Would you rather watch a music video from the genre: Narrative? Performance? Dance? Animation? Special effects? Browser?
What's something you think would be cool to see from a music video??
What is a genre you would rather not listen to??
What is a Music video you didn't like?
Why did you not like this video?
How long do spend listening to music a week (Approx) ??
How much of this is watching music videos ??
Pitch notes to go over for video:
Hi, my name is Hunter look, and I attend City Impact church school, where I take the media studies course and this is me creating my pitch for our advanced portfolio music video of the song "what other people say" By Demi Lovato and Sam Fischer.
Genre:
The genre we are using for the music video will be following a narrative and slight performance aspect and the actual genre of the song is classified as a pop song but it is quite more down buzzed and more of a slow and depressing song which contrasts the often upbeat and buzzing songs depicted for a pop song.
Characters:
For our talent also known as our characters or actors, we will have 8-10 characters and of these, we will have 4 main characters. These 4 will be Phoebe who will be our talent for Demi Lovato and will be lip-syncing her lines and acting accordingly to these lyrics. Our second talent is going to be acted by Ethan scharneck who will be lip-syncing and acting out the lyrics for Sam Fischer. Our final 2 Talents are Armone Gravenstein and Tracy Watson who will be acting as phoebe/ Demi Lovato as a kid and her mother.
Storyline and symbolism:
The story will follow a generally linear path with some cuts of the main character's childhood edited in between as well as scenes of phoebe singing on the stage by herself and later Ethan joining her later on. It will start as a scene where phoebe will start by singing on the stage with one spotlight on her symbolizing the darkness around her and how she is lonely, it will then switch to shots of Armone and the mum reading the bible and having good times together. This will show how Demi Lovato originally started out as a kid with good intentions and a sweetheart but the world and drugs had changed her perspective on life causing her to feel alone and depressed. The rest of the music video will kind of follow this theme in a Narrative order to show her sadness through visual expression. It will then go into how Ethan almost feels the same way and comes into the song like he is almost coming into her life as well as a person who understands where she is coming from and is able to help her and show her she is not alone. This will be accompanied by the fact he will be joining the shots she is in and also the 2 separate spotlights on the stage for both of them will eventually join together as well as them moving closer together. In the end, we will be adding a montage of younger kids all happy and smiling and as they are older it can show them either as depressed or as happy, showing the different paths these people can take.
Roles each person will be undertaking:
Grace Watson will be directing this music video, Levi Wijohn will be our Cameraman, Kayla Lockington will be focusing on lighting, and Hunter Look, myself will be working with the sound.
Target audience:
Our main target audience would be people of either I-gen or gen-Z. We would want this to be targeted to a slightly older audience as a younger generation/ age group is possibly not mature enough to grasp these concepts and it may actually be damaging to them and we would not want to influence them in any bad and detrimental ways.
This is my pitch for our music video, thank you for listening and I hope it gave you a bit of insight into what our music video is about.
Music Video Genre: Narrative/ slight hints of performance.
