Goodwins Points

Possible additional shots to our film

We re currently discussing as  group whether to add various shots of random people not associated with the film, dealing microphones. this adds to the subject of our music video, but also adds a bit of flare and adds to the idea that we are trying to pursue; that the world is mainly just themselves with their microphones and the lyrics from the song suggests

Album covers

We are researching past album covers from the next men to use as inspiration for ours. So far we have only found one proper album cover, deducig that they have only realeased one album/mixtape.
They are quite  complex hip-hop partnership using complex and educated lyrics throughout their raps. Their album cover is quite the same, taking a picture of themselves or their colleagues in a recording studio, merging them together and then obscuring the view using colour editing. This is similar to their lyrics as they are taking an ordinary subject/ photograph and giving it a stylish appearance/sound. This is the album cover we have found from the next men:

When making our album cover for the project, we will look to follow similar conventions discussed above. Although we aim to make it individual so not copy the original.

final cut express effects inspirations

We were inspired to produce our music video in black and white, as this would contribute to the genre and mood of the old school theme hip-hop track. We researched on you-tube how to get the most of this effect and how to make it look neat and professional, in order to maximize the potential of this special effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-PNThbF9yg

Editing Roles

After capturing our video, we have decided upon editing roles that we will follow, although we will not stick just to these roles, they will be roles we will stick roughly too.
We have decided to make Martin and Dan our main editing guru's. Tyler and Harry will be researching other videos and products relating to our video to inform Martin and Dan of potential editing techniques or shots that we can incorporate.
As a group we will look to blog together concerning lessons plans and discussions we have held

Class Feedback

We received various feedback from the class regarding our rough cut video. We have summarized this info into a block of positive and negative so we have a clear indication of what to keep, delete and improve from our video.
This is the feedback from the class we received.

We have broken this feedback down into the following;

Positive:

- Good editing, switches and transitions between different clips
- Good idea of using mics instead of drugs to show imagination
- Costumes represent the lyrics appropriately, good use of mise en scene
- Two main characters is a good idea instead of the conventional one main character.
- Props link to lyrics


Negative: 

- Shot cuts need to be quicker
-Variety of shots aren't used enough EG close up's or extreme close up's
- Include some lip syncing shots
- Improve story narrative
-Increase the speed of shots and how they are cut and edited

We will take this feedback and use it to improve our video during editing

Rough Cut

Photos of our costumes and props

Here are the photos of the costumes we used throughout the film.

This is a photo of the main prop we use in the video, being a microhone

Product Placement

Throughout our video we have used a lot of product placement. We decided to do this as we were trying to keep our video strongly associated to hip-hop.

We used a lot of nike, and adidas as  these are the most relevant style brands worn throughout the hip hop scene.
Harry was dressed in a nike tracksuit, whilst Tyler wore nike trainers. We placed an adidas shoebox in one of the shots to further suggest this product placement.

We believe this was a successful idea as the video now coincides with typical hip hop conventions

The Nextmen Email

Recently we as a group emailed the band who created the music to our video. The email consisted of a few copyright issues, also us asking the band if they had any suggested input.
The email we sent consisted of the following:

The Nextmen!
We are a group of students from Long Road Sixth form, Cambridgeshire
currently studying A level media studies.
Our current project is to pick a track, and create from scratch a music
video for this song. We decided to choose your tune 'My way'. We understand
hugely copyright concerns, but we want to clarify the video is purely for
college views, and will not be released, sold or used in any other intended
way.
Whilst we have a plan for the video, we wanted to ask if you or any of your
team had any input or ideas that we could possibly include within our video.
Any input would be hugely appreciated and gladly included.
If you would like to see our final video or hear our plan, please feel free
to email and we would be more than happy to have a concussion about it.
Kind Regards,
 Tyler, Martin, Harry, Dan

We sent this email not expecting a reply, but an hour or so later we received this reply:

Hello.


Yes this should be fine. We'll leave the creative input up to you guys though if that's alright :)


You could tell us the plan if you like, or just keep it as a surprise.




Thanks




Dom & Brad

lyrics and ideas

"In my zone, thoughts running through my zone,
on my own, real far away from home,
but let it be known, not all alone,
just me myself and my microphone"

We have decided to try to link our video more with the lyrics of the chorus which are clearly revolved around microphones. We had a vague idea as a group how to include microphones into the video and concluded that we would use irony throughout our video to feature microphones. For other ideas we tried to inspire ourselves with suggestions from other artists' music videos.

This rizzle kicks video features the same sort of irony as at 1.28, discretely in the background a drug deal styled transaction between the dealer selling a trumpet and the buyer.

This has influenced and inspired our ideas for our music video, where instead of the mugger wanting to buy drugs/stolen goods we have edited it so he now wants to buy a microphone.

