Our music video's protagonist's costume

The attire of our protagonist consists of a grey suit,grey trouser and a white shirt.
The monotone colour scheme conotes  boredom and represents how this character is very depessed with his life. The grey colour scheme also connotes that that there is nothing interesting happening in the potagonist's life. The protagonist's choice of attire shows that he feels he has nothing to live for.

The protagonist also wears a pair of tattered grey shoes. We chose for our protagonist to wear worn out shoes since it conotes how the life of this character is very depressing as his life is in tatters.

Real Media texts: Silver linings Playbook

This video shows how Bipolar is presented in the 2012 film Silver linings Playbook.

This is clip from the 2012 film Silver linings playing. I watched this film last year in the cinema and had noticed that the main protagonists of these films were two young people with bipolar mental disorders. Similarily the main protagonist of our music video is a young man with bipolar. I decided to gain inspiration from this film by viewing clips of the film on Youtube. 

The main purpose of my research was for us to study how the characters present bipolar through their acting. In my research I had discovered that the main characters represent their bipolar disorders by becoming slightly irratted which then causes them to have angry outbursts of rage.

Evaluation qustion 4

This is my fourth evaulation question which I had done in the Prezi presentaion.

My Third Evaluation question on Slideshare

How effective is the combinaton of your ancillary texts and your main product?

My team and I decided to record a response as a group presentation. We all took turns talking about different anciallary texts such as our poster and our digi pack. We mainly spoke about how these texts relate to our music video as well as how they contain intertxtuality of Eminem's previous promotional texts.

Copyright permisson letter

Dear Interscope Records

We are A level students from Bishop Stopford’s School and we are writing to request permission to use one of Eminem’s tracks from his Album, Relapse. The track that we intend to use is Beautiful.

With your permission, this task would be used in our Advanced Media portfolio, which involves creating a music video, advert poster and a dig pack for a choice of our own song. We felt inspired by the song ‘Beautiful’ and felt that the message was something we wanted to get behind.

With your permission, this task would be used only for educational purposes and not for our own self promotion; the video would be put on Youtube in order to gain feedback from our fellow classmates. The video will only be seen by our fellow classmates, our teachers and the OCR exam board moderator.

The artist and your production company will be fully recognised throughout pre-production and the final video itself. A copyright notice with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full details.

We look forward to hearing from you

Regards

Shayne Thomas-Gordon

Leyon Stolz-Hunter

Michael Phillips

Tyrell Chetty-Wilson

My group's completed Music video

This is a link to our completed Music video project on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfaGTvZY07A

My team members and I had complted the post production process of our music video on Tuesday the 26th of April in 2013.

We thoroughly  analysed the effectiveness of our music video on iMovie when we had completed our editing. This had included adjusting the clipsto make sure that all of the clip effects that we planned to use were applied to right clips.

We also checked to make sure that all of our clips were in the right sections of our narrative. 

My team members and I were required to be very critical with our video in order to remove any flaws were evident in our music video.

We were very satasfied with the final outcome of our video once we watched it a number of time and presented it to members of our music video for their opinions on the video. 

The response that we gained from our audience was generally positive and we uploaded our video onto Youtube once we were certain that our video was of top standard.

Completed Digipack

My team and I have produced a selection on images to be used as our music video’s ancillary texts. Our ancillary texts include an album cover and a promotional poster. These images were created from our own creativity which was inspired by real media texts such as music videos and album covers.

We formatted each section of our album cover by using a consistent house style which consisted of the same font style and colour scheme.

We took images using Michael’s laptop as well as his iPhone5 and then edited the images on the photo editing software: Pixlr.

Front cover

My group and I had thoroughly planned the design of our digipack’s front cover since it is the most important section of the album cover. This will be the first thing that audience will see if this product is advertised to them. The front cover of our digipack includes a close up of our protagonist’s face. We edited the face so that it would be vertically divided into two halves. The right side of the protagonist’s face is depicted in clown makeup whereas the right side of the face is made from a collage of medication pills.

This section of the digipack was inspired by two album covers which my team and I had researched in our product’s planning stage. The first album cover that we researched was the 2009 album Relapse which is Eminem’s sixth’s studio album.

We primarily gained inspiration from this album cover since we were using the song ‘Beautiful’ which is featured on this album.

Relapse’s font cover depicts a close up of Eminem’s face which is made from a collage of pre prescription pills. This design was used to signify the name of the album’s title: Relapse. The term ‘Relapse’ means for an individual to regress back into an illness which they had previously recovered from.

