Locations

We will be using the regal community centre which is located on the corner of Ridgefield road in Cowley as one of our locations for our music video. The main reason we chose this as one of our locations is because its a large and open space that can imitate a number of different locations and it would leave us enough space to have an elaborate action scene. 

After having one filming session at this location, we decided that what we had filmed had been unsuccessful and that we would use this location for another scene (instead of the poker scene and the scene where the character realises his girlfriend has been kidnapped which was due to go at the start of the video). We decided that we would use this location for the fight scene because as i said once already, this location has the ability to imitate a lot of different locations.

This is the set where we filmed all of our performance shots. This location is in the assembly hall of our school. This is a very good location because it has a black background and is also a spacious area to work in. It can also imitate a number of different locations.

Cast and Planning

Ahsan as Justin Timberlake

 Muzzy as JayZ

Steven as Bad Guy #1

Ammer as Bad Guy #2

Ayman as Bad Guys Leader

Dominic as Bad Guys Side Man

Good guy #1 - Ishy Daley
Good guy #2 - Mustafa 'Muzzy' Ibrahim
Good guy #3 - Ammer Mohammed
Girlfriend - Grace

Music Video Deconstruction (No Sleep)

Artists: Sway Ft KSI, Tigger Da Author & Tubes
Song: No Sleep
Genre: Hip Hop
Audience: 16-25
Director: Colin Tilley

"No Sleep" is a song by American rapper Wiz Khalifa, released as the fourth official single from his debut major-label studio album, Rolling Papers. The track features production from Benny Blanco, and was written by Cameron Thomaz and Benjamin Levin. The song was released as a single on August 9, 2011. The song debuted, and peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Wiz Khalifa's second-highest charting song, behind "Black and Yellow". The song was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

This long shot depicts the main artist of the video (Sway) in the middle with all the attention towards him, the other two artists are looking at him and he is the only one looking directly at the camera. He is also holding a megaphone which is used to show that he is the main voice of the song and his voice is above everyone else's in the video. He is also holding a small pocket light which is also used to draw the audiences attention to the main man of the video. All of this contributes to give Sway all the power in this shot and make him seem as the star of the video.

In this shot the attention is diverted to the women's bodies with a panning long/mid shot which starts off showing the women's face and then goes down to show off the women's bodies. This is clearly exploiting the women's sexuality and this is very common occurrence in hip hop music videos. They are also wearing revealing clothing (underwear and bras) to engage the male audience to the video and therefore the song.

This shot is taken in slow motion to depict the action on screen in a dramatic fashion. Someone is doing a backflip at the front of the picture as there is a collection of people partying in the background. The slow motion i used to match the pace of the music and break up the pace of the video to show something of interest (the backflip). They still manage to squeeze in the girls in the back ground which shows that the sexualisation of women is always present and is constantly pushed on the viewer.

Music Video Deconstruction (Fu**in' Problems)

Artists: A$AP Rocky featuring Drake, 2 Chainz & Kendrick Lamar 

Song: Fuckin Problems

Genre: Hip Hop

Directors: Sam Lecca and Clark Jackson

Audience: 16 - 25

"Fuckin' Problems" (edited version titled as "F**kin' Problems") is a song by American hip hop recording artist ASAP Rocky. It was released on October 24, 2012, as the second single from his debut studio album Long. Live. ASAP (2013). The song, co-produced by Noah "40" Shebib alongside Drake under the pseudonym C. Papi, features guest appearances from fellow rappers Drake, 2 Chainz and Kendrick Lamar. On November 27, 2012, the song was officially released to radio. Complex named the song #21 on the 50 best songs of 2012 list.

Most Hip Hop and RnB music video's feature some sort of sexual explicitness. This shot in particular shows a typical woman in a music video with lots of make up and looking right at the camera to tease the audience. They use a close up to clearly show the woman's sexual expressions on her face. This is used to draw mens attention to the video. Women are seen as objects and are sexually exploited in hip hop music video's in particular. They seem to focus more on the women in the video more than the men that are rapping.

The clothes worn by drake on this video is very typical to the type of clothes that most hip hop and R&B artist wear. The Glasses and the Jewellery is the typical look that most of these artists go and the reason for this is to show that they have lots of money because of the expensive jewellery, and the glasses are worn to break the connection with the audience by rejecting eye contact. This distances the performer from the viewer, which puts them at a higher status.  

The sexual exploitation of women are apparent in this music video very often and this is a very clear example of it. This first thing I would like to mention is that she is exposing her body by wearing very little, they did this to make men interested in the video and therefore make the song more memorable for them. Another point I would like to bring up is that the model is covering her face to get rid of her sense of identity and it makes her seem like more of an object to look at except from a human being. 

