MARK KAMARA - A2 MEDIA PORTFOLIO

To be able to effectively produce a music video, as well as two related products, it is important that I and the rest of my group, work together to come up with ideas that could go towards the project. Since I am in a group of three, I believe that we will be able to produce creative ideas quite efficiently, and build upon each other’s ideas, which would not be the case if I was doing this project alone. We initially began placing ideas together on an A3 sheet, where we broke the task into eight different categories, to help us with organisation. A photo of the A3 sheet can be seen below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first category was choosing our genre, and we quickly decided Dance, with a subgenre of House, as Dance and House were mine and Amid’s favourite genres, and Trenay was happy to work with a music genre he felt confident in. After this, we decided on the track that we wanted to use, which was, ‘Everybody Be Somebody’ by Ruffneck feat. Yavahn (Lucas & Steve Remix) [#1]. You can listen to the track, by clicking on the ‘Play’ button on the SoundCloud embed below to hear a 1 minute, 47 second preview.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next task was brainstorming the possible artist or band that we could have for our music video. Some of the ideas we came up with were that we could feature a group called, ‘Team Infamous Music’ which is composed of two rappers who attend our college, and that we have worked with before in the past. We also thought of marketing ‘Spanner In The Works’ which was a band that we came up with during the process of practising how to pitch, using the ‘Hurt’ song. Additionally, we thought that we could feature a female artist, who we feel would also be the main character from our music video. Furthermore, we came up with the idea that we, the production team, could also be performing as well, making us a part of the band.

 

After this, we came up with ideas for the cast; we thought that we could include 4 – 8 male masked dancers, as well as the main female character, who also dances; who we thought could be accompanied by up to two friends with her, throughout the music video. The audience we decided to plan to target was teenagers aged 13+, students aged 18+, and adults aged between 21 – 35 years old. We thought of these age groups as from our genre research, we learnt that these ages are the predominant target audience of House music.

 

Next, we had a heading of Fashion and Style, which we couldn’t really decide on, however we do want to incorporate a theme of being trendy, and quite original or obscure through costume, and so we will probably develop this when it comes to planning for our music video in depth. Our next heading was promotion, and we had to select two of the following, a digipak, a magazine, or a website. However, we did not place a firm lock on the ancillary products that we wanted to make yet.

 

Our last heading to concentrate on was basic ideas, and here is where I felt we strived in the most, as we scribbled ideas all over the A3 sheet, relating to what we feel could be incorporated into our music video. We came up with using speed variations throughout the video, such as slow motion, or including a lot of time lapses, with speed changes, to show the girls roaming around various parts of London enjoying their time, and having fun. With this, we also came up with the idea of using a similar concept to Clean Bandit’s – Mozart’s House music video in which time is sped up, but the music that was used when filming the video is slowed down, so that when the footage was sped up in post, the singing is in time with the actual track. I felt that this was a very creative and engaging way to show performance to the audience.

 

We also brainstormed that we could show some known brands, through shots of footwork during dance scenes, which we felt would conform to a lot of House music videos already out there. We then thought that for some of the Performance scenes, we could use our school Performance Hall, which would enable us to create a professional music hall environment. We then had the idea that we could have a dance off, and that it would be set during the second chorus, or song drop. After this, we developed our idea of the girls roaming around London having fun, by incorporating the ideas that these masked guys, that are possibly wearing hoodies or jumpsuits, with pail white masks, keep appearing one by one, constantly freaking the girls out, creating a theme of paranoia for the music video.

 

We then built on the idea that the dance off could be the alterative to a conflict, with the girls fighting against the masked guys, instead of a physical fight, keeping the Dance and House element strong, whilst gripping the audience. Our last idea that we came up with on the sheet, was that for the ending, the girls could put masks on, which the male dancers are already wearing, symbolising that they have joined the masked guys, hence the lyrics, ‘Everybody wants to be somebody’. However, we thought that we would be subverting the lyrics, as with the mask on, the girls are now nobody, with no identity.

 

After working on the A3 sheet, Amid drew a mind map of our ideas coming together, and a visual representation of how we thought the music video could progress. Photos of these can be seen below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then did a Vodcast where we collated some of our ideas, and discussed how we felt that our music video would progress, which can be seen in the embedded video below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next goal was to finalise some of our ideas, and draw in some more inspiration from existing music videos and related products that have been previously made by actual House and Dance artists and bands, in preparation for the pitch that we will soon be presenting to our class.