Music Video Pitch

My group and I had to present our ideas of our music video to the rest of our peers. We did this by creating a pitch using power point in which we discussed the location/setting of our music video, who's involved, the costume, the problems we may encounter, audience profile as well as the what we gathered from our survey. After we showed our pitch to our peers we got some feedback as well as some positive comments. They liked how the ideas we had for makeup and costume fitted in with mood of our music video as well as that they liked how our mood board had elements that reflected what we wanted to show in our music video. The suggestions they gave us to help improve was to make sure we were working with reliable people so that we didn't get disappointed, as well as that with the locations we chose we should be realistic and make sure we will actually be able to go there.  Below you will find images from my power point, that outline the ideas for our pitch.

MoodBoard

My group and I decided that the artist we wish to focus on will be Alicia Keys, as we were stuck on which song to do, we decided to produce two mood boards. One for ' If I Aint Got You' and another for 'You Don't Know My Name.'

Below you will find images for my mood board that somewhat describe some elements of my vision for the song Alicia Keys - You Don't Know My Name.
I have chosen the put an image of a man and a woman together to show how shes thinks about the man she desires for and how she pictures them in her head to be together. In the picture the man and woman seem rather close and intimate, as well as that they are just embracing one another's presence. Which is what she would want to do with her lover.

I deiced to put a variety of lips on my mood board to show the different feelings she embraces whilst she is with this man or even when she is simply just thinking about him. The lips on the mood board vary from her smiling as she is happy to see her lover, to her biting her lips as she sometimes tends to get nervous/shy around him. But I have chosen to put more lips on my mood board that show a smile as she is always happy to see him.

 I also put a face of a beautiful woman who is gazing into the distance, to show how her face would be if she sees her lover or even just thinks about him,  because she is totally in love and mesmerized by this man she really forgets about everything and anything around her and is lost in her own world.

I've also thought about to putting the word 'Love' on my mood board because she is deeply in love with this man, and really wants to be with him to be able to show him how much she loves him.
I've also put images of some beautiful scenery because when she thinks about this man her mind really wonders and embarks on a journey to these unknown places, were she wishes she could spend some quality and alone time with this man she is in love with. I also thought this type of beautiful scenery is where people who are in love tend to escape to as an romantic get away. I also put in image of an apartment due to the fact that some of our scenes that we film would be in an apartment.

 

Copyright Letter

                                                                                               
As a part of our research and planning we had to try and get in contact with the copyright owners of the song we have chosen to use,due to the fact that we are using a video that they own. We proceed to do this by writing a letter to the owners, so that will would be able to get a reply and be given permission to use their song. Below you will find the letter I have written to the copyright owners.

                                                                                                            La Retraite RC School

                                                                                                            Atkins Road

                                                                                                            London SW12 0AB

                                                                                                            UK

745 5th Ave

New York, NY 10151

United States

Midtown West, Midtown East

17 September 2014

Dear Copyright Holder

I am an A level student and I am writing this letter to ask for your permission to use a song for my music video which I will be creating for my practical work in Media Studies. The song that I will be using for my project will be Alicia Keys. ‘You Don’t Know My Name’.

I can assure you that the music video will only be shown to my Media Studies class, my teacher and the OCR exam board. Your company and the artist herself will have an opportunity to view the final video if you wish.

If possible, could you please send me a written copyright notice to be included in my coursework portfolio?

Yours faithfully,

Chantelle Ayoku

Music Video Survey

So that I was able to gain more knowledge and understanding on my target audience, we created a survey that contained a variety of questions that would help us to create a music video that appealed more to our target audience.

