Filming update 5

So far we managed to film another scene which is the second verse where a girl is in the park, and is talking (on the phone) to her boyfriend. We managed to get a range of different shots from different angles and shots. We also shot a studio scene where we see the conversation from the boyfriend's point of view. We also shot a scene with him looking at naked women on his laptop in a dark room. We thought this would highlight his disinterest in her and show that he is not bothered.

Filming update 4

So far we have filmed a few scenes of Makeda's part in the music video. We filmed the scened where a girl is getting dugs off of some drug dealers and at some point we see her going crazy, as if she is possessed. We also attempted to film one of our scenes in Myatts field park, however, it was a disaster so we decide to continue filming this scene on Thursday.

Update 3

Bunmi filmed a scene last tuesday, It was her part of the music video where there is a couple having an argument in the street. None of us other members of the group were present during the filming of this particular scene. We uploaded the clip on the Mac, and decided that it was way too short so now we're planning on re-shooting the whole thing possibly with different actors.

Our location/ storyboards

We took some pictures of Myatts field park which we are going to use for our music video. We took pictures of a long pathway which we could use for our characters to walk through, maybe on an autumn day with the leaves on the floor or a winter day with the snow on the floor. It could work either way because the cold weather will represent the characters' moods and mental state.

Here are some rough storyboads. They might change later, however:

update 2

So far, we have finished our track. Today we had to finish the male voice parts, which we have now completed . We then just had to tweak a few things to put the finishing touches. Now we have to get our storyboards and ideas together for our music video.

Song making process/lyrics and final song!

We finished making our track a few weeks ago, and as of now we've finished most of the lyrics. We now recorded one verse and we now all we have to do is record the rest of the song, maybe change the tone, pitch and add some effects and then we'll be finished. Here are some screen shots of the process of making the track :

Here is the song!

Here are some printscreens of process of making our track:

Here are our lyrics:

(chorus)

Even though I'm on my own 

I'm not alone 

I still have the seat to my throne

The first time I layed my eyes on you

i didn't know what to expect 

but you became the remedy

to make pain less

i thought you were cool

but then I heard you weren't the best

so then I took myself out

not hearing the rest

I searched, I found now look at me

I'm a mess

you turned me into a wreck

I love what you do, the way you make me feel

that perfect hit on the deck

Yet I'm digging deeper

Looking for better

Feeling weaker

In search for that feeling again

I should have listen to the rest

they were warning me about you 

saying you will cheat 

and will destroy me

(chorus)

Even though I'm on my own 

I'm not alone 

I still have the seat to my throne

Baby we keep trying and trying 

But nothing seems to stop me crying

Every day and night I'm living in an illusion

I give myself false hopes that your still my baby

Even though you say I'm all yours 

i can see through those deceiving eyes

don't you dare come back to me 

I know what I'm worth

I don't need your comfort

(Baby i love you)

You say three words with such emotions 

yes i heard you say i love you a billion times

our love it used to flow like an ocean

your heart pounding like the heart of a chime

(I was always there by your side

holding your hand with such pride)

I've heard it all before, don't even try it

its been week and you're still crying

what we had wasn't love

I'm sorry to break it but i have to say it

I was just a rebound

Lies, lies, how many lies 

we try and we try

wait, I try and i try

i don't have to spy with an eye

you cut one already

now you disgust me

get off me

Go to the bedroom

It's all good though

I'm a big girl

Imma go solo

they day not until you lose

it you won't know

It's too late to backtrack now

I'm moving forward

cus' it's all about me now

(chorus 7x)

Even though I'm on my own 

I'm not alone 

I still have the seat to my throne

The lyrics relate to our video ideas because we plan to do a conceptual narrative video where the lyrics relate to what we see on screen. In our lyrics the chorus says " Even though I'm on my own....I still have the seat to my throne". This means that now matter how much people are troubled/depressed, they can still get back up and move on with their lives. The first verse is about a person going through drug addiction and regretting not listening to friends' warnings. So, the video adaptation is going to be very literal. We will have a girl taking drugs and we will see her mental state go downhill. The second verse is about a girl who has just broken up with her boyfriend, and he wants her back. The video might show them doing seperate things and then talking to each other on the phone. The third verse is about a couple having an argument. The song ends with the chorus, which is an optimistic/positive ending.

Music Video ideas and research

 Our track/video's genre is urban/pop. This particular genre appeals to the widest audience e.g Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, The Wanted, Drake etc.

