photoshoot

album cover

heres our remake of an album by drake, this is Views. We used this album cover because its in the same genre as our music video and it was good to analyse the similarities between the varied hip hop album covers as majority of them have a common theme of drugs, money, women and also theres a theme of the artist looking at how far they have come. As it can seen with this album, drake is in a tower in Toronto where he is originally from , this indicates hes looking down on his city and seeing how far hes come

Semiotic Analysis of To Pimp a Butterfly's Album Cover

marketing

Marketing strategy.

To market our product we shall use social media such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook as most of our fan base would use social media it is a good way to expose the product. Because of a large audience base on these platforms it is very wide spread which helps to promote the product to our audiences and to other people who may take interest. As well as this we would use TV adverts on music channels that appeal to our target audience such as MTV and KISS.

Our release date for our products will be next summer in July which is a peak time for our target audience because music is a large part of summer for our target audience which means that we would achieve more sales.

To promote and market our product we shall be using posters that will be distributed around shops and stores etc and also we would be using billboards in popular areas and in major cities such as London in the tube where our target audience would use this to travel so they would see it including the name of our artist “ASAP MON” which will appear large. Also we would put our posters and billboards in Manchester in the Arndale and Trafford Centre as it is full of students who are our target audience. Placing them in such popular areas could even attract different and new audiences.

Chance the Rapper who is a similar artist to A$AP Rocky used Instagram to promote his new album which is what we shall be doing to promote ours as well to reach a wide audience. This is the use of technological convergence.

The record label Polo Grounds whos parents company is Sony Music Entertainment whos genre is R&b and Hip Hop. Their current artists on this label re artists such as Lantana, Pitbull, ASAP Ferg, ASAP Rocky. On their website has banners of artists upcoming events and upcoming albums to help with marketing and promotion. They also have a newsletter which tells the audience what the artist is doing. Polo Ground has a part of the website where they show artists tweets, promoting their albums etc. which gives them even more promotion.

85% of those aged 18-24 own a smart phone

30% of those aged 14-18 own a smart phone

With these stats it shows that quite a lot of our target audience own a smart phone so they will be able to see the social media posts promoting our new album.

music treatment

Synopsis

The video consists mainly of bright colours and many different visual effects throughout the video to entice the viewer and engage them in the video. He spends a lot of the video walking around a busy Tokyo with a girl walking around and kissing. They are giving the impression to the viewers that they are on a lot of drugs or that they are on some kind of drugs.

“Yambourghini High – A$AP Rocky” is a good example of the kind of music videos that we want our audiences to be interested in, they entice the viewers and show what the genre is about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt7gP_IW-1w

Outline of inspiration video

The very first shot is an out of focus close up of the artists face with a red glow.

The camera slowly moves out and starts to rotate, showing the artist lying down, from above. There is a lot of smoke in this shot which somewhat ‘blurs’ the picture. The camera continues to rotate out which reveals more of the area surrounding the artist, which seems to be a boredom, consisting of the things like a bed, magazines, clothes, and the red light which is causing the red hue of the shot.

The shot then rotates quickly and reveals a different surrounding in which the artist is walking through a dimly lit street, which also has a few bright lights.  Whilst walking the video speeds up then the artist comes to a car, which the camera then zooms in on bright yellow colour of the cars body paint. There then is a smooth transition from the bright light of the indicator to a fire in the back of a van and the camera does a 360o rotate of the skyline.

There is then a tracking shot of the artist but moving very slowly making the audience feel calm and relaxed but there is also the building lights that are flickering brightly overpowering the artist who appears like a dark outline.

The transition from the glass of water to it turning into an acid trip is a key part of this video. It shows the context of the video and what the video is about by a simple transition, it shows that the music video is trippy and confusing but looks aesthetically pleasing at the same time.  

Later in the video the two people are in a building and the normal objects that they touch become psychedelic adding to the effect that it is trippy and they are experiencing hallucinogenic drug related effects which is what the video is about. Even with these effects it makes the video a good example of how to use editing to create certain effects in a video.

The final shot is the character leaning on a balcony without any of the effects visible on the screen.

Outline for our music video

The first shot of our music video will be a spinning camera effect which will be rotating around us, this will give a psychedelic effect which is what we are aiming to do. We plan to film this for around 0.20seconds.

The next part we plan to film is where we subtly take LSD as this is what the video is all about aswell as the lyrics being related to whats on the screen. We want to make it a very similar video experience as the original video as it was highly praised for the effects.

46 seconds in , we plan on a scene where we are walking around but the background around us is all bright colours whereas we are normal coloured, this creates a contrast and highlights the psychedelics effect.

At around 1.12minute, we plan on filming a driving scene.

