The Song is ready and so is the Video

So finally after 1-2 weeks of filming we finally had all the footage we needed to make the video! As i agreed i would edit the behind the scenes video of filming where as Martin would edit the music video, so there was a lot of independent working on Martin's hands over the first week of Christmas.  I was extremely impressed by his work ethics during the process of the video, at times i struggled putting in the same amount of effort as much as Martin as i had to work on work from my other subjects as well, yet Martin carried on working. It was good as we were both working towards a goal, our aim was to release it on New Year as the theme of the song went with the 'kissing your love on new year's eve', however rendering the video, took much longer than we all expected and it ended up being uploaded on 2nd Feb.
But I didn't know this, so like a person who was in the blind, i waited and waited... Here is my video i recorded of me waiting for the video to be uploaded/rendered.

I also thought that for the artist's (my) fans that it would be great to give them an update on what was going on especially if they heard about the song and was waiting to release it. Then i wanted to show my appreciation to the cast and the crew for their participation in the project whether or not it was towards their media studies a level or just for some camera fame.

The BoardMeeting

Seeing as everybody was so enthusiastic to put their input in the music video and ideas behind it, there were so many ideas passing by everybody so not everybody had a good understanding of what was going on. So decided we should have a boardmeeting and record it so everyone was clear on what the music video was going to look like and it was good to have knowledge of other;'a people's ideas.

Note: Make sure volume isn't turned up too high when playing video.
At first i got this video wrong as i made the backing music too loud so our actual voices couldn't be heard however it didn't take me too long to remove the music then render the video again....okay let me face it took hours to redo the video; it took a few hours save it once I  removed the tracks in a few minutes.

Red Filtering

Glamorous - Fergie
There seems to be a red filter in this part of the video as the red cups in the party people's hands are so vibrant and grab the audience's attention on several occasions during the beginning of the video. This is what Martin would like us to incorporate in our music video, this idea stumbled upon him a couple of weeks back when he was reminiscent of last year's project when we wanted to emphasise on the red tie of the antagonist by making everything else black and white a great example of this is the spirit and sin city.
Red Red Red! 

Red Tie sticks from the Grayscale cinematography
(The Spirit)

Our reasons for the emphasis of red in last year's project was to express anger,terror and danger but this time it is being used to represent the bipolar opposite which is love, passion of love and romance which will be very creatively incorporated in the music video. The most recognisable way to shoot this music video would be have the female lover of the video to wear a red coat with red lipstick, however I want to branch away from that typical representation of passion and add our individual twist/look to it. Even if the female protagonist is wearing other red attire that's not a coat it would be good as it shows we can understand the reasons behind certain cinematography and can challenge the fundamentals of colour meanings and expressions of passion to interpreted consciously and subconsciously by a large ranged audience. I would prefer it if we had the female protagonist suttle red clothes, as the actress will be a young adult (around 18) she can wear other items such as a cardigan,jumper, slim fit shirt etc. Just to be creative and not blatantly symbolise 'the lady in red' in our video, also to make the couple stand out as the video/story progresses we could have the man's tie turn red too to show unity and how their love has brought them together.

Martin's Red Filter Test 

Martin using Sony Vegas tested the red filter on footage of an ordinary day in London city in my local area Waterloo!! As you can see there isn't only red that is being let in by the saturation there is oranges, pinks, yellows and browns being shown also this might be why in the 'Glamorous' video there is other colours seen through in the 'grayscale ' filter. We will have keep this in mind when using Sony Vegas to edit our videos and if we can't use that software we could always use Final Cut Pro I guess...

Closer Video Analysis

Beautiful Liar
Beginning shots, medium shots with smoke machines to cover their faces henceforth making the two singers looks more mysterious. The make-up artists have made their hair look similar, with their dresses; Beyonce went on a diet to have a similar figure as Shakira and their black dresses are alike.

Slim figure, black with a lighter touch. 

