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