"What Other People Say" Demi Lovato & Sam Fischer:
Thought when I grew up I would be the same
As the ones who gave me my last name
I would not give in, I would not partake
In the same old drugs, everyone else takes
I'm better than that, I'm better than that
I'm living my life so I go to heaven and never come back
But look where I'm at, look where I'm at
I'm livin' the life that I said I wouldn't, I wanna go back
I used to call my mom every Sunday
So she knew her love wasn't far away
But now I'm all messed up out in LA
'Cause I care more about what other people say
I used to not take chances with God's name
But it's been so long since I last prayed
And now I'm all messed up and my heart's changed
'Cause I care more about what other people say
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
'Cause I care more about what other people say
I wish I could shelter the boy I knew
From the constant hell, I'd put him through
'Cause I'm all grown up and I'm black and blue
I could use some tape, I could use some glue
I'm better than that, I'm better than that
I should be livin' my life so I go to heaven and never come back
I used to call my mom every Sunday
So she knew her love wasn't far away
But now I'm all messed up out in LA
'Cause I care more about what other people say
I used to not take chances with God's name
But it's been so long since I last prayed
And now I'm all messed up and my heart's changed
'Cause I care more about what other people say
Yeah, yeah, yeah
'Cause I care more about what other people say
Thought when I grew up
I would be the same as the ones who gave me my last name
I used to call my mom every Sunday
So she knew her love wasn't far away (Far away)
But now I'm all messed up out in LA (Out in LA)
'Cause I care more about what other people say
I used to not take chances with God's name (God's name)
But it's been so long since I last prayed (Since I last prayed)
And now I'm all messed up and my heart's changed
(And my heart changed)
'Cause I care more about what other people say
(What other people say)
Yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah
'Cause I care more about what other people say
Talent and characters:
Phoebe Armitage: She would be Singing Demi Lovato's Part in the song, we chose her, as she has that kind of look kind of like Demi Lovato in a few ways. She would be doing a few different things, from Singing in the sanctuary in a dark room to add that performing feel, but she would also be acting to the lyrics, as it is still a narrative genre we are trying to get across.
Ethan Scharneck: We wanted to use Ethan as it contrasts how the original singer is white, also contrasting the common thought that white people are a common occurrence for pop songs and you often see darker-skinned people in hip hop and rap. This will challenge the social ideologies and show that the common way is not the only way to do things. This could also be done with the contrast of Phoebe and Ethan as phoebe is white and Ethan is a darker shade of color. He would be doing pretty much what Phoebe is doing but slightly less as Phoebe would be the center of the attention and main character that the story is revolving around.
Marwan Bashir: Since we were unable to get Ethan as he did not have free enough time we have decided to get one of my other friends, Marwan Bashir who looks similar to Ethan and we could still play around with the same conventions.
Characters:
Phoebe: She is playing Demi Lovato and we wanted to show her as a teen/ adult who has gone through a lot just like what the song represents, she will often be depicted with running mascara and messy hair to show the symbolism of her crying and acting depressed. Also, there will be shots of her as a younger kid who will most likely be played by Armone Gravenstein where in contrast she will happy and full of joy with her mother, possibly played by Tracy Watson.
Marwan: We also wanted to play around with race and generalizations in this music genre as we often see only white men in pop songs but we would be contrasting this by having a colored actor. Marwan would be playing Sam Fischer and would be also depicted as sad and down but since he would only be depicted as a feature he would come in much later and would not have a younger counterpart to play the role like phoebe being played as a younger character by Armone.
This is the look we are going for with phoebe:
And this is the look we are going for Marwan:
Brainstorm:
Mise en scene/setting: In our music video, we will have 3 locations that will have things going on. In our first location, this would be graces house, we would be filming in either a bedroom or the lounge so that we would have something for the actors to sit on while they are reading the bible, the bible would be there as a reference to what is happening in the song, which is talking about how she hasn't talked to God or read the bible in a while giving a contrast of what's being said, to what's happening. The next location we would be setting up would be the sanctuary stage. We would set it up so that it is almost pitch black or otherwise quite dark, but we would only have one spotlight, this would be to emphasize her loneliness and how she feels about everything going on, we would also have a microphone, and possibly a microphone stand which would show the fact that at this point in the song it would be switching to a more narrative kind of look. The other place we would film is on a lonely country road, possibly somewhere by graces house, which would just make it a little easier for filming reasons, also we would have a car in this scene as we would use this as something for Phoebe to sit in to make it look like she is sad and contemplating things in an open place where no one will really come past, this will allow us to really draw out her loneliness and make it have an even sadder feel to the whole song.
Sound and Music: Since this is a music video, music and sound is a massive aspect of our video, although it's a big part, we don't actually have a very big role in the choice of sound and music as we will be taking the song from someone else and will have very little to no ability to use other sounds.
