Foundation Production Group 8

This year for our A2 media coursework we decided to create a music video, we went for the music video because we made a short film last year and thought to go with something different and maybe more challenging. We went for a Polish rap artist Adam Piechocki a.k.a PIH and one of his latest songs: Rosyjska Ruletka(Russian Roulette).

The video portrays a young male working a standard job, the male is aspiring to become a rapper and make it in the music industry. The whole idea came from constant changes in the concept ideas, our initial idea was entirely performance based and the song choice was also different. We were able to get the shots from the actual coffee shop kitchen in Windsor, which helped to represent the artist’s work in the most realistic manner. The video’s storyline does not connect with the songs lyrics, the reason for this is that the artist talks about many issues which some of which will be nearly impossible to portray. That’s when the idea started to come along of having the creation process of the song while working. We however tried to link the visuals with the beat itself, the song consists of a lively beat, we represented this in the visuals by having lots of cuts fades, which makes the video fast and dynamic showing a clear storyline at the same time. Because of the concept of creating a song we had shots of different musical instruments and other objects linked with this process (microphone, headphones, keyboard, music mixer, amplifier etc.) As I mentioned above the whole reason for having shots of the artist creating music and thinking of lyrics is that he’s trying to make it big in the music industry. The first shot at the beginning of the video showing iTunes screen playing the song was done in order to promote the actual artist PIH. Throughout the whole video the focus is on the main character, we tried to show him in different surroundings and different settings throughout the video, the reason for concentrating on only one character is because of other videos in the rap genre, every single video you watch the rap artist is always a focal point of the video. While making the video we tried to direct ourselves using the Goodwin’s theory, we managed to stick to most of the points, we included a concept, linear narrative and some performance with lip syncing etc. We didn’t however have any intertextual references, the reason for this is we didn’t want overcomplicate the video and really could not think of any references while shooting the video.

While creating the ancillary texts using Adobe Photoshop, we thought first of all how to make the digipack unique, vibrant, we wanted people looking at it and saying “wow”. Straight away we knew to focus on the main artist like we did in the video, the whole album is quite dark, focusing on day to day issues, on things that everyone is aware of but does not want to talk about them. The idea with the main poster came to use straight away, we thought that he wants to be a rapper, so we thought of the artist having a grip on the whole city because of his lyrics that concentrate on pretty much everyone around him etc. While creating the whole digipack we kept the main concept of dark and mysterious vibe, the reason for this is that PIH’s lyrics are hard to understand because of their complexity. The front of the digipack (frontcover) was pretty much straight forward we kept the same concept, took a different picture and started editing. This time the artist has the whole planet in the palm of his hand, with this we wanted to give a message “the world is yours” the left side of the earth is red, this represents the first CD, which is more violent, straight to the point. The right side of the globe represents the second CD, which is much calmer concentrating more on PIH’s private life, love, friends etc. We kept the background the same as the main poster. The title covers had more colour to them however, we didn’t keep the subtle, we took pictures of equipment we had at home (microphone and headphones) again creation process, and stuck the onto the picture, we didn’t want to complicate the title covers too much so all we did is kept them the same but re-arranged the pieces on them. The inside cover is quite simple, it’s a turntable, the reason for this is that we wanted to have a affected of a CD being put onto a turntable.

After showing the video, to the audience (classmates, family, friends etc.) the main thing we learned is that the video lacks enthusiasm, if the guy in the video dreams of being a rapper and that’s all he wants to do and loves so much how come he’s so dull in the studio. He should be bursting with energy because he’s realising he’s dream. With our first draft we learned that the video is to boring, the camera work was too shaky etc. So we sat down and planned it out again properly, we thought of every shot carefully, of joining them together to give an appealing affect without overcomplicating it. So we did, we used variety of different shots, planning them out and shooting them properly, without as many handheld shots.

While planning the video the main resource we used was an internet, which we couldn’t do it without. We gathered information on the target audience. We used a Samsung camera to gather location shots for future references. For construction of our video we used a PC and Sony Vegas Pro 9 software for editing and constructing the video, for the ancillary texts we used a MacBook Pro provided by the media department in my school, with Adobe Photoshop pre installed on them. We encountered few difficulties at the beginning working with the new software but after a while we managed to get to grips with all the software. At the evaluation stage we used a HD Sony camcorder for the filmed interview, blogs and Microsoft Word for the written art of the evaluations