loose it’, the video is a spoof and takes the piss out of Famous people, but what we like about the video is that he relates to the lyrics and shows it through the acting in the video. We have an idea to do with our music video and we want to try to recreate it.

Anaylsis of Eminem "Just Lose It"

Artist: Eminem
Length: 4:05
Producer/Director: Dr. Dre and Mike Elizondo

Camera starts off in a high angle possession looking down on the character who is mocking the artist Michael Jackson. The character is in a famous posisition which is known to that character. The scene is shot in an alleyway which appears to be behind a backdoor to a theatre or stage. This scene/shot is also a mockery of the music video by Michael Jackson “Billie Jean”. As the character walks along the alleyway the floor tiles light up when trod on which is famous to the “Billie Jean” video. After around 5seconds the scene changes to a quick shot of a novelty sign which reads “the one man show” this sign looks to be based around the 70’s, it appears to be a sign for a game show or a talent contest of some kind. The scene then switches back to the alleyway consist of newspaper sheets scattered around which is ideological of an alley way. Throughout this first scene the character is mocking Michael Jackson by copying dance moves which are famously associated with him.

The shot then cut’s to what appears to be a show where people are able to eat, the lighting is dim, we can see where the audience are sitting and there is a bright light which aimed at the stage which shows the audience that the show has begun or is about to. This is shot from a high angle, the camera then starts to smoothly glide down to a more eyelevel view, this allows the viewer to engage and see that the show is about to begin. The audience then see a character on a push bike cycle into the middle of the stage representing the presenter of the show.

We then have a close up of the Michael Jackson character ( at this point the character of Michael Jackson has had his face hidden at all times) we see the character turn towards the door, there is use of the 180 degree rule here as it is all shot from the same side. The director then uses continuity editing when he opens the door handle then switches to an eyelevel view which sees the door opening and allows the audience to see into the room that the door opens into, this is all in dim lighting.

The scene then cut’s to a mid-shot of the T.V/Game show presenter , this is highly lit and shows the presenter turning around to face the curtains at the back as if to show an act to come on.

At 00:15 we have a whole new shot of the artist (Eminem), in front of what appears to be a metal grate or some kind of wall which has lights behind the gaps which are a range of Reds, Blues and Orange’s. These colours hold the Viewer's attention as they are yet simple but effective. The artist is in an ideological stance which is often used or mocked by other rappers. The shot also appears to the viewer as if they are peering through a keyhole as there is a black ring around the edge of the shot which helps to bring all of the attention to the artist in the video, by Filtering out everything else and allowing all of the focus on the artist.

This then cuts back to the T.V presenter who is again introducing an act. It is noticeable that the presenter and the rapper are both played by the same character, this is a famous trait by Eminem as he often Plays more than one character in his videos, as this video plays on we see him dresses as another large range of characters such as “Santa Claus” “Madonna” “Jimmy White-rabbit Smith” (Jimmy is a character in 8mile who Eminem plays).

Risk Assessment Form

Planning Diary

• In our initial ideas our first Song Choice Idea was a song by Lily Allen, We originally chose this song due to the effectiveness and power of the words she uses. At this point we had no Initial ideas for the story board.

• We Spent a lesson discussing what possible songs we could have and the pro’s/cons of the song choice. We came to the conclusion that Lily Allen was not the right artist for us due to the song being popular and well known, this gave us the risk of the video being compared to the original and this was most likely to affect the overall feel of the video. We then came up with the artist “Example”. We came up with this artist as he uses words in a powerful way like Lilly Allen. “Example” is also less well known.

• In our next lesson we discussed What “Example” song we wanted to use. We went through his latest album “Won’t Go Quietly” And decided on the song of “millionaires”. This Song Has Strong powerful words, and at Current this song is not well known and does not have a music video to accompany it. This gives us the advantage as there is not a video for our song to be compared to.

• We then did some background research on the artist “Example” Found out key information on him, Name, Age etc. This was helpful in allowing us to create an ideal character for our video.

