Saturday, 16 May 2015
Saturday, 9 May 2015
Know Me From Target Audience (DONE)
Age - the age of my target audience would be between 16 and 25. The reason for this is due to most of the artists within this genre are of similar age, most of the content is too explicit for anyone under the age of 16 and anyone older than 25 may view the content as inappropriate or 'silly'.
Gender - the gender of my target audience would most definetely be male. The reason for this is because all of the artists involved in this genre are male, the lyrics involved match the usual representations of male behaviour and the music videos involve a lot of objects and behaviour that are usually associated to the male gender. The reason for not aiming at the female gender with my project is due to the fact that they may not simply relate to the lyrics and videos within this genre and the fact that they may find the content sexist or maybe disrespectful to women. For example, in Skepta's 'that's not me' he says, "take your girl no dinner, no rose, two minutes in my bedroom, no clothes". Here he is suggesting he doesn't care about the women's feelings therefore some females may not agree with these lyrics. Some males may even struggle to listen to this content.
Occupation - my target audience's occupations would definely vary. Everyone can enjoy all sorts of different types of music but I believe there are certain people with certain occupations who would listen to and watch music videos of this genre regularly. The majority of our target audience would most probably be in education with possibly a small job on the side or an inspiring artist/musician who likes this genre. Older members of society with an office job for example wouldn't listen to this type of music due to their surroundings and what they're influenced by.
Hobbies - my target audience's hobbies would also vary quite a lot. However, by looking at grime artists music videos, twitter and Facebook pages, I believe that our target audience would try and base their hobbies around the artists. For example, JME always appears on his YouTube and twitter to be simply hanging around with his friends 'messing around'. Whether it's playing xbox with friends or driving around, my target audience's hobbies would be social hobbies. This genre of music has got larger by word of mouth. A friend telling a friend. This is due to the lack of publicity it gets. Therefore, people are always listening to it together. This could yet again, be another hobby.
Media grouping - media grouping is quite an easy one when looking at target audience. My target audiences favourite films would be those of British gangster films. These films always involve grime songs and in some cases even some grime artists. For example, lethal bizzle the artist makes an appearance in anuvahood as does 'bashy' in the film 'Shank'. Favourite TV shows would also be for the exact same reasons. For example, the artist 'Kano' is a main chatacter in the popular series 'Top Boy'.
Style - when it came to target audience, I aimed for a specific style. Very similar to grime artists, our target audiences style is just simply hooded jumpers and jeans with possibly some 'bling' necklaces, bracelets or rings. Most of these people are again influenced by the mise en scene in the grime genres music videos.
Skepta - Shutdown: Music Video Analysis
Shutdown is the most recent single to date from the grime artist Skepta, released on April 26th 2015.
The first shot in Shutdown is the a long-establishing shot of a block of flats in where we presume to be London, as Skepta is from London which he backs up in various songs. After establishing these flats, Skepta give the audience more knowledge of the location by making the following shot a mid shot of some bridges connecting the flats, this makes the audience feel more involved to the storyline of the music video and gives them a sense of collective ownership. Stuart Hall's audience reception theory states that audiences understand text according to their cultral upbringing. In this case the audience that are from the council estates/flats will understand the text because thats where they have been brought up.
We then see another mid shot this time involving a group a people, some are recognisable, with the likes of JME, Shorty and James McCabe making an appearance, who are all in the Grime group BBK or Boy Better Know. Again this shot is used to engage the audience because they will recognise some of their favourite artists and feel comfortable watching the video right from the outset. A few similar establishing shots later, we see Skepta driving an all white Mercedes 4x4. The fact that the Mercedes is all white does make a stark contrast from the normal colour scheme in the Grime genre, which is black. White represents the opposite of black as it is associated with death, evil and mystery, where as white connotes goodness, purity and perfection, and Skepta is also dressed in white for the first half of this music video. Claude Levi-Strauss' Binary Oppositions states that all narratives are organised around the conflict between such binary opposites. In this case the binary opposites are the black of the rest of his crew and the grime genre as a whole, and the fact that Skepta is wearing white is the binary opposition.
After the shot of the white Mercedes, there is a mid shot where Skepta is in front of his peers rapping whilst they stand in the background. This is as so because he is the most prominent figure in the music video, being that he is the artist and producer. The shots that follows this first 'dominant' shot all try to represent Skepta in the same way, by making sure to have him on a higher level than the rest of the people in the video. He can be seen sat on a wall whilst his peers are below or just even standing up, as he is taller than the rest of his posse. This complies to the social dominance theory, in particular group hierarchy, which has been around since the dawn of time and helped man to survive in groups. There has to be social dominant is order for a hierarchy to work and in this video Skepta is dominant.
