Storyboard draft

Krept and Konan Website

The website is especially appealing as the two artists on either side shift into view from out of frame as does the album name fade in. This is especially effective as after it does this it gives you the options to download their songs on Itunes, Google play or view something from their official store, as well as buy any of their merchandise with the slogan "I Play Dirty".

Filming: Vlog 2

Today, everything went as we planned, in terms of what shots we wanted to film. Currently, since the estate idea was not taken well by the group, we are looking for more places to do some cutaways and base tracks.

Original Digipak/CD Analysis

This is the front cover of Krept and Konan's "The Long Way Home" CD. The dark, melancholy design provokes feelings of regret and sympathy as the side on close up of each of their faces is displayed on either side of the CD cover. The seemingly infinite road with a burning car placed on the right side compliments this theme well. The cartoon style is most effective I feel on the dusk sky where is stretches around the back cover of the book to sustain the same dark art style.

The back cover of the book is simply the same as the front cover but without the close up of the artists. The red sky and infinite road are darkened however to bolden the text that shows the names of each song with a yellow coloured font for each featuring artist.

Filming: vlog 1

Today the initial plan was to go to Waterloo to shoot Joram and Charlie's base tracks and acting parts in the Southbank skatepark, Leake St. Graffiti Tunnel for the Krept & Konan song Fell Apart, however due to miscommunications, we ended up going to the alleyway off Carnaby, Soho. where we shot the first base tracks for the song.  It was a little bit of a challenge because despite my knowledge of the area - usually around 2-5pm on the weekend, when a majority of the public are off work), since none of us are there all the time, we weren't aware that there would be as many people and cars/motobikes passing through as there was, and as you can see, it disrupted the smoothness of the filming process. Nonetheless, today we made a good start, because in reality, after 2pm mark we picked up the equipment, there would have been too many people in Waterloo anyway.

18. PLANNING - Analysis of digipak/CD for final song choice

Artist Image

LANE X MANTZ

We think that both artists are as important as each other (unlike most bands), so we had both artists stand beside each other. We thought this would be a powerful image by symbolising Lane x Mantz' unity and commitment to both becoming the best they can be. In the poster/digipack/website, we want to use similar images to these where both artists face are at the same level as each other (which we have to use photoshop to alter slightly). The best picture are where the two are crossing their arms because they appear in sync. Also, the pictures with the differences in levels is interesting. We can explore this future in the (near) future when we take professional pictures for our ancillary texts.

Real-life artist inspirations

GREEN SCREEN 

Kendrick Lamar - Swimming Pools (Drank)

We really like this concept of falling in space, or a continuous black space. With the slow-motion in this music video, we think it is a really effective way of showing how the artists felt in the beginning of their careers, as if they were going nowhere. We want to use the green screen, like how you see, at different angles, so the face, whole body side view, and wider whole body side view shots, so it looks as dramatic as possible, like the artist is grabbing something that is clearly out of reach. We aren't professionals with the green screen, however we were really inspired by this look and want to experiment with it for our own music video.

CAMERA MOVEMENT AND JUMP CUTS

Drake - Worst Behaviour

We like how, in the video, there is a lot of obvious hand-held camera movement. It's almost like the energy of the artists gestures and lyrics are transmitted through the camera and what the audience sees. It almost makes us feel what he is feeling - hyper. In Krept & Konan's song Fell Apart, there is a similar kind of energy. We'd like to use this technique of moving the camera as the artist is lip-syncing into the lens, so that for our own song, the audience can feel sympathy for the artists.

 This is unrelated to the songs lyrics or genre, but we like how the clips cut to match the beat of the song. The affect is that it got us more engaged in the song and its lyrics because we felt that everything was in sync.

Shot-list (updated)

The first draft needed a lot of improvement - especially in terms of how many shots there were.
This updated shot list has over 20 shots added to the first minute of the song, as well as includes most of the locations we are filming in within this short time, which is done - for example in the beginning showing the back of Charlie aka Lane's back on the Queen's Walk overlooking London's landmarks - to show that the song is about how he gets to that place. For this shot-list, we made sure that it has some obvious links to where they are now and how they became big, from not giving up and their love for music - Lane, despite living in poor conditions and using his cheap, cracked-screened phone, shows that he still has a passion for music, and that is what gets himself, as well as Joram aka Mantz, their fame and fans around the UK and Europe. There is also a key at the bottom, which was used as a guide mainly to show when and how frequently we would use base-tracks and the green screen throughtout the music video. We made sure that we weren't using the green screen too much, because that would leave no time to show the amplification aspect of the video we want the audience to recognise. Lastly, almost every shot is listed under a specific time/beat in the song, This makes it easier for us to film, as we will know how much footage we will need, which will avoid use re-shooting (more than once)

Branding Our Blog

We chose this wallpaper we found on http://www.mmxd.biz

We thought this was an appropriate background as opposed to a white background with chains because usually, pop/mainstream artists, such as Chris Brown and Tyga use white a lot in their videos, for their clothes and their cars, and their music is more hip-hop than grime. Grime is more basic, and the colour schemes are really limited to black, grey and navy blue, so we decided that we should combine the black - coming from simple backgrounds - in contrast with the gold chains they are seen sporting now because of their wealth and fame.

We also decided because of this, we would keep our whole blog theme black:

Shot-list (draft)

This is a rough, uncompleted draft for our music video. We are thinking to use a green screen and several locations such as an alleyway, were we want the artist to begin his lip-sync, and then go on to see Joram's character pick up a mic and start rapping, with floor lighting lots of black and white contrasts. Despite this being a draft, we will definitely begin the video with some establishing shots which we will later cut to the beat of the song, to signify how empty and alone to two felt at the begin of their careers.