Since our track is about love and drug addiction, each verse is about a different person and we want our video to be the same and have different actors portray the characters. For our chorus, we plan on doing something similar to Kanye West's ' All of the lights' ( Which is actually a homage to the opening sequence of the film ' Enter the Void') where we see the lyrics on the screen in various different fonts, sizes and colours. I loved this idea ever since i first saw the video and i think it would be a great way to try something new without having to film and rely on actors. Ne-yo's ' Closer' also uses this effect:

 

 Another idea we had for our music video is a split screen effect where we see two or more different characters going about their everyday lives. I thought it would be cool to use two characters who are binary opposites so that we can clearly see the contrast even though they are going through similar issues. Examples of this split-screen effect include Destiny's Child's ' Emotions' and Micheal Jackson's ' Billie Jean'. 

Locations - When it comes to locations, we thought about using London city shots where the main character is standing over a bridge or something at nighttime. I personally would rather shoot at nighttime than daytime because the lighting looks better at night. However, i am unsure if we will have the right equipment to get the lighting perfect. Examples of these locations include N-Dubs  ' Playin with fire' and also Katy Perry's ' Firework'. We also want to do some dramatic studio shots where we see shadowy silhouettes of the characters talking to each other on the phone. We also want to shoot some part scenes where the character is walking, looking depressed. For research, we took some pictures of the local park for our music video. We took pictures of a long pathway which we could use for our characters to walk through, maybe on an autumn day with the leaves on the floor or a winter day with the snow everywhere.

Style of music video - The type of music video I want for our video to be is conceptual narrative because our lyrics have a narrative so i think it would be more fulfilling to have a music video with a narrative, i also i think it would be appropriate to continue that for the video. When it comes to conceptual non-narrative music videos, i think sometimes they are artistic and visually pleasing but i don't think it's right for the type of song we're doing. As for a performance style video, i don't think it would give us an opportunity to be creative with the plot of the video/song.

Lighting - When it comes to the lighting, i think it would be nice if certain shots to be shadowy - to give a sillouette effect to the character. For example, when someone is singing and you can't actually see their features, just their figure.

Costumes - I don't want a specific theme with the costumes since our characters are just regular teenagers. However, the characters could wear normal clothes which go with the surroundings and that particular scene. For example, if there's a scene where i want a character to be walking in the snow, i would want them to be wearing winter clothes and a coat instead of a dress and heels.

Props - We will need (fake) drugs, a phone and a laptop.

Song ideas/research

When we were first thinking about ideas for our track, we thought that Adele's ' Someone like you', particularly the piano intro, would be a good inspiration for our intro. When it comes to writing our lyrics, we were inspired by ' Runaway Love' by Ludacris and Mary.J.Blige. In this song, each of the three verses tells us an individual's story:


Now little Lisa's only nine years old
She's tryin' to figure out why the world is so cold
Why she's all alone and they never met her family
Momma's always gone and she never met her daddy

Part of her is missin' and nobody'll listen
Momma's on drugs, gettin' *** up in the kitchen
Bringin' home men at different hours of the night
Startin' with some laughs, usually endin' in a fight

Sneakin' in her room when her momma's knocked out
Tryin' to have his way and little Lisa says ouch
She tries to resist but then all he does is beat her
Tries to tell her mom but her momma don't believe her

Lisa's stuck up in a world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin' else to do but get some clothes and pack
She says she's 'bout to run away and never come back

(chorus)


Little Nicole is only ten years old
She's steady tryin' to figure why the world is so cold
Why she's not pretty and nobody seems to like her
Alcoholic step-dad always wanna strike her

Yells and abuses, leaves her with some bruises
Teachers ask questions, she's makin' up excuses
Bleedin' on the inside, cryin' on the out
It's only one girl really knows what she's about

Her name is little Stacy and they become friends
Promise that they'll always be tight 'til the end
Until one day, lil' Stacy gets shot
A drive-by bullet went stray up on her block

Now Nicole's stuck up in a world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin' else to do but get her clothes and pack
She says she's 'bout to run away and never come back

(chorus)
Little Erica is eleven years old
She's steady tryin' to figure why the world is so cold
So she pops *** to get rid of all the pain
Plus she's havin' sex with her boy who's sixteen

Emotions run deep as she thinks she's in love
So there's no protection, he's usin' no glove
Never thinkin' 'bout the consequences of her actions
Livin' for today and not tomorrow's satisfaction

The days go by and her belly gets big
The father bails out, he ain't ready for a kid
Knowin' her momma would blow it all out of proportion
Plus she lives poor, so no money for abortion

Erica is stuck up in a world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin' else to do but get her clothes and pack
She says she 'bout to run away and never come back



Also, we want some of the verses to be spoken in a rhythmic way, so the singer isn't actually singing, instead they're sort of rapping. An example of this is Cassie's ' Long Way 2 Go': 








Here are some potential lyrics to our song (it's only a rough draft so it might change later) 


She loved him no matter what
Even though he would always cheat
but she knew that from her gut
and he was always acting sweet
till one day, she realised she had enough
and showed him the way to the door
life after was tough
but she'd get through it, she swore


Here is another passage:

I promise i'll change, baby - man's voice

I've heard it all before,

don't even try it

It's been weeks now you're still crying

and anyway, what we had wasn't love

I'm sorry to break it to you but you were

just a rebound that went on forever.

Im sorry - man's voice

Hip-Hop music promotes materialism, misogyny and criminal activity. It is responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes of young black men and women. Discuss.

“Hip-hop is a tool...It can be used for good or it can be used for evil.” - Hasani Pettiford.

Hip-Hop is a genre of music which is originated from the Bronx, New York in the 1970s. It slowly became throughout the 1980s and It features other forms of expressions such as graffiti, break dancing, MCing, and DJing.  I personally disagree with this statement and believe that hip-hop is such a wide genre of music, to paint all of hip-hop music with the same brush is simply ignorant. I also think that hip-hop music does promote materialism, misogyny ect. However, I think there are positive as well as negative attributes to Hip-Hop music just like any other genre of music out there. For example, one the positive attributes to hip-hop music is that it could positively influence young people, so that they aim for a successful future. However, one the many negative attributes is that most hip-hop music/ music videos/lyrics do actually promote misogyny and materialism.

The media has always been biased towards hip-hop, and is part of the reason why young black men and women are negatively stereotyped. Since hip-hop music is sometimes associated with gangs and violence, many people seem to believe that all rappers are criminals. For example, there was a huge media frenzy when legendary rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were shot dead in the late 90s.People theoriesed that those two rappers were really popular, but people quickly assumed they were gang-related murders. There was also a huge media uproar when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s winning speech at the 2009 Video Music Awards. This begs the question, would the people have made such a big deal if it was a white pop singer instead of Kanye?

I think hip-hop music is also responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes of young black people. The majoriry of rappers do use the controversial n-word is their songs, which is why all of hip-hop music is censored. Rappers Jay-Z said during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that hip-hop music helped the the power out of the n-word. He said " "People give words power. For our generation, what we did is that we took the word, and we took the power out of that word. We took a word that was very ugly and hurtful into a term of endearment,". So while the use of the n-word in hip-hop music might seem absurd to other people, it has a whole different meaning to rappers.

There is the issue of gang culture when it comes to hip-hop music. There are so many rappers and hip-hop artists that glorify being a gangster. Even the word 'gangsta' is used normally, for example Coolio and Snoop Dogg had a song released called ‘Gangsta Walk’, and Eve and Alicia Keys had a song called ‘Gangsta Lovin’. This casual mention of being a gangster and gang culture misleads kids into believing that being a gangster is okay just because these singers are talking about it. There's a subgenre called "Gangsta rap", which does glorify violence, drugs, racism, murder, objectification of women and homophobia, just to name a few. However, i think that despite the voilant nature of these lyrics, these rappers all have a story to tell. Also, Many seem to believe that Gangsta Rap is the epitome of hip-hop music and that reflects badly on other hip-hop music and rappers.

While some of hip-hip music and some artists do condone negative stereotypes, not all of hip-hop music is like that. Some hip-hop artists promote love, change and hope in their songs. For example, artists like 50 Cent and Eminem went from having bad childhoods and dealing with drugs to becoming the richest and most successful artists of their genre. Given, neither of them are perfect role models but it sends out a positive message to young people who might be in their situations, it also it might motivate them to do something good with their life, especially those who come from unprivileged backgrounds.

Misogyny is unfortunately widely associated with hip-hop. The majority of hip-hop music videos include half naked women, and fully clothed men. An example of this is ‘Tip Drill’ by Nelly.  Although they clearly don’t mind, the women in the video are clearly being treated like sex objects. Other examples of music videos like this include ‘Still dre’ by dr.dre, ‘Candy Shop’ by 50 cent, ’Gold Digger’ by kanye west, and many more. While it may not be the actual music that's the problem; it's the lyrics and images which refer to men and women as pimps and hos, and shows women half naked while the men are fully clothed. A lot of rappers are aggressive and violent in their lyrics when it comes to treating women. Eminem is a good example of a rapper who promotes misogynistic views through his lyrics; these are lyrics from his song ' Kim';
"Don't you get it bitch, no one can hear you?
Now shut the fuck up and get what's comin to you
You were supposed to love me
Now bleed! Bitch bleed!
Bleed! Bitch! Bleed! Bleed!"
Although we obviously do not know if these lyrics reflect his personal views, it sends out a negative message to young boys.

When it comes to materialism, hip-hop definitely does promote it but in both positive and negative ways. The negative side of hip-hop’s promotion of materialism is that it could tempt young people to go down the wrong path and sell drugs or steal in order to get materialistic goods. The positive side could be that it might motivate young people to do well in life and school so that they, too, can become rich and successful. Also, a lot of hip-hop artists become spokespeople and ambassadors for certain brands and get paid to promote them. For example, rapper Tinie Tempah is an ambasador for Lucozade Sport and his song is used in the adverts. Will.i.Am from the Black Eyed Peas, said in an interview in 2002 “These corporations – Nike, Sprite, Coke, Panasonic, Motorola – they’re gonna utilize urban music anyway to sell their product because most urban people buy these products. Every rapper talks about Motorola in their video for fuckin’ free. So why not get paid for a commercial when people are doing it for free anyway? Why not give it back to Hip Hop?”. Basically what he's saying is that since most rappers use namebrands in their videos, they might aswell make money out of it.

There's even such thing as “Christian hip-hop", which is a sub-genre which is pretty much hip-hop but with a christian view and the opposite of gangster rap. It doesn’t promote sex, drugs, violence, and all the other stuff that regular hip-hop does. Although it's not actual christian hip-hop, Kanye West's Jesus Walks focuses on religion and spiritiality. He also talks about how the media can't take anything seriously if religion is involved.

To conclude, it’s not the genre of Hip-Hop that’s the problem but the way that some rappers and hip-hop artists use their power to promote things such as materialism and misogyny when they could be using their fame and popularity to promote positive things. However, the media also has a part in it as it is slightly biased towards the genre.

Welcome

My name is Barwaga and welcome to my A2 Media blog. I will be producing a song as well as a music video for this unit. After that, I will be making a digipack and a magazine advert to promote the artist/song.

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Conventions of music videos

We looked at the different types and conventions of music videos.
 Performance - This type of music video involves the artist or band performing the song. This is usually done to showcase their vocal or musical talent without a big budget. An example of this is Adele's someone like you: 

Conceptual narrative - This type of music video focuses on the images shown and there is an actual story throughout the video. They use this technique to bring a message across. Eminem's ' Stan' is an example of a conceptual narrative music video:  

Conceptual non narrative - This type of music video focuses on the image but with random images which don't have anything to do with the actual song. One advantage of this is that it enables people to be creative and they can do whatever they want with it. An example of a conceptual non-narrative music video is Beyonce's Upgrade you :

 Rock videos are different from hip-hop/r&b in many ways. Hip-hop/r&b videos tend to be more glamourous and show off the rapper's wealth while indie/rock videos are often show the opposite. Pop videos tend to have a variety of locations used depending on the song's mood. If the song is upbeat the locations used would be a nightclub (J-lo - on the floor), party ( kesha - tik tok), studio ( gaga - born this way), outdoor location (LMFAO - party rock anthem), or in the wild (destiny's child - survivor). But sometimes they use random locations e.g Gaga ft. beyonce - telephone, they use a prison and a diner. If the song is slow or a ballad, they typically use real or " unglamourouss"  locations e.g christina aguilera - beautiful, fergie - big girls dont cry and beyonce - halo. Hip-Hop videos tend to use a wider variety of locations like mansions (young money - bedrock) , desert ( diddy dirty money - coming home), portrait/ moving painting ( kanye west - power) , city/outdoor (wiz kalifa - black and yellow and jayz - empire state of mind), studio (kanye west - gold digger).

Sometimes artists in pop videos wear casual clothes maybe to give the impression that they're down to earth or relatable e.g christina aguilera - beautiful and the saturdays - higher. But most of the time, artists wear over the top costumes like lady gaga - bad romance ( or most of the videos) , rihanna - s&m, beyonce - run the world. Most male artists don't really wear " outrageous" or crazy costumes ( with the exception of the black eyed peas), the majority of them wear casual clothes like justin timberlake, justin beiber, usher, example, jls, the wanted etc. In hip-hop/rnb videos the men are usually wearing normal clothes while the women are wearing revealing costumes. In indie/rock videos, the bands are usually wearing casual clothes (often scruffy) because they don't really focus on their appearances.

Some music videos use very fast paced editing because of the song and the storyline. For example the sugababes - about you now and red hot chili peppers - by the way both use fast pased editing because the songs are upbeat and the storyline. Beyonce's singe ladies and ok go both use extremly long takes but they both prevent the videos from being boring by performing and entertaining the audience. A lot of music videos take a few seconds before the song starts, for dramatic effect. Examples of this are beyonce's videophone and rihanna's only girl. Also, a lot of music videos nowadays are mini films, they don't stick to the traditional 3 minute videos, instead some of them are 5 to 10 minute long. Lady Gaga is one of the artists who does this, and Kanye West's Runaway.