There are several cuts between the two; they are done so quick that the only way to tell the difference from the two singers when the cuts are moving really fast, are the different coloured backgrounds (blue and yellow). Even in Shaikira’s solo shots of Beyonce is still shown looking very alike to her however this unnecessary show of Beyonce is disguised by both of their solo parts in the same verse. Towards the end (the peak of the song) it becomes harder for the audience to tell the difference between the two, in both the Egyptian pyramid interior and the water/rain scenes. Not only are the shots quick but then they start swapping positions, this can the director signifying that they are agreeing with each-other more, or a more blunter/commercial reason so they look as identical as possible to promote them as sexually as possible. Further evidence is of this sexual promotion is the dancing on the floor when it seems as there are possessed by the issue, along with melody of the song that depicts the characteristics of a snake piper and his snake symbolises submission to a masculine presence; Beyonce and Shakira are desirable ladies, the song is directed at men, their faces can’t been seen and the lack of identification the video and song entwines to make a desirable feature to men. The directing of this video is deceptive, so the audience can subconsciously think that the women are identical and good for the same thing, shown by the images this isn't the truth...obviously...so it makes you really think who is the Beautiful Liar....

Slim figure, caucasian with a mediterranean
touch.   

Runway Love 

 Beginning ten seconds, shows the two artists walking past walls covered with wanted posters,lost ones shrines and candles with the title of the song within the posters drawn by red flyers and bunches of flowers. This sets a serious tone for the video as it places the focus of the audience's attention on the serious issues behind the song (missing girls' cases). 

'Runway' in red flyers

'Love' in bunches of flowers 

Then there are quick cuts of closeup shots of the artists that quickly progress to shots of the actresses playing the roles of the characters described in the stories of the verses.  Again bringing the audience's focus to the cases of the girls instead of showing off the artists moves/clothes or looks especially the clothes of the artists which is a common feature of videos involving rappers. Also the shots of the artists show both of them humbly moving to the music as if they are personally connected to the personas of the stories.  The first verse; Ludacris is dressed in black, making him look mysterious as he stands in the same rooms as the girl narrating the role she is playing, the people act as if they can't see him as if he's a ghost and he is omniscient which makes him powerful but not to be praised but to entitle him to show the audience what is happening in the video. This arrangement continues throughout  the whole video with the girls near Mary J Blige during the chrous, the video centres around the actresses and other youg girls in the video and the song and the video are supportive to these 'runaways' and give a affectionate attitude to people who are going through hard times. 

Millionaire 

Watching White Men Can't Jump

A black man would rather look bad and lose

I was recently watching a film named 'White Men Can't Jump' and despite it's obvious aim to break stereotypes it also enlightened me with a few too, Woody Harrelson who plays Billy Hoyle an white basketball hustler says a line in his script that got me thinking....'a black man would rather look good and lose than look bad and win'. This may have been a racial critique of black men but looking at the music industry and throughout history there has been a few events that have backed up his 'crazy' statement. 






Lets look at famous rappers

Asher Roth- "But money doesn't mean
a damn thing to me, i just want to be,
i want to be free"

Asher Roth just looking at the photograph on the right, one can already tell his image isn't like other rappers in fact i'm sure just looking at him you thought 'he looks strange for a rapper' this judgement brings me to my point. Is because he's white that people don't think he's rapper? No because they are amazingly talented rappers like Eminem but i'm sure it's because his look is so casual, his cream hoodie and standard jeans makes him look like any other person. We can say that it is just Asher who sticks to this humble 'apperance' but it pains me to say it most famous non-black rappers prefer to either look responsible or causal, without durags, diamond chains or showing cars without spinning rims. Just looking at what Eminem wore in the majority of his earlier videos is further evidence than he would rather be an amazing artist than look good for the camera/video.  

Simple white T-shirt and dyed blond hair
he carried this simple image throughout
the years 

After all these years, he's still
kept it simple

Even in genres

Ellie's costume for Under The Sheets

Rihanna's costume for
'What's My Name '

Looking at modern genres where the majority of musicians involved in the genre are black, are heavily filled with artist who must acquire a certain image as they grow in their fame, so this isn't all assumption lets look at the RnB and Indie industry.  Ladies first, Rihanna and Ellie Goulding both are iconic people in their different genres,  Rihanna in the RnB/Pop genre and Ellie Goulding in the Indie/Pop genre i have  taken screen-shots from videos of both them in their music videos for songs that were sex-related to make the comparison fair as possible. Looking at both pictures already you can see Rihanna is displaying much more of her body than Ellie is and her less-covering clothes are more wild and racy than Ellie's. As you can see Rihanna's image is very important to her whereas Ellie seems to not go for the most stylish video costumes. Even though these are just two artists from the two genres (Indie and RnB) but this is practically the same for many artists of the different industries, so is Woody's statement a blown out of proportion judgement? Or does his statement contain a deep truth of things black people do in the music industry?


