Planning:Outline of narrative

 

 

 

 

 

 

This song is about SZA the artist as she talks about how she feels about life and how she thinks most teenagers do. She talks about not trusting pretty girls or anyone because they can make you hate yourself. These are typical situations that teenagers face in life such a social groups or bullying. In the music video she commits suicide creating a dark and sensitive vibe, which has people thinking instead of enjoying it.

For my groups music video we have decided to stay with the message of the song of suicide because it makes sense for the message to match the lyrics. we have chosen to use narrative, performance and concept for our video. The narrative consists of 2 situations that young adults may face in tough times. We want to use a violent couple and a girl who gets bullied for being different. For performance we wanted to show the star all alone in a dark room with a spot light on her as she lip syncs the words. And for concept we wanted to show random things that we thought created purity such as leafs, trees, hair blowing, birds and a river.

Theories applied in my music video

Goodwin
I will include editing that will match the pace of the song with visuals will match the lyrics. Technical elements will be used to help the production of my video as well as star image. Intersexual reference's will not be used and male gaze will not be used as well.

Dyer:
Star theory will be applied, we will have a star that the music video will focus on. we will do this by using close up shots on the star as she lip syncs and acts.

Mulvey:
Male gaze will not be used because it is not appropriate for our narrative. Also we do not want our female characters to be represented as sexual objects and instead want them to be represented as vulnerable girls.

Hebdige:
We are not going to follow Hebdige's idea as we are aiming for a niche audience rather than subcultures. We have a mainstream idea however the themes are much darker and the song presents that.

Adorno:
We are not going to follow his ideas because we are not trying to manipulate our audience and turn them into masses with our music video.


Conclusion
My narrative has a mainstream idea however it follows a diverse format because of the song. While planning for my music video knowing what theory i'm going to use has helped me know what would be appropriate for our music video and what wouldn't be suitable.

Planning: Analysing similar videos

Content/Structure

Jhene Aiko- The pressure

Structure:
This music video has the same structure that my group decided to have. Throughout the video it shows different narratives as well as the stars image. This is done through a pan shot and fade to blacks whereas we are going to use straight cuts.
As the song goes on we see the problems and situations the characters go through in each narrative . By the end of the video the narratives all end in a negative way, this is how we want our video to play out.

Narrative:
In this music video there are similar themes and narratives such as relationship problems and feeling alone. In the end all the characters are left alone which is similar to us however our characters take their own lives.

Performance:
The star is sitting in a dark room with a spot light over her making her stand out. This is similar to how we want our star to perform as we want her sitting on the floor in the dark surrounded by nothing.

Artist

Rihanna-Stay

body language/facial expressions
Her emotions are shown by a lot of close up shots on her eyes as she cries and lips when she's lip syncing. You can see from her facial expressions she looks emotionally drained and zooned out, this is the type of feeling we want our artist to feel when acting in the video.

performance
 As she lip syncs she does actions such as hugging herself in a ball, wiping her tears, playing with her hair or looking away from the camera. These are the performance qualities that my group want our main star to have because it shows deep emotion and the audience can connect.

make up/costume
The make-up is very nude/neutral in this video which shows how stripped back she is. She is more likely to connect with the audience because she seems more honest and real. Rihanna in this video is not wearing clothes however its not for male gaze purposes as it makes her look infact vulnerable and innocent.

Visual style of video

Five finger death punch-coming down

The narrative of this music video is about two teenagers going through bullying which eventually leads them down a route of suicide. it shows us all the problems they face and that they can be saved if one person cared.

Editing
The editing of this video is fasted pace with a lot of jump cuts to represent the hectic narrative. Our group thought that the use of jump cuts would also be used in our music video. This music video helped us see what would work for us and what might not.

Characters
The characters in this video really acted out the narrative as if it was their life's. One thing I realised
when watching this video is that I connected more with the female character than the male because of her innocents. We have decided to make all our characters female so that the story will have a better impact.


Lighting and Colour
The lighting was mostly natural lighting however there were scenes where there was low-key
lighting. We have chosen to go with the low-key lighting because we want to create a sad feel for the audience. Colours such as black and red where used to represent dark and deep moments, black will also be used in our music video for clothing.

There's a lot of inspiration that we gathered from this music video that we know will help us because it involves the same themes and narratives.

Conclusion
whilst researching other music videos I found that me and my groups ideas became clear and by the end of this research we now know exactly what we want to achieve. This research helped us all come to a final agreement on certain things such as costume and location.

Planning: Location

My first location: The house

We decided to use a house as one of our locations because it was suitable for our narrative with our characters. The house is where the couple will be when they argue, this is relevant to the lyrics "and I cant recall the last time I took love from anyone". This is because a house is where people should feel loved but the couple contradict that. Another reason we choose a house is because we thought it was relevant to our genre of soul which is an intimate genre. Finally we tried to relate our location to our target audience and we said that young people in their late teens might have just moved in with a partner and may relate.

