Video Success.

As we have successfully filmed our final cut for the music video and uploaded it, we sent the video to the artist's manager and were requested to film another video for another song in the artist's album. We received over 2000 views within the first month of uploading the video via youtube.

Final Video: Finished edition

Magazine Analysis

The magazine advertisment here of Jay-Z reflects the artist's power within the hip-hop scene. He is standing beside new york skyscrapers with the caption "Is Jay-Z bigger than hip-hop?" which emphasizes that his progress has become notable as a guru within the hip-hop scene. with this type of advertisement, his most recent album "blueprint 3", builds anticipation toward the audience as the project which sets him above the rest in the scene. the title of the album and the way he is portrayed here highlights that he may have the solution and perfect plan toward success in the music industry.

DigiPak Analysis - Feist

This digipak is from the artist "Feist". She is a female indie pop artist and the artwork on this didgipak reflects this very well. The intricate use of colours emphasize this thoroughly as though the artist may have a colourful personality. The use of sewing thread represents that she is a trend setter and works well with fashion regarding her music audience group and in general. as the album is called reminder, the artwork here emphasizes nostalgia and a journey. There is a "thought bubble" representing thoughts and memory and gives an insight to the sort of content the album would have. The artist has also used blacked out silhouette style images as though, the memories and connotations in regards to the reminders in the album aren't clear and she is over coming this through the use of the threads which act as safety nets and guidelines. The threads also possess a reference toward the question "how long is a piece of string" and this represents that because a piece of string cannot be measured due to its variation, thesame can be said for a person's emotions and memories. The threads are used on a diagram of the human body shape in different shapes and directions painting a vivid picture of the artist's train of thought as the chest area has a diamond style shape formed representing the key importance of the heart to the human body.

Viral Marketing: Testing The Projection.

We researched several videos regarding projections such as "Drake- Over" as we were determined to capture our vision to successful execution. We then made this comical video with a projection to determine if we could achieve this.

Video Draft 2

With this video, we decided that we needed a more urban edge which is why we decided to choose the setting based around graffiti. It was filmed By Marcus on the 550D Camera as [planned and Edited by Kojo on final cut pro, then looped so we could couple it with our main video as the projection video.

Survey Analysis

In order to gather a general view on our video I created a survey on the website http://www.surveymonkey.com/consisting of ten questions on the surveyors thoughts of the video. These ten questions were:
1. What was your view on the video?
2. Could you please explain why you think this?
3. Do you believe the video concept fits the genre?
4. If you could change something about the video, what would it be?
5. What do you prefer in a video?
6. Would you want to watch this video again?
7. If not, please tell me why.
8. Where could you see this video?
9. Do you think we should have had more actors in the video or more going on?
10. Any last words?

When I had gained a sufficient amount of replies from the public I was then able to collect them and analyse the replies to implement into the final music video.
In general, the video was very well received for a draft version, there were some negative views but they were backed up with reasons in order to help us create a much better viewing experience in the final video.
It was made clear that our video's progression was in the right direction however, it was not yet to every bodies tastes and they contributed their views to help us meet their expectations. With these results I have been able to create a breakdown of each question which I will go through.

Question 1.
For question one I asked what the general view of the video was, giving people five choices to choose from ranging from "Great!" to "Terrible!". A majority of the views were among the midpoint which was "Okay" with a small portion being split between "Great!" and "Good" this shows that the video was well received by the public.

Question 2.
For this questions we asked people to explain their views. Although the public generally liked the video, they did have complaints about the production quality, for example "Not in sync through the whole vid" this shows that the concept for the video was liked however, the quality of equipment and editing was not up to standard again.

Question 3.
I asked the public whether they believed the video fit in with the concept, to which the answer was unanimous: Yes.
This proves that the video fits perfectly within the genre and is appeasing to the public.

Question 4.
In this question I asked what people would like to change in the video. It appears that from the results that the viewers would have appreciated more variety in the video as they stated they would add more scenes or more people into it.

Question 5.
We asked the public whether they preferred Concept-Based videos, Narrative-Based videos or a mixture of both. A large majority answered Both and so we will take this knowledge into consideration when filming our final draft of the video.

Question 6.
I asked whether the public would want to watch this video again, generally the answer was Yes indicating that the video was enjoyable even for a first draft.