What's this got to with me and the music video.....?
Well as I've been thinking of the presentations of people/concepts and stereotypes of rappers and hip-hop artists and if we will follow the usual practices of the industry or if will challenge aspects and go against the grain to convey a message.  In relation the information above...shall we copy the typical 'gangstar'  rapper look? Or will we (me [KdotC] the main artist and svf [the featuring artist]) go for a more humble costume choice that honestly represents our actual  for the music video. Let's look at some music videos we can take ideas and influence from to get a better understanding of what we want to do. 

Looking at Lupe Fiasco's Out of My Head Music Video

The song has a direct connection to our song so it was perfect to look for more inspiration to sharpen up our video for a re-edit. As the main artist is a rapper featuring a singer just as the main artist of our song is a rapper featuring a vocalist for the chorus, also the Trey Songz has a few adlibs in the song just as the vocalist gives adlibs to the rapper.

The first thing i noticed within the first 30secs of the video is the amount of quick cuts between shots of the artists, together and independently as well as the main actress with the main artist and the main actress independently.  This is something our video lacked we didn't give the audience an actual chance to get familiar with the two artists especially in the opening 30secs of the music video  which is essential for the audience to link the vocals and lyrics with the artist, especially with the image he was trying to create with his descriptive language in his lyrics. Also as soon as the vocalist was announced in the song there is a shot of him, to bring a face to the voice to introduce the audience to the vocalist for his fans to recognize him and attract new fans to him.

There was a great use of extreme close up shots of the main actress this is very important for hip-hop/rnb songs as it focuses the song on a physical human as the opposed imagination of the audience's interpretation of the appearance of the girl. The next time the audience get to see the main actress is her wearing a red dress which signifies an aura of romance around her making her attractive attribute look superior and she is the ultimate woman, as i said before that 'every man desires the woman in red' with makes more sense to why Lupe Fiasco is directing his vocals at 'her'. The girl in our video wasn't blatantly  wearing red so even though we were going for the sole representation of the girl in red it still wasn't obvious enough to be noticed by the audience. So we may have to make the leading actress wear more red clothes in her outfit and the leading actor to wear more too towards the end of the video.

Song Searching/Writing...

We are looking for a song to use,  it would be easy to take a song from my favourite artist that they didn't make a video for however i'v known that we will be directing a music video this year since last year and it was a dream to make a song with my first music video. So with these wishes in mind the brainstorming for a song idea began.....

Hopsin- The type of wild appearance
I would need for Hadouken 

After AS examinations fellow classmates and I discussed what we wanted to do for A2 regarding the video and song, their wishes were similar to that of mine and one of them produced his own beats named Martin. From then we started listening to his beats and thinking which ones we liked and ones that we could make good videos to, we chose a beat called Hadouken as i was inspired by the technique used in the beat called sampling. Here is the link to youtube video of the beat 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tERN-Sd-oKY' so i was set to write lyrics for the song over the summer, i wrote lyrics easily within a week i used my daily experiences as inspiration, however the characteristics of the persona in my lyrics was different from my usual persona of past written songs.

This an example of a dark video
with exaggerated shadows. Shot from video
  'Paranormal Activity pt 2 -Konan'

So this meant that I would need rebranding or to find a way to explain to the audience that i was trying something different from my usual musical concepts.  Daniel and I started thinking about how the video was supposed to look, if we were going to have a simple video with just cuts and transitions or if we going to have major need for editing and effects that would require a green screen. We also started to think of costumes, cast and locations for scenery. We wanted to go with a music video that had a cold, gothic theme.
Exaggerated shadows,contrast and probably some colour filtering. To give focus on an object such as a weapon or make an eye look extraordinary. It would also make the representative of persona look mysterious  which could be interestingly developed to make a better relation to the key lyric in the chorus 'Hadouken' and maybe make the persona look like he supernatural powers similar to the character from Streetfighter who has a move called 'Hadouken'.

So...we finally have an idea, lyrics, song concept so it should be simple correct? WRONG I came to the realisation that there would have too much time and effort into the process of things I would have to do to keep my audience informed enough for them to understand my motive behind the song. Also due to being  heavily accompanied and lack of communication together the group only decided we wanted to create another song entirely after a week into our A2. So we decided that a Love/'Sweetboy' song would be the song we going to do for various beneficial reason such as music artist image wouldn't need changing, it would be simple to make the video as clean as possible etc.  Martin (Magnificent) whose speed in producing beats lived up to his musical alias had a beat that would fit the song concept and i listened to it and let myself become entwined with the beat so i could produce lyrics that could blend together with the music.