The following shot is of a woman, on her own wearing a grey coat and necklace with blonde hair, the camera starts at a mid - long range then zooms into the woman face. This accentuates the woman's blonde hair and her facial features, which familiarises her with the audience. The woman is alone because she is being objectified by the camera operator, who we can assume is male, as is Skepta who produced the video. This aligns with Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory, which states that woman are objectified in film because heterosexual men are in control of the camera, in our case Skepta. However, the shot does not fully conform to this theory because it objectifies her face, which is far from he norm of focusing on erotic parts of the female body, breasts, curves etc. This is backed up in the following shot including a different girl who is wearing big clothing that covering up her body, which then, again, zooms into her face which is just staring into the camera. There is no erotic features in the shot which may say that Skepta isn't trying to objectify women in a sexual way but rather in a way that shows they are just the same as men and we are all equal. However, there is the question of why these women are on their own in these shots, but this is probably because Skepta knows that his audience will be wanting to see female in an unrestricted way which means they can see the whole of them, because grime videos before have done the same thing, so he conforms in this way.
The shot after this is a shot of a what we can safely assume is a male handling drugs of some kind (white powder). Skepta had a background before rap which involved selling drugs, which he has repeatedly mentioned in previous songs, such as Ace Hood Flow in which he says 'never got money...off white' white being cocaine. This shot is probably paying homage to his former criminal career. The other reason he has included this shot is because again, worryingly, it may conform to Stuart Hall's audience reception theory because they may have come in contact with the drug trade, and this trade is a convention of the grime genre so makes sense to include, even if it does give the audience an idea of his criminal background.
A few shots later there is a shot where two men are sat on a wall, one dressed in all black and one dressed fully in white. Again, this shot re-enforces Claude Levi-Strauss' binary opposition theory as these men could not be more opposite, a good example being black and white. Levi-Strauss said that binary opposites are included in film because they catch the audiences attention for long periods of time as the battle between these opposites reigns on.
Halfway through the video the song pays homage to Kanye West's performance of All Day at the Brit Awards by including a voice recording of a complaint received by ITV. This complaint goes on to say about young men all dressed in black not normally being on primetime television, which speaks volumes about the impact of these grime artists that are gaining popularity at an alarming rate. This complaint also outlines the conventions of grime, as they are all dressed in black. The corresponding shots to the complaint are as you would expect, young men all dressed in black running up a staircase. It is at this point Skepta changes his outfit to all black, to represent his change in attitude and how he was angered by this famous complaint and the binary opposition is thrown out of the window as all his peers are dressed in black.
The first shot in Shutdown is the a long-establishing shot of a block of flats in where we presume to be London, as Skepta is from London which he backs up in various songs. After establishing these flats, Skepta give the audience more knowledge of the location by making the following shot a mid shot of some bridges connecting the flats, this makes the audience feel more involved to the storyline of the music video and gives them a sense of collective ownership. Stuart Hall's audience reception theory states that audiences understand text according to their cultral upbringing. In this case the audience that are from the council estates/flats will understand the text because thats where they have been brought up.
We then see another mid shot this time involving a group a people, some are recognisable, with the likes of JME, Shorty and James McCabe making an appearance, who are all in the Grime group BBK or Boy Better Know. Again this shot is used to engage the audience because they will recognise some of their favourite artists and feel comfortable watching the video right from the outset. A few similar establishing shots later, we see Skepta driving an all white Mercedes 4x4. The fact that the Mercedes is all white does make a stark contrast from the normal colour scheme in the Grime genre, which is black. White represents the opposite of black as it is associated with death, evil and mystery, where as white connotes goodness, purity and perfection, and Skepta is also dressed in white for the first half of this music video. Claude Levi-Strauss' Binary Oppositions states that all narratives are organised around the conflict between such binary opposites. In this case the binary opposites are the black of the rest of his crew and the grime genre as a whole, and the fact that Skepta is wearing white is the binary opposition.
After the shot of the white Mercedes, there is a mid shot where Skepta is in front of his peers rapping whilst they stand in the background. This is as so because he is the most prominent figure in the music video, being that he is the artist and producer. The shots that follows this first 'dominant' shot all try to represent Skepta in the same way, by making sure to have him on a higher level than the rest of the people in the video. He can be seen sat on a wall whilst his peers are below or just even standing up, as he is taller than the rest of his posse. This complies to the social dominance theory, in particular group hierarchy, which has been around since the dawn of time and helped man to survive in groups. There has to be social dominant is order for a hierarchy to work and in this video Skepta is dominant.
