Construction - Adding Images On A Website (Tutorial)

Construction - Cropping on Photoshop (Tutorial)

Photoshop is an industry level software used to augment, enhance and stylise images. It allows place images in layers

Construction - Garageband (Tutorial)

Planning - Interviews and Analysis

We decided to interview a a boy and a girl to ask them questions that would help us creating for music video. This will allow us to be able to target our audience a lot better by providing a similarity with the music video and their life.

From these interviews we ascertained that our audience primarily watch music videos on the internet. We can use this information in order to aid the distribution of our portfolio of media products, in order to reach a wider audience.
We also found out that most of our audience buys their cloths from low end shops,  E.g. Primark, Tesco, ect...

Planning - Lyrics Analysis

Coolio the artist starts to talk about "walk[ing] through the shadow of death" in the first line this connotes biblical imagery since it is a reference to the popular bible chapter of psalms 23. It can be theorised that his life is always in danger and he sees death all around him yet he fears nothing since he believes that God is on this side.

The artist states that he "never crossed a man that didn't deserve it... or you and your homies might be lined in chalk" this suggest that he knows that he has committed heinous crimes and is ready to atone for them but he believes that those people had it coming. The "lined in chalk" could be a reference to a murder scene where the police usually outline the corpses with calk so he could be suggesting that if you rub him the wrong way you end up dead.  

The chorus features repetition of the phrase "living in the gangsters's paradise", this shows that he is currently living the dream. Despite this the paradise he is living is only filled with gangsters and in the gangsta's world only the strongest survive and the weak perish.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

I take a look at my life and realize there's nothin' left
Cause I've been blasting and laughing so long,
That even my mama thinks that my mind is gone
But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it
Me be treated like a punk you know that's unheard of
You better watch how you're talking and where you're walking
Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk
I really hate to trip but I gotta loc
As they croak, I see myself in the pistol smoke, fool
I'm the kinda G the little homies wanna be like
On my knees in the night saying prayers in the streetlight

Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise

Look at the situation they got me facin'
I can't live a normal life, I was raised by the streets
So I gotta be down with the hood team
Too much television watching got me chasing dreams
I'm an educated fool with money on my mind
Got my 10 in my hand and a gleam in my eye
I'm a loc'd out gangsta set trippin' banger
And my homies is down so don't arouse my anger, fool
Death ain't nothing but a heartbeat away,
I'm living life, do or die, what can I say
I'm 23 now, but will I live to see 24
The way things are going I don't know

Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the ones we hurt are you and me

Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise

Power and the money, money and the power
Minute after minute, hour after hour
Everybody's running, but half of them ain't looking
What's going on in the kitchen, but I don't know what's cookin'
They say I gotta learn, but nobody's here to teach me
If they can't understand it, how can they reach me
I guess they can't, I guess they won't
I guess they front, that's why I know my life is out of luck, fool

Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise

Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the one's we hurt are you and me
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the one's we hurt are you and me
[Fade out]

Planning - Survey Monkey (Responses / Results)

After we posted our survey we started to gather useful data from our results that we got. This will allow us to be able to adapt the music video to the way we can reach our target audience. 

From our first question we found that 73% (rounded up) of the audience is male. This means that we would need to add in more elements that will attract the majority of our audience. We can do this by adding elements that male audiences like such as violence and sexual objectification. 

We then asked for the audiences age. Here we found that the majority of our audience was between 14 and 19. There were a few younger than 13 and the rest were older than 20. Focusing on one specific group gives us as a better perspective to what target audience area we gather the most information for. In this case, we will be able to add in things a teenager would like to see in the music video.

We had the make sure that the responses that we asked are valid for the type of genre that we were creating. Most of the respondents liked Rap music. This benefits us as we are looking to create a Rap music video also ourselves - people within target audience will be more likely attracted to it.

54.5 % of the people we asked said that they watch their music videos on the internet. We would need to put our music video on a website like youtube to meet the wider audience that may not watch TV anymore.

We then asked them what they enjoy seeing in music videos. When we are planning our music video we would be able to know the different concepts and things that we need to add onto our video. From our research, we have a variety of different responses that people have chosen and one of the most popular was girls and the artist. This means that we can try to incorporate this ideas into our music video.

The rest of these results will be used in a similar way. 

Furthermore, our research exhibits that having a narrative story is popular amongst are survey respondents. This reinforces our intention top carry on with a narrative story.

By the most popular answer to this question is the lyrics, it is important to emphasise them by coinciding the lyrics to what is happening in the music video.

Due to this response, we will take into consideration that we make sure that we are dressed current in terms of teenagers (target audience) today.

This response provides evidence of what type of clothes are target audience likes to see and we should make sure that we wear clothes from similar shops such as Footasylm.

The final question, offers us the information of what are respondents like to do. This information will allow us to understand what the target audience likes.

Planning - Promoting The Survey Through Twitter

The is a screenshot of the twitter post that Aaron posted to help get more people to do the survey. This helps us attract more potential audience and gives us the information on how we can attract these people.

