Planning: Production Roles

Planning: Production Roles 

Production Roles

Director =Josh: 

We chose Katie for this role because she has experience in directing from directing her thriller production in last years’ project where she was able to organise the production efficiently.  

Editor = Amani: 

In last years Thriller Production, Amani was seen going out of his way to learn and experiment with various amount of edits on Final Cut Pro. Therefore, we chose him to be our based editor as he has experience from creating a successful project last year. 

Camera person = Josh: 

Joshua filmed his groups last years’ thriller production which we have identified that this is an advantage for us because he has a well developed understanding when operating the camera. 

Print design = Amani: 

We decided that Emine would be the print designer due to her previous work experience in photography where she gained a specific skill set on how to take professional pictures which will benefit us when we are doing our digi pack.  

Producer = Josh: 

Joshua was chosen for this role as he is extremely organised in which this would be beneficial for us as he would be able to assist the director on tasks such as what days and times we will film and ensure our cast members will attend this. 

Storyboard = Amani: 

We chose Amani for this role due to his creativity and ability to quickly create a scene and adapt ideas from scene to scene. Amani’s previous skills in art will benefit the group because from drawing each scene, it can give everyone in our group, a clear idea of what we will be filming. 

Photographer = Josh: 

Due to Emine’s developed skill set from working in photography studio, she would be most appropriate and suitable to the photographer role. 

Location manager = Amani:

 Katie has given us several locations that we can have easy access to and that we as a group have found that these locations that Katie has recommended are very suitable to our production idea. 

Cast control = Josh: 

Josh immediately acquired the cast consisting of two performers to represent our two ‘artists’ therefore Josh would be most suitable for the role to control and handle the cast. 

Costume, Hair & Make up = Amani: 

As they are females and are very familiar with using make up, they would suit this role. They are both also very passionate about fashion and clothing so they would have certain ideas for what type of costume our artist should wear to match the particular locations. 

Lighting = Josh:

Emine developed the skill set and knowledge of lighting which is part of photography therefore she would suit this role. 

However after a discussion with our group later on down the line we decided that we would split up the group into two between Katie and Emine and Josh and Myself meaning that i have now taken the roles of Katie as well as maintaining my own roles and josh has done the same but taken the roles that Emine had previously.

Planning: Digipak Information

Digipak Information

Album Name: Ying & Yang

Artist name(s):

SWEENEY - (Amani)

MD - (Michael)

Track List:

1. Differences. (INTRO)
2. You Are.
3. Squad Only.
4. Wavey.
5. (MD)MA.
6. P.H.A.T.
7. Trilla.
8. Spectre.
9. Lost Tape.
10. The Equilibrium.
11. C.R.E.A.M.
12. Paypa Chase.
13. LEGO City.
14. My Fung Shway. (Feng Shui)
15. The Mirror's Edge. (OUTRO)

Music Institution: DefJam Records.

Production Company: KAJE Records.

Parental Advisory Symbol: Present

Planning: Lighting and Colour

Lighting & Color

Lighting and colour in 'I Won' - Future ft. Kanye West

It is black and white in colour. I really like the use of this as it is a very distinctive and cool effect that gives the video a classy look for mainstream artists who usually do not tend to be formal or classy. This black and white theme is an idea I already had in mind to go along with my idea of a black vs white; one artist dressed in white and the other dressed in black as well as making my two performers have contradicting actions within the narrative to portray the idea of opposites. I am very interested in recreating a black and white concept as it helps can vary and create both a classic or urban feel.

Lighting and colour in 'Don't' - Bryson Tiller

The lighting in this video shows a contradictions between high key and low key lighting. The high key lighting and use of all white clothing on the female character is used to represent her as an asset in the music video which plays against the stereotypical conventions of females being passive in a music video.

Lighting and colour in 'Wavey' - J Spades ft. Young Teflon

The music video that has helped influence my music video in terms of lighting and colour is J Spades Ft. Young Teflon - Wavey.

As in this music video the use of lighting and colour helps to emphasize the theme of being 'wavey' (under the influence of drink and drugs) also the black lighting is cleverly used to enhance the star image of the two performers which is similar to the way we would like to shoot our own music video.

This is a good example for our music video specifically as our key themes for our music video is indeed; drink, drugs and females, we also have included the use of star image within our music video as we also have 2 star performers in our music video. 