This album was influence by the period of Eminem’s life when he relapsed back into his previous drug addiction during the mid 2000’s.

We developed this convention by depicting the left half of the protagonist’s face. This was to connote that our protagonist has a mental illness (Bipolar) and is required to take medication for it.

The other half of our protagonist’s face is illustrated in clown makeup. The significance of this design is that it relates to a lyric in song “Marshall you’re so funny man, you should be a comedian, Goddamn, Unfortunately I am, I just hide behind the tears of a clown”. The protagonist will be presented with clown face when he says this lyric.

We gained inspiration for this side of the face from a poster of the Dark Knight which features and image of the Joker who is a character who wears clown makeup throughout the film.

The two sides of this protagonist’s face show that there are two sides to the protagonist which further signifies this character’s bipolar illness.

We also changed the colour to black and white to connote the depressing mood of our music video.

In addition we included the title Relapse which is formatted in Eminem’s trademark style in which the ‘E’ on end of this word is rotated backwards. We also included a parental guidance sticker on this front cover to emphasize that this album contains explicit content.

I feel that we had selected an appropriate selection of real media texts which contained conventions that were ideal to use for our product. I was very pleased with the outcome of our front cover.

Interior sections

This section of our digi pack is used in the album covers interior. These images depict two images of the protagonist as they face each other. One of the faces had an angry expression while the other face has a sad expression. This creates the impression that one of the faces has upset the other.

The concept of having two images facing each other is that it connotes how this character has a split personality. In addition these characters are expressing negative expressions to each other as they are face to face. This connotes how this character suffers from inner conflict since these characters appears as though they are enemies.

This section also represents this character’s mental illness. The protagonist of our music video suffers from bipolar which causes a person to feel intense anger as well then severe sadness. We emphasized how this character has bipolar by depicting him from two separate entities as they both display the emotions associated with bipolar.

Track listing section

This refers to the back page of the album cover. The purpose of this section is to display the list of tracks which is included on the album. We used a white font style for the text and edited the background of this section to be black. We selected this house style was so that the list of tracks would be readable against the background.

The centre of the section includes an image our video’s protagonist as he sits on a table while surrounded by a group of people. The people around the protagonist are blurred out while the protagonist is in clear focus.

This use of editing is used to signify that this character is the main focus of our music video. In additional it also represents how the protagonist perceives everyone around him.

Due to this character’s mental illness, he has become deeply depressed with his life and ignores everyone around him. His bipolar has made him become very antisocial and reluctant to communicate with anyone around him.

The background consists of people being  blurred out of focus which connotes how the protagonist is not focusing on anyone around him.

Constructing our Digipack



This is the front cover of my group's digipack



This is the layout of the booklet that will be included inside the album cover. This booklet will be placed on the opposite side of the front cover.





The image above shows the layout of the left side of the album's interior. This is an image of pre prescription pills which will be featured on the side of this dipipack where the CD booklet will be positioned.



The image below depicts the back cover of my group's digipack. This section of the template is used to display the list of songs that are featured on this album. 

Fast cutting in our music video

My team and I have decided to incorporate the fast cutting editing technique into our music video. The 'Fast cutting' technique consists of various brief shots that are played in consecutive sequence. The duration of the clips in this sequence often lasts for a few seconds.This editing technique is primarily used in films for conveying a large amount of information within a small amount of time.

We chose to use use this editing technique in Post-production stage of our product.

This technique will be used in the second chorus of our video which takes place before the protagonist decides to commit suicide in the video's climax.

We gained inspiration for this editing technique from the 2004 horror film 'Saw'. This film is about a group of people who are abducted by a serial killer and then  forced to participate in a series of life threatening traps in order to prevent their deaths.

(Duration: 4:24-4:37)

I had previously watched this film and had noticed that the Fast cutting editting technique is evident duing  the climax of this film.

 In this scene, the film's protagonist has  discovered the true identity of the film's antagonist.

The protagonist then tries to shoot the antagonist but the antagonist retaliates by electricuting him. It is at this moment when the fast editing technique becomes evident in this scene.

The following clips are a sequence of fast shots which highlight all of the main events which occured previously in the film's narrative.

The speed of the clip's length gradually increase throughout the course of this sequence which creates an energetic mood for this scene. In addition the combination of this editing technique with the incidental background music is used very well  in order to make this scene very dramtic as well as intense.

This editing technique begins at 4:24 seconds and concludes at 4:37 seconds.This means it lasts for a total of thirteen seconds.

