Test Shots

We have booked the Camera for todays lesson to carry out some test shots using the green and white room. The white room is being used to test close up shots and lighting, whereas the green room is being tested for animation aswell. If we have time we are going to test the black room aswell.


RESULTS

From our test shots we have learnt some techniques for when we are filming in the media studio.
- Using aritificial lights and standing further away from the green screen will remove the green flare of the light bouncing off the walls onto the performers face, however we can remove this in final cut as well.
- Most importantly we can't lean on the walls as the shadows created will not be able to be removed in final cut when we change the background colour.

...JG...

Student Music Video Analysis

We chose the video by group -

S1-17 Just A Dream

Camerawork
Variety of shots from different angles. With repeated shots to show the changing situation through the video. Also used effective zooms to and shot ranges, particularly close ups to show emphasis on the female artist. Framing within the shots is generally with the female singer central to the framing focusing attention on her, as it would be her video. Good use of slow panning to make some still shots more interesting and effective with the establishing shot at the beginning of the rapper involved in the video. For improvements they maybe could of included a few different locations.

Editing
There was some good editing used with occasional fade transitions that fit well with the music. The cuts also fit well with the song to make it look professional and make it more interesting to watch. The choice of having so many shots of the girl in it fits well with the music style and genre whereby the focus is on making the singer look good to the audience.

Setting
The setting for the video is appropriate for the genre and some different locations are used to make it more interesting to watch. The lighting in the video looks really professional for the indoor parts of the video, however the outdoor shot does seem a bit bright for them walking together away from the camera. The white screen used is a nice setting as being typical for the female singer genre.

Performance
The lip syncing was good throughout and both performers acted their roles quite well and fitted the style of music that they were performing too. However it did look a bit like the girl was reading the words off a sheet of paper at some point.

Genre Conventions
The video portrays a typical love song by a female pop singer. Including lots of shots of a relationship and the singer to help sell their music. Throughout the girl is putting make-up on and checking she looks good which also fits with the genre of female pop/rnb singers. Typical narrative of the girl not having her boyfriend anymore which fits to the lyrics and music genre.

...All The Group...

Animatic Sequence

lyrical

A problem we have encountered is that the song is only just out and their are no lyrics available on the web so we are working them out ourselves. Here they are:

CHORUS
police and theives in the street
fightin the nation with their
guns and ammunition
guns and ammunition

VERSE 1
late night roam the streets like a fox on the road
16 experiment a little heroine and coke
room full of coke cans syringes
posted over the whole web po po kick the door off the hinges
6 kids all livin in a flat
no jobs no dough every dealer on his back
mums on her own drunk when she comes home
days on endz sleeps out and dont phone
daddy dont exist such a cliche these days
so he looks up to the gs thieves
whatever he makes gs take and call it a clean slate
till one day he said he had a job for him paid
and said all u had to do is wait
outside one crib and tell me when the bredda comes in
and who the breddas with and if the shit goes to plan
u can earn a jip, thats wat i call quick
though but what he didnt know the g was a snitch
and the breddas in the crib were sellin guns and cuttin bricks
and he just phoned the g when the bredda rolled in and told him
hes with about 5 man and 1 chick
and next thing u know theres armed police at the crib
sirens so loud hes trying to read the feds lips
and what sounded like put your hands behind your head
was actualy dont fuckin move and we wont have to shoot

CHORUS 2
police and theives in the street
fightin the nation with their
guns and ammunition
police and theives in the street
fightin the nation with their
guns and ammunition
guns and ammunition
guns and ammunition

(PAUSE)

VERSE 2
Look how many youts got guns on dem bussin dem
i aint seen the back of der hed cant see the front of em
nuff'a dem
itz time to fuck wit dem
yea i got 99 problems and londons one of em
youts have lost lives from stratford to moss side
and all they care about is if theyve lost stripes
i aint no preacher mc
im feelin mc's
but dig a little deeper like dynamite
an i no i say sum bullshit in moments of anger
and its not cool for the fan club
just the other day we were up late discussin iraq
over a glass of champagne how fukked is dat
i aint celebrateing shit
if i aint usein my status to make a change
i aint every making hits
a wide man told me k listen
if you wanna fly like an eagle you cant fly with pigeons
an eagle i am for a reason i am where i am behind
i supposed to make it outtta eastham when theres

