Storyboard Animatic

Extra Cast:

These are some of the extra cast that will be used in our music video, this will almost certainly be edited a few times.
 Jake.
Kyle.
Alfie.
Kieren.
Ella.
Barney.

Finished Advert.

Digipak

This is the finished version of my digipak, I feel it went relatively well although I feel that the stencil effect picture of the band would have turned out better if I had taken a few more photo's using better lighting 

Pictures of the cast.

These are pictures of the people who will play as the band in our music video/digipak. These pictures have been taken from their facebook pages with their permission.

Josh: Guitar

Elliott: Vocals

Reuben: Drums

Holly: Bass

Digipack Preperation - Font ideas

These are two ideas for fonts that I could use for the Digipak, these look as if children have written them. I think that they could fit with the theme of the music video. Alternatively I may get a young sibling of one my friends to write the words " Gun Talk " on a piece of paper and scan it in. Underneath are the links to the two fonts.

"Kids First Print" by Manfred Klein.
http://www.dafont.com/kids-first-print-fo.font?text=Gun+Talk

" Hand Writing" by Keegan M.
http://www.dafont.com/hand-writing.font?text=G+u+n++T+a+l+k

This is the final design for the Digipak, the drawing isn't very good but you can get the general idea from this.
Some of the panels are likely to move around or change, depending on the availability of the cast and the location. I may change this to a plain, or possibly dingy looking background as this is usually found in this genre of music.

Digipak and music video idea.

The idea for the music video came from the theme of the song, the song is written about the wasted youth in English cities. The song talks about how they are being childish, wasting their lives and ruining communities. Our idea for the video plays on this theme. We will be taking the stereotypes of English gang culture and making them seem childlike, this relates to the message conveyed by the song. For example, we will replace guns with water guns, or "Nerf" guns and drugs with sweets. We will be bringing in key conventions of action and gang genres to create this video.

Digipack Preparation - Facebook Group.

I have created a Facebook group with everyone we need for the music video and digipak. I will use this to contact people when I need to, I could also use this for audience feedback by uploading photo's.

Advert analysis - Collie Buddz

This is an advert for a Collie Buddz gig, but it will have a large number of the same conventions as an advert for an album. First of all the artists name is in big, bold white writing against a black background. This brings attention to the stars name, giving extra publicity and making it easier to notice. The bright red, green and yellow colours are both eye catching, and representative of rastafarian culture. These give the audience the idea that he is a reggae artist straight away. The large image of Collie Buddz in the center of the poster really reinforces his star image as he is the center of attention, and the focus of the advert. The advert is relatively entropic, with it's bright colours, black and white photographs, striped text and strange shapes in the background. These are all things designed to catch the audiences eye, and to create publicity. In general, adverts for reggae artists are usually relatively entropic yet still uncomplicated enough to be understandable and eyecatching.

Digipack Analysis.

The first digipack that I will be studying is for Nirvana's " Incesticide ", on the whole this digipack is very quite entropic. It's not so entropic that you have no idea what's going on, but not so redundant that it becomes boring and doesn't catch your eye. The font used to spell the word "nirvana" looks as if it has been cut from something and pasted onto the cover, this adds a sense of authenticity and connotes a sense of realism. The hand drawn look of the artwork on the front furthers the sense of authenticity. The dingey, beige background adds a dirty, grimey feel, reflecting the bands ethos and music. 

The withering flowers on the cover could represent something that was once beautiful and prospering, dying and becoming ugly. This could represent the singers mental state at the time. The back cover strongly contrasts the front, becoming a lot more entropic and colourful.

This album art is quite entropic, the bright colours and rubber duck enforce this. It's not so entropic that you have no idea what's going on, but at the same time it isn't so redundant that it becomes boring. The bright colours and entropic imagery connote senses of happiness, highly contrasting with the front cover which gives a much darker feeling. The font on the right side is similar to the font on the front side of the digipak, this creates another link between the two, whilst still keeping the contrast. 

Redundancy and Entropy.

Redundancy -

If something is redundant, it means that something is predictable. An example of something that is entropic would be this Davidoff Cool Water advert. It is uncreative and uses residual ideologies, male and female gaze.




Entropic -
Something that is entropic uses unexpected and new ideas. An example of this would be this tesco mobile advert.

Collie Buddz - Come Around

One of the largest aspects of this movie is the star image, the name " Collie Buddz" features a few times in the video, mainly near the beginning, reminding the audience of his name. The shot types used reinforce the sense of importance within him. The mise en scene and costume are large factors in the star image, the star is dressed very differently to the rest of the people in the music video, setting him apart from them. This highly contrasts the star image in the other music video that I analysed.
The mise en scene of the car, with a driver reinforces the fact that the star is the centre of attention and the most important person in the video. This is reinforced using a very large number of close ups, and Collie Buddz having a very large amount of screen time.

In a more niche video such as Richie spice, ( the other video I analysed ) the star would be portrayed in a very different manner, as the emphasis is usually placed on the feel and message of the song and not the actual star themselves. Women are often sexualised in this music video, further enforcing the star image. Collie Buddz is shown to be attractive towards the women, once more maximising his star image.

The narrative of the video follows an " average " day in Collie's life, he is driven around a town by his driver and he stops off in some run down looking neighbourhoods, he is then shown to be friends with these people. After this he plays a show infront of a large crowd of fans. These are the common conventions of one side of the reggae genre.