Mood and tone: Because the song we are using has so much emotion etc... mood and tone come pretty easy and allows us to add a real emotional mood and tone to this. We will be able to mostly show this through Phoebe, but we have realized we can actually play around with 2 different moods in this video, allowing us to play around with a younger and happier side as well as an older and more depressed side to the singer (Phoebe). We would use different aspects in the different scenes to show out the different moods. In the scenes of the young girl where there is a much happier mood we would use a much brighter light to show the bright and happy life she is living, also, we would show her being around people to show she has that support and a nice life where she is surrounded by loving and caring people. This would contrast to the scenes when she is older, the mood would be sad and melancholic, this would be shown through aspects like all the dark lighting and how life is dark and depressing at the moment, also there will be very little to nobody around in her scenes besides the other guy which she will not see as they will almost be invisible to each other. This having no one within the shot while she is in a scene will give us the feeling that she is lonely and empty on the inside and doesn't have anyone to turn to for help.
Symbolism: In our music video there is not too much symbolism, but there is a good amount. With the younger girl, there will be a bible in the scene which will be linked to the words, showing how she used to be involved with the bible when she was younger, but not anymore. Also, the running mascara will symbolize sadness, giving off the feel that phoebe had been crying and that her life is almost only filled with sadness now.
Editing: Editing wise since our music video is about a sadder topic we will be able to slow the film down a bit. We will be adding some slo-mo into some of the shots to draw out and make the video more intense in a sense. Also, there will be more fades rather than quick cuts as it is not a fast-paced kind of song. Another thing we could add in the editing process is probably color gradients. This would a darker feel to the darker scenes. We could also add a possible gold/yellow hinted tint on the happy scenes to give that extra happiness-looking effect to it.
I have chosen to talk about women in hip hop and the dismantling of social norms in the music industry...
The women of hip hop:
Cardi B's new song invasion of privacy seems to be one of the most influential songs written by a women rap artist in this era, but this is all because of the enormous and massive legacy passed on to her by past women hip hop rappers that gave a very big job of living up to. The first time we saw and heard about women rapping and getting involved with the hip hop culture was back in the '80s when hip hop was still very much in the shadows and in the underground. In these eras, the women were often referred to as B-girls or female breakdancers. This lead to eventually allowing B-girls to pick up the mic in a crew, as well as the introduction of crews this also brought in the introduction of rivalry between crews meaning you had to be the best to get any cred. A big name early on for women in hip hop was Roxanne Shante` who was known to say what was on her mind and didn't apologize for it. She would end up challenging whole crews saying what she needed to say. As a battle MC, she believed she could step up to the plate and battle anyone any time anywhere without the fact of fearing anyone and would diss whole crews, she just said whatever was on her mind. Other noticeable MC's were Sha-rock and MC-LYTE which also pushed the boundaries for women in hip hop. Rah Digga said, "you really had to rhyme like the guys to even be taken seriously". Over time, however, the overuse of the female battle rap that had once been popular just became overused and out of date, until eventually, Queen Latifa came into the picture to change that up. As the '90s rolled around female hip hop artists became a sort after thing, with record labels all after them to introduce something new. During this era, we saw big names like Missy Elliot, Lauryn Hill, and Foxy Brown, and many more, but biggest of all Lil Kim adding a new look for the women and bringing in some of the most explicit lyrics yet to be heard from females. This actually played a massive role in how cardi b raps today as this is where she decided to take her inspiration from. Although battle rap had become less popular than it once was, Lil Kim and Foxy Brown brought this back causing big disputes eventually even ending in violence. After the '90s tho there was actually a decline in the number of female rappers until the surfacing of Nicki Minaj which came with the same style, lyrical prowess, and hypersexuality that Lil Kim came with.
