Dj Rukiz Detox (Millenium aftermath) album cover

 The font of the text "Detox" stamped onto the front cover in a orange stamped font makes it look unique therefor standing out from the rest of the cover because the rest of the cover is in black and white. It gives the main artist Dj rukiz the main focus of attention because his name is the only one mentioned. The stamped on album name "DETOX"is a an example of the vocabulary used it gives the idea of drugs/prison/hospital, without actually talking about it.

You can see that position signs were considered when they were shooting for this album cover. The camera is positioned in the center of the shot with a low angle looking up towards the artists. With all the artists in the same sight lines as the audience. By doing this it makes the artist look powerful and has ownership over the audience especially as each artist has a very serious facial expression. The girls acts as symbol in this picture and has great significance. Her facial experession is quite smug and happy that she is the prize all the men around her are fighting for.  Content signs can be seen through Mise en scene  and communicates a message to the audience. The girls low cut strapless top (also creating sex appeal) and the mans watch, silver chain, flat peak  and gloves suggests that they are stylish and very much care about their costume. The man in the background wants to stay hidden and one of his eyes is covered by his flat peak this shows he wants to watch but wants to stay unseen. Archetypes are also used in the front album cover shown my all the artists holding a masculine pose for example broad shoulders and arm around the girl.

Low key lighting is used and creates a dark shadowed look around the edges of the picture but gives the main image a high contrast light in the center of the image.

The the back of the album cover and the disc are mostly black except for the text. This is becuase the album content is dark involving songs about death, money and violence.

Puns and phonemes are used a lot in the song names. For example "Put It On Me"  "Nuttin But A G Thang" "From Da Bottom" "Wanna Fight". This is because this is how they speak and how they have spoken since they were young. Its the idea of street speech and aims to make them look more cooler, notorious and "hard".

The artisits faces here are very shadowed suggesting that they are like ghosts but always watching, almost like they are haunting, and they should not be forgotten.
The Mise en scene throughout all images are what would expect as they follow the usual conventions of a hip hop group. The baggy T shirt, flash jewlery, baseball cap and tattoos.
Low angle shots are often used on the covers awell to show they control and have power over the audience.

Progress post

When we first came together as a group of three we lacked communication skills and were not very decisive. We were unsure on what genre we wanted to do and disagreed however we have now found a great song which is a mix between the two genres our group wanted to do.

I have started doing some secondary research on artists and have analysed parts of music videos in our genre. In our lesson today we started to brainstorm ideas for our own music video. In lesson time the group will concentrate on planning such as location and actors for the video. I still have more artists to analyse and research to do on by myself in my own time. We have recently been working on primary research such as questionnaires and surveys to see what our audience would like to see from our artist and our music video.

Artist research- Chase & Status and Plan B

Chase & Status featured Plan B in the song end credits. Originally the soundtrack for the 2009 film "Harry Brown" staring Michael Caine as the vigilante and Ben Drew (Plan B) as the main villain. After the film the song became a huge hit and Chase & Status and Plan B became more noticed.

As Chase & Status are more electronic producers such as drum and bass and Plan B is a rapper the acoustic guitar in the first fifty seconds of the music video goes against the usual conventions of this genre of music.  However the quick cut shot shots shortly followed do follow the conventions.

The slow motion shot at the start does connect with the acoustics in the song as it builds up the suspense untill the drop where the faster paced music comes in and bad acts start to happen.

The song was played at the end of the film during the credits suggesting why its named that, but the video also shows how its the end of the villain as he is dieing and going to heaven. There is lots of connotations for example "I'll be on my way, to heavens door"  as the visuals showing him floating up dead towards the sky (heaven).

Throughout the video different concepts are portrayed all of them being quite dark. Such as street crime, drugs and violence. During the video you see what he has done wrong and shows how he is paying for giving the message that bad things will happen to bad people in the end. You would expect this video from the artists as all their music videos are quite dark and involve crime for example "Time, Flashing lights, Pieces and Let you go".

Lots of establishing shots are used to show where they are and what kind of society lots of people are living  in. Close ups of the main actor singing into the camera about the acts he has done in  the past. The aim of the close up show emotions such as regrets to the bad things and the person he has become  We see the bad things with the main actor in the background looking back at what he has done for example when he is being questioned and when he is in the alleyway, he acts as a spirit over what he used to be.

Similar artist videos- The Game

*post in progress

Similar artists- Nas

*Post in progress

Similar artist videos- Tinie Tempah

I thought it would be a good idea to look at both of these songs from Tinie Tempah as he is very similar to our artist. Both of these songs also have similar narrative to ours "Driftin away" "Till I'm gone" and "R.I.P' all have the same meaning ie leaving and not seeing eachin other and how things are changing.



Tinie Tempah focus' on his image such as his designer clothes, sunglasses and jewelry. We also have a close up on a black flash expensive car. Throughout the video it suggests that Tinie has everything, the girl, friends, money and lifestyle. The video is mostly shot in the beautiful sunny outside location however when it is filmed inside we see him in big famous modern buildings which suggests how successful he has become this is also seen by new famous Hip-hop artists such as Jay Z and Kanye West.







Both of these songs have a similar narrative to ours. One has a up and coming female artist.

Chosen song

As a group we decided to chose Driftin away ft. Reasin- J Luciano. It has a great genre mix between Hip-hop and R&B which we were looking at. We thought it would be the best song to do from the ones we had shortlisted. We also asked 8 people in our media class who agreed we should chose that song except for two members who thought we shouldn't. 

Song shortlist

A couple of weeks ago we were in confusion over what song we should make our video for.

BCee& S.P.Y- Anybody Out There. A liquid drum and bass song. I managed to contact one of the members on facebook however the song has few lyrics, to fast beat and it is 5.24 long which would be very challenging.

Dirty dike- Catch me if you nah. A white Hip-hop artist. I have James dike on facebook and know him from Cambridge where he has filmed before. However he is filming a video for this song at the moment and all of his other songs are not suitable for us to target at younger audiences.

 Driftin Away ft. Reasin- We think this would be a good song to do because it is achievable, and has good lyrics that we can make narrative from. It is also the right length and could be made shorter if we decide to cut the intro.

Demographics of Nas

I decided to do some secondary research so i could find out what our ideal audience member would be. Another Hip- hop artist that we feel as similar lyrics and style to us is Nas. From quantcast you can see his primary audience gender this will be the same for us.

 Although this research shows Nas' audience is mostly adults aged 35-44 we will not follow this. From our own research we think our main age group will be 12-19.

This demographic will be the same for a large percentage of our          audience members.

 

 Our Hip-hop artist and Nas both rap about their hard up bringing and money troubles. We know Nas used to live in a very rough poor area and people liked and listened to his music because they could relate to it. This will be the same for our audience as our audience can relate to his music and the lyrics for example in his song "One day".

We found this quite quite suprising but i can also understand this. Nas has been around for quite a long time so his audience would have been young when he first started to become succesful but as he has grown up his audience have become older and matured aswell.

African American and Caucasian being at the top is not suprising as Nas is Afrerican ameican. At the moment we have not decided what our main audience ethnicity would be as we the video will have three artists all being a different race.