We will develop this film convention by incorporating this editing technique into the second chorus of our music video. This will be done to build up the video's climax in a dramatic and energetic manner.

In our music video's second chorus we will use this technique to show a collation of breif shots that highlight the previous events which took place in our video's narrative.

This form of editing will reflect how the protagonist is looking back on his past and is being reminded of all the depression he experienced in his life. Once this character has been reminded of all of the negativity in his life , he then decides to commit suicide in order to end his suffering.

Our music video's storyboards

The storyboards of our music video

Our music video will begin with a wide angle shot of a man running towards a building.
The next shot features the protagonist of the music video.
This character will be shown to standing on the roof of a tall building .The protagonist then throws his phone to the floor. Following this frame will be a a close up shot of the phone as it lands on the ground.  The text 'Missed Call' will be shown on the phone's screen which implies that someone is trying to contact this character. The protagonist ignores the phone and looks out to the ground below.

The protagonist then turns his head to make sure that no one is behind him.
He then looks  down on the ground and sees cars and people on the ground from a very high distance.
The protagonist then closes his eyes and the video flashs back to previous events in this character's life.

From this point, the rest of the video is shown in flash back. The purpose of this is to show the protagonist's depressing life and the events which led to the protagonist wanting to commit suicide. 

The flash back will begin with a wide angle shot of the protagonist as he wakes up  in bed.
The next shot will be a low angle shot of the protagonist as he sits on the bottom of his bed.
The protagonist will have his head lowered as he rubs his hands through his hair and then on his face.
This camera angle will then transition to a mid shot of the protagonist in his bathroom.
This shot will feature the protagonits washiong his face in his bathroom sink.
The camera will then show a close up of a tub of pills on the bathroom sink.
The protagonist then picks up the tub and stares at them for a short while.

The protagonist will then violently throw the tub to the floor.
The next shot will show the protagonist as he is getting dressed in the bathroom. The camera will show the protagonists reflection in a mirror as he buttons up a short sleeved shirt.
The protagonist will then be shown from a high angle shot as he kneels down a picks up a pair of battered shoes.
The protagonist then leaves the bathroom. As he exits, his eyes widen and suddenly realises something.
He then goes to a small table in his living room and tries to find a pen and paper.



 The protagonist then begins to write something on paper but then throws the paper on the floor.
He then walks out of his home and onto the road. He sees a man in smartly dressed clothes walk past him. The next shot shows the protagonist walking though a cemetry.

This part of the song will begin with a sequence that shows a close up of different lips. This would show a selection of people lip synching to he song. After this sequence, the camera transistions back to the protagonist as he walks past people on the street.
The protagonist then enters a building where people are witing for him inside.

A group of people approach the protagonist and try to communicate with him but he ignores all of them as he is clearly unwilling to interact with any of them.

The protagonist then sits down on a sofa chair while other people socialise behind him. Another character sits down next to the protagonist and attempts to start a conversation with him. The two characters briefly exchange dialouge and the protagonist explains that he is distressed.

The protagonist then sees two people who are very happy with their lives. This contrasts with the protagonists life and he appears envious of the couple and then leaves the building.
The man wh briefly spoke to the protagonist sees him leave and chases after him.

The video then transistions back to were the music video began with the protagonist on the roof. The protagonist is about to jump off the roof but the second man who spoke to the protagonist has also arrived on the roof.

The second man then convinces the protagonist not to kill himself which then causes the protagonist to walk away from the roof's edge.

The screen then fades to black which concludes the music video.

Real Media Texts which inspired our video

'Beautiful' A 2009 music video by Eminem



Not Afraid. A 2010 music video by Eminem

Silver linings Playbook. A 2012 romantic comedy film directed by David O Russel

This is a scene from the 2002 film: The Two Towers. 

The album cover for Eminem's sixth studio album 'Relapse'

The Dark Knight poster. A 2008 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan

Bullet proof. A 2009 music video by the british pop duo La Roux.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. A 2002 fantasy film directed by Peter Jackson.

 

Limitless: A 2011 thriller film directed by Neil Burger

Bitter Sweet Symphoney by the Verve.

A 2005 film directed by Judd Apatow

The cover for the  album 'Playing in the shadows'. This album was released in 2011 by the british rapper Example.

Saw. A 2004 horror film directed by James Wan.

Post Production: My group's Digipack prototype

Eminem's Relapse Album cover

My group's Album cover

This is the first prototype of our music video's completed Album cover.