Fl Studio 9

FL Studio 9
This is the software that Martin used to produce the beat, the program is called Fruity Loops 9 its widely used by producers and has a good user interface that can be comfortable to use after seeking help from tutorials.



With this notion i began to start writing lyrics for a love song and as i classed myself to be a romantic partner in past relationships i  thought it would be pretty easy to accomplish....but like most things in life it wasn't that easy but only took a few days for me to write the first verse.  It probably would have been quicker task if I didn't have other a  levels to attend to. The next verse came more naturally and within a week i had two verses ready and ideas of how i wanted the chorus to sound like.  I wasn't sure if i wanted the chorus to be sung or rapped so i asked around, asked Martin, the rest of the group and even my english teacher whose musical knowledge and interest in my creative concepts had always been profitable.

In the process of writing my lyrics theses songs were the most influential....

An artist's cover for Lady Brown

Nujabes - Lady Brown 
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjqTiQhOgU8
This is a big song in the underground hip-hop scene Lady Brown is a great example of what a love hip-hop song sounds like, this inspired me to have poetic language in my lyrics that involved romantic imagery and more complex interpretations than the weak meanings in the words of commercial (pop) love songs.

A fan's cover for So Special

Lil Wayne - So Special featuring John Legend 
Youtube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U6qhYAgE1M
This is a song off Lil-Wayne's most recent album called 'Tha Carter 4' with soul-sensation John Legend, this song inspired me by its composition; Lil Wayne normally has a faster flow in his songs but he chose to rap slower in this to ensure that it targets a broad female audience and John Legend has a strong voice that really touches the soul of the audience.

The beat that Martin had given me was called Aloha, he named it this because he felt the beat took you to a tropical scene when you were listening to it, somewhere like the Caribbean islands.

Survey Monkey Survey:
We made two surveys on survey monkey to try research on what type of music our target audience enjoy listening to so we knew what impact we would have when the artists made the song.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9NW5WQJ
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LSRZM9V

Lyrics

Volas' Lyrics: Verse 1

 Travelling in busy terrains,via bus or trains. Tired of dull animation, manmade imagination. See a rare picture, ruth like creature. Like ancient scripture,so I wna lips ya. Use them to flatter, your perfected matter. With a sun-like smile, that promotes your style. Don't wanna call you bird, Your melodic dialect's unheard, a blessing to hear, let's baptise my ear.Lips are crimson like passport, my tongue passes this port. Our souls connect, I don't want to infect. Your gradually healed heart,I'll play my part. So don't back up,I won't act up, Take the man's role, take control, heal the soul, the x stole,be effective, better your bitter perspective. Of guys, show truth from the lies. Show fakes from the reals, my soul your aura thrills.

Verse 2

Get lost in your eyes, from midnight to sunrise,well it feels like that, when you look under my hat. To see my soul windows,I feel like I'm the one who throws,the clock,flying tick tock. Spinning in the air, like black silk hair, crowning your head, tender like rose bed. Yeah real peaceful, makes me so gleeful, looking at you, looking at you. You're like sweet medicine, take that back, you're sweet medicine, to my thinking brain. When dawn feels like midnight, things are looking dark, your like golden sunlight,making things alright. Sitting with ya, the greatest feeling, take away my, tribulations you're stealing. Pushing them in the open, after my long-holding,of them now,I hold you.

Bridge

We've had different foundations, varied pronunciations,but you call my name, the way I call your name. Problems don't matter, be joyful til the later,remember how we began, so bring it back now.

Chorus(SVF)We met at the corner store,we both know we needed more,thinking about the days before, happy that I didn't ignore you.(SVF)We met at the corner store,we both know we needed more,thinking about the days before, happy that I didn't ignore you.Saw you at the corner store,knew that I wanted more, never seen your kind before,someone I just can't ignore.

Sitting by the seashore, know that I want more, never seen your kind before, how can I ignore.

We met at the corner store,we both know we needed more,thinking about the days before, happy that I didn't ignore you.

(Volas): Your face I'm always... (SVF): Looking At You

When you walk past I'm always...           ''

You're face is best when I'm...                 ''

Everything's bless when I'm...                 ''