Planning: Pre Production paper work

Pre - production Paperwork

Production schedule:


Location Recce:

Client Release Form

Planning: Artist Image

Planning: Artist Image

Our artists' image is important to our product and campaign because it is critical that we get both of our characters image and identity correct in order to attract a wider ranged audience as they are two different artists coming together for a collaboration album. 

For the first artist image I will be looking at SWEENEY who takes over the voice of Youngs Teflon in the Wavey music video and is one of the rappers out of the two artists on the collaboration album.

Because of this we will have to not only differentiate each artist in terms of actions and representation and overall role of the music video, but they will also have to be distinguished in terms of mise en scene such as costume colour lighting and facial expressions. Hence the reason why we have chosen this actor in particular to be our more aggressive character, as you can see he has a more serious and arrogant facial expression which is what was first realised when auditioning for potential characters and looking at how they are represented by one picture of themselves.   

Actual artists that best resemble that to SWEENEY is:

• Lil durk.
• Ace Hood.
• Youngs Teflon.
• Skrapz.

The resembling artists have not just been chosen for their appearance and image in the media but they have also been related to our artist because of their lyrical content and  primal and serious aura that they carry during performances and in their music videos which is now attached to their image within the media.

An important image aspect that also manipulates the them of this music video is the Ying (also known as yin) and Yang binary opposite theme. This has influence over the SWEENEY's characteristics as their are 2 different sides to the symbol, he is present as the side known as Ying. This is because the characters overall appearance (all white clothing relates to the touch of white in the circle) is deceiving and his actions best present and show us that a slightly darker character that carries Ying energy.

From this we earn that our artists appearance is pure and white and innocent looking however his dark actions show how he really is.

As a result of this research upon artist image here is a first glance of our 1st artists image and appearance below, as you can see the appearance has been heavily influenced by the artists mentioned above as well as the theme.

The second artist that will be analysing is MD, his artist appearance within the music has been influenced by the following music artists that are established within the industry already:

• J spades.
• Trey Songz.
• Skepta. 

Our reasons for MD being influenced by the following artists is because J SPADES is the original artist that MD will be covering in the song Wavey as he has to sing the chorus as well as his own verses jspades is an artist heavily involved in rap but he has been known on many occasions to sing through his choruses as other the other names mentioned that influence our character, all of these artists' image within the media are heavily influenced by females and womanising as  a lot of girls love them for not just their appearance but for their boss like status and persona within the media, Which is what is needed for our character MD in the music video as he will be talking about why he is wavey and why n one else carriers themselves like him.

The reason why we have selected images of our artists in black attire is because if you didn't know who they was within the media they could be mistaken for bad people that influence themselves in crime as they are wearing all black attire, which is the idea and theme that we are going for with this character as he plays the opposite role in the Ying and Yang theme against SWEENEY and is Yang the good character with a bad first impression because of his overall appearance, however it is his actions that prove that he is different from his contrasting character. 

Planning: Advertisement Information

Planning: Advertisement Information

For our music campaign it is key that we have an advertisement because, not only does this raise the awareness of the album to the fans and people in general but it also to help build and establish a connection from the artists to their fans.

First of all we had to do research on advertisements for albums, me and my group came up with the advertisement for 'The End Of The Beginning' by Skrapz and 'The Blue Print' by Jay-Z and this is what we had managed to analyse. 

The common conventions that we had found out that appears in many of the advertisements was:

• Release date.
• Album title.
• Artist name.
• Where you can purchase and download the product from.
• Artist image.
• Hit singles to be placed on the advertisement.
• Parental advisory symbol (if needed).

For that reason we will have the following information placed on my album's advertisement.

Image: Artist image of MD & SWEENEY with their faces merged in a 50/50 split.

Cinematography: For the advertisement we will be using a closeup shot to get the head and shoulders of our artists, enough to see the colour of their clothes for when we merge their faces together showing the contrast in clothing between the 2 artists.

Costume hair and makeup: White and black costume contrasting each other.

Lighting & colour: White and black lighting and colour used due to the influential colours  of the Ying and Yang theme. 

Settings: For this there will be no settings as we will take the picture in front of a green screen, to better the effect of the black and white background when editing the advertisement.

Body language and facial expression: Due to the fact that our artists are already meant to be established artists within our project they will have stern, focused and quite serious expressions.