There will be various points throughout the video where microphones will casually, but not blatantly be dropped in, for example at the beginning there will be a picture of a microphone on the laptop screen.

And as in the Rizzle Kicks video, When the transaction happens at the cashpoint, there will be someone selling a microphone near by in the background, in a sketchy manor.

We believe that this will add a bit of a twist and keep the audience engaged as it does not follow the conventional story line of a hip-hop video, however the mood and genre of the video are kept similar and match with the beat and lyrics of the song in order to not lose/confuse the viewers.

Moodboard

Copyright

Definition of Copyright

A copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to the creator of an original work or their assigned for a limited period of time upon disclosure of the work. This includes the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.
We have all discussed these issues, and agreed not o directly copy any scenes or shots that our inspiration Johnathon Glazer or any other form of video may possess. Although we are using different editing shots and techniques as inspiration, we understand we cannot directly take the idea and copy it into out music video

Opinions, things to include and further planning

Over the past few meetings we as a 'production team' have had, we have further planned, hinted to change and concluded what our filming will typically be.

Although we all decided to that Johnathon Glazer was our inspiration and we wasnt going to include any lip syncing, there has been a few discussions concerning changing this. Although we wanted to keep our video mainly based around conventions J Glazer uses, we have discussed maybe adding an extra person into the group to lip sync over the chorus of our song. This person would only be included during the chorus to keep the video consistent and un-confusing. We are still debating whether to do this or not, and on the day of filming we are going to make a final decision whether to use this idea or not, although we will film it so if we do decide to, we can use the footage.

As well as this, there has been a few issues with transportation issues, and whether we can use a car in our video or not. If the reality is we cant, we will change the shots to instead of meeting in a car, meeting in a secluded area to still keep the aspect of secret rife throughout. If we do change this,we will comment on the blog surrounding all of the changes, different health and safety aspects and shot lists.

Finally, our last concern is editing. After researching, we have found many individual editing tehcniques and effects, some of which we may decide whilst editing to include in the video. EG the mirror effect. having somebodies reflection doing something different to their actions. This again will be something we finally decide after the footage is shot, so we can see the success, or failure of the effects on screen.
At present, these are the only things going on regarding changing our film planning, although if any more do occur we will blog to ensure we have kept a record of the changes

Test shots

These are a selection of still images we took of various scenes that will feature in our music video. We took these pictures to find out the general atmosphere and look of the shots to see if  they matched the genre and mood of the song. We also took pictures to gain a general idea of roughly how our film footage will look like and whether or not we needed to make any editions in relation to this.

Fortunately we found that these pictures were accurate to how we wanted our footage to look like and we had no surprises but are looking forward to expanding on these pictures and capturing some real footage and in the planned location.

Influences

This video captures the feel and atmosphere that we plan to create in our video. The grim locations featured are clearly in London because of the landmarks visible, areas like this are harder to come by in Cambridge but we have selected are well suited to what we need. The clothing worn in this video is the kind of thing we will all wear in our video to appear like the characters we are trying to play. We will also use some similar camera shots to this video as they also follow the subject of the video as our video does. However this video entirely revolves around lip-synching which ours will not and also does not feature a storyline which is what we plan to include.

This is a screen shot from the film 'Kidulthood'. These are the kind of clothes we will wear in our video to bring across similar character types to the film.

Our video does not follow the typical conventions of a music video as it follows a narrative like a short film accompanied by the music playing in a non - diagetic format. We took influence from auteur Jonathon Glazer who uses this technique to bring across a darker and less traditional atmosphere to his videos. We decided using this method would fit the feel of the song and would be more powerful than ,ore typical type music video. An example of a video that does the same thing is Chase & Status Let You Go which became a very successful song which shows that a non typical video can still attract a large audience. 

Analysis of past student work

I have looked at Group 5's video and thought it was a very good piece of work. They have some kind of camera filter to give the video a 'vintage look' which works effectively with the style of music. The video is very simple featuring just one man and his guitar in and around Cambridge which also suits the folk genre well. I really like the shots on the punt as it

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/vA0QR87NahA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Health and Safety

During the filming of our video it is important that we work safely to ensure that no one is harmed. Some of the shots we intend to use will be filmed in Tyler's car so we must makes sure that we a particularly safe whilst filming these shots. We must all wear our seat belts and Tyler must pay close attention to the highway code while we are moving. Our video features a mugging scene so we must make sure that nobody is actually physically harmed while filming this but ensure that it is still realistic. We must also be aware that the public are not offended or harmed while we are filming the more graphic scenes of our video.

Call Sheet

Monday 3rd - Take out camera

costume, props, lighting, location

Costume:
We are going to wear our usual, casual clothes but make an effort to fit the mood of the video and genre which is hip-hop - so wear hoodies, jeans, generally dark clothes..?

