Reasearch into our song's Digipack

The titles of Eminem's previous albums

1. Infinate (1996)  
2. The Slim Shady LP(1999)
3. The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)
4. The Eminem Show (2002)
5.  Encore(2004)
6.  Relapse(2009)    
7. Recovery (2010) 

   

To help us develop a Digi pack cover, I had felt that it would be useful for me to research Eminem's previous albums in order  to discover how the music in these albums relates to their titles and front covers.

In my research I had learned that the majority of the songs in these albums are reflective of Eminem's life, as his songs are inspired by the many difficult times that Eminem had experienced in his life such as his legal troubles, his drug addictions and his conflicts with his family( namely his mother, his ex-wife Kim Mathers(nee Scott) and his daughter Hailie Mathers).

Additionally to this, the titles in Eminem's album covers also represent the different stages in career as well as his personal life.

In terms of his 2009 album "Relapse" the music in this album reflects on Eminem's drug addiction that he had underwent in the mid 2000 as a result of the depression that he had endured in that time period.

In 2005, Eminem had decided to take a break from recording music and had developed an addiction to prescription sleeping drugs.

In 2006, Eminem had remarried his ex wife Kim Scott. However this had quickly resulted in their second divorce after only eleven weeks of marriage.

In the same year, Eminem's childhood friend and fellow rapper DeShaun Holton(Proof) was shot and killed. This had a massive impact on Eminem as it had caused him to go into a state of depression which led to Eminem relapsing into prescription drug abuse.
Eminem's relapse is visually portrayed in the front cover of his Relapse album through the use of the album's name and it's image. The title itself is "Relapse" which directly refers to it and the main image is Eminem's face that has been collaged by pieces of prescription medicine tablets. This shows how Eminem was severely addicted to prescription drug prior to the time of the album's release. Additionally, the tablets which illustrate Eminem's face are surrounded by many other tablets and the red and yellow colours of the medicine makes it appear as a vomit stain on the floor. Vomiting is a common symptom of a person with a prescription drug abuse problem.

Eminem's following album 'Recovery' contains themes about how Eminem is recovering from his past misfortunes which had inspired the music in his Relapse album.

In order to create intertextuality between our Digi pack and Eminem's album cover, it may be a good idea to include an image in the cover which symbolises the stage of life which the protagonist is currently at. This could show how unsuccessful the protagonist is in his social and career life.

Music videos which inspired our A2 video

Intertextuality of music videos that will be present in our Music video

Not Afraid(by Eminem)

Sweet Symphony(by The Verve)

I need you tonight(by Professor Green)

Third day of filming

Date: Friday, 4th of January, 2013

First filming location: Rooftop of Wood Green shopping centre car park

Crew:
Me- Director/camera operator
Leyon-Actor/camera operator
Tyrell- Actor/camera operator

On this day we had carried out the third day of our music video's principle photography. This had taken place on the day after the second day of our filming in the same location as we had used the previous time we had met to film. In my opinon this day was significantly more successful than our previous days of filming since we had travelled to Wood Green with the knowledge of our experiences of what had went wrong the last time we had filmed. This had meant that we now knew what we can do to prevent all of that from happening again this time.

 Like we did last time, we had checked the weather report of this filming day and had found that the weather conditions were similar to thursday's weather conditions meaning the shots the we had filmed on the last day would match with any shots that we film today on the rooftop.

We had met  at 11am, as we since we had wanted to meet early and have enough time to film all of the shots that we did not get a chance to yesterday as well as some new shots that take place in different settings.

As soon as we had arrived in Wood Green, the first thing we had done was go to the manager's office in the shopping centre so that we could ask him for permission for use to use the roof as a filming location. Luckily the Manager had kindly allowed us to film on the roof for a maximum of 30 minutes with the condition that we do not include any shots of the shopping centre's property such as any shopping centre signs.

With the manager's permission we had then took an elevator up to the roof to begin our filming on the rooftop.