Question 7.
I asked the people who voted that they would not watch the video again whether they would give their reason as to why not, only one person answered saying "seen it once, seen it all". It would seem that this is that person's personal attitude and does not reflect on the actual video itself.

Question 8.
For this question I asked where the public could imagine seeing this video; a mainstream channel, an underground channel or the Internet. The vote was tied between a mainstream channel and the Internet which means the public believes that the video is good enough to be shown around the world on national television.

Question 9.
I asked the public whether we should have more going on in the video or not and the majority voted yes meaning that they may have thought that the video grew tedious.

Question 10.
For the final question we asked whether the public had anything else they would like to say that wasn't expressed in the other questions, most answered No however one person commented that Kojo fit the lead role well and that we should keep him in that position.

Overall, our video was well received by the public even managing to reach 2,900 views on YouTube. It would seem that the video only needs minor adjustments made to it in order to reach full completion but according to the public we are well on the way to reaching this.

Survey Results

Samba Theory Look 3

To make our images look more professional, we decided to have a more professional style shoot for our actor. We kept conventions of both the first shoots. We kept the urban look but also retained the sophisticated look, with the smart-style cardigan with elbow pads and Red Bow Tie. We then coupled the bow tie with Red Supra trainers alongside Beats By Dre Headphones, which complement the overall look.

Evaluation of Planning.

The song we will be using is of the Hip Hop genre and so we decided to make a video that suited the characteristics of the genre but with changes as well. We plan to have our actor stand alone in the video performing to the song whilst using props and projected images to link to the lyrics, for example when the artist QuEST says

"Let these stars hit you till you fall and lose your balance like the "Roc boy"

We have decided our actor will hold his hands up over his left eye in the shape of a diamond to represent the Rocafella recording label. This is to create a direct intertextual reference for fans of Hip Hop to enjoy and recognise instantly.

Many Hip Hop videos focus largely on the performer and not the performance and so we will try to do this as well, although we have not neglected the performance.

Our actor will also have three costume changes for each verse, each one hopefully symbolising what the artist is trying to convey through his lyrics whilst also keeping our own twist on the video concept.
As the video progresses we hope to show that our performer is conscious about his image as he changes costume three times in order to stay looking "fresh" and on trend. We will also have a projector that we will use to place certain images on top of our actor to use as a form of props for example when QuEST says

"Worldwide the scriptures get me spotted on the atlas"

We plan to place a globe on to the actor with an arrow pointed to a certain part of the world in order to symbolise the performer having his place in the world.

As the beat changes in the song we we cut the video to match for example when the chorus plays we will show a kaleidoscope to go with the chilled music during the chorus and hopefully not to confuse the viewer by showing fast paced camera work whilst the music is very slow paced at the time.

We will use plenty of close up shots to get the viewers accustomed to the artist and also to work with the conventions of the Hip Hop genre's music videos as the artists tend to try to show themselves off in their videos.

Our video's main hook will be that our actor will be performing in front of a projector so that a video is playing on top of him and so the viewer will have two different things to watch.

We also plan to reference such Hip Hop videos as "Brooklyn Girls" by Charles Hamilton, in this video Charles Hamilton is seen wearing Monster Beat headphones by Dr. Dre throughout and we plan to do the same thing in our video.

Video Draft One

Shooting Schedule.

• We began the shooting schedule for our music video on Monday 18th October in which Zack and Kojo organised to book the theatre with Mr Hitchingson. They then tested the clarity of the projector which was the key tool in regards to our video. When we sorted that out, Myself and Zack proceeded to take pictures and Kojo started editing for our first video draft.

• Tuesday 19th October: We continued editing for our initial video. We also began making ideas toward improving the video concept and what we may change for the second draft.

• Thursday the 21st October the editing for the first draft was completed and was uploaded onto YouTube.

• Saturday the 23rd October we held a photo shoot in order to promote the video.

• Wednesday the 27th October Marcus and I went out and took pictures of possible locations to use in the final version of the video.

• Monday the 1st November we filmed footage that would be used for the images projected onto our actor in the final video.

• Wednesday 3rd November we began to edit the footage that we planned to project and uploaded it to YouTube once it was completed.

