Location Permission Letter

When we decided upon Westfields Shopping Centre for one of our many locations, we realised we needed permission to film in there. We found what we thought would have been a relevant department to send a email to them, but with no reply, when we went to film on the day we was turned down for security and advertisement issues, they insisted they had no email from us, but it was later revealed that we had emailed the wrong department. This was an unforeseen error in our filming and we filmed the specific scenes elsewhere, so we did not need permission to film anywhere that we had decided to.

Track Permission Letter

We did not have the legal rights to use the song, so a letter was sent to Young Money Entertainment to ask permission to use the track.

Photo-shoot Plan

Here is my groups planning document for our photo-shoot. we decided to make sure everything was neatly typed up to make sure we had a back up for any unforeseen troubles.

Concept

We have decided that we want to use the title of the song, 'Successful' to be the main concept for every thought in the video. We have made sure that our artists are differentiable to show the levels of success. We have also decided that we will shoot in locations that show off our artists in a successful light.

Advert Designs

This was our original idea as a draft for our advert design. Since this was created, we have changed our minds about the positioning of our artists, because we feel that our main artist should be the centre of attention and our second artist should be slightly out of the main focus. we need to promote our main artists brand image, and making him the focal point will only help us to achieve this.

Props/Costumes/Make-Up/Equipment List

We decided on these to enhance the visual aspect of our video. we especially chose the "I love haterz" t-shirt because it coincided with a line in one of the verses of the song, it is completely typical of the genre to do this type of thing, we have made the t-shirt noticeable during this line.

Location Shots

This was one location that we had initial ideas to shoot some scenes for our music video in. We would of used this location, but as we wanted to shoot our video early, so in the end this location was ditched, but the look of it would of complemented our song, genre and artists. There is also a shot of outside Westfields Shopping Centre. We wanted to show off our artist in a light which suggests he can afford to shop in places like this.

Song Details

We have chosen the song, Successful, by Drake. We chose it because of its soulful, but catchy beat and lyrics. It is a mix between Hip-Hop and traditional R'N'B.

Technical Tutorials

I learnt a great deal from the technical tutorials we were given, as they helped me to understandthe technical ability and effort that goes into making real life Digipacks.

Photoshop

I had previous experience with Photoshop, so this was good to use the application again. I went over simple techniques such as cropping and resizing, and due to my previous knowledge, I used the extract filter to make cut out of picture. We were asked to create a CD front and back cover to help us get used to the tools in Photoshop, my attempt is above.

Green Screen

The introduction to the Green Screen technology has been a great insight into how we can take our music videos to the next level. The use of these could be a real help into crisp shots and photos for use in the Digipack. We will need to remember to set up 3 cameras, showing 3 different shot types; 1 long, 1 close up and 1 moving camera. We need to make sure we direct our performer(s) into how to get the best shots of them.

Final Cut Express

For AS Media we were first introduced to iMovie, a video editing application to edit our music videos, but now for A2 we have been asked to use the step up software which is Final Cut Express. I had a little bit of experimenting time on their and found a lot of differences between the both, the majority improvements, but it took me time to understand what did what in Final Cut Express. The main information I need to remember is that we need to have filmed everything needed in the music video before editing because problems can occur otherwise.

Roles

Within my group, it is me, Arun and Vida.

My role within the group was to find and obtain the props, Arun's role was to look after getting the actors, and Vida's was to make plans to shoot in appropriate locations.

Initial Ideas

When our group first came together our first ideas of genre, was from the urban scene of music. We all had interests in it, and so it would of been a good decision of us to keep to what we knew about, in order to get the best out of song. We researched into a few recent popular songs, artists and locations within videos to gain some extra ideas. We all came to together after this and put our individuals points of view across to decide what we all thought would be the best decision. In the end we did choose the Hip-Hop genre as we felt we could portray it in a better light than what it already is in the media.

Lyrics Annotation

Our ideas can come from whether we look to be illustrative with our lyrics, being very narrative minded and keeping very cliche, or whether we decide to amplify the lyrics and present them in a very different way. The lyrics themselves are very broad in meaning and we have the creative freedom to portray them any which way we want.