Dismantling gender roles in Hip-hop:
The idea of hyper-masculinity and the idea that you have to be hard' has been one of the most common and biggest staples of hip-hop ever since it started up. Back in 1990 when "Your struggling" by boogie down productions was released, it attacked black men who displayed feminine qualities and used homophobic terms and slang to bring them down, it often comes through in a lot of our most favorites including Tupac, Migos, biggie smalls, Ice cube/ N.W.A, etc...etc... This has forced a change in rap with people rapping almost how they view gender in a more gender-fluid light, making their lyrics more to what feels right rather than the sometimes harsh stereotypical views and ideas. You see this with a lot more vulnerability in some newer rappers' lyrics, for example, Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator, and Frank ocean.
Here are some articles on the change women have brought to hip hop and how they have created their own style and image:
1.) An article on how women are being accepted in the hip hop genre:
These articles talk about how women have had a massive role in the new change of direction that hip hop is taking and how the norms of men being the dominant figures in the hip hop genre are slowly being dismantled and allowing for Women, such as Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Kehlani, etc... have started to come to the forefront of Rap and Hip Hop and allowing for more female artists to show what they can really do and men aren't the only people who can make a splash in the music industry, especially Hip hop.
3 Women Hip Hop artists from 3 different genres:
The 3 artists I have chosen are Roxxane Shante`, Missy Elliot, and Cardi B. These 3 Women were 3 different artists from the 3 eras of the '80s, '90s, and now present 2000s. They have all changed and influenced each generation to come in different ways and have brought in what they have wanted to change in the Genre of Hip-Hop.
Roxanne Shante`:
Roxanne Shante` was well known for the way she started the craze of battle rap among women, with some of her most famous music being songs where she is talking smack to other artists, even going as far as to challenge men in these battle raps who she would start, and would almost win all of because of intense and great skill, not being afraid to tell her mind and let others know what she wanted them to know.
In this music video, we can see her showing her mind and not really holding back as she doesn't mind what others think. We can also see how her music videos are very simple and chilled out without lots of things going on and lots of backup dancers or intense lighting etc... it is simply just her rapping to the beat with cuts of narrative but a mostly performance-based music video.
Missy Elliot:
Missy Elliot was also a well-known woman Hip-Hop artist from the '90s known for her change in the hip-hop genre for women in a massive way, known for her crude and crass lyrics in which she was often challenged on and ridiculed as well as often not being accepted by the media for this change although she was very popular with the public and adding her own spin to the genre and making it into her own.
One of her more known and popular songs, 'Work it', was a hit as well as changing the whole aspect to music videos with technological advancements allowing her to add to her style with elaborate and different styles. She pioneered the way for new animation to her music videos as well as choreographed dance routines and a different style overall to her music which eventually became the new normal for a music video for women and even men in the genre of Hip-Hop, Rap, and even R&B.
Cardi B:
One of the most influential women in Hip-Hop, not just in the music industry but also outside of it adding to fashion aspects and social aspects and being a topic of discussion for many media outlets, as well as her being a massive public figure that many teenage girls and even young girls to look up to showing them they can just be themselves and not bow down to social systems that confine them to not allow them to express themselves in the way they want.
Cardi B's new song, 'Up', just newly released was one of the many massive hits she has produced. This Music video, however, also not being the only one, is shown in a classic Cardi B image with the whole very revealing clothing and crass and crude lyrics, this may be her trying to represent that society shouldn't confine women to a certain set of rules for their clothing and how to speak. This was also brought forth by her interest in Missy Elliot from a young age, with her saying she was a big influence on her now style and image, and how she wanted to present herself in her music and style choice. Along with this, she is also often depicted in her videos with a lot of men and women dancing as well as a lot of risque dancing and moves to give off a very sexual vibe and again changing the whole idea and image of women in Hip-Hop now in this generation.
Pretty much just the Band/ performer with clips of them performing the song to something like an audience could even be done.
2.) Story:
Where a narrative plays out to the music which is behind the video. If done well can add a visual boost to the music.
3.) Special effects:
Use of After effects and Cinema 4D. This genre's effect is to draw the audience into the music.
4.) Dance:
Artist and others dance to the music in different and various locations
5.) Animation:
Adds a different feel to the video drawing viewers into almost another reality. This can also allow bands and artists to show sudo realistic representation of the lyrics.