• Thursday 4th November Kojo and Zack went to collect the props whilst I and Marcus set up the filming equipment and projector in the school theatre. As a group we spent the whole day in the theatre filming the final version of our music video. I took care of the camera work and filming, Zack handled the the projection and lighting and Marcus handled the clothes & props that Kojo (our actor) would wear. We also filmed a Behind the Scenes video of our filming.

• Friday 5th November we began editing of our final video.

• Monday 8th November to Thursday 11th November Kojo edited the first two verses of our final version of the music video whilst Zack edited the Behind the Scenes video and uploaded it to YouTube. Myself, Marcus and Zack then continued editing the final video.

• Friday 12^{th November} Kojo completed the editing of the final video.

Request for permission from Quest's management

Meeting Up

Samba Theory Look 2

As we began filming for our Second Draft, we decided to have a more Urban Look and dressed our actor in clothes which will be more evident in modern hip-hop videos, as we felt we didn't attract the target audience we initially wanted. We decided we should give him predominately black attire with Red highlights to match the "Beats By Dre" Headphones we used due to how they are a very popular product in Music Videos of all genres.

Samba Theory Look 1

During the first draft of our music, we were still in the process of deciphering our actors look. We experimented with a rather "Urban Geek" look as we discussed, we wanted him to correspond with the mood and tone of the song, In which he appears rather intellectual throughout, so clear glasses and a Blazer with Red Bow Tie added a feel of sophistication and Intellect.

Music Video: Anamatic Storyboard

Textual Analysis of Music Videos. 2

The music video i'm analysing is "Kanye West- Work Out Plan." The video, although not a typical hip-hop style video which glorifies the advertisement of money, it still displays the image of women being the image of perfection in the world of Hip-Hop.

The video is ultimately about women losing weight and with the perfect body, they can be promised with riches and success. Throughout the video several of the girls go through several "workout" stations which are not typical in gyms. They run through stations with names such as "Weave Check" and "Baby Pick-Up" which mocks the women of the black community and common connotations which they are associated with such as the extensive use of weave to highlight their looks and the common theme of black females "single baby mommas" who don't know the father of their child, also appears to be a gag in the video disguised as a workout. This is reinforced by the ultimate prize, being a rich or famous man for the women and here, we see one child mouth the words "daddy" continuing the the direct mocking of the black female community present in America.

The lyrics and visuals link very well together because ultimately, the video follows a linear narrative. we understand that Kanye has devised a work-out plan to get women looking fit and sexy which it will ultimately change their lives. the video follows an overall comical style as we see from the way in which he associates the whole theme around workout video commercials. Although the video is not too 'in your face' regarding the themes of Hip-Hop, it ultimately outlines that slim beautiful women get everthing. There is a part of the song where women are being interviewed regarding the work-out plan and they have before and after photos, with their fat pictures sporting words such as "Alright" but when compared to the after photo which say "Aight!" (colloquialism in America within the African American community) displaying a direct mockery of typical fitness advertisements in America. The women also appear to sport glamourous accessories to accentuate the way the work-out plan has changed their lives.

There are several close ups and Mid-shots throughout the video used on Kanye so that the message is being spread across to the audience successfully. As the video contains severals references to a website and phone number which audience can use, so these bits of editing give it that more believability in regards to the concept of the song.

The video follows a linear narrative in the sense that you get from the beginning to the end with an understanding of the story and concept. However, due to the intertextual referencing used throughout the video, it is not straight forward as it seems, which displays aspects of a concept-based video. The video however, is mainly for comical emphasis of how shallow the Hip-Hop Scene can be at times, particularly with this being Kanye's more "modest" period within the scene.

QuEST - The Samba Thelonious Theory (Lyrics)

Hello my ladies, Hello my fellas
Lets get this money
Ayyy
Q and thelonious (uh uh)
We owning this (uh)
Like you aint knowing this!