Advantages:

• easy to find
• easy to use in our narrative
• different locations in a house

Disadvantages:

• space
• lighting
• might disturb neighbours

My second location: Train station

relevant to lyrics:
because it shows the young girl wants to get away from life and the fact that she is alone at the station reflects her feelings of isolation. "are you hating yourself do you really hate me"

relevant to genre:
Hip Hop looks at the lows in society and the public, the train station is a public area and it is really gritty with graffiti and stones.

relevant to target audience:
If a teenager feels to run away the first thought of escape is a train

Advantages:

• easy to get to
• can film in relevant times to us
• large spaces

disadvantages:

• other travellers: try film off peak times and try to not use too much space
• risk of being near the edge: edit to make it seem she is not that close to the edge
• looking like a potential suicide : talk to worker with relevant paperwork

My third location: Black room

relevant to lyrics:
"I cant recall the last time I took advice from anyone" this is relevant because she is alone in a room showing that she would rather be by herself.

relevant to genre:
Hip Hop/Soul is all about people and their deep thoughts and feelings. This is why this location is relevant because it shows signs of reflection and thought for the soul.

relevant to target audience:
It suits the impression of wanting to curl up and hide. Young teens are commonly known for being bullied so they could mostly relate to this location.

Advantages:

• no disruptions
• easy to direct actors
• can film at anytime
• not much needed to create the shot

Disadvantages:

• lighting in the room
• bad quality of film

My fourth location: The street

relevant to lyrics:
are you hating yourself? do you really hate me?". We show the girl on the street with people laughing at her as she runs away wanting to be alone.

relevant to genre:
Urban streets-relevant to Hip Hop genre

relevant to target audience:
The streets are identifiable and relatable for young people who feel to run away in times of stress.

Advantages:

• lots of options/lots of locations in the street
• realism
• can film locally
• large spaces

Disadvantages:

• traffic
• people may get in the shot
• hazards

Conclusion:
Overall planning locations for my music video has been very helpful for helping my group understand what to expect from our locations and how our narrative will go. We can now start looking for the correct and suitable locations that will help with our narrative.

Planning: Final idea

Artist: Sza ft. Kendrick Lamar
Song Title: Babylon
Genre: Hip Hop/ Soul

I have chosen the artist SZA because she is such a different artist her song Babylon with her group member Kendrick Lamar has a great meaning of love, trust and betrayal as to why our group thought we could create a good narrative to this song. This song falls under the Hip Hop/Soul genre because its a nice balance of rap and soulful singing which makes it appeal to different audiences. Also the song is so relatable for teenagers so our target audience would be easy to choose.

Video content:
We have decided to create a narrative based around 3 scenarios
Scenario 1: A couple that are going through relationship problems and issues resolve their problems by using violence and aggression. They take their life's by overdosing on pills/drugs.

Scenario 2: A girl that is a young carer of her younger siblings while taking her A level exams is under so much stress she decides to take her life by drowning herself in a river.

Scenario 3: A young girl is in her prom dress depressed walking around crying. We see a group of people bully and make fun of her. She tries to take her life by jumping in front of a moving train

Video structure:
my video structure will consist of narrative and performance because we have the artists singing and rapping with the story behind it.

Star image:
Our star image will be based on the prom girl because she is a perfect representation of a teenager so for her to be the artist she will connect more with our target audience. We wont use Mulvey's male gaze theory because I don't think it will help present the narrative well and the characters are young.


Our music video influences are:

Destiny's child-Emotions

 

This music video was a great inspiration to our final idea. This is because it was based on three different stories with three different characters but they all still feel the same emotion. We also wanted to show the different stories and situations that young female teenagers face in life.



Britney Spears-Every time

 

This video uses most techniques my group wish to use in our video. This includes slow motion editing and following the life of the star to capture their image. 

My final choices was decided from the positive and negative feedback from my questionnaire. I found that most teens want a video they could relate to and understand.

We realised that the song we choose was so different we had to keep it within the mainstream area by involving dancing. With the dancing I believe that my video will appeal to the mainstream audience very well.

This music video will be conventional to the hip hop/ soul genre because it represents hard struggle and pain of young teens. Most hip hop artists rap about love, partying and drugs and those themes will be incorporated.

how does the music video represent your artist?

This music video represents my artist because she is the main character in the middle of the screen showing her as the main story.

Conclusion:
In conclusion I believe that with the right conventions and themes my music video will be a great success. Because it will connect with the audience more and allow them to feel the emotion of the characters.