CHORUS 3
(Police and theifs in the street)
and its easy to end up in a police van when der
fighting the nation wit der
guns and ammunition
(check check check check)
Police and thiefs in the street
(check check)
Fighting the nation wit their guns and ammunition
(ga ga ga guns and ammunition)

OUTRO
Chu guns and ammunition
ga guns and ammunitions
fighting the nation
wit der
guns and ammunition
chu police and thieves in the street bang bang an it aint nuttin sweet
belive peace

..SC.&.JG..

Developing Ideas

We have found some inspiration for our black and white idea and found this video on youtube in which we feel is fantastic in the way it looks in an artistic form:



The part in this video with the police animations is what we would like to do simulary aswell with the part of the lyrics being animated over the screen and feel this would go well with our chorus.

We initially broke down the track into different parts for example the chorus's and when the tempo of the song change's as shown in the picture below:



As you can see:
-The first 15 seconds is the intro where only the guitar is playing.
-Then from 15 seconds to 31 seconds is the first chorus
-Then from 31 seconds to 1 minute 45 seconds is the first verse.
-Then the second verse is from the 1 minute 45 seconds to 2 minutes and 20 seconds at this point the tempo of the trak significantly speeds up.
-The second verse finish's at 3 minute's and thirteen seconds then the last verse comes in after ths verse the music slows down again.
-At this 3 minutes forty one point the outro begins and the track ends at 4 minutes 14 seconds.










We studied some of kano's previous video's and came up with some good ideas from this one in particular:



We wanted to do something like this for our verse's however as the tempo of the track significantly changes between the two verses we are going to have the first verse with slow movements and slow cuts as with the second its all going to be fast to represt the track.


We then strated to

Final Choice/Initial Ideas

We have decided to use the Kano track but are going to use our ideas from the other video aswell.

TEACHER PITCH FEEDBACK

Ideas show understanding of conventions and limitations of working in different genres.

Think more carefully about why the band may have chosen their original video

Look at more videos to develop your ideas further and think specifically about integrating performance, narrative and non-narrative elements

We found a video for the Shout Out Louds song on youtube. The look they have gone for in their video is quite stylised and has many abstract effects used such as the phone floating in the air. The main idea in the video is to show people the band and create a surreal performance environment to make the video look odd. The black and white effect in the white room fits the video style as the costumes of the performers are black and makes them stand out and creates the stylised effect. Overall i think we could included the idea of their video into ours, but go further and expand it to make it more entertaining.

Here is the video embeded

Alternative Track/Video

With the arrival of Rhys to our group we have talked about our original ideas concerning the Kano track 'Fightin The Nation' and it isnt looking good.

we have listened to the other tracks on our cd and have heard a tune we think we culd work with to produce a music video for , the new track is track 13 Titled Please, Please,Please by the Shout out louds, 5 piece Swedish indie band.

the song itself is about a Girl, from the lyrics we can see it has somethng to do with a lad who once had a girl but obviously she left , hence the Please Please Please lyrics, we have thought of various idea we could perhaps encorporate within our video if we choose to do this video.

The lyrics Of The Song - Please, Please, Please

Long time ago
The times we had were so and so
It was the worst date of your life
So I called your home your so-called father was on the phone
he wasn't easy to ignore

But we're all happy cause the streets they're always there for us
and it's quite scary when you wake up in the same old clubs
It's getting darker and I know this time wasn't meant for us
So won't you please please please come back to me

But yesterday when i saw your eyes in a black haze
You didn't even know my name
So I walked on pretending that you still belong
but it will never be the same no more

But we're all happy cause the streets they're always there for us
and it's quite scary when you wake up in the same old clubs
It's getting darker and I know this time wasn't meant for us
So won't you please please please come back to me

It's like a picture of a loved one in disguise or
it's like finding something pretty in a jar of lies and
if you want just hide your eyes behind your hair
but you can't see me then you can't find me anywhere

