Filming photographs

Sample lip-syncing

This was a test of the green screen we did to determine if we would need to use lighting, and even then what layout we would go for. We ultimately found no differences between lighting and no lighting so decided to just simply stick with no lighting. This could have been because the room in which the green screen is set up is already very bright.

Storyboard

Production Schedule

Date	What we're filming…
26th September	Park shooting
3rd October	Filming people saying Bonkers
7th October	Opening Scene at Harry’s house
10th October	Stage scene
13th October	Filming at my house & bike scene at Chauncy
17th October	Pick Ups

The Animatic

This is the animatic sequence for the introduction of the music video, we simply drew out all of our camera shots and angles we plan to use for when we do film this. We made the decision to do the shot with Jared waking up at different angles to create a more absurdist style to the video, these shots would be quickly intercut with each other to create an upbeat mood to the video.

The Pitch

This is the pitch for our media production, it is a music video for the song 'Bonkers' by Dizzee Rascal. When we showed our pitch towards the rest of the class we recieved positive feedback, our only thing now is to make sure the video lives up to our USP; it is entirely absurdist and unusual

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspirations: "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJO5HU_7_1w

The music video features Eminem performing the song in a psychiatric ward, a local Detroit neighborhood nearside a park, a fast-food joint, the Grammy Awards, and even in a factory where multiple clones of the rapper are produced. The video also features cameo appearances by Dr. Dre, D12, a lookalike of Kid Rock, Fred Durst, a lookalike of Carson Daly, Kathy Griffin, lookalikes of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, and even a stuffed Bill the Cat doll can also be seen being held in possession by one of the mental patients in the hospital scenes.

Actress and comedian Kathy Griffin, who is also known for insulting celebrities in her act, appears in the video as an attending nurse in a psychiatric ward.

The video also features Eminem dressed in the same superhero costume used by Tom Green in the Lonely Swedish video chasing a boy band, taking one of its members down to the ground and putting 'his bum on the man's lips.' The costume can be seen later in the "Without Me" music video following the release of The Eminem Show.

There are also more scenes showing one or more of the following (when the lyrics roll along with the video):

• 2 young boys watching the Discovery Channel on television with two rhinoceroses mating, then looking at each other in awe
• Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee chasing each other around a couch and Anderson screaming in front of the camera
• An obese man in underwear being enslaved by a dominatrix with a paddle
• A gay marriage is shown and Eminem breaks up the two men about to kiss each other (as a rejection to homosexuality) and showing disgust
• Eminem performing in a private room with all his clones produced from the factory with their heads bobbing to the music
• Eminem at the Grammy Awards dressing as Britney Spears, along with Fred Durst and Carson Daly pulling a blow-up doll of Christina Aguilera between their seats towards each other angrily until it flies out of the chair. 
• A clip from a cartoon of a frog tap-dancing on a turtle (from the 'Flip the Frog' film, Fiddlesticks) can be seen on a TV in the hospital and the viewer laughs at it.
• Eminem working in a fictional fast-food restaurant with an 'Ask Me' patch giving an obese woman her order and rejecting it because of the onion rings being forgotten, however he gets the onion rings and he spits in them, and gives the onion rings to the woman to complete her order, which she begins eating as she walks away. The same scene also shows Eminem driving recklessly around in circles in a parking lot in a blue AMC Pacer

Despite the controversial situations it is still humourous regardless, and will be of good use to me and my group, we can take the ideas from this by thinking of more outrageous situations to film.

Inspirations: "Trouble on my Mind" by Pusha T feat. Tyler, the Creator

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GKL_ZoJQjc

In this video we see the two artists in Los Angeles wreaking havoc and showing ridiculous behaviour in general, we first see them throwing eggs at innocent passers-by during Pusha T's verse, then in Tyler's verse we see him rapping on a chair intended for people with disabilities, various other members of his group Odd Future following him whilst he flirts several times with an old woman in a humourous manner. We then finally see them in the last verse ruining a hotel room and a convenience store once again in a comical fashion. 

This video could be of good use and inspiration for my group, easily because of the comical and hectic situations and nature of the video, however we would not be exactly able to replicate these situations as we would most likely cause trouble for disorderly behaviour!

