Props & Locations

Props:
• Hard disc cam recorder – UCA equipment – Farnham campus – My sister rented the equipment.
• Empty tape – UCA equipment – Farnham campus – My sister rented the equipment.
• Tripod – Borrowed from a friend from UCA that has the tripod that is portable with the camera.
• Red heads [lights]– UCA equipment – Farnham campus – My sister rented the equipment.
• Lighting for the green screen– UCA equipment – Farnham campus – My sister rented the equipment.
• 4 different outfits
• Strobe Lighting– UCA equipment – Farnham campus – My sister rented the equipment.

Location:
Green screen studio – Farnham [2 Hour journey] – UCA green screen studios – My sister rented as you have to go to the university to have any access.

Crazy Cousinz Ft. Calista - Bongo Jam [Textual Analysis]

The music video that I am analyzing is “Bongo Jam” this music video was produced by the Crazy Cousinz. The genre characteristic that this music video belongs to is funky house. The broad characteristics of this genre show men in power, big house, half naked woman dancing around the men and blinging jewelery which is stereotypical of a funky house genre.
The relationship between the lyrics and the visual show that the lyrics are emphasizing the visual, as the lyrics say “sometimes I wake up in the morning” the artist wakes up with girls next to him in his bed. The lyrics also say, “to play my bongos” and you can see him gesturing tapping on the female actors chests, which references to him tapping bongos, to further more clarify it there are scenes of him tapping actual bongos with the previous scenes with the actors chests. As the scene carries the use of representation of women as subjects also carry on as the artist is shown to have the power to pick the girls he want like a products in shops. All these are typical views of the funky house genre, which are shown in this video. The girls he chooses have to help him with his daily routines such as brushing teeth…etc referencing the girls as his slaves. However the girls emotions about the actions they are forced to do are clear through close-up shots of the girls faces, this is also used on him to show his clear happiness. While all this is happening there is also rapid shots of Calista singing as she is featured in this song, however she is not compared to the other girls in the video as she has shots on her own and she is dressed normally with a black dress, this shows her power as an artist however she isn’t shown that much as she is only a feature in the song.
Even though there are very degrading shots and references towards women, the representation seems to be not as typical as it usually is as Calista also says, “I love to play my bongos in the morning” and looks at the man dancing around her playing actual bongos. This illustrates her power as an artist just like men are typically portrayed in this genre; this shows us that as an artist you have the power no matter what gender you are.
Then towards the end of the video the main artists wakes up to his friend waking him up because he is sleeping while he should be cleaning the house he was dreaming he lived in, his dream was portrayed with a fade of black around the video shots throughout until the end as he wakes up. And now as the audience we see why he was dreaming of all the girls instead of doing the usual actions such as seductively dancing around him with a lot of interest, they were still seductive but they were cleaning the house and their emotions towards him wore not so pleasing as they showed no interest in him even in his dream. We can also now see why he as the man with all the power was so shocked and overly happy to be next to all these girls in his house, when usually they are portrayed as calm as they are used to these actions and showing emotions towards this is illustrated as weakness. Which he was shown as throughout the video.
As I was analyzing the video these are the main points I picked out which are very good examples of the funky house genre, this has helped he understand the image portrayed in usual funky house videos even though this video is shown in a unique way it still shows how a typical funky house video would look and what audience would expect it to look as it’s natural.

Evaluation & Conclusion

Evaluation

“Trick’n” was based on a stereotype view of a Hip Hop music video because I wanted to show that I understand the conventions of a usual Hip Hop video. To get better details with the shots I rented a hard disc came recorder and a tripod which worked out perfectly, I also got to get access to some good settings.

However it was very hard to get actors, when I did get actors it was complicated because I had to commute to Farnham to film the video. Because I only had the equipment for a certain limit of days and I had to plan the video, I didn’t get a chance to travel to Farnham and look around for good scenes for my video. When I got to Farnham I realized that there isn’t that much scenes that would be appropriate for my music genre, so it was really frustrating to find anything at least close to my chosen genre. Also due to my actors not being available for a certain day I had to shoot most of my music video in one day which unfortunately didn’t work out as planned so I couldn’t finish the ending of the video which was the main shot that made up the whole story. So I had to change the whole story and instead I filmed other shots to suit the new story line, this was really hard for me because I couldn’t put together another story and I had to change my planning.

If I had another chance to do this music video again I would most likely be very specific with the planning. I would actually visit the place first to search for good and appropriate settings, and also use actors that I’ve seen act or that they have had experience. I would also make second options in case


Reason for changing my music video:

When I first done the music video “Trick’n”, it didn’t turn out how I wanted it to look however due to me finishing my music video early I had time so I thought I should shoot another video and edit it. I had to book a green screen studio and the equipment but it was available only for few hours, plus it was the day after I made my decision so I had a day to make my planning for the music video “Right Hand Hi”.

Poster

The Making Of The Ancillery Text

Ive downloaded some smoke effect filters for Photoshop to get the professional result on the back of my digipack.

Trick'n Digipack

Digipack Analysis

In this digipack the artist is represented as a child with white fairy wings and a white dress, it’s as if she is represented as an angel. Angels are originally represented as peaceful and joyful, however in this image has her standing on a rock right next to the sea and there are filters on her hair as if it was flying in the air and the image is in black and white. This really makes the image look quite horrifying.
This is also represented in the use of white, black and red, red represents blood this illustrates the artist most likely to be punk in the critical genre. They most likely to be chosen to make the digipack look more scary to most likely match with the songs in the album and the front cover of the album which also looks scary.
The design of the digipack says a lot about the artist, the whole album is plane, it don’t have a wide choice of colours and images used. It is also layout simply, the artist clearly is not trying to attract their audience by following the recent trends such as a wide choice of colours and very interesting use of imagery, the artist wants to use their music as an attraction more then the digipack.
From studying the digipack I would conclude that the genre of the music produced by the artist is most likely to be punk as its quite emotional just like the album is designed, and in the common trend the style of the album would be called as ‘emo’, and their popular music is mainly punk.
The packaging is laid out in the most common way an album would be laid out as it is easier for the audience because it is always used like this, the main image at the front with the artists name and the albums name, when you open it there is info about the artist on the left side and the CD on the right. At the back of the album is the content of number of songs and their names, for easier and faster use for the audience.
The information given on the album is the name of the artist and the albums name, this also goes on the side of the album as this makes it easier for the audience to find the album in stores or their shelves. It also gives the number and the name of the song for better use for music players. And there is the name of the artist and the name of the album on the CD so the audience can identify the CD without the album case.