This shot in particular shows how a particular camera angle can effect the pay a person is portrayed. In this example we get a low camera angle of this rapper which makes him seen dominant and powerful. His body language and hand gestures help to reenforce that. He is stood up strait, with his head held up high, looking slightly down at the camera with his hand held out. All of this comes together to show that he is under control and he is dominating his moment which all comes together to make him seem confidnet. 

Storyboard First Draft A2 MT

Shot practice

We didn't use this first part of our storyboard draft because we felt that the song didn't suit the action and it wasn't dramatic enough. It was just too slow and mellow it was not the right song for what he had planned for the music video. We also had new ideas which lead to changes of the song and main character. The camera angles and shots have been altered to effectively portray the dramatic nature that we are trying to get across in our music video. We have now got a clear idea of what we are going to do on our music video and we will be making a new storyboard to plan our ideas and give us a solid foundation to work on.

Performance practice

The purpose of having this little session to practice the types of shots that we are going to use and how we will be editing the video will come in very useful and will give us some ideas for improvements.

Storyboard

Target audience interviews

Specific Target Audience Interviews

These two interviewees fit our very specific target audience for our music video (young black males in their late teens - 20s) which is why we made a separate video for them.

Song & video ideas

The song choice was something that we discussed quite a lot,  we first chose the song 'Find your love' by Drake but we decided that it would not match the pace or intensity of the video that we had planned to do from the start.

We took inspiration from the 'Hold on we're going home' music video by Drake to create a hostage situation where the damsel in distress is saved by the hero. When we decided on this video idea all it came down to was finding a song that would suit the video perfectly.

We decided that the song 'Holy grail' by Jay-Z ft. Justin Timberlake was a perfect fit because of the pace of the music and the lyrics has some connotations in our video idea.

Feminist views on Blurred Lines Music Video

Feminists definitely recognize that music videos are a source of women being sexually exploited and it has become increasingly popular and common within hip hop and pop music videos. A clear example of this would be ‘Blurred Lines’ Robin Thicke music video. The models in this video wear revealing clothing and they act in a sexual manner, they also have an explicit version of their video, which depicts these women topless, clearly revealing their breasts. Some feminist’s see this video in a negative way, they say that it is just portraying women as objects to be looked at and that the men in the video dominate the women. However the Director of the music video (Diane Martel) which defends her video and she stated that the women were in control, calling it  ‘Sex positive feminism’. The way she backed this up was by stating "Blurred Lines played with the "male gaze" while being entertaining. The naked, sexy women are dominant, the men are submissive.” She mention’s the male gaze, which was a theory that Laura Mulvey.

Blurred Lines Media project

This is our Blurred Lines music video replica. The reason we chose to replicate this video is because we felt that it was a simple and popular video that we could replicate effectively with the resources we have. We had 3 good actors as well that played the part of the characters in the video perfectly.

Evaluation

Replicating a music video such as 'Blurred Lines' was not easy and it required good organisation to get the whole cast together for filming and to get all of the scenery set up. Replicating a music video was a good chance to get experience for making our own music video. I also got us familiar with the kind of shots which are common in music videos and we also got the chance to see what we should do on our music video and what we shouldn't. For example, we have decided not to have people outside our group act in our video because they will not be as committed and they may be a liability to our group. On the other hand I feel that we should continue playing the music in the background as the actors perform so that they can lip sync accurately. It has certainly prepared us nicely for our main task.

The replication process of this video did not go smoothly at all because of the lack of organisation and the abundance of actors available when filming. It was very difficult to have the whole cast together when filming because of the lack of free time available. Due to this problem we had to replace certain shots with fillers and replace certain actors which then resulted in the video not looking like a very successful replica. However I do believe that the acting was all round great and the lip syncing and editing was perfect however some of the shots and the scenery did not match the video which was disappointing.

The changes I would make would definitely be the organisation because we found it difficult to find a time where everyone was available and we couldn't find a location where we could continuously keep filming in. This caused problems because we had to keep changing location. The lighting was also a aspect which needed better controlling because of the changes of location, certain locations had better lighting than others which caused a continuity error  The filming could have also been improved because some of the shots are not accurately similar to the actual music video and other shots were just poorly filmed and out of focus. When we film our own music video, I will personally ensure that all the shots are well filmed. From the feedback we received we realised that the costumes in some of the shots do not accurately relate to the actual music video, to be specific Mustafa changes costumes numerous times throughout the video. Continuity errors is something that we have to actively avoid in our future music video because it could take people away from the experience.

Blurred Lines Props

We've created one of the props for our video which was the dice but we haven't created a Haystack or a  dice and goat but can we decided to use other props to imitate the props mentioned.

The equipment we used include a Tripod, a EOS 550D Canon camera and stage lighting also a laptop so the actors can go along with the video itself.

We also got access to white sheets to put in the background courtesy of one of our group members and D.T teachers who provided us with fabric to put up against the wall.

Blurred Lines Parody Story Board