Understanding Synergy

High angle shot used to make him look vulnerable and confused.

Busy background that has lots of CCTV images, this goes with his album name ‘catch me if you can’ suggesting he is on the run from perhaps the police and they cant catch him.

Medium close up of the artist used. This is used to show his facial expression and is another technique used to show his vulnerability/ confusion.

Background is busy just like on his album cover but not made up using images. Instead its made using colourful boxes which is used to attract viewers with its brightness.

Extreme close up used to facial expression of Bashy. This time the image shows a more confident person who seems to be in control of things. So his website seems to conflict with what his CD cover is trying to portray.

In bashy’s video he is portrayed in a different way to how is portrayed on his album cover. Instead of the high angle shot which made him look inferior and weak , there are many low angle shots which show him looking superior which ties in with the songs theme of black boys standing up and taking control. There is however a few similarities, like where the album cover has the CCTV images in the background suggesting crime. In the video there a large groups of black males sometimes on brick walls or riding bikes. Usually when gathered like this people would assume that they were there to cause trouble or commit some sort of crime.

Genre

A music genre is a type of categorization that associates certain attributes with a certain type of music

Genres come from different point of views

A genre usually reflects a certain culture and people who relate to these genres can clearly identify a product as being part of the genre by specific traits or qualities given to them.

Some genres overlap and have very similar properties

List of music Genre

category of artistic works: one of the categories, based on form, style, or subject matter, into which artistic works

Choice of genre and it’s conventions As we were very familiar with R & B and knew a lot about the genre we decided to make it the genre we would base our work on.

A regularly noticeable trait of R & B music videos the way performance and narrative are blended in together. The main artist usually performs a song with lyrics and dancing etc, and also acts out a narrative or short story that relates to the song title.

An example where this is nicely displayed is in Ciara’s music video ‘Never Ever’

In this part of the video you see the storyline being shown

In this part of the video you see her performance. She is seen dancing to the music

Glamour & R&BWithin R&B glamour and appearance is a key convection. The audience are attracted to products that are no less than 100% perfect.

Artists usually have a main style that they stick to, which helps their target audience easily identify a product as being owned/made by them.

An example of one of these artists is Keri Hilson, who has a distinctive style that anyone who isn't even fan would associate with her. This style is unique and maintained in her videos, images and her website.

There is a clear between the website (left image) and the CD cover (right image)

Her name is written out using a font that is similar to stage lights which make it bright and catches he audiences attention.

Right under her name is an advertisement for her new album ‘In a perfect world’ with the words ‘OUT NOW’ written in bold again to catch the audiences attention.

Links to help navigate through the site. More information and products can be found here

Clearly you can see she likes to use large images/text as an eye catcher. She does it again with a big image of her.

Here she leaves a music player so you can listen to her latest song. This is to draw a person viewing the site and make them interested in going further on in the website to view other things.

Album coverImmediately you see a large similarity with website. The same masthead is used and so is the same image of her and the background used to link the products together and indicate that its another of her produces. Again everything is large to catch the audience’s attention.

Similar hairstyle

Similar eye-make up

These are from two different videos and nicely illustrate the style that she keeps to.

Planning our work

In the end our chosen genre was Hip-Hop mixed in with R&B as there will be rapping and singing done together. We decided to pick these genres because they are made of conventions we could finely portray on a low budget we all had friends who had a keen interest in the genre.We decided to make our own song which will talk about the problems young black people face as this is a hot topic in Hip-Hop and R&B. The lyrics will be explicit in the sense that there will be swear words to appeal to the young rap audience and the word ‘nigger’ will be used as that is one of the conventions of black rap music , its seen as normal for a black person to refer to other black people as ‘niggers’, however we will not be glorifying gun or knife crime but expressing other problems in the society.The song will in fact be performed by Emmanuel and Geraldine and we’ve decided to call it ‘Everything Will Be Ok’ with Emmanuel rapping and Geraldine singing. We’ve decided to book studio time for some time in October and will record it then. As we are unsigned artists there will be no copyright problems with us using our own song. We will make up a fictional Record Label name to use for the website and on the album cover.The video will consist of Geraldine and Emmanuel as the main characters and we may need extras depending on the locations we choose to use.To create Emmanuel's identity as an artist, we decided to change his name to Icer, so this is what his fans will know him by, and Geraldine to Geri.