We then plan on using rave paint that glows in the dark and using a close up camera effect to contrast the darkness of the background then the brightness of the face paint.

At around 1.50m, we play on walking around a built up street area and adding bright effects surrounding us to stimulate the watcher that they are also on some type of high.

2 minutes and 30 seconds in, we are going to use a fish eye lens and film some bits using that to add a different dimension to our music video.

3.15minutes in, we will be filming it upside down to add a different effect to it then we will be filming a scene where we will be looking in a mirror to give the image of looking back at yourself.

4.00 minutes in, we will be filming a scene where we are just sitting down and talking with the music on top, it will be fading in and out.

4.30 minutes in, we will be filming Monets face zoomed in then pan it out to see a full view of the body then spin it out to end the music video.

Treatment

The style of filming and dialogue will reference A$AP Mob and Mura Masa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLuQ0MGLBXU

Mura Masa - What If I Go? (Official Video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt7gP_IW-1w

 A$AP Mob - Yamborghini High ft. Juicy J

The video will mainly be had held so that we can add to the effect of the video being trippy and dynamic. This hand held effect will be very effective in some specific shots e.g. a spiral 360o shot of one of the characters. It will also add to the effects that we will be adding ourselves as the hand held effect increasing the intensity of the video.

The colours that we will be using for the video is a wide range of bright colours for the effects and some dark and neutral colours on the characters to make the video more intense when the effects are added and also more intense on the eye. The colours will also add life to our video and add more impact for what the video is about without having to say it with words, the vibrant effects and colours speak for itself.

Characters

All of our characters will be dressed like street outfit, like the typical trend and street stereotype. Our look will be make more unique and added effect by adding visuals when editing our video.

Media Language That Represents Our Artist

research into a record label

Richard Dyers star theory

rapper moodboard

This is a moodboard with all relative rappers to Asap Rocky. All featured have a similar style of rapping and their music videos mostly feature similarities.
We have featured artists like Knaye west, Chris brown and Tupac. All artists that asap is known to believe as an influence to him.

Majority of the artists used are mainstream and tend to appeal to a wide audience for example, Kanye wests music but on the other hand, Chance the rapper has a more niche audience relating to a smaller range of people.

wordle

We made a wordle to describe representations of similar artists to our artist ASAP Rocky. we choose the word, drugs because Asap rockys music is highly influenced by drugs like lsd, he bases many of his songs on drugs aswell as naming them after them too. This is a relevant word due to these factors as even in the hip hop genre, it is highly influenced by drugs as that is the lifestyle of these rappers aswell as the industry.
Another word thats relevant is money as in the hiphop genre, money is used thoroughly in music videos as a way to validate the artist as more money is easily linked to more success.
Fashion Forward is also a good word for representations of artists in the industry as many artists, for example like Kanye west and Rihanna have all been involved in their own fashion campaigns aswell as artists like Asap Rocky who have been involved in campiagns for Gucci. This is relevant for representation as it also indicates how established an artist is.

wordle

We created a wordle using words to describe our artist, ASAP Rocky, creating a representation of our artist. These words are perfect descriptions of Asap Rocky , for example, he is known for his stylish and fashion forward dress sense as well as his stylish music videos as he adds alot of effects and techniques with creating a work of heart especially shown through-out videos like LSD and Yamboghini high.
Vibrant and electric also describe Asaps music videos as they tend to use psychedelic effects using bright colours and fading transitions,

music video treatment

Music video treatment

Today we have started to work on our music video treatment. This will include synopsis, outline, treatment, characters and visual references. This will consist of a few pages.

Focus Group Interview

We carried out a focus group interview today and asked a group of people questions such as - "What is your favourite genre of music?", "What do you like to see most in music videos?" and "Who is your favourite music artist?", the answers we received helped us to form the ideas we hope to eventually manifest into our music video. Overall, it was a very successful focus group interview. 

surveys

today, we went and created a survey on survey monkey. We went and collected research from students to get a wide range of responses.

w used his method to help obtain results so we can understand what peoples opinions on rap music are.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-SBTQQ6HX/

vox

piktochart hip hop and rap chart

initial research

Initial Research - Jobs on a music video set

Director - The person who is in control of everything such as scripts, storyboard, costumes, target audience and props. The director also directs an effective video that covers all aspects that has been planned in pre-production. (Our chosen director is Charlotte)

Assistant director - The assistant director assists the director, helping out with anything that needs doing. (Katie)

Producer -  Purchases everything and helps choose the correct brands. (Monet)

Executive producer -  Pays for the cost of the video (All of us)

Actors and Actresses -  Responsible for portraying the characters in the video. The actors and actresses will work closely with the director. (Katie and Monet)

Script writer - Writes all that s taken place in the video (Monet)

Script Supervisor - Makes sure the director follows the Script (Katie)

Cameraman - Shoots the video (Charlotte)

Initial research for music video

Initial research

The essential jobs on a music video 

LSD - music video theory

advice for year 12's

Advice i would give the year 12's starting media is to always set a goal with your projects in what you want to achieve in the period of time you are given but also allow yourself to use your creativity and flow with it when you can.