6.) Browser:
Allows music videos to become interactive with new browser functions.
Pretty much just the Band/ performer with clips of them performing the song to something like an audience could even be done.
2.) Story:
Where a narrative plays out to the music which is behind the video. If done well can add a visual boost to the music.
3.) Special effects:
Use of After effects and Cinema 4D. This genre's effect is to draw the audience into the music.
4.) Dance:
Artist and others dance to the music in different and various locations
5.) Animation:
Adds a different feel to the video drawing viewers into almost another reality. This can also allow bands and artists to show sudo realistic representation of the lyrics.
6.) Browser:
Allows music videos to become interactive with new browser functions.
My name is Hunter Benjiman look I am taking A2 media this year previously finishing up AS level media. I am 17 years old in Cambridge year 13 and achieved a C grade average in my AS media course work and exam paper.
How was last year:
I found last year interesting and quite a good experience learning new things and getting to know all the new sides to media previously unknown to me.
What I hope for this year:
I would really like to be able to increase my average of a C and bring that average up to a B. Also, I would like to really be able to get the most out of the course and be able to increase my skills in these areas.
In this blog, it was at first a little challenging to find things and the labels were a little bit tricky to navigate but it made sense after a while and I overtime was able to find out what was happening.
This blog I came across was very easy to navigate, really good labels that were very instructional for me to find whatever I was looking for there was also a very nice layout/ front page giving us an easy overall view of the blog.
This blog was even more confusing than the first one with no labels and one flow on feel with no breaks ups in the posts. This made it very challenging to read it all as you could not even find anything unless you scrolled down for a while.
A common theme that is shown thru a lot of the blogs is that there is a lot of planning that goes into each one, as well as quite a few PowerPoints.
Genres:
The genre I am thinking of using for my own music video is a rap genre/ Hip hop genre which in that case I will be using quick cuts shaky shots and dark lighting etc... the clothes most likely used will be more casual wear, jumpers, shorts, track pants, sneakers, t-shirts, almost streetwear, most likely jewelry, sometimes guns knives, etc...
Rap/Hip hop:
Rap is a massive genre that has come up just recently and is coming into the light now with many followers. Because rap is up and coming massively at the moment different countries are expressing their style through music videos and not just the song itself and giving it its own touch and flavor.
America:
This Is a song by a famous artist Roddy Ricch which shoes off the use of flip transitions a lot where the camera is twisted and shaken and flipped in between transitions. Also, we see the use of a slowed-down effect and the use of reversed film to exaggerate and draw out the moment making it more powerful. There is also a lot of use of dark film like at night filming to add an unknowing feel to it.
England
In this British drill rap song by up and coming artist big jest, you will see most transitions are done by quick clean cuts which give it a real nice choppy hard feel to it. You also see that a lot of the lyrics come up on the screen as it is said to almost reinforcing the hard-hitting important lyrics.
Ideas of songs I wanted to use for the music video:
Costumes/clothing worn & props:
In hip-hop culture, the type of clothing worn is quite often a variety of colors but most of blues, reds, black, brown, grey, and white. The usual is also that they wear a lot of bling, chains, pendants, iced out watches, bracelets, earrings, rings, and grills as well ( a grill is a silver/gold with diamonds encrusted in, this is then molded to the teeth of the person and can be pulled in and out whenever). The clothing is often baggy, often cargo pants and baggy shorts, sometimes they also wear bandanas as well fashionable tactical vests. Shoe wise they wear a lot of big brands E.g. Nike, Jordans, etc... these shoes have been common for a while looking cool while being comfortable as well as being easy. As well as all these clothing items they often, not always, have items like guns knives, and cool cars to bring across some of the feels of their lives.
type of clothing often worn:
Iced out chains common styles often with pendants on:
Glock 19, gun shown often in music videos with rap:
Jordan 1's, shoes often worn:
AF1, another common shoe:
A tactical vest is often only worn for style reason:
