Unsigned Artist Research

https://m.soundcloud.com/planejaymes/time-flies-feat-blac-youngsta-1

Genre: 

• The genre of this song is American rap which is quite mainstream in todays society.
• This would be a good genre to use as in todays society, most teens tend to listen rap music and this would be a good target audience to aim for so they'd gain an interest in that respect.
• The music video would also relate to teens as they tend to go to house parties a lot. 

Contact:

• Contacting this artist would possibly be difficult as he is an Amercian rapper so therefore it may take a while for them to reply in order to gain permission to make a music video for their song.
• I would contact this artist as they have different platforms to contact them on on their Soundcloud page so I'd be able to send a message and wait for a reply e.g. Through email
• Another problem would be getting the actual artist to feature in the music video himself so therefore we would have to use friends that we know who wouldnt mind being in the video and acting as the artist.
• Also instead of having someone to lip-sync/feature, we can just do a music video that tells a narrative instead but links to the lyrics.

Pitch:

• An idea for this music video could be a house party where it starts off with the artist turning up in their car and there is a slow mo of them entering and as the dialogue starts it would switch to the artist lip syncing.
• The intro would be slightly muffled and when the song begins the volume would increase to full volume.
• It would then be followed by cuts of different scenes within the house party itself of people drinking, images of bottles and money as the artist would symbolise the typical show off type artist.
• We would try to have the artist in jewellery e.g. chains, watch, rings to emphasise the image of the artist having lots of money.
• Within the background of the artist lip syncing, there will be extras dancing to the music and enjoying the party which would create a sense of verisimilitude.
• The lighting used throughout the music video would be quite coloured such as purple, green, red which would give it a house party look and make things more realistic.

Genre Research

Genre: Rap

Rap:

The rap genre/rap music is undoubtedly one of the most popular forms of music throughout the centuries its existed. It is a form rhythmic speech usually performed over a backbeat or instrumental which helps to draw in the audience as it gives them something to dance to or help to remember the lyrics. The word rap formerly meant "to lightly strike" in 16th century Britain  which then went on "to converse" the 60s in America. Presently it is referred to as a musical style.

Early 80s rap video:

Modern rap video:

Top record labels:

• OVO Sound
• Maybach Music
• Aftermath
• Shady Records
• Death row
• Def Jam

Forms and Conventions:

• The form of rap is nowadays commonly based on the artist having a bad childhood and how they have come up through this struggle, acting as role models to people in their same situation. This is shown through their lyrics and music videos.
• The costume that these artists wear consist of tracksuits or well known branded clothing that they are also using as promotion e.g. Stormzy wearing Adidas
• They are usually shown wearing rings, chains, watches and all sorts of jewelry to show that hard work pays off/what money can get you once you've made it.
• The music videos themselves stereotypically consist of drugs and violence accompanied with angry facial expressions from the artist/artists as they are rapping.
• The locations used for rap videos within the UK mainly use council estates/in a dark atmosphere as they show where the grew up and that they've made it out of there or they are shown living a life of luxury with the money that they've made as if they are showing off. 

Technical Post - Green Screen

Advantages:

• Quick and easy to use as not much equipment is required.
• It is a very cheap option in terms of bringing the location to the studio.
• Production  time will be shortened due to the easily changeable backgrounds.

Creativity

Blog:

The layout of our blog was a pretty simple blog which had sidebars and task bars so its easy for the audience to find little things that they want to look for rather than have to look through everything. This blog includes both the preliminary task and our actual thriller opening with all the research for this embedded in between. This can be accessed through "St Marks Media Blogs" in the section marked "Group Blogs"

Preliminary Task:

Thriller Opening:

Both the preliminary task and thriller opening were a success in terms of what we going for/trying to gain from the audience. The work on continuity editing within the preliminary task allowed us to apply this skill into our thriller opening which helped to create a lot of verisimilitude. In terms of improvement, there were scenes within the thriller opening that had very dark scenes which reduced the quality of certain scenes. Therefore I would have liked to use a farm room with better lighting which would allow us to film scenes in higher quality.

Conventions from real media texts

Post-Production - Directors Cut

Captioned Images

For the editing phase, we used Final Cut Pro on the iMacs where all raw footage from our filming was uploaded and put together in the timeline to create the final product that was our thriller opening. There were a few sound difficulty problems due to filming in quite loud and public areas so we were able to use Final Cut Pro to adjust the volume and increase it so that the dialogue could be heard.

Also with the lighting, a few scenes were quite dark when we filmed it so during the editing phase, we were also able to adjust the brightness so that the darker scenes were better lit so the action could be seen but still give the effect we wanted to have on the audience.

In terms of titles, we were also able to add text into the opening sequences of the producers, cast, editors etc., and we chose the right size, font and color text to add into it so that it was still visible to the audience but in the corner and not too big so that it wasn't a big distraction from the action that was occurring.

For certain scenes we wanted to use different effects to give the audience a realistic thriller feel to our opening and we were able to add things like cctv camera edits over our clips in the shop scene and interrogation scene which created a lot of verisimilitude.

For the audio lines within the opening, we added background music from an non-copyrighted source which helped to emphasise the thriller effect behind the action and the dialogue that occurred which I think turned out quite successfully.

The Research and Planning Processes

Research:

Thriller Opening - The Dark Knight

This particular research on actual thriller openings was very useful to our own thriller opening. We were able to pick out different aspects that occurred/conventions within the opening of 'The Dark Knight' and found what gave it that thriller like element. For example, the use of the mask to hide the Jokers identity gave us the idea to also use this with our own protagonist which emphasised the elements of a thriller. Also it helped us with how our opening credits should come into the opening and the idea of jumping straight into the action.

This type of research/audience profile was useful to us as it allowed us to look at someone of our own age and the reasonings for watching films so we could apply this to our own work and make the target audience want to watch this film. This included having lots of action involved within the opening. Also, finding out their favourite thriller film/s helped us to look at these openings to pick out the conventions that gave it a good opening and apply these to our own thriller openings.

Planning:

For the planning, my group decided to do a storyboard and an animatic to present the ideas of our thriller opening and how things were going to pan out. The storyboard was successful as it allowed us to plan out the events within the thriller and highlight where things like the credits would enter, where the action would begin, etc. The animatic allowed us to plan out the timings of the actual thriller opening and helped to plan out what needed to be shortened so that it fit the time gap and overall this was successful as our thriller opening followed this.