I also would say that managing your time when working is important since deadlines are strict and its difficult to catch up when youre behind.

Updating your blog most days is important as it means you appear to be keeping on top of things even ig youre not.

Always forward thinking and having a backup plan is key.

Evaluation Question 7

Looking back at our prelim task,what do you think you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back to our original preliminary task which we used continuity editing for in comparison to our full opening sequence, the progression we have made is huge. Our preliminary task lacked transitions whereas our completed opening sequence, had simple transitions which made minimal difference when previewing the film but without them, the film would lack the simple flow between the cuts making it seem more realistic. The transitions we used make a big difference as it allowed the film to look more professional and less amateur.

In our preliminary task, we lacked any effects on the scenes, we left them with no filters. This results in the task looking very basic and too simple. With our final product, we used two effects mainly throughout the scenes, to add to our horror genre. We used "cool tones" effect throughout our sequence to make the scenes look cold and dark which worked well with our genre aswell as what we were filming as we wanted to highlight the fact that although High School may be seen as positive experience as it allows you to find yourself and work towards the career you want but it can also be a very dark and cold place and we wanted to show that even if you are popular  student with loads of friends like Dani and Tiffany in our opening sequence that it can still be a scary place.

Throughout filming, we learned to plan when and where we would film certain scenes. To plan we used storyboards to show where and what we would film and we also used social networking to communicate with each other.

Overall we have learnt many things throughout filming our opening sequence including timing, planning and editing skills. As well as gaining experience and learning from our filming, we researched our audience and different techniques and horror conventions to use in filming. We then used what we have learnt to create ideas and make the best possible product that we could.    

finishing the filming

today we finally finished the filming sector of our project and we have just improved all our scenes that needed improvement. We finally got a risk assessment meaning we could use a real knife not a cake knife which helped make the film look more realistic as that was our aim. We aimed to make the film as real as possible because our target audience was teenagers like the main characters in our film. By setting it in a school environment, it also added to realistic side of it as makes it relatable to our audience.

starting to evaluate

In todays hour, we are focussing on getting a confirmation to film a scene with a knife whilst we are waiting we are going to start evaluating our movie.

filming and editing day

Today we did more filming to improve some of our previous footage as wanted to make sure it was perfect. We also need more editing.

FeedBack from our opening sequence

Feedback for the Opening Sequence

For our opening sequence we took to Facebook to ask for feedback on the questions that we asked positive or negative on our work and then will use that feedback to do some more editing on the sequence. We got quite a few bits of feedback which we will take into consideration when doing more work on the editing etc.

editing more scenes

Today in lesson, me, Elliott and katie edited more of our opening sequence.  The lesson before we lost all of our work so we had to re-edit all of it but we had a good idea of what scenes went where as we referred back to our original story board to help us.

We have managed to re edit as much as we can to the same quality but we are also thinking of re-filming some of our scenes to make sure we get them as perfect and well framed/lighted as possible.

filming day

In today's lesson, Team Decapitate filmed more for our horror opening sequence.

We filmed four scenes, scene one was Elliott "sharpening" his knives as he plays the creepy janitor,we filmed this in a small room & covered the light up with blue coloured tissue paper to add a creepy feel.

The second scene we filmed was a bucket full of water tinted red to imitate blood as the horror movie sequence is based around a janitor and janitors tend to have mop and buckets as they are cleaners.

The Third scene was Elliott killing Katie where he stabbed her.

The fourth scene was Elliott killing myself after me running away from him.

We had a really successful day of filming and we also managed to edit our sequence together.

Filming

Filming

using our storyboard, we went and filmed two scenes for our opening trailer. We went and filmed the outside of the school. We used the rolling tripod to make it look smooth asif the audience will be walking inside the school. This will create an affect which will make the audience believe they are part taking in the movie. It adds visual help to imagine what will happen. The next thing we filmed was me and kate running down the stairs, this adds dramatic effect as it leads the person watching the film to their own imagination to think who we are running from.

we then filmed elliott walking across the corridor not exposing his face to add mystery to the opening sequence.

We then also added the elemnt of video blogging and me and katre videod ourself in the way of a youtube video to add to the fact we are high schoolers but elliott was stood in the background which creates a scary effect.