Phase 3 Planning - Font Ideas

When choosing for Fonts for ancillary tasks, it's important that we choose a font that looks appealing to fans of the genre, and one that we feel represents our products. Here are 3 fonts that we all found that could be used for our products.

This font was found on Dafont. My group and I like the look of it, and the distorted image links to the idea of having an altered mind to when drunk. A drawback we found was it may be seen as hard to read.

This font we felt suited the genre and was what caught our attention, and it more readable than the first font.

We chose this font as we saw how unique it was amongst other fonts we looked at and we think that it'll stand out and be remembered in our products.


To get an idea of what our audience would prefer, we asked people to take a short questionnaire on which of the 3 fonts they preferred.

Out of the 3, River Drive was the preferred font of choice. Whilst this was the most preferred choice, when asked if it suited the genre of rap, 3 out of 5 people said that it didn't. The 2nd most popular choice, the Nervous font, was considered more of a rap font than River Drive. When choosing what font we want to use, we're more inclined to go with River Drive, however Nervous is another good option and we hope to use it as a secondary font somewhere in our texts.

Phase 3 Planning - Setting and locations idea

For our Music video, the Idea is to have a house party, as it's a typical location for where significant drinking could occur.

We haven't found a specific location that would be free yet. However most houses feature the same type of rooms and are very similar to one another. So here are some ideas as to what locations could be used for.

Kitchen

• As the kitchen is where food and drink is kept, it can be used for where alcohol is predominantly seen.
• The kitchen can be used for where people can chat and socialise with others, as is common with a party.
• In terms of our video, we'd use this room to show alcohol consumption as well as a party atmosphere.

Living Room

• This room is also used for socialising, the sofas and cozy atmosphere is always popular at parties.
• The use of sofas result in people sitting next to one another, meaning we can document those relationships.
• In terms of our video, we'd use this room to show alcohol consumption and how it affects relationships, as people will be close to each other and stationary. We'll show a negative message as this is what we want to show of excessive drinking. We'll show things such as party members looking on at the main character who is intoicated, people lying down or slouced over with alcohol in hand and people moving away from those who are drunk.

Roof

• This location will be used for the lead character to be alone and isolated from the party.
• The weather and the sky can be used to evoke the characters emotions.
• The view of the city can be used as a reflection of how small the main characters problems are small, so when he goes up to the roof, he can seek some clarity. 

Other Locations

Hall

Stairway

Storage

Outside

Gantry

Music Room

These locations can be used for solely visceral shots. They can be used to break up from the locations that move the story forward. The use of more locations also enable us to utilise more ideas that may not be achieved in the main locations.

I think with the locations made available to use in the college, we have used them effectively. I believe the kitchen and roof are conventional of rap videos and parties in music videos. However the other locations are not as conventional and I believe will be more eye catching to a viewer, as they're not used 

Phase 3 Planning - Audience feedback

This is some feedback we gained from our Prelim Video, all of it is positive.

With the feedback given, we'll have an idea of what we can do in our music video that would please our audience. This also gives us confidence in the video we will produce.

Phase 3 Planning - Copyright Permission letter

For the right to use an artists music in our video, we have to write to the artist to ask for there permission to use it.

Here is our letter that we will use.

The letter reads,

Dear Sir or Madam

I am a student of Media studies at A level and would like permission to use your song Swimming pools by Kendrick Lamar, for a music video we are planning to produce as part of our course. This would involve having the track play over our video that we have produced originally as an interpretation of the song. This would be for educational purposes and not screened to an audience.

This was written by Aidan in our group, and we'll all use this letter for permission.

It's important to get Kendrick's permission for the use of his song, as he's the only one that can claim ownership of the song. No one but him can claim copyright of the song or use it without permission, unless an agreement is made, for example the letter we wrote to him.

Phase 3 Planing - Props and costumes

This is an update post for our coursework.