Our first filming location

Wood Green

In this location Leyon was featured in all of the shots that we had filmed so he was acting 100% of the time while we were on the roof. While he was acting Tyrell had acted as the camera operator while I was directing the process by instructing Leyon what to do while he is acting and also providing Tyrell with my advice on how to film each shot.
This part of filming had went extremely well since Leyon was very good at improvising certain aspects of his acting in order to make his performance more believable. Tyrell had also excelled in his job role since he was able to provide a lot of his own ideas as well as use a a variety of different camera angles in order to add emphasis to certain aspects of the music video as well as to make it appear interesting.
I believe that I had contributed a fair amount to the video in my job role as I was directing since I was able to make certain suggestion of how to carry out different filming techniques . For instance , I had created a filming technique which in which appeared Leyon's character was dropping a phone to the floor without actually damaging the phone it slef by filming the phone's hollow case from behind .
Additionally I had also looked out for any mistakes that we had made in our music video. An example of this is when I realised  mine and Tyrell's shadows gotcaught  in the frame while we were both behind the camera so I had insisted that we re-shoot that particular shot.
To help keep the realism of this shot we had used the 180 degree rule in our filming by only filming shots and different camera angles of Leyon from his right side or behind him.
As the introduction scene and the concluding scene of our video both take place on the roof , we had decide to film both of those scenes back to back.
The introduction scene had only required Leyon to act in the scene, whereas the concluding scene had consisted of both Leyon and Tyrell characters meaning that Tyrell would be unavailable to record the scenes.
For these shots, I had taken it upon myself to direct these shots as well as act as the main camera operator for these shots. I had used camera angles such as wide angles, over the shoulder shots in order to include both Leyon and Tyrell's characters in the shots that would require them to interact with each other.
We had spent approximately an hour and a half on the rooftop.
Once we had completed we had then filmed a low angle P.O.V shot of the building and another shot of Tyrell's character running to the building. When these two  frames are put together it will appear as though Tyrell's character chases after Leyon and then finds Leyon's character at the climax of the music video when Tyrell looks up and sees Leyon on the top of the building.

Second filming location:

 Tottenham cemetery

In this setting we will be filming the scene in which the protagonist walks through a cemetery in order to relfect the lyrics of "Here today, gone tomorrow". The image on the top of the page shows the setting for we have planned to film the scene that we had planned in our storyboards. 

We had finished filming approximately 2 pm Wood Green we had made our way to Tyrell's house so that we could charge the batteries and also so that we could have a break of filming. Furthermore this had also allowed Leyon to change into his other costume for the scene that we were going to film once we continue filming after our break.

We had begun filming again at about 3pm in Tottenham cemetery to film a short segment of our video which features Leyon's character in a cemetery  The significance of this scene is that it shows how the protagonist is depressed to the point where he is close to death and that he considering committing suicide as a way of ending his depression.

This is Mis-En-Scene will be used to relate to the lyrics "Here today, gone tomorrow", meaning that the protagonist is alive today but may be "gone" by tomorrow.

Second day of filming

Date: Thursday, 3rd of January, 2013

Location: Wood Green shopping centre car park roof top

Crew:

Me-assisstant director

Michael-camera man

Leyon-actor

Tyrell- assisstant director

Location of this shot: Edmonton Green

Image taken from the music video 'Not Afraid' by Eminem

The image above is a test shot, which involves leyon looking over a wide space of london area. This shot creates intertexuality between our music video and Eminem's music video for the 2010 hip hop song 'Not afraid' in which the introduction scene involves Eminem standing on the edge of a roof.

On this day, my team memebers and I had carried out our second day of principle photography. We had decided to begin filming on this day as it was most convinent for all of us since we were all available to film on this day. We found our filming schedule to be limited as it was the Christmas holiday which had meant that throughout the whole of the first week most of us would have been unable to meet up and carry out work together such as filming as we were all spending time with our families. This had meant that Christmas and new years day would have been unavailable for us to meet. However we all still had access to communication such as instant messaging and social networking, which had meant that we were still able to talk and exchange our ideas with each other.