So let these stars hit you
Till you fall and lose your balance
Like the roc boy ,mmmm
I open up my mouth
And come out fresher
Than an altoy
That rap shit
Giant pain and silence
Kill that wack sh*t
That 20 pounds of composition
Books up on your mac sh*t
World wide the scriptures
Get me spotted on the atlas
Banging beats
And placing minor competitions in a casket
Dodging traffic, please
You couldn’t hang a rope on oak trees
Reasons why I keep my standards
Higher than a nose bleed,
Higher than a hippy in the 60’s,
Smoking dope weed,
Higher than a Sixer,
Calvin Mercer and his colleagues,
Higher then Pacino sniffin' soda
Watching Low Bleed,
Admire verbal essence as I proceed,
Please just let me breathe.

Hello my ladies, Hello my fellas
Lets get this money
Ayyy
Q and thelonious (uh uh)
We owning this (uh)
Like you aint knowing this!

Im tryna get that Irv Gotti money
Back when rule was sporting head bands,
And dudes shouted murder like they slipped
And see a dead man,
Guess I gotta walk through muddy waters like I’m Red Man
Tryna keep my balance like a headstand,
Come up out that swamp without a stain obtain my land and chuck a deuce up,
Running into strangers who convinced themselves they knew us,
Interviewers interview us,
Staring at the reporters,
Like we basic and oblivious
To shit they try and throw us,
And we laugh,
Chuckles to the mattress with the knife cuts,
Glancing at the models with the nice buts,
Who like us,
Precise cus’,
Fade into the 97’ escort,
Word to my barber,
Cut the check though,
Please just let me breathe.

Hello my ladies, Hello my fellas
Lets get this money
Ayyy
Q and thelonious (uh uh)
We owning this (eh)
Like you aint knowing this!

Time is of the essence
So I always count my blessings
More than mishaps,Rappers still complaining out whats wack inside
Their chit chat,
Acting how a b*tch acts,
Makes me wanna quit rap,
Like Christian Ward did,When Maino hit him with that bitch slap,
Clown face crying through the smiles I tend to force now,
Hoping I don’t run into the act of being brought down,
Notoriety has got me questioning my self worth,
Guess I’m in the state ere all my thoughts are drawn from hell first,
But,
Lessons of living got driven like the artist acts,
Keep a steady hand,
When facing drama,
Calling all the shots,
Homie its hard as rock,
Rolling on a honest block,
Hoping that them liars never breed,
Please just let me breathe.

Textual Analysis of Music Videos.

The Music video I’m analysing is “Eminem- without me”. The video’s director is Joseph Kahn, who is famed for directing other videos for controversial artists like Eminem, such as, Lady Gaga and Brittany Spears so directing such a music videos with several forms of intertextual referencing, was not particularly difficult as it is familiar territory for Kahn. The music video, although not a typical and familiar hip-hop video, still retains conventions of a hip-hop video. Eminem, at times, sports baggy tracksuit wear, whilst sporting some jewellery. He also has his “posse” in the video, showing he is affiliated with a crew, which is normal within the hip-hop scene.

The lyrics and visuals,link very well with each other as the video ultimately follows a linear narrative as although there are several times where the video seems to go off topic, we understand that the whole concept of the video is Eminem, as a super hero, is on a mission to save a child from listening tohis album as he is under-age. As the video at times has a comic book template, it can be forgivenwhen he goes off topic. He goes on to criticise several other political and musical figures who have previously criticised him, stressing to them that no matter what they say, he is here to save hip-hop, hence the whole super hero theme, he associates with this video and also answers why the video is called “Without Me”. This pretty much makes the video straight forward with its concept.

The rhythm used for the song,

is rather face paced which has en

couraged the use of fast editing for the video. This also adds to the comic book theme used making everything snappy and quick like most comic book stories, to add an exciting element to the story. At the end of the video, Eminem’s crew, D12, seem to have captured Bin Laden and there is the use of a famous comical fast-paced "Benny Hill" chase in which Bin Laden proceeds to surrender. This also emphasizes superiority which hip-hop artists always retain but toward women in most cases, showing that Eminem in this case mocks the US government, run by George Bush at the time and shows he has a crew greater than the government and outlines their inability to find Bin Laden which most see as a conspiracy theory.

There are several uses of close-ups on Eminem in this video. This enables him to be the focal point of the video to ensure that his message is successfully being spread to the audience. The video portrays Eminem as a rather idiotic character, as he plays several roles within the video and in some cases, results in himself getting hurt in situations. This video is rather typical of Eminem, as he has several videos which also follow this humorous aspect he has used in this video. A video such as “D12- My Band” is about Eminem being the leader of his group and how he gets all the recognition, and the crew end up turning on him, for some publicity and in that video there are several uses of comedy, such as when the bandimitate being a pop boy band and a Spanish mariachi band. “Without Me” ultimately follows the pattern of comedy Eminem uses in several of his videos.

