Question 1

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. - Edwin Land. 

Creativity- 'The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns,relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations.

This enabled us to begin to 'brainstorm' ideas for our music video, beginning to discuss location, costume and props that would suit our preferred song. We  then explored our surrounding area at college taking pictures that we felt reflected the mood of our music video. We were, however, limited by points of interest in the surrounding area. This collage in fact only reflects the mood of half our music video, the rest being inaccessible to us at this moment in time.Choosing our song was rather difficult. When deciding upon the stepping stones of forming our media product - the genre, artist and song choice - we had to combine both tools of research and creativity. 

We were encouraged into making use of such tools by the writings of media theorist David Gauntlett, who holds "The process of making something, and then reflecting upon it, is claimed to give a more nuanced insight into participants' feelings or experiences". This is quite a retrospective theory however, and still required us to be quite inventive ourself when deciding upon our 'stepping stones'. We both mutually decided on the genre of rap. After analysing the situation we were in and the facilities we could access we decided on a 'rags to riches' theme.  

We felt the  song 'Danger Zone' - Chiddy bang expressed the convention fantastically.

When I began my research for creating a music video I started by looking at existing music videos in the same genre as the song that I had chosen. I did this to get a clear understanding of some of the conventions that the videos use so that I could create my own video based around them. I analysed artists such as Drake, 50 cent, Jay Z and of course Chiddy bang.

 After gaining an understanding I made  pitch so the class could watch to watch the videos and for them to comment on the conventions of the videos, such as the music connecting with the images being shown, so that I could gain a wider understanding by hearing the opinions of others and from there developing an idea of my own.

                 

After studying similar conventions within the genre will watched many different music videos, through these we discovered ideas that we were keen to re-enact these scenes and watch them with specific lyrics.We found these idea's from the Artist's Big Sean, Drake and Blue Scholars who are all famous within the genre. Our main goal in our video was to expose the differences between both lifestyles; Rich and Poor. I think this is done very well in these following videos. 


Rich

Poor

"Never take a time out"

These lyrics are in the first verse, and as an example of our technique of Andrew Goodwin's theorys of music videos, we will not be illustrative of the lyrics and instead amplifying. This is shown by how the lyrics do not relate directly with the video. However, their is slight irony in a connection of the artist calling for 'time out', whilst being lazy in the video and clearly taking a break.

"I'm in a major zone"
These lyrics are part of the first verse away from the beginning chorus, and this medium body shot will be used as part of a long take, to then be interjected throughout the rest of the verse by varying shots and locations. This will therefore be a dolly camera, as the artist walks towards the camera before gestures like seen here - in order to gloat his weatlh and success.

"Serious, higher than a nimbus"
Yet another 'riches' shot, the material boasting is highly present in this wide angle shot, and we would use a similar shot in order to show off as many expensive possessions as possible. The lyrics relate to the video here, in that whilst our peformer will smoke a cigar, lyrics will be talking of being high.

"To the penthouse we go"
These lyrics will be illustrated by the video, as a glass lift as seen in this image is available in our filming location straight to the penthouse. This allows us too pull off dramatic mid-range shots and quick cuts to reflect the movement of a rising lift.

"Watch me as I come up from the bottom and ascend the charts"

The first of our 'Rags' examples, this will be a dolly camera where our main peformer walks down the pavement towards the camera. This gesture of pointing towards the sky will be used alongside these lyrics, in reference too the future success of our star's rap.

"Train noise"

At the start of the muisc video, our track contains the noise of public transport in the background. Instead of trying too wait till the perfect shot, we came too the conclusion a close up of our star image will be used as the firstpart of our video's narrative.

It's extensive use of symmetry results in a sense of control and power within the artist, something I wished to impose upon my media products 'Star image' - a term coined by Andrew Goodwin. Whilst this sort of representation only portrayed the one half of my music video, it is a more conventional representation of Hip Hop artists in other media texts and so I felt would be more fitting in such a market.