Inspirations: "All Of The Lights" by Kanye West feat. Rihanna and Kid Cudi with vocals by Fergie, Charlie Wilson, John Legend, Tony Williams, Alicia Keys, La Roux, The Dream, Ryan Leslie, Alvin Fields and Ken Lewis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAfFfqiYLp0

This music video is directed by Hype Williams, a music video director known for directing hip-hop videos for artists such as Busta Rhymes, Kanye West, Nas and The Notorious B.I.G. In this video we first see a young child walking through several streets covered in snow, this occurs for a minute until we suddenly see the screen begin to change colours and we se several texts which are the lyrics and also credits to the artists and director. We then see shots of Kanye West rapping on top of a police car with lights on and also a handheld point-of-view shot presumably of him running back to home to find a man in bed with his wife! We also see shots of the artists Rihanna and Kid Cudi singing, notably without any flashing strobe light effects although there is a strong backlight behind them. Finally at the end of the video we see flashing text again with the artist credits and lyrics.

Of all inspirations I have found and posted onto the blog so far, I feel that this is the most unique and visually eye-catching, something that I feel me and Jared should utilise in our video by not just using shots but also flashing titles and texts, prehaps not in the same fast-paced, sudden style in the video though!

Background of the song

Performance Inspirations

Lyrics Annotation

This is an annotation of the lyrics which we have used to decide exactly in which sequence we will place our shots and sequences, this set of lyrics in particular deescribes the beginning of our music video and what will happen in each shot.

Music Video Analysis

The Target Audience

The demographic that we chose when planning our music video was adolescents of our age who were into dance, house and rap music which are the genres we decided to work with when going through the initial ideas phase. We targeted adolescents who were into going parties and clubs frequently for socialsing, a location and time when dance and house music are bound to be playing. This demographic would be most likely into films which are all mainstream and popular, examples of this would be action-adventure, rom-coms, comedy and horror films and in fact it would be high unlikely that they would be interested in Indie films as they like to follow what's popular. In terms of TV they would most likely watch reality shows such as Big Brother, comedies of most kinds including sit-coms such as The Big Bang Theory, and most importantly music channels such as MTV which almost always show music videos and what's popular in the world of music. 

Skills Evaluation of AS Production

Technical
I found the blogging side of the project to be rather simplistic and easy to achieve, however I was not always up to date with everything and had to do a lot of catching up, so next time I need to keep up to date more, and I could also post things other than mere paragraphs of what we did, I could blog pictures for example to show what we looked at or did.

Camera Skills
The shots we used for our project last time were relatively decent but to improve we could most certainly go for A-Grade shots, for example we could think about what angle we take a shot from in order to create more impact upon the viewer, there was also a lot of empty space in our shots and not a lot of mouth-on action, so we should most certainly fill up the spaces in our shots and use more mouth-on action.

Editing
We did experiment about with editing on the program we used and thought about the captions design, I honestly did not like the song we used which was 'The A-Team' by Ed Sheeran, it was too upbeat and catchy so we had to create a more moody and downbeat version, we only used a piano for this so we could have added maybe another instrument to create more atmosphere, but it worked well enough on it's own. We could also experiment more with video edits, but we used some effective transitions.

Creativity
During the editing process it soon became clear that we had done a lot of ordinary and uninteresting shots and had not really thought out any creative ideas that we could have used. We did have some however, for example Shaunagh's change of clothes when she walks through the woodland and the scream at the beginning of the opening. We could have taken shots at more interesting angles or thought about the lighting more, for example when we see the grieving mother we could have used some dramatic lighting and gone for a close up rather than a medium shot.

Characters
The characters we used in the opening were based upon stereotypes often related to poorer and more crime-filled areas of Britain, for example my character was a stereotype of a Chav, an anti-social and hooliganistic adolescent that wears sports designer clothing such as Adidas, Nike etc and behaves in a disorderly manner, and Shaunagh's character was a stereotype of a prostitute, a female who engages in sexual activity for money. We designed the characters around these stereotypes, thinking about dress code and the way they would behave in the opening. They both represent stereotypical British adolescents and young adults, and are realistic in this sense because. We made Shaunagh's character with the aim of getting audiences to sympathise with her because despite her activities as a prostitute, she still is a young girl whose life has not gone well for her.

A2 Production Planning

We have now started A2 and so we must begin planning out what we want to do for our production which shall be a music video. Such tasks involved in planning will include:

• AS Production skills analysis and evaluation
• Song lyrics
• Producer pitch
• Animatic
• Recce shots
• Research on song
• Production schedule