The following shot is of a woman, on her own wearing a grey coat and necklace with blonde hair, the camera starts at a mid - long range then zooms into the woman face. This accentuates the woman's blonde hair and her facial features, which familiarises her with the audience. The woman is alone because she is being objectified by the camera operator, who we can assume is male, as is Skepta who produced the video. This aligns with Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory, which states that woman are objectified in film because heterosexual men are in control of the camera, in our case Skepta. However, the shot does not fully conform to this theory because it objectifies her face, which is far from he norm of focusing on erotic parts of the female body, breasts, curves etc. This is backed up in the following shot including a different girl who is wearing big clothing that covering up her body, which then, again, zooms into her face which is just staring into the camera. There is no erotic features in the shot which may say that Skepta isn't trying to objectify women in a sexual way but rather in a way that shows they are just the same as men and we are all equal. However, there is the question of why these women are on their own in these shots, but this is probably because Skepta knows that his audience will be wanting to see female in an unrestricted way which means they can see the whole of them, because grime videos before have done the same thing, so he conforms in this way.
The shot after this is a shot of a what we can safely assume is a male handling drugs of some kind (white powder). Skepta had a background before rap which involved selling drugs, which he has repeatedly mentioned in previous songs, such as Ace Hood Flow in which he says 'never got money...off white' white being cocaine. This shot is probably paying homage to his former criminal career. The other reason he has included this shot is because again, worryingly, it may conform to Stuart Hall's audience reception theory because they may have come in contact with the drug trade, and this trade is a convention of the grime genre so makes sense to include, even if it does give the audience an idea of his criminal background.
A few shots later there is a shot where two men are sat on a wall, one dressed in all black and one dressed fully in white. Again, this shot re-enforces Claude Levi-Strauss' binary opposition theory as these men could not be more opposite, a good example being black and white. Levi-Strauss said that binary opposites are included in film because they catch the audiences attention for long periods of time as the battle between these opposites reigns on.
Halfway through the video the song pays homage to Kanye West's performance of All Day at the Brit Awards by including a voice recording of a complaint received by ITV. This complaint goes on to say about young men all dressed in black not normally being on primetime television, which speaks volumes about the impact of these grime artists that are gaining popularity at an alarming rate. This complaint also outlines the conventions of grime, as they are all dressed in black. The corresponding shots to the complaint are as you would expect, young men all dressed in black running up a staircase. It is at this point Skepta changes his outfit to all black, to represent his change in attitude and how he was angered by this famous complaint and the binary opposition is thrown out of the window as all his peers are dressed in black.
Locations - Know Me From - Stormzy (DONE)
I filmed all of my footage in Calne. The shots included shows a number of different areas in Calne, as well as the roads going through the centre of town. Below are some images of the locations I filmed:
- Calne
- Alley Way Station Hill
- Calne Bypass
- River and Bridge
- Ally Way on Oxford Road
Editing - Know Me From - Stormzy (DONE)
I decided to edit my music video on the software iMovie that comes on the Macbook Pro. Below are screen shots of how I edited it and different effects that I used.
This screen shots shows me selecting a clip from the clip bank and inserting it onto the platform where I can edit the clips.
Above shows me changing the speed of the cup to customised. This can either speed up the shot or slow it down. In my music video I have done both fast forwarding as well as slow motion.
This screen shot shows where I have jump cut the shot. This means I split the shot into sections and deleted certain sections to make it look like it jumps.
This is the word I created in Photoshop to put over the top of my footage. It reads 'where' which is a repeated song lyric, and this was put into iMovie by originally making the image green and white, and when choosing the effect 'Green/blue screen' the footage shows through.
Finally this is called a split shot where I have layered shots over each other. I have used two shots of the same as this looks effective but have made them split. This clip is also in slow motion.
Platform - YouTube (DONE)
The reason I chose YouTube is because it is easily accessible. My target audience is likely to use YouTube a lot making my video better advertised. Also, people can subscribe to my YouTube channel to see future videos I would create if I was doing it professionally and this would keep them updated. The YouTube video can also be commented on allowing me to receive feedback and 'likes' or 'dislikes.' The URL can also be shared on other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter easily meaning my video will reach more of my target audience. It is likely this is the most effective way of exhibiting my video as social networking is so populated by my target audience.
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