We developed the conventions of Eminem's Relapse cover by:

Hair is cut in the manner as Eminem's hair cut.

One side of his face is collaged with pre prescription pills.

Jump Cuts

We decided to incorporate jump cuts into our music video editing.
Time effective
More interesting

This is the music video for the Pop song 'Bulletproof' which was released in 2009 and performed by the british singer pop duo La Roux.
Bulletproof is a concept based music video which focuses on the visuals rather than a narrative. The video shows the lead singer of La Roux, Elly Jackson as she walks in  various different futuristic settings.There is a segment in this music video when the camera pans around Elly Jackson as she gets up from the chair. The camera cuts to different shots of Jackson as she rises up from the chair without showing the complete transistions of Jackson while she is physically moving.
This technique was used effectively in this song since it matches the song's fast paced beat. In addition jump cutting can be used to reduce the duration of the music video.
The main purose of a jump cut is to cut to a different shot of the same subject but from a different angle. This form of editing is commonly used to represent a transition occuring without showing the transition itself

My group's Digital Technology

Filming equipment:

One Camera : A Vivitar dvr 1080p Camcorder

 We also used a Tripod to hold the camera in place as we filmed our footage for our music video.



This image shows one of my team members using the camera with the Tripod to film one of my group's actors.



Editing Software:

We used the iMovie editing software on an Apple Mac computor to edit our footage.



Software we used to develop our Digi pack:

When my team completed our editing we begun to develop our album's Digipack. We took pictures of our music video's protagonist and then edited the images by using online photo editing site: Pixlr.

Using our technology

Here i am using the iMovie programme to edit the video

Editing our Music video

Editing location- Apple Mac Room in our school's sixth form

Dates-

Completion our filming-14/03/2013

Day one of Editing-  21/03/2013

Day two of Editing- 25/03/2013

Day three of Editing- 26/03/2013

Day four of Editing- 27/03/2013
Day five of Editing-19/04/2013
Day six of Editing- 21/04/2013

Editors-Myself(Shayne),Michael,Leyon and Tyrell

Day one:
One this day my team members and I had begun to edit our film footage. Initaily we planned to filming earlier immediately after the completion of our filming. This was delayed as we had trouble uploading our footage onto the Apple Mac computor.
Luckily , we were able to upload our footage to the Apple Mac by using my school account and then imported our footage onto iMovie.

Before we started editing, we thought that it would be wise to watch over the clips that we filmed to check to see if they were suitable to include in our product. In addition we also checked the length of the total amount of clips to see if we had too much or not enough footage. We did this by clicking on each clip to see how how many seconds were in each clip. We then added all of the seconds together and found that we had filmed a total of 508.326 seconds of footage. I then divided this value by 60 which equaled 8.4 meaning that length of our footage was 8.4 minutes long.

This meant that we would have to crop down a large majority of our footage since the length of our sound is four minutes long which is less than half of what we filmed already.
We then begun to crop out any clips that we felt were uncessary. By the end of this session we had approximately six minutes of footage.

Day two:
Applied music onto iMovie so that we could get a first impression of how the scenes would appear with the music.

We were able to uses the shots we filmed to create an exceptionally well introduction scene.
On this day we began to incorporate editing techniques such as Jump cuts. We were able to use Jump cuts effectively in our videos since they made our video appear more interesting as well reduced the length of our video.

The majority of our video features Leyon's character walking in different locations.
An example of the segment of the video which shows Leyon walking down a narrow pathway in a cemetry.
In our filming we had filmed Leyon walking for almost forty five seconds. In order to shorten the length of this section we divided this segment into small sections which show Leyon as he is at different distances on the pathway. Once we added Jump cuts to this section, this video sequence was about twelve seconds.This editing technique enabled us to convey the image of Leyon walking down a long walkway while also making this section time effective to fit in with music video.

Day three:
Me and my team members had initally planned for our music video to follow a consistant narrative which shows the protagonist as he travels to different locations in a linear manner.However we discovered that our clips were too long which  therefore overlapped the original music video's length.
This would have been a major disadvantage for our product since the scenes wouldn't match with the lyrics of the song.

According to the media theorist Andrew Goodwin, there must always be a relationship between the visuals and the lyrics.

Our music video primary uses the song's lyrics along with Signs and Signifiers to convey its Mis-En-Scene. If  the lyrics did not match the clips so then our representation will not be evident.

As a solution to this we problem we chose to crop down a few scenes as well as take out a few scenes that we planned to include in our music video.
As with our first day of filming we looked carefully through our clips so that we would only have footage that we needed.