The video has several intertextual references. He addresses his feuds with artists such as Moby, Chris Kirkpatrick and mocks Dick Cheney and his wife, MTV and the FCC. He also addresses his superiority in the hip-hop scene by drawing comparisons to Elvis Presley and his success in a music art form with a big African-American following.

The video follows a linear narrative in the sense that you get from the beginning to the end with an understanding of the story and concept. However, due to the intertextual referencing used throughout the video, it is not straight forward as it seems, which displays aspects of a concept-based video.

Although the video ultimately has a concept and has a clear agenda to appeal to a younger audience through the comic theme used, the video creates several forms of irony as he tries to avoid a young kid from listening to his album. The video is very light-hearted and has a feel good factor with it and is very humorous. However, there are several references to other artists and celebrity figures, which are quite caricature styled to emphasize for comical effect, that have criticised Eminem, thus making it, quite controversial.

QuEST and Thelonious- The Samba Thelonius Theory MUSIC VIDEO PITCH

The song presented is a melodic feel good jazz inspired hip hop song from young rapper Quest and producer Thelonious with a quick pace witty lyrics and nostalgic sampling.

The mood of song takes you back to memorable moments in music without being a full-blown history lesson; easing in listener as the song proceeds

We feel with the direction of the video should keep up with the tone mood of the song, making it almost visually nostalgic without being overdone; the style of the beat is reminiscent of a classic J-dilla song from the mid 90’s. Listening to the track you can hear classic piano sampling colliding audibly with a 60 – 90 bpm

The song builds up gradually with lyrical content and then occasionally interjects with a old jazz sample which could be reflected in the visuals

In terms of directive styling we researched the work of Quest’s past videos and also the work of new creative directing teams like “creative control” While at the same time looking at concepts presented by other directors like Sanaa Hamri and BLKDMNDS. We enjoyed the pacing and styling of their videos and wish to implicate this in our videos.

We noticed in these videos the director used quick paced edits and a number of focusing and lighting techniques which the direction we’d like to take our video in.

We want to give the Artist, Quest a clear-cut image of a young witty rapper who’s creative and artistic direction coincides with his the direction of music when it comes to his styling and direction of his video.

For this video we want address the topics raised in to the video by the artist via video projection on to the artist him self as he narrates this through the lyrics. We plan to shoot a video in the style of the directors referenced and then project the video on to the artist and rerecord, similar to the techniques used by the band THE XX on the song Crystallized. We’ll include quirky costume changes and clever props that will help communicate things sighted in the lyrics.

The song opens up with a skipping sample and a Mario sound effect, we want to reference this visually On the projection we have an short clip of The video game character Mario jumping into a pipe Following this, the main star of the video jumps up into the scene as if he is emerging from the Mario pipe.

Once this is over, the performance beings; introducing the concept of video. A projection is played on to the stars face as he beings to narrate the lyrics of the song, also we’ll introduce the props for example

“hello my ladies” – The artist would pull out a Barbie doll and throw it away before pulling out a ken doll on the line “hello my fellas” . This would act as an intertextual reference to the rap stars Nikki Minaj and Drake and their Barbie and Ken like personification. For references to money we’d use monopoly money and make it rain down from the sky like the typical convention of many Hip Hop videos; while the rapper continues to narrate and perform, we’ll more visual representations of his lyrics on the project while at the same time allowing him to interact with the things projected. In between verses costume changes will occur

In verse one – The artist talks about him self and how cool he is so we want to reflect this in his costume; dressing him in key brand names that are considered “cool” in hip hop media

In verse two – the artist talks about money and how much he wants to get in his career; so to help reflect this we plan to dress him in more formal attire. Blazer, white shirt maybe even a red bow tie.

In verse three – he talks about the state of hip-hop, and how he feels about it so we considered in old school hip hop attire from the early 90’s

Both videos will be filmed on a Cannon 500D and edited on Imovie and Final Cut pro