Props:
We will need a receipt from the cash-point, a car

Lighting:
We are shooting our film in the day time so will use natural lighting throughout our video

Location:
The video will begin in a house, with the 2 characters in 2 different rooms to make the audience think they are in different houses. We will then have them walking through Cambridge (Chesterton) to Mitchems corner where they will use the cash point before returning and going down an alley way (Springfield Terrace). The whole video shoot should be taken not too far away from each other or from my house to make it easier and more simple if we need to jump from different locations.


Here is the cash points we will be using and the avenue where the mugging will take place:

Inspiration from Jonathon Glazer

Some of the ideas our group has put together for our music video have been inspired from Jonathon Glazer. For example we have decided to make majority of our music video in black and white to add to the atmosphere and mood of the video, and to also allow us to switch back to full colour at the end of the video to allow a more chaotic effect.  A lot of Jonathon Glazer's film are in black and white and he uses effects such as slow motion, rewind and colour effects to further cement the storyline in an unconventional and non-linear way. We have also decided to incorporate these ideas into our video to add to the mood of the realization when the character discovers himself in a very bad situation that he can't get out of.
Watching and analysing Jonathon Glazer's work, we found that his music videos didn't usually represent the lyrics or have much reference to the singer/band itself, but instead reinforced the actual mood and atmosphere of the beat and the lyrics of the song through a short movie, tweaked with special effects which grip the viewer. Our group is doing the same with a short movie which will reflect on the lyrics and background of the song. We chose to challenge conventions of not including any of the group lip syncing, to give a a short film effect of johnathon glazer

Song Choice and Viedo Ideas -

The song we have chosen to create a video for is 'THE NEXTMEN - My Way'. We chose this song as we felt it would be the easiest and most appropriate to create a decent, well made video for.
Ideas for the video:

• Short Story- A day in the life, following 2 different people, cutting between each of them, walking out of their houses and walking down the street. Maybe have a split screen shot of the two people as they walk towards each other, then having a shot of the 2 of them from behind in a queue one behind the other. They don't acknowledge each other or even know one another. This creates dramatic irony as the audience are aware that they will be connected somehow as the video follows both of their lifestyles, however they have no idea about one another. The man at the cash machine forgets his receipt, the guy behind him takes the receipt and see's how much money he took out. He debates whether to mug him or not, eventually deciding to.
• We could have the guy who stole the money phoning his friend to sort him out with drugs, he says he cant but gives him the number of someone he knows to meet, turns out the guy he meets is the guy he mugged. The guy who was mugged tells him to get in the car when he arrives, to make the guy who mugged him in danger. There is 2 or 3 other men in the back seats, clearly showing the man who we originally thought was the stronger of the 2 is now a much smaller threat. Video ends with the music fading and a shot from behind the car of it driving off.
• Colour could be black and white with sharp contrast between colours, as he the mugger gets in the car, the colours start changing in sharpness, contrast etc. showing he is panicking as he realizes who the driver is. 
• While the mugger is on the phone to his friend, the conversation would be quick and the music would still be audible in the background, but probably just the beat with no rapping. 

Songs

Track 4: Dark lighting could be used with a black and white effect added. A boy and girl would be needed to perform. It could be set in a house or a flat, with close-ups on both the actors, cutting between them as each of them speak. 

track 5: girl and guitar, stop motion film, experimental not performance. The mood of the song is fairly sad and depressing, however it has a medium tempo to the song, ad the mood lightens as the song progresses.

track 8: Short story performance, 'day in the life', experimental. The main prop we would use would be a microphone and maybe have some close-ups due to the relation to the lyrics, highly contrasting colours could be used such as a sharp black and white. 1 or 2 actors would be needed in the video, with a piano being used as a prop at the end.

Track 10: Dark and shadowy, upbeat. Claps., if it was a story it could be based on uncertainty during love. The lighting would be bright with colours possibly enhanced during editing due to the upbeat song. A girl would be needed to lip-sync.

Track 11:short film based, shots of feet, running and singing. Props needed would include a guitar and drums. The video would probably be shot outside, with the lighting quite bright and fairly colourful with contrasting colours.

Jonathan Glazer

Jonathon Glazer has a recognizable style with an individual artistic
signature. All of his videos are effectively simple and usually feature just 1 or 2 characters with the emphasis on the special effects. His videos are generally sinister and in black and white. The music flows well with the storyline which is very linear and easy to watch, however they are very original and follow some sort of plot.
Crazy
Un-Structured
not high budget
Both diegetic , non diegetic sound
Humour

Slow
 

A video that presents an artist in a different way to their usual image. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhMFKQnU0Ok&feature=related

This video by Q-Unique is very different to the way he usually projects himself in his lyrics and videos. Q Unique is an a American rapper who is noncommercial however this video features it a man with his mate in the streets of London to start with but then the English man transforms into the American rapper which is very surprising.

Eminem - Just Lose It