To reduce the length of our video, we mainly croped down the length of our clips as we found that most of them were a bit too long. We also applied the song to our clips and timed each clip with the syllable's of the song's lyrics so that the timing of each scene  .

Day five:
Today we applied Lip-Synching to our music video. On this day we uploaded the scenes of our music video which will be played with the lyrics "Ha, Marshall your so funny man,you should be a comedian,Goddamn! Unfortunatly I am, I just hide behind the tears of a clown".
We filmed Leyon's character mouthing the lyrics of the song in these clips.
We applied the song to iMovie so that we could match the lyrics of the song with Leyon's lip synching. This helped us to keep the music in synching with Leyon's mouthing and make it appear more legitimate.

In the orginal video, this lyrics were said when Eminem briefly stops rapping and talks normally. However he apparantly speaks from two different perspectives as if he is two people communicating with each other.

We used this in our video to highlight this character's bipolar mental illness

Day six   :

Begun to edit the second chorus in the song.
Close up of lips
Incorporated close up of lipsynching

6th day of filming

Date: 14/03/2013

Location:

Durants park

Scenes:
The protagonist is shown to be walking in the park and sits down on a bench by himself. This segment of the music video will be used to highlight this character's mental disorder. In this section the protagonist will be presented as two seperate characters communicating with each other. This shows that there are two sides to this character: His inner positive side and the negative side of him which is evident through the video.
We used the 180 degree rule in order to film this shot.We filmed Leyon from two seperate angles with different expressions on his face. The first shot of Leyon shows him to be smiling and happy whereas the next shot presents him as unhappy with a clown face painted on his face.
This reflects how this character is mentally unstable since he is talking to himself. The use of filming Leyon from two angles helps to distinguish that he has different personalities which is a symptom of well known metal disorders like Bipolar and Schizophrenia.
This filming techniques allows the viewer to interpret that this conversation is taking place in the protagonist's mind in order to give them a better understanding of this character's mind set.

This segment of this video was inspired by the 2002 film Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. This film features a character called Gollum who has two seperate personalities, due to his orginal self (Smeagol ) being corrupted and developing a new personality as a result of that. In this film there are many moments which shows being talking to himself as his two seperate personalities as if they are two seperate people despite being the same being.

Lyrics:

"Think Im starting to lose my sense of humor, everything's so tense and gloom, It almost feels like I gotta check the temperature in the restroom, as soon as I walk in its all eyes on me."
"Ha, Marshall your so funny man ,you should be a comedian goddamn, Well unfortunatity I am, I just hide behind the tears of a clown". So why dont you all sit down, listen to the tale I'm about to tell. We don't have to trade our shows and you don't have to walk no thousand miles".

This segment of our music video required us to apply make up to Leyon's face.
We used White,Black and Red poster paint in order to give Leyon a Clown face.
Michael and myself had applied the paint to Leyon's face by using paintbrushes.
The poster paint worked well as make up since it had dried quickly on Leyon's face  and did not delay our filming. However the paint was very thin, which meant that it would crack if Leyon moved his face. This hindered us slightly since it reduced the amount of facial expression that Leyon could put into his performance in this segment.

This is a real media text we used to inspired our music video. This is scene from the 2002 film 'The Two Towers in which the character Gollum has a conversation with himself. This character is well known for having a split personailty which is presented as him talking to himself as if he was two seperate individuals.   In addition this character commonly refers to himself in the third person throughout various points in the film. This can be identified as the medical illness 'Illeism'. This character trait is often used to highlight this character's split personality since Gollum refers to himself as 'we' and 'us' instead of 'I' and 'Myself'.

My team members and I found this media text to be ideal to use since this character contained simpliar conventions to our own media project.

This the purpose of this film's segment was to highlight this character's mental illness through the use of camera work.

Initally the cinematographer uses the 180-degree rule in order to film this character as the camera rotates around him from left to right. The camera then films Gollum talking to his other personality from two seperate  angles as the two personalities exchange dialouge. In this sequence Gollum is shown from the right angle whearas his positive personality( Smeagol) is shown from the left angle.

The affect that this has on the audience is that it allows them to observe Gollum as two seperate characters instead of one.

The character of Gollum is very similar to the protagonist of our music video since both of them have mental  illnesses.We developed the conventions in this scene by using similiar camera work by filming the protagonist from the left and right angles while he is sitting on the bench. This was to depict this character's bipolar disorder as he exchanges dialouge with himself.