Ndubz

Ndubz first music video called 'I Swear' is also another video we have looked at and analysed.
The video also starts with the band name maybe we should start off with Imads name 'Krazy' and move it along, maybe not start with him straight away we should probably start with a location shot or a variation of location shots. Ndubz first video seems to have a lot of voyeurism and which maybe we should have in our video as the genre 'hip hop' includes a lot of voyeurism.

 I have found that this video is also showing a story through the lyrics, which allows the audience to know exactly whats going on and understand the lyrics through the video.
The video isn't all as serious as the lyrics it's pretty comical and unrealistic which is a very good idea for their 1st music video as it would be very memorable to the audience which will make them come around to like them and remember their names making them famous much quicker.

Shooting Day 1

This is taken on top of a roof, overlooking Canary Wharf. One of our friends live around the area and gave us permission to film on the roof top of his building. The outfit he's wearing is one of the chosen outfits. The hat, jacket, chain and the watch is usually worn in a typical R&B/Hip-Hop Music Video. Lighting had to be used as there was no lights on top of the roof, so we had to buy a portable torch. It was quite difficult as Imad couldn't see anything with the light shining in his eyes, so he had to close his eyes at times and we had to position the light at and angle so it makes it easier for him to see. We did get a few complaints from being on the roof top because the music was being played through a speaker and it was disturbing the local residents as it was too loud, so we had to play it through our phone speakers, which made it pretty difficult for Imad as he couldn't hear the music and had lost the beat a couple of times but once we had figure out a way of getting the phone closer to Imad without getting it in the shot. I believe things just started to fall in place and the filming just ran smoothly.

Krazy- Down for me

There are many students in our college who produce their own music, so what we decided to do was hold auditions and chose the best musician for our music video. From having many talented students come along we decided to use Imad Ahmod’s track ‘Down for me’ as we thought it was one of the most appropriate tracks for the century we live in and after posting the auditions on face book his was the one that had the most positive audience feedback.

We interviewed Imad and asked him to answer a few question on why he decided to make this song as we thought we should know a bit more about the musician. He had told us that the song was all about his first crush, how he tried to win her heart then ended up losing her which made him decide he should write out everything he felt for her, which had him thinking that it would be a great idea for a song.  This topic of fallen love is a convention which we identified from our research into this genre. It seems that rappers often rap about negative life experiences and learning from your mistakes- eg, Eminem and 2pac both rap about difficulties in life and when live is mentioned it is often about the hardships involved.

Eminem.

2pac

Real Music videos

I have found that most hip hop songs whether it be fast tempo or slow there's always a bass beat that makes the music video. For example Ndubz music video 'Best Behaviour', you'll see that the locations are pretty much the same.

The video starts off with the name of the band, letting the audience know exactly who's song and video it is. But we can also tell what type of genre it is from the way it is presented. Not only is the music recognisable the fast cuts to different scenes also allows the audience to be able to tell.
So as an unknown production we have to be able to reach out to our audience in the same way as Ndubz has from their 1st music video to their latest.

Their video also tells a story through the lyrics and video. So we should also think about whether our lyrics would match the story or whether we would tell another story. Through out this video each of the artiste tell their own story and have their own specific role, but like in all brands there is always a main character and in this group its Dappy.

Most hip hop genres have other members in the group such as Ndubz has. We have to deiced on whether we'd have members or just have extras so our group needs to decide on whether we will have a girl as a member or an extra.
We have had a number of meetings and have still not been sure on whether we should keep her as a part of the group or not so we will just have to get some audience feed back on this matter.

I have gone round asking a number of students from different years on what they think or imaging the video to be like. After having them listen to just the song and getting ideas we have chosen not to have the girl as a member of the group as we believe it would be much better to just concentrate on Imad.

Each part of Ndubz video tells us a bit about each of them so we need to make sure we can tell our audience a bit about our characters and represent them in the right way.

Ndubz-Best Behaviour

Audience Feedback Initial Ideas

When we told our initial ideas to the class we were told that we should include Imad mostly in the video as he is well known by all the class and they thought that the video should have a little narrative as we should concentrate on promoting Imad. It would be silly not to use him as he was the real artist and he can lip sync correctly and how to act while recording the track. Also he is very motivated to create this video as he can use it to promote himself as an artist.
We have taken these ideas on board and adapted it to our music video because we know that the audience best as they will be the ones who purchase the song.

Risk Assessment

We encountered a couple of risks while filming but overcame these problems by doing a careful risk assessment.

• The roof top scene ; We will overcame this by having the security guard who patrols building present while filming.
• The tower bridge scene; We will make sure that everyone who comes to the shoot can swim and be extra cautious while filming. 
• The cut aways; The main risk here will be the busy roads as we will be filming close to the edge of the pavement. So we have given nasima the job of keeping an eye on the hazards while we film.

Storyboard plan

Our basic idea  for our music video is that it will be based on a relationship where the guy is trying to win over the girl by woeing her throughout the whole track. The twist of the music video is that Imad, the main rapper is in a fantasy and at the end the girl is not his. We are going to show this through clever editing and detailed planning.

- Our opening shot will be an establishing shot of the locations
- Various close ups of Imad and establishing the artist and his look
- Continues with a series of shots of him rapping to camera cut against dream shots of him with the girl
- The closing shot will be of Imad and the girl together. A close up of their hands which pulls out to reveal that she is with somebody else.
- The final shot will be a pull focus of them walking away and Imad left on his own.