• We then started to storyboard, in our initial ideas we were going to just have one story scene going on. We then decided it would be better if we could get two story scenes into our video. By this we mean a separate scene where the Character is for example, walking down the street, and then another one of him acting out a drunk in the bar etc. We decided this would be better as it allowed the viewer to follow a story.

• We then wrote to MOS (Ministry Of Sound), Asking for Permission to use the song. (At Current we have not had a reply from them) So we are going to carry on using this song choice unless we get a reply from them stating we do not have permission to us their song in our video.

• We are currently Deciding/Discussing how we are going to overcome certain problems such as lip syncing and the possible negative effects that could occur due to poor lip syncing. We are also discussing how and where we will shoot and who we will need etc. We are also discussing how we will be able to get everyone to the location etc.

• We have also looked into audience and target audience trying to find out whether our initial target audience fits in with the genre and our song choice. To do this we researched the artist and the type of clothing he wears as well as the type of person he is. From the information we gathered from this we can see and understand that our audience is what we assumed it to be and we have been correct in the working out of character style.

• We Created Blogs on Our Inspirations/Influences For the music Video, We also created a blog on the promotion of our video and what way we would do it and how it would work.

• We then created a questionnaire, and discussed what the questions should be and what we could learn from the answers and how we could use the answers to make the music video better.

• We then designed a shooting schedule and decided who we would need and what we were going to shoot on that day etc. We then discussed costume ideas and created a blog for our ideas of costume and what we would need and what would look best.

Story Board

This is a short video of our story board explaining step by step what we are planning to do.

[Still to come, pictures of story board]

Brief outline of the video

From the start which we included in our initial ideas we wanted to choose a slow upbeat song in which we could hear the lyrics loud and clear. We choose ‘example - millionaire’ because it fit the exact criteria of the ideas we had, as we wanted to follow the lyrics of the song and act out some of the lines in the song.

The video is based around a main scene which is on a long quite road. We had the idea that someone would act as ‘example’ and would be filmed dancing through the street as more and more people would gather behind him the further we got to the end of the song and road. Meanwhile it would cut to separate scenes depending on what the lyrics say. E.g. ‘but i was out getting plastered’ we are going to cut to a scene of example on the floor with cans of beer/vodka and being sick to show him getting plastered. We found out by looking at over similar videos such as Eminem – just loose it, that there needs to be a main scene to always cut back to after following the lyrics of the song, this seems to hold the video together without making it look random. We felt it would be to dull and boring just having ‘example’ dance through the street this is why we decided to have more and more people start to follow him, this makes it more interesting to watch as it is not something you would see every day and if done well, the people in the background would be all kinds of people such as: clowns, Goths, emo’s, chavs, office workers and more.

Possible Colour Schemes

Sky/Surroundings

-Dark/Grey sky with Orange/Yellow Street lights. (The lights would reflect off the road, if the road was damp/wet, which would give the video a Cold/Glum feel)
- Bright/Blue Sunny Sky. (This would give a more upbeat/happy feel to the video, making the Video Feel Warm. But using this colour scheme may affect the whole feel of the music, could change it from a Down/Glum song to an upbeat/Cheerful song)
Choosing at which time of day we shoot the video ultimately depends on what feel we want the video to have. So in order for us to say we want the music video to feel up/Down we must change the surroundings in order for that to have the full effect.

Clothing

-Our character would have Jeans. If we want to have a Up feel song then light coloured jeans, where as if we wanted a down feeling song we would have him wearing dark jeans. The same principle applies for all of the clothing.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a particularly useful tool as it compares the balance of strengths and weaknesses for a given project or even organisation. SWOT means Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The strengths and weaknesses are internal factors (they are decided by the organisation or project managers themselves). Opportunities and threats are external factors ( they are developed from sources outside of the group’s control ).
Strengths
- Very well planned and structured idea.
- We can relate to the target audience.
- Hip hop is a very popular genre with young adults presently.
- The songs relevance and references are very male dominated, which is convenient for us, as we have more access to a male cast and male ideology.
- There has been

Weakness
- Video may struggle to relate as strongly to another audience, however we may be able to save this by not making our film overly specific to the target audience – although this is a risk as it could cut our relativity to the target audience.
- Music videos for the hip hop genre are not generally accepted by all young adults.