Persuasive language used: We will announce it as 'The most anticipated collaboration of this year' as the two artists are already meant to be big names within the industry and their genres of music.

Information: As for the additional information that we been seen on our advertisements are:

• Release date of album.
• Key songs on the album for example 'Like Me' which is the song we are performing in our music video.
• Where the Album can be purchased.

Layout: For our advertisement seeing as my group have decided that because our project is a joint collaboration album we will have both of the  star artists in the advertisement, however we will distribute the layout of the page 50/50 between the two artists as this will help them to better attract and merge their individual fan base which is similar to that of the Trey Songz and Chris Brown collaboration album titled 'TRGA X BRZY' (image below) as you can see both artists faces have been merged together. Our advertisement will have a similar layout as we will be going for contrasting shots because our album is influenced by the Ying and Yang theme.

Theories used in advertisement:

Dyer (star image) - Star image is used as our artists will be placed on the front cover of the advertisement.

Goodwin (enhanced star image) - Goodwin's theory of enhanced star image will be used in our advertisement our cinematography will be close up shots of both our artists and they will be the center of attention which helps to enhance their star image as they are already highly famous and will known, also because the background is just white and black colours this means that there isn't much else to look at besides the artists face, which enhances their star image and shows how important they are as nothing else is shown.   

Adorno (pop culture) - Our front cover will show a slight aspect of pop culture as the clothing worn is considered to be popular and conventional to artists that come from our artists genres.

Research: Creative brief for digipak

Research: Creative brief for digipak

During this lesson we learned about the importance of the digipak in terms of it's visual interpretation to not only the album but the entire promotional campaign, for this reason we needed to give send a message of the themes of the album which best captures the main vibe of the entire album. When creating our main ideas for the drafts of our digipak we decided to play off of dyer's theory of star image due to the fact that our artists are two different but both equally well know and established within the industry and are collaborating for the purpose to merge their fan base with this album. 


 

Album Name: Ying & Yang

Artist name(s):

SWEENEY - (Amani)

MD - (Michael)

Track List:

1. Differences. (INTRO)
2. You Are.
3. Squad Only.
4. Like Me.
5. (MD)MA.
6. P.H.A.T.
7. Trilla.
8. Spectre.
9. Lost Tape.
10. The Equilibrium.
11. C.R.E.A.M.
12. Paypa Chase.
13. LEGO City.
14. My Fung Shway. (Feng Shui)
15. The Mirror's Edge. (OUTRO)

Music Institution: DefJam Records.

Production Company: KAJE Records.

Parental Advisory Symbol: Present

Product Overview: My two artists are two already well known and established Hip-Hop artists that have decided to merge their talent and fanbase together to create a cross over album.

The Album Concept: The crossover album will be known as Ying & Yang. The overall concept that we are looking for is to play off of the idea that these are indeed to different artists with their own style MD (Jeremih cover artist on Like Me) sings and SWEENEY (Durks cover artist on Like Me) raps, hence the reason why we have come up with the Ying and Yang concept as these are two different elements and energy types of Music coming together to create one product. 

Comparable products

A comparable product to this could be be the new project in the UK titled as 'Young Fire Old Flame' by both Wretch 32 and Avelino which is a newly released mix tape that's concept is about Young Fire (rapper Avelino) as he is a new, upcoming artist that has been gaining a lot of attention more recently in the rap industry and Old Flame (Wretch 32) who is an already established rapper within the music and rap industry a like and is very well respected. My reason for this being a comparable project is because not only is this a collaboration project, but it is also heavily advertised by both artists as Avelino's twitter name has been changed to 'YOUNG FIRE' and Wretch 32's 'OLD FLAME'.

For that reason the digipak that we create will be heavily influenced by this theme and the music video will also have the same influences and themes. Our second comparable product is an album titled 'What a Time to be Alive' by famous and established american artists Drake and Future. 

Because we have two different artists collaborating together for this project they will also be merging fanbases together which means this product will be aimed at R&B, Pop (because MD) as well as Rap and american drill (because of SWEENEY) meaning that the reaction we want from this will come from multiple genres and produce multiple sales from a wide range of people.

The launch date of the Albums release will be shortly after the release of the music video as we need to create hype around the album by releasing the top hit 'Like Me' before hand.