19. PLANNING Analysis of artist website

Krept & Konan's website is very simplistic and dramtic. There again is a sense of synergy with the colour schemes:

The website doesn't have a lot on it, which makes the site look kind of pointless and a waste of an investment. I think for our website, we are going to use a similar style (because we like the clean layout) however put a lot more attention grabbing links to it - maybe like a few of their previous videos (just screenshots taken from editing) and pictures of the duo in different locations - possibly a vlog or two taken from the filming proccess

17. PLANNING - Analysis of original video

Unfortunately, there is no original video for Krept & Konan's song Fell Apart. However this just means that we will be able to be as creative as we want in terms of how and where to go, and without filming by what will be in our heads from watching the original music video. One could say, the fact that there is no video is probably going to make our video more visually pleasing, and stronger...

 

Pitch - 8. Synergy

synergy - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Pitch feedback

Our Pitch - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Pitch Task 12- Post Production (By Joram)

Reflection on Progress

Overall, I think that in terms of progress since last year when blogging I have been far more up to date with one catching up session in comparison to far more last year at the beggining of AS Media.

I would give myself a 15/20

This is because while I have used different applications to display my flexibility of knowledge with ICT I feel as if I could do more in terms of presentation and creativity when doing so. Furthermore the while the detail in my blogging is satisfactory, the room for improvement is still very much present.

My 3 things that I need to improve are:

Complete more blog posts on time

Include more detail on the subject of the blog post  

Think more creatively with the presentation of blog posts

Pitch Task 13- Industry (By Joram)

16 - Production Schedule

Pitch - 9. Ancillary texts/advertisement/Digi-pack

I think that this picture of the duo looked really album-esque, so I used it to create the album cover featuring the song they are going to perform. If we have to just do a cover for the single, we might have to get one of them to pretend their falling to aid the song title "Fell Apart" and the lyrics

FRONT

BACK

Promotional poster idea

I think we are going to stick with a black and white theme, because unlike rap and hip-hop artists, Krept & Konan are more grime artists, and their style is very simple.

pitch task 9 - Digipak drafts (By Charlie)

This is my draft of a possible advertisement of the single and album like seen on billboards or phone boxes, etc. The actual final album cover of course will look a little different and might use a slightly different image of us. The final album cover might also have a different background to go with the theme of the album name 'Good & Bad' and wont use this type of plain background.

This is my draft digipak which i have drawn of what my final album cover will possibly look like. The title will be 'Good & Bad' and will have a theme of angels and devils and negative and positive things. 

Pitch task 5: Audience 2 - (By Charlie)

This is my Powtoon presentation which shows some of my research to do with the target audience for our genre. To gather research, I have made questionnaires, looked at similar artists on YouGov, looked at audiences from social media and recorded mini interviews of what fans expect from our video for the rap/hip-hop genre.

Pitch task 4: Audience 1 - (By charlie)

This is pitch number 4 which is about audience. The Emaze presentation looks at the core and wider audience for our genre and music video. It also looks at what will appeal to the audiences and how the video will do this through clothes and locations and meanings in the song and video.

14. Reflection on Progress

Compared to last year I feel that I have improved significantly. After a year of experiencing first hand how blogging affects your overall mark, I think that I know exactly how to carry about blogging and doing extra work to ensure a good level of work. Last year I left a lot of posts out, and our group didn't every attend to them, despite their importance in our planning and research stage. So far (to my knowledge) I have not left any posts out of our blog, so I am off to a good work ethic. I would give myself 18/20, because despite how much ICT and level of detail I've used in my posts so far, I know I could add some additional texts to aid these posts, or just extra posts, however I will be doing this more frequently in the future. To improve, I need to found some more online presentation applications to get a bigger variety of styles - such as videos, cartoon presentations and slides.

Pitch task 2 - Brand Image (by charlie)

This is a link to my moodboard which explains our artist's name and our artist's brand image. I've looked at which artists we're similar to, what costumes we will have and how our image will help connect to a wider audience.

http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/hAKQE8N5/share

http://www.gomoodboard.com/boards/3JVvEHPJ/share

Pitch Task 17- Risk Assessment (By Joram Mantemo- Makondo)

Pitch - 7. Costume

7. Costume

More presentations from Jessica Emovon

Green Screen Test

Flip cam videos of green screen practice

These are short video clips taken on the flip camera which shows our practice attempt of using the green screen for effect in our video. From these videos we have tried to practice a shot in our music video in which Joram will be 'falling from the sky'. 

Original video

Unfortunately, the original song does not have a video. This means that it will be a little more difficult to follow a particular kind of theme because there is not original. However, this does not bother us because we think it will benefit us. It is good there is no original video because it means we can not be accused of copying the original and this will make our video more unique and original and creative.

If we had to choose a video from this artist that was going to be most similar to ours would be Krept and Konan's 'Fell apart' or Krept and konan's 'Devils playground'.

Pitch - 6. Setting & Location

6. Setting & Location

More presentations from Jessica Emovon

This is the UAL granary where we will be filming the final chorus with both artists. We will be filming this in the evening at twilight, and possibly at night, when the fountain lights are brightest and most eye-catching. We chose this setting because it has a very nice aesthetic and also UCL is a place where most people will link to success, because of how prestigious it is in it's long history or alumni.

We have also decided to film in the following locations:

the Barbican Estate apartment complex

and 

Abandoned car-park -