We decided a great site for us to use for research was the channel AKA website as it specializes in R&B and Hip-Hop

The channel is well known for songs made to appeal to the same target audience as our video. A lot of young black people view the channel so 90% of the songs played deal with issues faced by young black people.

DMX & Faith Evans- “I miss you”

We chose to use this video as our stimulus as it consists of the genre we were going for. R&B and Hip-Hop are both present in this video through the two artists style of performance. Faith Evans sings whilst DMX raps.We also decided we will use this instrumental for our song as it has the right feel for the song we are going to produce. We liked the strong Hip-hop beat.We will also emulate some of the features in this video such as the location as we liked the graveyard idea to show sorrow and sadness.In contrast to our video to this one the rapper “DMX” has lost some one and is going through a hard time. And in our one we have lost some one and getting some deep thoughts on how we are treated as young black people. Further in a way that’s the message he is trying to get across in video on how blacks are treated.We are going to try and differentiate our video as much as possible but as a group we really feel that this is a good stimulus for our song.

Artist Bio

As Geraldine and Emmanuel are not real artist we couldn’t really write a biography on neither of them. So we searched for some interesting facts about our stimulus artist, DMX

DMX is an acronym for Dark Man Extreme.Formed music label Ruff Ryders.Has tattoo on his back of his dog killed by a motorist and the words ONE LOVE BOOMER.Known for his barking and growling while rapping.He has his own record label and clothing line called BloodlineHe is now the only artist in the history of the Billboard Charts to have his first five albums debut at number one on the Billboard Charts.His wife Tashera lived above him in his apartment complex when he was young. He did not know this until he met her at a club.He and his wife Tashera Simmons, welcomed a baby girl named Praise Mary Ella Simmons on 18th April 2005. They also have a son called Shawn.Battled rapper Jay-Z in a rap battle which was determined to be a draw. Although, DMX stated in an interview that the battle taught him that his style of rapping was not always the best.Has 9 dogs.6th best selling rapper of all time.Has sold more than 15 million records in the United StatesPersonal Quotes:"To live is to suffer, but to survive, well that's to find meaning in the suffering.""I used to do the beat box... a friend of mine, he was the rapper and after, we'd be doing a block party or something or a house party, and he's gettin' all the attention and I'd end up with a handful of spit, you know, from doing the beats... and I was like, 'you got to be the rapper'... the rapper's the man...""I know I may have done some bad things, but I'm not a bad person."I want Flesh Of My Flesh to be like my connection to the community, I want to say what's on my peoples' minds, soak up all their pain. I've learned that when I take it all in, I can make one brotha's pain be understood by the world."An important and fundamental premise of the American judicial system is the presumption of innocence - that is, until proven guilty."

These are our ideas for he video so far:We decided to emulate the church scene in the ‘I Miss You’ video and use it as our first scene to set the mood for the song. We have decided we will use natural lighting, and the lighting will be mainly dark and dull around the artists.We will edit a lot of the scenes into slow motion to show some sort of confusion and unrealism. We decided to use Charlton Graveyard as one of our locations. It links in well with the lyrics of our song. As its about loss and expressing everything being Ok in the endCostume; boys wear black and the girl white to symbolise hope. The contrast also shows the contrast of the 2 genres as black is a common colour in Hip-Hop, like rap-mogul Jay-Z says ‘All black everything’. White is a light colour and R&B is very feminine and light in most cases.Beat- typical hip-hop sounding instrumental, mellow tone to go with everything that is happening in the video.

13-20 21-25 26-29 30+

Download music store I tunes Amazon other

Yes No

Rap RnB Indie Rock Heavy metal Pop Dance Other

•What is your Age?