We were also able to use this to our advantage by planning our video even further by saying what segments of our video we will film on each day and what locations we will use for each day. Additionally , it was crucial that we had made sure that our filming locations were suitable for us to use on the day of our filming. In order to ensure that our arranged filming days were appropriate to film on  I had checked the weather reports of the days which we had scheduled for filming. To our luck, the weather on the scheduled days were suitable for filming as there were no reports of rain and there were misty clouds which we had used to our advantage as Mis-En-Scene to match the depressing atmosphere of our music video.

Our orginal filming location

Edmonton Green

On the 3rd of January, 2013 we had begun our sceond day of filming and had met at 11 am in Edmonton green to begin our filming . In our music video, the begining scene and concluding scenes feature our video's protagonist on a rooftop. Initially we had planned to film these scenes on the rooftop of a building which is near the edmonton green shopping centre and right in front of the Edmonton Green bus station. My team members had found this location to be suitable for these scenes as the rooftop was quite high up and our test scenes had showed that this location would enable us to film our scenes the exact way we had visualised them in our planning.

Unfortunately, two security guards had then told us that we were in fact not allowed to film in that location since that particular rooftop is considered to be private property. This  forced us to pick another location to film our video.

Our second filming location

Wood Green

Fortunately for us we had then remembered another place that we could use as a setting for our video which was suggested to us by one of our school mates. This setting was located in Wood Green and had consisted of the rooftop of the shopping centre which was actually the nineth floor of the shopping centre car park. We had acknowledged that if we were to go to Wood Green the same situation would be likely to happen again and the rooftop may not be available for us to film, however we had decided that it was atleast worth a try to travel to Wood Green as we did not want to waste a day of filming.

We then traveled to Wood Green by the 144 bus and then onto the rooftop to begin filming when the time was about 1-2pm. When we had arrived in the shopping centre we took the elevator up to the nineth floor of the shopping centre car park and checked the area to see if it was appropriate for filming.

We found that this location was even better then our previous film location as the view was even higher and had provided us with vast amounts of space which had given us the opportunity to include various types of camera angles in our music video.

Within 20 minutes , we were able to begin filming and had completed a total of atleast 6 shots of Leyon on the roof edge.

Sadly , a security guard of the shopping centre had came up to the nineth floor and had told us that this area is unavailable for us to film as the car park is also private property of the shopping centre. Despite of this thesecurity guard had suggested that we ask the shopping centre's manager for permission for us to film on the roof.

We went to the manager's office but the manager himself was unavaible at the time so we had to ask the staff that was available. They had gave us permission to film on the rooftop for 30 minutes on the condition that we do not include any shots of the shopping centre's signs or anything that indicates the setting is property of the Wood Green shopping centre.

Immediately after that we had returned to the rooftop to continue filming which lasted for about 10 minutes, but sadly our camera was low on battery and quickly died.

We then stopped filming for that day as we did not have a charger with us at the time. Michael had bought a charger in a phone shop but we could not charge it any where in Wood Green. As a last resort , my team members and I had traveled back to Tyrell's house to plan the filming that we would carry out on the following day while the phone was charging.

Additionally we had decdied to make the best of our current situation by trying to film any interior scenes that take place in doors while we were in Tyrell's home.

Michael had told us that he would not be available to work with us on Friday so he had given me the camera and the tripod to hold onto until then.

My team hand then decided to film the rest of the shots that would take place on the rooftop in Wood Green and the cemetry scene on the following day.

Music video stills

This is a view of the landscape from the roof which will act as a point of view shot of Leyon's character.

The image on the left depicts Leyon getting into position so he is ready for filming while Michael is setting up the camera to film him.
The image on the right is an image of our storyboards which shows the shot that we are attempting to film.

This image shows Michael filming Leyon near the edge of the roof.