Statement of intent

 Music video

The dance music video has to be constructed with a purpose of entertaining 16-25 year olds in the class of AB (middle-to-upper class) and must demonstrate two different stereotypes. To portray this vividly, I have chosen ‘Creeping’ by Lil Skies featuring Rich the Kid, as the song carries conventions relevant to the ‘dance’ genre and allows me to be creative in combining traditional rap with new generation trap hip-hop. The directory and performance will be lead by myself with help by a few friends to film and perform. Having such performers is befitting to promote the track to an audience of the same age range. I want to view the main artist as a comical, money-loving rapper who desires success and with typical conventions of characters in the rap scene, particularly in the new era of hip-hop, they are seen as flashy and eccentric. The music video will also tackle issues on homelessness in a light-hearted way to meet the criteria of the NEA brief: to represent to different stereotypes, and I want to avoid the typical portrayals of homelessness being in a melancholic manner. The entire video will be upbeat and energetic; having a scene where the mood suddenly becomes serious takes away the main core of the video, to be entertaining. The mise-en-scene will reflect hip hop as ‘street’, by using stereotypical dark background, with the camera only focused on the artist and his outfit choices being dominantly streetwear, however the artists will flaunt his wealth and this in essence shows the artist his position in society as successful (reflects the socio-economic group of class AB as that group is recognised as wealthy). This will then cut from a dark, ”undisclosed” location to a more bright-lit setting (using Wollaton Hall) and this will display the rise to fame and riches from the unknown. The setting also feeds into different character portrayals as the main artist will influence other characters around him, like the homeless man, in a facetious way.

Website

I will retain the original artist’s name, ‘Lil Skies’, and create a website that expands this artist’s accolades and personality, to demonstrate the rapper as a highly successful music artist. I will follow the typical conventions of rappers: being overconfident, money-hungry and ambitious. My website will convey this through the heavy use of social media, promotion of new music and tours and images. The site will feature a welcome page that users click on and this will take them into the actual website, providing me a seperate link but also promotes the artist’s new single with the image of the album cover at front. Smaller external links such as listening to the song will take users directly on to YouTube, Spotify and Apple music. Furthermore, the website has to portray the artist and the music video as a joint collective. This gives me the opportunity to take my own photos and create album covers using Photoshop. This will ultimately showcase the use of synergy across my media products as I will hopefully be able to link my website and music video concurrently, thus creating this overall media package for my artist: music video and website.

Final Brief summary

Ensuring that I establish a clear link between the music video and the website is necessary as part of the synergy to create an overall product. Creating the website with a dark yet uplifting finish and using images of my own, I believe that my end product will meet the demands of the demographic, whilst obtaining that synergetic link across my NEA. The layout of the website will mimic the music video’s desired dark locations, ensuring that the theme will maintain consistent and recognisable of the artist. The website promotes the artist’s new music and socials, with the music video further promoting the artist himself and gives fans a look into his personality. To have the website stimulate the artist’s career forward is something I want to achieve and the music video will further boost this and align with the contents of the website.

Music Video - Final Draft

Finished Website

https://jahee1999.wixsite.com/media

Screenshots of the website include the welcome page featuring the front cover for the single, the main page consisting of the new releases, new music, tour dates and the music video in full. There is also an extra page labelled 'About' which speaks on the artist for people who want to find out more about him.

Using Effects in Premire Pro

For my video, I want to make it appealing and eye catching on the visuals and so I needed to research on different types of transitions and effects that are most effective for music videos. Youtube has allowed me to research deeper into different effects and transitions. One video that I looked into is this one:
and here I learned to use and replicate edits such as ghosting (creating a double image on a singular object) and the screenshot flash. I tried practising these on my video to create a similar style and I may have used one of these effects multiple times as it demonstrates more on the creative side of my video for viewers. This video helped me break down how to use some of these effects step by step and has allowed me go further in creating my music video. Another video I used to help me learn on effects and transitions is this one:
 and here I learned different transitions that I can apply on my own video. One transition called a 'scale in transform', where the camera moves in then out for a short second, took quite a while for me to understand as I needed to be sure every step was correct. Due to the amount of key frames needed for this shot, this transition was by far one of the most challenging, however I got to grips with it and is in my video.

Using special effects and makeshift transitions will allow my music video to be more creative and professional at the same time and will fundamentally make my video stand out and be dazzling to keep viewers entertained.

Update on Editing/Re-filming

Currently I am two thirds into editing my video and so far there are no problems with using the software. I've input my song by converting it into an mp3 and also have organised my clips into different folders and sections. For example, one folder is labelled as 'Chorus first half' and another may be called 'Verse 3'. This is done to organise my clips accordingly so that I know where my clips are for me to drop them into the editing area and it saves me time on looking for scattered clips.

During the editing there were some shots that I needed to either change or replace as they didn't work or were filmed badly and so I had to do some re-filming. Because this was unexpected, I had to make time over the weekend and come with a friend to re shoot some shots, days and nights. However, these shoots didn't take as long as the original schedule of filming and only took us 2 hours maximum. Luckily for me, my friend was readily available on weekends to meet so there was no problem in re shooting shots.

After doing this, I've made changes to the problematic clips and the video is looking smoother. Once I have edited the entire music video, I will go on to adding special effects and transitions to give my film a smoother flow, whilst maintaining the upbeat vibe.

Learning to Edit

During the editing of my music video, I will be using the Adobe Premiere Pro 2017 software. This software allows me to freely edit clips easily, providing me tools such as a razor and snipping tool to cut down my clips and concise them to look like a professional, fast-paced music video. The application also provides many effects which can be applied directly on to clips to create different effects and add variety to the video.

To teach myself with how to use this software, I used youtube as a means to get better and utilise all the tools on Premiere Pro. I began with this video

 to teach me the absolute basics of how to use each option on the computer app. This included dropping clips in, cutting clip lengths and adding sound, in my case the soundtrack of my chosen song.

Teaching myself on using Adobe Premiere Pro 2017 was crucial for me to develop in this coursework as it taught me new skills within media that I may come across to use in other projects but it also taught me independence with learning and the responsibility I have of ensuring I complete this coursework with the most effort.

Practice Shots

This is a small sample of what my friends and I got upto during the filming days. Here, you can see that we were trying out a couple of diffrent shots, including a pan and a still. We tried this on many occasions to see how the footage would look and if the samples were music video-esc. What I thought about after filming with my friends is that we were all super engaging and interested in what my production is going to look like and this is important as evryone involved has to be motivated to ensure the video is interesting for at least ourselves, to enjoy.

Here, the aim of the shot was to make it a slow motion (through editing ofcourse) but we were debating on whether we should perform slower for the camera, faster for the camera or film normal and just change the settings to slow motion. After a few takes, we decided to keepo it at normal speed because the editing software that will be used, Premire Pro, allows reducing the speed of a clip whilst maintaining it's optical flow.

This short snippet was used as an idea to gage the different shots we wanted. The extreme long shot hasn't been used throughout the video so I thought it would be better to get a couple shots and give my music video some variety.

After working with a camera so frequently over this past month, I have learned to get to grips with the settings on the camera (the ISO, the white balance) as well as using a tripod to track and pan shots as well as maintaining the focus and composure to keeping the camera still when a still shot is needed. This whole production phase has been really enjoyable for me and look forward to the editing stage.