•How do you get hold of your music?

•Have you ever heard about ICER?

•What type of music genre you in to?

Please Tick the answer that suits you

This is the questionnaire we sent to 20 13-25 year olds

•Have you ever been to any musical gig, festival or club performance?Yes No

•What CD cover do you prefer

•Looking at the CD cover you chose what is your opinion on the artist displayed?

•Do you ever visit artists Forums, websites and blogs?

•Have you ever used a rap artists forum or blog?

•What music channels do you watch?

A) B) C) D)

Friendly B) Intimidating C) Depressed D) Other

Yes No

Yes No

MTV Base AKA (U) Kerrang Kiss Smash Hits Other

16 of the people we questioned were age 13-20The rest were 21-25This was good because age range was what we wanted to targed. Therefore the questionnaire results would be reliable.

Results:

Of the people we got to take part, 14 obtained their music illegally by downloading, 6 got theirs from iTunes and the rest went in store for hard copies.

None of the people we questioned had heard of the name Icer before, so that would mean (if we were really trying to advertise him) we would have to have to market the video right and make Icer stand out to get him an audience.

7 of the people we questioned listen to Rap music, 8 listen to RnB, 1 listens to rock, 2 listen to Pop and the rest listen to various other genres. It was helpful that most of them listen to RnB and Rap as they are our target market.

18 of the people we questioned attend musical event s and only 2 do not. From this result we decided that on the website we could include gig dates.

Nobody liked the in your face DMX album cover but most loved the plainer more conventional 2pac front cover, this is something we definitely need to take into account.

All the participants found the cover they liked the most intimidating. It seems to be a very important convention of rap, because most of the album covers we have looked at for ideas are intimidating. This is another thing we need to take into account.

All the people we questioned use artists websites, which will be excellent for us, that means we could use our website as a effective marketing tool.

15 of the people we questioned we had visited a rap artists blog before, only 5 had not.

All the people that were questioned watch the music channels Kiss and Smash hits and other channels. 17 watch Channel AKA which is our chosen channel for advertising the video. 11 watch MTV Base.

For the opening scene we decided to start with a low angle shot of the church starting from the foundation tilting upwards, this should take about 5 second of the intro. We will attempt to just use natural lighting as much a possible in our video as proper lighting is not easily available to us , but if possible we will try get two floor lights, so they can be illuminate the shot. We will then do a transition in to a short frame of Emmanuel walking through the graveyard. This should take about the last 5 seconds of the intro. As he starts rapping we will switch to a close up of him in a dark room with strong lighting on his face so that the background is completely dark except for Emmanuel’s face.

We will include two shots of Geraldine and Emmanuel together, Emmanuel dressed in dark clothing and Geraldine dressed in lighter clothing to show the light and dark theme we are trying to create. This shot will also be taken in a dark room but with white lighting over Geraldine and lighting with a red filter over Emmanuel.We will also insert tracking shots of ambulances passing and of gravestones in the graveyard.

If possible we want to get a shot of the police and just general street scenes. It may not be easy but we will try to some shots to add emphasis to the narrative of our video.

We decided we will also include some medium shot clips of hooded blacked out youths in the dark room with dim white lighting shining on the faces, and we will pan from face to face. As well as Emmanuel there will be a few close up shots of Geraldine singing the chorus in the dark room.

We decided Emmanuel should just wear plain black clothing throughout the video, nothing flashy or expensive as he is meant to be a representation of the typical black boy off the streets. We decided he should look rough and unkept.

For Geraldine we decided she should wear a denim shirt to make her look young and innocent and flowery leggings, as she is meant to represent peace and hope and that’s what people relate flowers with.

Emmanuel (costume)

Geraldine (costume)

These are the two final digipacks I was going to take into consideration. At the end of the day I decided to use the bottom one as I thought it looked better and attract the intended audience more effectively.

Here are my last two website ideas. I picked the bottom one because again it seemed to look much better and more useful.