Planning: Characters

Planning: Characters within narrative

 

In this post I will be looking into the characters within my music video, this is important because to make our music video believable as the correct image has to be captured by all of the characters within the music video otherwise when people watch our music video the characters won’t look like how they sound on the sound which could make them lose interest as they aren’t seeing the visual representation of what they are hearing on the soundtrack. Both of the characters that are being shown within this post are also the characters that are the 2 main artists within the music video.

 

Completed by Amani

 

Character 1:

Name: Amani Sweeney-Fenton (SWEENEY)

Age: 18.

Ethnicity: Black, other.

Physique: Tall Slim. 

 

Genre stereotypes of artist:

• Money orientated

• Self-obsessed.

• Womanising.

• Confident.

• Intimidating.

• Controlling.  

 

Costume:

 

The overall appearance that we are looking to achieve with our artist is that we want him to look successful, trendy in the area of fashion and his image must be quite evident that he is money orientated in terms of the use of jewellery and designer brands. 

The all-white look gives our artist a sense of purity and cleanliness as although this genre of music is more directed at Rap, this soundtrack in particular abandons the ideology of gangs which is conventional to the genre and exploits the idea of having fun with your friends and having a sense of swagger about what you do. This helps us to capture an image that maintains all the positives about rappers and people associated with the genre and leave out/ down play direct illegal activity which some people do not like to see which make the music video a better-rounded music video for various people to enjoy. 

 

Our artist playing as the character SWEENY:

• Straight cut white jeans – (designer).

• T-shirt -white

• Bomber Jacket - white

• Gold watch - (designer)

Hair and makeup: Our artist will have a high-top temp fade haircut (as shown in the image) and won’t be wearing any makeup as we need to portray the realism of the music video through the visuals. 

Body language and facial expressions: This artist/character will have a very relaxed and confident body language to display how he is having fun whilst he feels ‘Wavey’ with his friend. We will show him as having fun and feeling youthful as the lyrics of how the characters behave in the song compliment this.

Representation within your video: Due to the all of these characteristics SWEENEY will be an extremely relaxed character, meaning that he will come across as having a good time. Often UK rap presents this idea which is why we have planned for this too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Completed by Josh

Character 2:

Name: Michael Okafor (MD).

Age: 18.

Ethnicity:  Black African.

Physique: Tall Slim.

 

Gender stereotype of role:

• Fun
• Charming.
• Confident.
• Relaxed.

Costume: Because of the overall theme of binary opposites within our narrative we have decided to dress MD in the opposite colours. He will wear causal clothing which will be all black, he will not be wearing designer brands as he is not interested in material items such as brands and designers, however he does have a desire to look good and fit the social stereotypes associated with him.

 

Hair and makeup: Make up will not be used on our male characters MD will also have a high top haircut as it is a popular hairstyle people have in modern day that grow up in these areas, they have the same haircuts as it shows that these are two characters that have grown up around the same environment but follow completely different lifestyles, which means they are expected to do certain things similarly. As we are trying to represent the UK rap scene, this is a conventional look.

 

Body language and facial expression: The body language of the artist will also be portrayed the same as the first which is confident in order to represent the artist as possessing SWAGGER and a 'star' in his own right. The facial expressions of this artist will also be quite cheeky so the artist will be smirking and smiling a lot which he enjoys the company of his fellow artist/character as they party together.

 

Representation within music video: MD will be similar to SWEENEY, however the only difference is that he will be in all black. It was important that we had a similar representation of our characters as it must reflect the UK rap genre and both characters must complement each other in terms of how they interact to create a believable friendship on screen. 

 

Similar characters that have influenced our music video characters:

These artists are also often used as the character/only performers in their music videos to enhance their star appeal to their loyal fans.

Similar findings:

·         Black in origin

·         Young in age

·         Wear white and black

·         Urban clothing

·         Enhance a confident persona

·         Use lots of close-ups and medium close ups on them

These are all ideas we hope to implement in our video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To conclude I believe that this will best way to capture the characteristics of the characters as close up shots will help to capture the best possible image of our characters within the music video and best display the type of people that they are, this will also help our idea to remain conventional as with many UK artists and camera shots this is a most favourable camera angle and shot size which means that if we remain to certain classical conventions it will be easier for the consumers/viewers to engage with the video.