Since twitter is a popular social media service it allows us to target our audience. More teenagers use social media site and putting our surveys there will also help attract teenagers to do the survey.

Planning - Survey Monkey (Questions)

We went onto a website called survey monkey and created a questionnaire. This question will allow us to be able to get audience input into the production of our music video. The questions that we asked reflect back to our target audience and how there life could be impacted by the music video. Here we wanted to try and relate to the audience as much as possible by asking about where they show and what types of musics they listen to.

The first three questions are basic and general. They help us as a music production company to be able to sort out the responses in different categories. With the male and female question we can see how different genders reflect on the music video idea and they social life. Again this is the same for the participants age.

They third question just helps us know what types of music the audience listens to. This will then help us know if the survey is a valid response for a rap music video.

As stated before questions four and onwards, it asks more specific questions that will help us improve the production of our film. Questions like "what do you enjoy seeing in a music video?" helps us implement these idea into our film so it can relate directly to our audience. This will be done for all the questions.

We hope to get a reasonable sample that we can use to help figure out the majorities opinion.

LINK - https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2KWYDDL

Planning - Storyboard

Creating a storyboard is essential to helping our group plan are music video, shot by shot. In addition, it allows us to make any changes before we start filming in case we have changed our minds about some of our ideas. It also creates an an opportunity to present our ideas to others and gather feedback from them as well. This storyboard consists of 26 images all annotated to give a reinforce the ideas that we are advocating in our film. It is important to have at least 25 images in a storyboard in order to fit in all possible shots and angles that will be performed.

Storyboard:

Planning - Master Catalog

The master catalog will help us know what we are going to do and what we need. We have put a lis of the different things that we need for all the different scene. For example the knife prop would be used in the house scene.                                                                                                                            
(Please zoom in)

Planning - Calendar

We made a calendar where we put all the the things that we were going to do for certain time periods. This helps us know exactly what was going to be done and how long it may take.

Planning - Filming Locations

Our first location was near Romford Cemetery where we short our beginning clips.  Along with this we also plan to film in dagenham park which is nearby.

This would be an  image of the dagenham park.

Planning - Demographics

We went and looked at the demographics about Coolios videos and rap videos in general. This allowed us to be able to know the different target audience that needed to meet. If we knew the things that we needed we would be able to incorporate certain things in our video to help meet the targets needed, thus grabbing more viewers to the music video.

The first screenshot show the number of males and females that watch rap videos and the particular age group that watches it. From the image above you can see that more makes in the age group of 20-24 watch rap music the most.

What we can tell from this is that coolios main audience is males aged 20 to 24 also his second largest audience are women ages the same.

What we can tell from this map is that the majority of coolios fans are in US, Canada, UK and Australia. This means that coolio is popular in western countries with developed infruatructure.

From this map of the UK we can see that the the majority of coolios fans are in the large cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester. So this means his fans are used to urban environments.

Planning - Mindmaps

We did a couple mind-maps to have an early plan of exactly what we needed and the different locations that we were going to use. We slip the mind-maps into two parts, mise en scene and characters.

Planning - History Of The Music Video - The Rise Of MTV

With the advent of the 80s brought the rise of new form of media. The commercial music video. This revolutionised the music market leading the charge, MTV the first ever terrestrial TV station to be dedicated to airing music videos. previously music videos were made of originally established songs but now the music videos were being released at the same time or in rare cases even before the official music release.

artists used MTV to compete with with each other by making Promo videos and publishing them onto MTV. the first music video that was aired on MTV was on the 1st of august 1981.

This video helps portray the types of music videos that could be found on the MTV station. there are similar motifs in this video compared to other music videos. You can see them singing and dancing to the music and they are wearing costumes.

Planning - History Of The Music Video - 80's Hip Hop Vs 90's Hip Hop

Hip hop music is genre of music that rose to popularity in the 80's. Hip Hop music is defined as having a rhythmic beat usually accompanied by rapping or rhythmic speech. The instrumentals are usually electronically generated.

Brooklyn

Hip hop music stemmed from Africa American culture especially from "block parties".  In major cities like New York the black population live in the rough areas such as Brooklyn. For a young black man during that time there was limited employment and little employment there was would have gone to white men.  A result of this led many black people into crime such as selling drugs, robbery and intimidation tactics. 

When these gangsters get together they would boast about their exploits and one form of doing this was by rhyming to a beat.

80's Hip Hop lyrics as sung by people like Curtis blow raped their new life as rich celebrities and less focused on violence and the life of a gangster.

This famous music video by MC Hammer showed how 80's hip hop music video were. The video was many focused on dancing to the beat of the music. The costumes are flamboyant and do not represent what the target audience (Young Black urban youths) would wear on a daily basis. Lyrically the artists talk about now he is successful the police cant keep him down anymore or mistreat him conveying that he has broke free of the poverty trap. There is also a lot of attractive young girls in the music video which would make people aspire to be him since he has essentially reached "end game" status.