Costumes

The costumes for our coursework will depict general teenagers. There isn't a focus on costume as they're to represent modern teenagers, so naturally each persons style will replicate someone on the life matrix scale.

For our main character portrayed by |Brandon, we thought we'd make him wear a shirt similar to the one that Kendrick Lamar wears in Schoolboy Q's music video for the song Collars Greens. We're doing this as it is common in the Rap genre for video's to reference other videos.

 Props

The main idea is to capture a party vibe inside a household. This can instantly be achieved with shot glasses, bottles of alcohol and red plastic cups, as these are all common place in a party and match the conventions of a typical party.

We have an idea of  having some multicoloured liquid in place of alcohol. This is purely for visceral pleasure as we hope the different colours would look pleasing to the eye of the person watching.

A cassette player will be another object featured in the video. The idea being a callback to older methods of playing songs. We want someone to press play on the cassette and have the song play, giving the illusion that  they start and finish the song. We're going to have their identity as ambiguous as to create an element of mystery around the track in the narrative of the video.

The only object out of the ordinary will be a golden flask. This will act as a motif throughout all products, and it's purpose is to epitomize the idea of anti drinking. By making alcohol look like the nicest thing to have, hence the gold colour and how gold evokes connotations of being the best and being powerful, we can show how alcohol isn't the best thing and is a stark contrast.The idea comes from the holy grail and how it's appearance and the idea around it looks appealing, however to drink from it will bring dire consequences. 

Prop overview

With the large quantity of shot glasses and cups, we plan on creating the image of excessive drinking. With the golden flask making an appearance throughout the whole video, we want to show the idea of the golden flask representing alcohol dependency, and how an addiction to alcohol can stick with you and is hard to overcome, hence why we're showing how drinking in excess is a bad thing

Representation of men and women

In our video, we're not going to put an emphasis on gender specifically. As our main message is about the negatives of drinking, we're showing the 2 genders as equal, as they both have an aversion to the excessive drinking, which is the message we're trying to convey, but ultimately we want to show both genders in a positive light.

Phase 3 Planning - Initial planning for Digipak and Magazine Advert

These are some initial ideas our group has for our ancillary task, in making a Digipak and magazine advert.

Digipak

• We're going to have the pictures the same as images from our video, this is to have synergy across all products
• One idea was to have a golden flask on one of the panels. The golden flask there to replicate the holy grail, something that's hyped up and made to be the greatest thing to man, but once you get to having it, there's a small chance you'll get the desired effect from it.
• We're thinking of using motion blurring to gain viscerally pleasing reception of the product. Personally we all think these will look good so we hope to use them.
• We plan on using a dark colour scheme, it's common with the Rap culture to use dark colours. It's common as darker colours are associated with gang culture and are seen as more dark and powerful than lighter colours.
• Another idea was to include some city shots. This is to establish setting to all products, and by showing such a large city to represent isolation and loneliness. This is because the message we want to put across is how alcohol can make you isolated and lonely if you overindulge and let it take you over. The connection to isolation and the video we have picked is how drinking in excess will isolate you from the people around you. Alcohol as a 'drug' is fine when drunk responsibly, however with misuse and excessive use produces problems.

Magazine Advert

• The magazine advert will largely carry on ideas from the Digipak, to ensure synergy across all products.
• We were thinking of showing the Golden flask spilling as one of the main images to accompany the advert, as it's the easiest way of showing iconography in our products.
• Dark colours will again be used.

Moral Messages of print texts

With our print texts, we plan to promote awareness of the dangers of drinking. With a dark colour scheme and the golden flask we hope to put the emphasis on this object which is associated with false dreams, like the holy grail. This subverts the genre as most rappers will rap about drinking in a more positive way. We've opted to have no people on either texts and just solely focus on the props used in the video.

Phase 3 Planning - Preliminary Video

This is our Preliminary Video.

We made a shot for shot replica of a 30 second clip of the music video for Roses by Outkast.

We did this to get an idea of what music videos are like, and by doing this we are now more prepared for filming our actual music video.