But we're all happy cause the streets they're always there for us
and it's quite scary when you wake up in the same old clubs
It's getting darker and I know this time wasn't meant for us
So won't you please please please come back to me

Come back to me
Please please please
Please please please


Ideas for video-

The song is about losing a girl and wanting her back so we thought we could do it based around that thought, we would have the lead singer (actor ) lip singing along and have a few shots of his face perhaps as he sings about her leaving , then we could mix in a few shots of the girl and when they were together , cutting back and forth of these ideas we feel would look good and help to show the meaning of the song, we think it is important to include a girl in this video , we do not have one in our group but were sure we can get hold of one.location would probably be cambridge , in the pretty parts :)

..WC..&..JG..

Further Ideas

I have been thinking of a few ideas to put into the Kano video. Looking into the lyrics closer the first verse depics a narrative of a story.

As we are not going to show direct violence, i considered using children dressed in typical childrens cops and robbers outfits to act out some parts of the narrative. The biggest problem with this is we don't know any children to play the roles.

My second idea looks into the lyrics in which Kano describes both police and thieves in a similar bad way both "fighting the nation". Therefore I had an idea of the police chasing a criminal and eventualy as the policeman finds the criminal he has shot and removes his hood/balaclava finds that the criminal has the same face as the policeman. Bit cheesy maybe yes.

JG

Kano - Fightin The Nation..... Our track

Fightin’ The Nation finds Kano commenting on Iraq, police fights and general western hypocrisy against the backdrop of an original piece from Junior Murvin’s reggae classic Police & Thieves. The acoustic guitar is particularly effective in allowing Kano’s flow to take centre stage.

Our ideas are simple yet satisfy what we feel the song is about , it will probably be filmed in the city , which at times can be busy with people rushing through day to day business,this in a way shows how people get by their lives yet many do not take the time to think about these events and views brought up in lyric, of course we will include some footage of someone sitting with an acoustic playing in the streets or in another location , this will add the feel to the song and help it on its way , cutting in bits of lip-sync in our video would be good because in a way the whole song revolves around the artist telling us of stories and the goings on in london, one downfall I suppose is that we will not film in london and will probably result in using cambridge town as our main location however if we film it properly it shouldn’t look out of place.

Other ideas consist of shots of police , maybe a few of surveillance camera of police patrolling or scenes of theft, just different scenes in different spots in the city to show different lives, different stories and it should flow nicely with the lyrics, having listened to the song many times over we can see that many things are brought up and it would be nice to get little bits of each included in our video , we will probably not include guns and knives and fighting in the video as looking at kano’s other work we can see that his focus’ are not about the guns and violence but the stories behind them, he tells stories of things that have happened in his home town , having guns blazing ever where in our video would just not fit in with the story that the song tells, in a way it would probably ruin it to have scenes of violence and aggressive nature, the song is not like that , it is more peaceful yet tells story of the above mentioned.

--

Here is Kano's Myspace , which includes many pieces of his work such as songs and videos, there are pictures and information about him there too, this will be useful later on in the project when we really need to put ourselves in his shoes.

www.myspace.com/kano679

-

The track we are going to be making a video for is on Kano's New album , Titled 'London Town' it contains a variety of styles and Kano works with many different artists in achieving this , a good site which has lots of information on his new album , to be released later this month, is

http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Music-Review/kano-london-town

Which talks through most of the tracks on the album and has information about them including who he worked with and the main themes of each track, it is very useful and has lots of information we may need to look at later on in the project.


..WC..

Group : T2 49

Song : Kano - Fightin' the Nation

Members : Sabil, Jack and Will

Details regarding Grime Artist Kano :

www.myspace.com/kano679

Due to the song being unofficially launched...lyrics are witheld until its release date, september 17th 2007

Fightin' the Nation is not Kano's original track, it was once sung by reggae artist Junior Murvin, Kano's version includes the original chorus however he wrote his own lyrics so that it appeals to todays generation.


Director - William
Cameraman - Jack
Lead Singer/Actor - Sabil
Editors - Everyone

Ideas:

Choose to be filmed in a busy street.
some shots on college hill looking up to give an empowerment effect.
Clips of events going on day to day.

..SC..