Opportunities
- Can start the video from scratch as it does not have an existing video and this gives us more room to explore ideas etc. and gives us the confidence to do so as it has nothing to be compared to.

Threats
- The song is not particularly well known, and due to its fast paced lyrics; some people may not relate the lyrics to the video itself.

Codes and Conventions of Chosen Genre (Hip-Hop)

The chosen Genre of our music video is Hip-Hop. The reason we have chosen this genre is because the music is not to fast so it does not involve too many split second clips, the fact that the music is slightly slower and less active, allows us to have longer clips and create a more personal feel to the viewer.

Hip-Hop Means, Hip (In the know or Current) and Hop (Hopping Movement)
The Viewer will have the idea of the codes and conventions of our chosen genre which is Hip-Hop, as being dressed in Jeans, Plain T-Shirt/Shirt and Trainers. An altogether general casual character. By Looking at our Artist ‘Example’ we can see that he usually dresses in a Plain pair of jeans, Converse or similar trainers, and a plain t-shirt with a jacket or coat.

The Audience will expect our video to feel Updated and modern, as well as Fitting in with the whole genre. Our genre of hip-hop Fits in with artists such as Jay-Z, Example, Kanye West etc. Our genre has the mainstream scene of Girls, Cars and Money, which help in allowing us to build our video around these aspects.

Codes and Conventions of a Music Video

A music video is a short film or video that accompanies a complete piece of music/song. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings.

Music videos use a wide range of styles of film making techniques, including animation, live action filming, documentaries, and non-narrative approaches such as abstract film.

What you would find from music videos, the codes and conventions will vary depending on what type of music video your analysing. The codes and conventions of the music video that I’ve looked at which is; Hip/Hop and Rap, generally include, girls, fast cars, drink (alcohol), clubs, money, and all the signs of money i.e, jewellery.

Initial Character Ideas

We were planning on having a main character acting as Example, but where he has such a unique style it would be hard to copy.

Initial Ideas

From the start we wanted to do a music video as we felt we knew more about them rather than a short film. We also knew we wanted the video to be aimed at young adults aged 17 to 25. Firstly we wrote down artists who would be suited for this and then some of their songs which we would be able to follow clearly so the video does not look random. Secondly we came up with the songs of the artists which were slow and clear as we decided we wanted to follow a song word for word in the style of Eminem, we also wanted a song that had a large variety of different lyrics as this gives us the chance to use a wide range of camera angles, lighting choice and mise-en-scene to convey the meaning of the lyrics.
The choice of songs we decided was good for what we were looking for:
• Lilly Allen – it’s not fair
• Lilly Allen – the fear
• The Streets – dry your eyes
• The Streets – fit
• Eminem – just lose it
• Example – quietly
• Example – millionaire
After we took a long look at each of the songs we decided to choose example, millionaire as it was perfect for the type of video we had ideas for already. The song is broken up into many verses and repeats the chorus throughout. The song is very slow and the words are pronounced loudly and clearly. We wanted to follow the words of the song and act out what the artist is saying. Although many of the smaller aspects of the video are subject to change; we are confident in following our primary basic structure of the video – basically acting out the story of the lyrics.

Permission Letter

F.A.O; Ministry of Sound,

We are a group of 4 Sixth form students that are studying Media at A level. As part of our A2 media project we are making a music video in which we would film and edit ourselves. The Music video that we would create would not be published on Facebook or YouTube or any other public domain, but would be purely for examination purposes only.

We are writing to you to seek permission to use one of your songs, Millionaires by Example. We would be extremely grateful if you would grant us permission to use this song.

If we have contacted the incorrect department, could you please forward this e-mail onto someone who can answer our query.

We hope to hear from you soon and would appreciate your co-operation with this matter.

Kind Regards,

Tom Payne, Ricky Lipman, Bill Kent and Sam O’Conner

example, background information

Example
Background information
Birth name: Elliot John Gleave

Also known as: Example

Born: 20 June 1982 (age 28)

Origin: Fulham, London, UK

Genres: British hip hop, new wave, grindie

Occupations: Vocalist, Rapper

Instruments: Vocals, Rapping

Years active: 2004–present

Labels: All the Chats (2004–2006)
The Beats (2006–2007)
Data (2008–present)

Associated acts: Mr Rusher, Andy Sheldrake, Chase & Status, Hervé, DJ Wire, The Streets, Hadouken!, Don Diablo, MJ Cole Lily Allen

what is a music video?