Below you will find a link to my Music Video Survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2YRC82Q

Audience Profile

This is Cara Blu, she is 19 years old and lives in Central London. She loves listening to Rap,Hip Hop and Soul/Neo Soul music. During the weekends she loves to go out shopping with her friends, she also enjoys going to her favorite restaurant which is Five Guys, as well as that she likes to go to the cinema and just chill out with her friends. On her lazy days in she loves eating, watching movies and listening to music. The breakfast cereal that Cara would choose for breakfast would have to be Coco Pops with cold milk. Her usual mode of transport would be taking the bus, and if she is in a hurry she would take tube, but Cara enjoys walking to her destination when she isn't in a rush as she likes to stay fit. Her favourite drink is water!  she loves a nice chilled glass of water as she finds it very refreshing. Her favourite TV shows consist of: Americas Next Top Model, Love and Hip Hop, Criminal Minds, Family Guy and Simpsons. Her favourite vegetable are carrots. She doesn't play or watch any sports. On holiday she would go to America,Hawaii or Thailand as she enjoys going to places that have beautiful beach views or somewhere she can get a lot of shopping done. For restaurants she would enjoy going to: Five Guys,Vapiano, Burger and Lobster, Tinsel Town, Ping Pong Dim Sum and Satay Bar.

Music Video Research

In a Hip Hop music video you would usually expect to see, that the location is in a party,club or a very big mason/ generally a fancy location. The characters would mainly consist of a lot attractive women, as well as men and of course the artists of the song. In an hip hop video there doesn't really tend to be a story line it just more or less follows the flow of the song as well as simply following the genre.

In a hip hop music video you would surely see some use of alcohol in one way or another, and people just generally having a good time (depending on the song). You definitely find a lot of recognized expensive brands and clothing, expensive cars and houses everything would be big and flashy. There would be a variety of camera shots in a hip hop music video from long shots to show all the money involved, the setting and all the big cars and houses. There would also be close ups to show all the expensive jewellery being used in the video and all the assets of the artist. You may also find close ups of the womens face.

Here is a Hip Hop video of French Montana 'Pop That' this video has a very typical style of a Hip Hop video and  fits all the conventions that a Hip Hop video should have such as the attractive  women, the big expensive mansion and cars, all the alcohol, there is also plenty of close ups shots showing all the jewellery and designer clothing.

  

Below is another example of a Hip Hop video that fits all of the conventions a Hip Hop music video should have.

Below is another example of a music video, this one is rather different compared to the other two videos. It contains less woman/attractive woman, and its more of the original style of hip hop or 'old skl' its contains a lot more dancing and is more or less how a hip hop video would of been like a few years ago. Although it does have some simple conventions of hip hop video such as the close up of expensive jewellery and clothes, the party settings at some point etc. The only thing making it different from the other videos is the lack of alcohol and attractive not fully dressed woman and i think that is because of the fact it is more of an older hip hop video and the conventions of a hip hop video have changed since then.

VMA Awards

I think Miley Cyrus video 'Wrecking Ball' did deserved to win the VMA of the year. From the simple alone fact that no other music video has had such a large social impact this year like 'Wrecking Ball' did, and in addition to that numerous people have used their time and effort to make parodies of this video displaying how successful it really was.

Some may watch the 'Wrecking Ball' video and question many things that occur in it, thing such as her lack of clothing, the licking of the hammer, swinging naked on an actual wrecking ball etc. But I think what Miley was trying to portray in her video was something more psychological and very with literal as we see in the video. The wrecking ball is actual tearing her apart which is more or less symbolizing what the person she is singing about has done to her. Apart from her using nudity to raise/draw more attention to her music video (which it certainly did) I think she used it in a way to expose herself, showing how they boy she is signing about has torn her apart, to her lowest possible form.

I think Mileys 'Wrecking Ball' video definitely contained a few elements which add up to create a strong video. Such as her use of very bright lighting throughout the video which made everything much more visible and clearer to viewer of what was taking place and especially her extreme close ups of her face with the white background which really just shows her emotions and how hurt she really is, the video is very 'white' in a sense of color, the background is white, her clothes are white ( when she has some on ) as well as the very bright somewhat white lighting. I think all this white symbolizes how trueself, and how pure,weak and vulnerable she really is due to the boy that has caused her all that pain. Although the white does clash with her mood which is more angry and loud. I get the idea that she is using the color white as a facade in her video to show how she truly feels about the situation at hand.

Lastly, i think this video deserved to win the VMA of the year because a lot of young girls/teenagers and boys in some circumstances can relate to the song and the pain/anger she shows throughout the video.
Below you will able to watch the video.