Planning: Copyright letter

 

Oasis Academy Hadley 

                                                                                                                                                 South St, Enfield 

En3 4PX

TEL: 0208 804 6946

                                                                               

 

Friday 7^th November, 2014

RE: Single SZA ft. Kendrick Lamar- Babylon

Dear Top Dog Entertainment (TDE), Interscope Records

We are ‘Notorious Productions’ A production group created by 3 AS media students in sixth form from Oasis Academy Hadley. We are writing to request your permission to use a song by two artist signed to your record label. The track we wish to use is Babylon by SZA featuring Kendrick Lamar.

With your permission we would like to use this song and create a music video for our A2 Media project which contributes 50% to our coursework final grade. Our task involves filming and editing footage to match the meaningful words of the song targeting a similar audience that you produced the song for.

With this music video a Digipack album and magazine advert will also be created to insure that our coursework is complete with the full package.

 If we received your permission, this track would only be used for educational purposes and for no other commercial purpose and will also be used for the OCR exam board moderator. The music video however may be shown on some social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and twitter in order for us to receive feedback to help us evaluate our production process. 

The artist and your company would of course be credited and acknowledged on our blog page showing our appreciation of you letting us use the song. A copyright notice with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send the full details within this notice.

Thank you very much for reading this letter, we look forward to hearing from you.  

Yours sincerely

From ‘Notorious Production’

 Lashane Williams

 Chardelle Willer

Jordan Cleveland

Planning:My audience

When creating a music video knowing about audiences is crucial because it will help you produce content suitable for your target audience. The only way you can do that is by categorising different groups of audiences, knowing their expectations and understand what they like.

Age:  16 - 25- This age group is still young but as a teen you are growing up and start looking for real hard-core music that you can relate to. Hip hop soul is based at young teenagers living life or going through a lot therefore this age is relevant for planning my video.

Gender: Unisex but mainly girls- All genders can listen to hip hop soul however for my groups video it is mainly based at young teenage girls because of our artists image.

Race: All races but however predominantly the black race- As time goes on more and more races start to listen to hip hop soul but hip hop was originated by the black race and that's why so many black teens can identify with the genre.

Audience categories: my audience will suit category E because hip hop soul talks raps or sings about the lowest moments in life and this category out of all the others have probably lived those moments.

Income: A little or no income- Most of my audience will be students so they may not even have jobs and the late 20s may also be students or just starting a low paid job. If I choose an audience that was really well paid they couldn't relate to hip hop because most songs are about the artists life and how little they had at a young age.

Hobbies and interests: My audience are mainly teenagers so they would have wild and outrageous hobbies like American football, skateboarding, partying, taking drugs, dancing, listening to music and sex

Audience reaction: I would want my audience to have : Engagement, Expectations, Foreknowledge, Identification and placement.

Engagement: As an active audience I want them to interact with my music video and have a deep understanding as to what the narrative is and what the song is trying to imply.   

Expectations: I want my audience to appreciate my artist and the only way they will is if my artist lives up to the star image required. My star has to have the correct image such as beauty, confidence and style so that the audience can idolise her/him or relate in some way.  

Foreknowledge: I want my audience to develop a great understanding of who my star is and what her songs and videos are usually about. 

Identification: This is important because when the audience relates to the artist they can also connect with the lyrics and the music video.

Placement: To make my audience feel that this music video was made specially for them I will use actors that are at the same age so that they feel that they could be that character. I will do this by allowing my character to have the same clothing a typical teenager would wear.


Conclusion:
In conclusion I want my audience to have a great reaction to my music video because the only way I can know it was a success is if I know I have reached my audiences expectations and needs. I have identified this group as my target audience because I know with what I want to involve in my video this audience will identify more. Also the whole theme of the hip hop soul song is about teenage suicide so the music video has to be created to suit teenagers. 

Planning: Graphs



 

These are all the graphs that represent the data from my questionnaire about hip hop music and music videos. They will help me plan and make conscious decisions for my hip hop music video.  

 

 

I asked in my questionnaire what lighting would you like to see in a music video and majority of people said natural lighting. least people said high key and low key was average. I thought this question was relevant because I wanted to know what mood most people liked to be in when watching a hip hop music video.

 

 I wanted to know if hip hop fans liked the typical club setting or if I should create a video that was diverse and different.

 

 

Structure Is very important in order for your music video to go in the right direction. Performance based was what most participants wanted to see so I will consider that when producing and directing my video.

 

 

 

This question was asked to find what themes I should involve in my video. and most people said that girls was their favourite theme.

 

 

Planning:Questionaire

 

I created a questionnaire so that I could get information from hip hop fans and gather their opinions and thoughts of the genre. This was done confidentially therefore all participants are anonymous although all participants are hip hop fans.