What is a music video?

A music video is a short piece of moving or still images put together accompanying a pre-existing piece of music to help boosts sales of the music. In a music video there should be a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals which link the music and moving images. There are many genres of music which should be illustrated by the video. A music genre is a group of music that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music. It is likely to be intertextual references, either to other music videos, films or famous people. Intertextuality is when a media text makes reference to another text that, on the surface, appears to be unique and distinct.
Key features of a music video.
Music videos demonstrate characteristics of their genre e.g. A rock video would stereotypically be dark and consist of low key lighting throughout. There is always a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals in the video, so the video would never be random compared to the lyrics. The demand from a record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist which would recur across their work which would produce a visual style.

Evaluation of AS Blog

Evaluation of As Blog- Tom, Leila, Paige and Mollie

From our AS blog we found that we had a lot of things that were positive and other things that were negative, from what was positive about our blog was that we had a mixed range of media that we include, such as images, personal videos of us recording and explaining what we’re doing, there are also images of us recording and editing our blog. I feel that we could have blogged a lot more than what we done; we could have increased our work and maybe got a better grade, at the begging we didn’t take it as serious as we should of, but got it together and produced an A grade blog . The team effort was good, we all set ourselves work and blogs to do other the week and made sure we had good communication in order to get a good blog. We had a few problems with the editing because it was very new to us so we had a lot to learn once we knew what we was doing, we found that we was good at the editing, and making the film flow properly with the correct transactions. The real strengths of the blog was that it had everything that was needed in the bog, and it was completed to a good standard, we didn’t fill it out with rubbish that wasn’t include, just good quality blogs and relevant medias.

Evaluation of As Blog- Billy and Ricky

Primarily, I believe that we simply included too much text in our blog and didn’t use a wide enough variety of media. I feel that using a variety of media within our blog not only shows a level of technological diversity for our group, but also plainly makes our work more interesting and clearly communicated – and this will be an important aspect to include in our blog this year. Although we did make a conscious effort to include some graphology in our work, we did not realise its importance and this is a possible reason why we did not do this to what we now consider an acceptable level.

We used some good, clear planning points; including thorough pictures and description of our location and this is possibly one of the stronger points of our blog and we feel it is equally important to carry this priority into our advanced production blog.







Evaluation of AS Blog (Sam O’Connor)

On My Blog what went right was the way in which it was presented. We used Microsoft word to create documents as well as Microsoft PowerPoint; we included Pictures such as the age rating system as well as screenshots of the film, Links to websites which helped to show extra information. Another area I feel we did well in was the areas in which we covered, we covered areas like mis-en-scene to audience feedback, whilst most of that was required, and some areas are more in depth than others. It would have of been better if we could have of been more detailed in all of the blogs but we started to run out of time so it had to be rushed towards the end so some of the quality was lost. A strength of the blog is the fact that we managed to get all of the main area’s covered. It would have been better if we were able to do more blogs which would have helped to boost our grades up.

Some of the problems which we had was with the editing, we issues with the music as we could not find any type of music which suited our film, luckily I had a piece of music on my memory stick which suited the film fairly well. Another issue we had with the editing was the clips sometimes jumped, for example in one incident the film clip jumped forward about 5 seconds, we fixed this issue by reloading the footage back up. During the Editing period we spent a long while before we did actually upload the footage due to someone lost the tape, and only a few of the computers working, which caused a problem in that we had to wait for some computers to come free in order for us to be able to start the editing.

If I had the chance to re-do the Coursework I would most likely pick another group as the two other people in my group where un-reliable. The main problem with our group was the fact that no-one took it seriously which meant that everything was left till the last minute. This lowered the standard and general quality of the blog and Short film. We did well to Get the required blogs done in the time that we left ourselves even if we didn’t get it done to the best standard.