This is an example of a 90's hip hop video. As you can see it is very different form an 80's video. the main difference is the video shows clips of how life was like in the "struggle" with clips of the police and people committing crime. The costumes are also different and more relatable to people who are listening to the music. There is less focus on dancing and more emphasis on the meaning of the lyrics. The budget for the video has also increased with more elaborate scenes and locations.

Planning - Historiy Of The Music Video - Glamrock 70s

Gleam rock is a style of rock and pop music which was created in the UK in the early 70s. It was also know as glitter rock because of the types of outfits that the singer wore. After the 1976 the popularity of the Glam Rock genre started to decline. This was mainly due to the sub genres that's glam rock created. It influenced the start of Punk, glam metal and other genres.

 

This is one of many videos that were released in the 70's by Queen. As you can see his costume is pretty flamboyant and would be considered a in appropriate for a man to wear such an outfit. He tests societies views on homosexuality and this is the controversy that can be found. There is music and people moving their body to a set beat.there are other motifs that can be found like the costumes that they are wearing and ritual dancing.

Planning - History Of The Music Video - 60's Promo's

During the 1960's there was a huge rise in british bands becoming prominent on a global scale. At this time, the US were at war with Vietnam and many were against the idea of getting involved and this resulted in rebellious subcultures. The Hippie movement was formed, this group of people advocated peace and love and went against a lot of rules. They were living in the moment and there was a lot of sex and drugs utilized in the 60's. Because of this many of the videos were presented in the anticipation that the viewer was high when they watched it.

 Beatles - Lucy in the sky with diamonds:

This video exhibits the connotations of drug use with the bright, vibrant colours and shapes. Watching this in a normal state would be very confusing and misunderstood. However, this is deliberately done in order for people who are high (target audience) to enjoy themselves while watching it.  In addition, the transitions of colours reinforce the effects of being high but also conveys confusion in what was happening at the time. Midway through the video there is a scene of fishlike creatures on a beach and the fish is arguably in the shape of a gun. This can suggest that these are connotations of the war, and their contrasting views on it. The fish are seen as being happy and enjoying themselves instead of being aggressive and killing each other - all about peace and love. Finally the video also consists of symbols such as the submarine which represents there album name.

Planning - Historiy Of The Music Video - Scopitone

France saw the popularity that was growing towards music videos that were being created.  They then decided to integrated jukeboxes and videos together. These new jukeboxes were called Scopitone and they feature 16mm film.

The first Scopitones were made in France in 1960, by a company called Cameca. This was based on Soundies technology that was developed in ww2, colour 16mm film with a magnetic soundtracks were shown on specially designed jukeboxes. These jukeboxes allowed people to select what music video that they wanted to watch on the small screen.

Scopitones were filmed in colour so it allowed people to expand their music videos and make it more vibrant then the previous black and white videos that were being made.

This use of Scopitones spread throughout Europe, particularly in west Germany and England. by 1964 it crossed over the Atlantic to United States. More and more people began to use this to listen to their favorite music.

By the end of 1960 the popularity of Scopitones had faded away and people had moved onto other methods of watching music videos.

Planning - History Of The Music Video - Soundies

Soundies, was a brand new form of entertainment born in the 1940's. Produced in New York City, Chicago and Hollywood. They were 3 minute black and white films containing motifs that are visible today in current music videos. These include motifs such as dancing, ritualism and singing. Dancing is the most popular of the motifs and are used in nearly every Soundie created in the 1940's. Soundies covered all genres of music, from classical to big-band swing, and from hillbilly novelties to patriotic songs. Furthermore, Soundies were controversial at the time because people interpreted the dancing as sexual in the short films. Women were wearing short skirts and raising there legs which connoted sexual imagery. In addition, black and white people were appearing in these films together. At the time racism was very prominent in society and black and white people were segregated.

Example of a Soundie:

This particular Soundie plays it on the safe side of advocating interracial between black and white. Instead of a black man dancing with a white woman, which some other Soundies do exhibit, they use light skinned people to promote the same thing. This race of people are crossed between a black and white person. By showing a light skin person in there film is controversial as people are metaphorically witnessing black and white people together. Furthermore, the men in the film are dressing up in high quality suits. This juxtaposes to other views during the 1940's; this is controversial because black people were being viewed as important figures in society. Ironically, it is still black people who are shinning their shoes at the beginning, that  is how the black race were perceived in society.

Planning - Music Video Motifs

Planning - Website Research

We researched into Coolios website to find different aspects that we needed to incorporate into out own website later on. We also looked at how he was portraying his image through the use of his website.

This was the front page of his website; you can see a single image of him and his name in the center of the page.

We first looked at the About page for Coolio where he talked about his past and his story into he music industry. This allowed his fans to personally engage with him through his website and social media. Them knowing his past allows them to have a personal connection with the artist.

  

When looking more into the website we found a section that talked about the different tour dates that we was going to be on. This was something that we knew had to be in own own website to help connect with out fans and allow them to be able to meet our artist.

There was also a section that allows their fans to be able to contact Coolio. There was also a social media options at th etop of ther page, this was another way that allowed his fans to be able to connect with him.

Lastly there was a section that just had images of him.