Richie Spice - Youths Dem Cold

The first thing I notice about this video is an intimidating looking group of youths, this reflects the title and subject of the video. A dark, moody filter is used to further connote the message of the video, which is about youths getting involved in crime. Poverty is also another big theme in this video, as shown by the mise en scene and location of the video.

A typical shot in this video varies between about 1-4 seconds, this is considerably longer than the majority of music videos, this allows the audience to better read the emotions of the characters in the video. A large amount of low angle shots make the youths seem intimidating, this is further reinforced by the mise en scene of guns and knifes, and the costumes worn by the youths.

This video doesn't promote star image in the same way that a mainstream music video would, as this is not as important for reggae artists. This can be seen as Richie Spice gets a similar amount of screen time than the other characters. The artist is also seen wearing normal looking clothing, and not trying to display his wealth, which is rare in modern music videos. This further reinforces the message of the song. He is also shown with other "normal" people, showing that he feels his wealth does not separate himself from them. 

We have made this moodboard in order to combine the ideas of stereotypical reggae with our ideas gained from synaesthesia. Explanations for each picture are as follows:

• "This is England" cast - The film "This is England" is a well known film that depicts the lives of teens from the 1980s. This has been a big inspiration of an idea what to include in our video; much of this is from the scene in the film which includes the song "Louie Louie" by Toots and the Maytals.
• Hooded youth - This shows the stereotypical outfit for modern day teenagers. As we are intending to base our video on the lives of teenagers, this is influential on the costume design.
• Jamaican flag - As reggae originated from Jamaica, the Jamaican flag is commonly known amongst many people as one of the stereotypical symbols for reggae.
• Bob Marley - Bob Marley is an iconic figure in the reggae genre. He is probably the most well-known and respected artist from the whole genre. He is also related directly to the reggae genre to most people.
• Graffiti - Graffiti is used commonly amongst teens that live in towns and cities. It is used as a means of expression in many lives of teenagers. This is a possible idea for some sections of the video we are creating.
• Cigarette smoker - Many disobedient teens are stereotyped to smoke cigarettes, so most people would expect to see them regularly smoking. This is another possible idea for our video.
• Police - The police are commonly associated as the "enemy" of many youths. This is influential on our video as it shows our main idea, which is a group of teens committing vandalism amongst a town or city. This means they will be directly disobeying the law.
• Sunny day - Sun is usually associated with reggae from a process of synaesthesia and many examples of reggae music videos. This is because many reggae videos are set in Jamaica, which is an extremely sunny country. Sun can also be used as a means of pathetic fallacy in our video, because the song sounds upbeat and happy. Sun is usually related with happiness or goodness. This is a possible aspect of the setting in the video, but will not necessarily be available during the time we are filming in January.
• Group of biking teens - We included this image because it shows a rough idea of an aspect we are including in our video. Teens usually hang around in groups and many of them use BMX bikes as a means of transport and as a means of also looking cool. This gives inspiration for a BMX as a possible prop we will use in our video.
• Dreadlocks - Dreadlocks are just a stereotypical hairstyle that many people instantly associate with Rastafarianism. Rastafarianism is usually related to reggae because they both tend to be from Jamaican background. We will take this into account when preparing the cast list.

Inspiration! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ermWVtpriJQ
I just found this video, this gives me a few ideas to do with costumes and mise en scene.

Song Choice.

The song that we have chosen to create a music video for, if possible, is called Gun Talk by Skindred.
The genre of our music video is unlike most others. "Skindred's musical style mixes alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock and reggae. The band also integrate elements of dancehall, hardcore, ska, hip hop, drum and bass, dubstep and various other influences into their music."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skindred

Production

Technology-
During the course of the project I learnt about the programs used in editing, and tools used for filming.
I had the opportunity to use the new HD cameras. They were similar to the old ones, so it didn't take too much getting used to. I further increased my skills in editing using Adobe Premier Pro, at the beginning of the year I only had a very basic knowledge of the program, but I feel that I have largely increased my skill level over the past few days. I still need to gain a larger understanding of the program, as I do not yet know how to add special effects and I'm still not completely sure about all of its functions.

Production-
On the whole the filming went relatively well although we missed out a shot due to not reading the shot list/story board properly, so next time I will have to make sure that I double check the shot list before I return the camera. Everybody brought their props and costumes in, and they all looked perfect for the video. The editing in my video didn't turn out too badly. It was very difficult to totally synchronise the audio with the video, especially as the mp3 file was slightly different to the youtube video that we had been working around. But I feel it went well considering the small amount that I have actually used the program. Towards the end of the project I was feeling rushed, which affected the quality towards the end. But all in all I think it went relatively well.

Video Evaluation

Research and Planning-
The piece of research that I found most useful was the shot list. I felt that this was the thing that I referred to during the filming and editing process. If I were to repeat this though, I would make sure that the shot list was as accurate as possible, down to the second, as it would greatly help the editing process.
Another thing I found useful was the storyboard, this allowed us to see exactly what kind of shot should be used and when, in much the same way as the shot list did, but it gave us a visual idea of how to film the shot. If I were to redo the storyboard I would use a photo one, I feel that it takes less time and comes out with a better product at the end. Other pieces of planning that I will be using this year would be:
Prop lists
Cast lists
Photo story board
Genre research
and a shooting script.

Introduction

For my task in A2 Media Studies I will be creating my own music video, we are allowed to use any song that we want, as long as it does not already have a music video. To practice we will be remaking the video to What I Go To School for, by Busted, we will have to copy every aspect of the video to make it as close to the real thing as possible.