Locations

We gathered up around four or five possible locations. The locations are:

1. Canary Wharf

2. Tower Bridge

3. Wapping Pier

4. Picadilly Circus

5. Millenium Eye

We were considering these locations in London because of recent videos we have seen. A good example would be Devlin - London City.

another reason we picked these very urban and busy loactions is because they are strong characteristics feature of the genre hip hop/rnb.

Some other Videos we had found with the same sort of locations was N-Dubz - Playing with fire and Fergie - London bridge.

Location Recce

This is a picture of our artist sitting by the river near Tower Bridge. We're hoping to film this part of the location on the 1st day as its the closest place out of all the locations chose. This is where Imad (our artist) will be filming alone and the girls part would be shot elsewhere.

This shot would be behind Imad when we're doing our cut away shots. We've chosen this because it'll show the audience that its set in the city, and having it as a cut away would mean it'll be through the whole music video.

This is the London Bridge, and can be seen from where we're shooting. We're going to get a shot of it when establishing the locations, its very useful because its a landmark of London and the audience would know straight away where it is. Because its close to Tower Bridge, it makes it easier for us to shoot it.

This place is in Southwark, not too far away from London Bridge or Tower Brdge. We're hoping to get imad and the female artist in this part of the location, because it'll make a really romantic setting with the lights behind, and would make the  music video look more creative and colourful.

The riverbank by the city of London would be another chosen location, with famous landmarks like London Eye at the background. This place is actually quite romantic, as we've seen many couples around the area. Again, another place for both artists to shoot.

 Big Ben is located near the London Eye, so we're going to shoot there aswell. With the parliament building behind, it'll give the video a political view aswell, as seen on other msic videos.

In between the music video we're going to establish locations as cut away, as well as that we've come up with a speedy effect where we film cars passing by, and this is one of the locations we're shooting for the speedy effect. Its located just over London Bridge, and not too far from Southwark.

Real Media Texts

Andrew Goodwins Music Video Theory

1. The video for this song is filmed in a derelict area near where trains used to go by. All three artists are black which conforms to the stereotype of RnB. One of the artists in the video, Tyga is wearing sun glasses  and a baseball cap which is normally worn by artists of this genre. The setting used has graffiti on the wall showing it is a more ghetto area. There is a woman who is barely wearing any clothes, walking in slow motion. There is also a flash car in the video were they are sitting on it. These are all typical characteristics this genre.

2. There is hardly a relationship between the lyrics and visuals. The only relationship between the lyrics and visuals is that when they are singing or rapping there are only hand movements. There are pyhsical locational references to the lyrics.

3. The transitions and editing techniques are used to cut to the beat at specific times. The relationship between the music and visuals is not that strong.

4. Voyeurism is used in the video as there is an attractive woman barely wearing clothes, and the clothes she is wearing are wet to show her figure therefore attracting males. She is walking in slow motion, seductively stroking her hair and looking straight at the camera. All this promotes the video to men so that it gets sold. The whole video has various types of shots of all three artists during the whole video to promote all three artists.

5. There is a little bit of reference to notion of looking as the female in the video looks straight into the camera in a seductive way as if she is looking directly at the audience. There is moderate use of voyeurism in the video.

6. Through the location of the video there is intertextuality to the film Grease as they have set the video were the race took place in the film Grease. The car bouncing up and down behind them could be a reference to other music videos as they have used it before.

Real Media Text/Ideas

This is a good example of the type of music video we want to create. It has all typical conventions of a Hip Hop/RnB music video. The artist conforms to the stereotype as he dresses like an RnB artist. He is wearing a wooly hat, earings which make him look more "street" even though he is trying to look like a gentleman. He is also wearing a leather jacket and a pair of dark jeans with hi-top trainers. The chain around his neck is very typical as all hip hop artists wearing chains around their neck to show that they are bling and cool. The locations are mainly filmed in the inner city. Significant locations that are used in the video are the shots on top of the roof, the shot in front of the cathedral and the shots in front.
We aim to take influences from the styling of this artist and the setting to make out our video meet the conventions for which the audiences expect. Therefore our video will be easily identified as being part of this genre.

Audience Feedback Song Choice

We played our song to the class and received some positive feedback. The main point was the creativity we would have with an original song and how we would easily overcome the lip syncing issues as we are using Imads own song. We also played it to other students around the college and received positive feedback. Our target audience is young adults of multi cultural ethnicity although the borough we live in is predominately young asian youths. This fitted perfectly because we are marketing a up and coming Asian male RnB/Hip-Hop star.

Feedback

• We would expect a lot of star construction, mainly Imad
• City/Urban locations/glamour 
• Simple narrative with a female 
• Quick cuts to which meet the beat of the music 
• Imad singing to camera/notion of looking  

Song Chosen

The song we have chosen as a group is an ameature song from someone we know as he is an amateur songwriter who produces music as a hobbie. We thought it would be more creative to use an ameatur song because we know the guy who produced it therefore he will be available to star in the music video. Also its a boost to his music career as we are producing his first music video for one of his tracks.
The song we have chose is one of many that our artist, Krazy has produced. The song is called Down For Me. We chose this particular song as it is about love, and how a girl is too good for him. It is basically about a guy promising to be everything that the woman wants, it meets the convention because many songs in this genre tend to be the woman setting standards of the relationship and the guy promising to meet them.

Our Group

Our Group individual blogs. We have all completed in depth research on music bideos and teh history of how they started. Through this resrach we have larent a lot about rnb ad hophop history. This has influenced our discussions with regards to our song choice.
Our group consists of:

http://khalid128.blogspot.com/
http://abaki93.blogspot.com/
http://ridhwanrahman.blogspot.com/
http://nasimabegumh.blogspot.com/