Reasearch

Genre Research

Our music genre is grime, grime originated from east London, artist such as Dizzie Rascal and Wiley first introduced the attention of grime to the mainstream media in 2003. A crucial factor to grimes success is youth creating music for youth, as by one generation making music for themselves increases its popularity. The artist we are using, Wretch32, is associated with today’s grime music with a darker and grimmer edge to his songs; he originated from Tottenham in North London and has produced many successful grime/hiphop songs such as ‘Tracktor’ and number one single ‘Don’t go’. Throughout the research we did into our song choice, we analysed a variety of different genres and found that wretch 32’s songs had an appeal to all of us and then leading on to us finding our song choice; ‘Don’t be afraid’ – wretch 32 featuring Delilah.
The harsh and dark narrative to our music video we felt suited the harsh and gritty sounds of the beat and the vocals, Grime's tempo is around 140 beats per minute. Style of flow also varies but it’s most common for rappers or MCs such as Wretch 32 to "spit" double time or aggressively over the beat which again helped influence the more angry and violent aspect. Yet we do have a vulnerable edge to out narrative and on the chorus the use of soft female vocals use of a piano, a much more elegant instrument helped us display this vulnerability. 

Costume Research.

For our costume inspiration we looked into different mysterious characters such as ghosts, spirits, and bad / good angels for the main character in our narrative of the music video. We decided as a group, after varied discussion, that the presence of a guardian angel suited and fitted well to our choice of narrative.



This image shows a representation of the guardian angel from our music video. However to fit with the modern genre of our music choice we decided to add a younger look to the angels costume, by using a shorter dress and the enhanced white eyelashes. We still wanted to keep the eerie and mysterious atmosphere to the presence of the angel and felt with use of locations and lighting we did this without the need of a darker more grim costume. We still wanted to ensure the goodness and purity of the angel was displayed we did this through the use being dressed in all white, as white represents purity, innocence and a godlike image.


Here is an image of the Catherine in costume whilst filming in the studio. We searched specifically for wings with feathers as felt they are important to clearly portray the magical and angel from heaven image as at the end of our video we aim to display the angel taking the female character to heaven. The eyelashes although add a modern touch also create a spooky and un-natural purpose.

We wanted our pprotagonist looking very venerable we researched a number of costume ideas and we thought that a pajama like costume opened up lots of connotations of venerability and insecurity.This image is taken from Devlin's music video for "Let it go" where themes of domestic abuse are also interpreted. In our video we took some inspiration from this and had her in a pajama like costume as at night this is when your most venerable, we also used white to connotate her innocent nature. We wanted a simple costume to not take the attention off our thought out narrative.



We wanted to use a stereotypical image of a young youth that could be involved with some domestic violence, we looked at some well known television programmes such as hollyoak and we used conventional stereotypical clothing such as ‘snapback’ (hat) and dark clothing to make him look more intimidating.

Creative process

When we first came to the creative process of making our music video, we all sat down talked about the original ideas we came up with, we decided that something quite original was used as a extended metaphor to try to symbolize certain feelings, ideas and creativity to portray our music video.

We came up with the idea of a guardian angel watching over an abusive relationship, this gave us certain ideas about our narrative and performance. We had inspiration from such music videos as ‘Love the way you lie’ and ‘Stan’ both by Eminem; where an abusive relationship is displayed, performance is also incorporated is performed by the star.

We wanted our lead female character to look quite vulnerable; therefore we used nightclothes because this is when you’re most vulnerable, we used a white top and shorts; the white top was used to symbolize her purity and her good nature, she wore minimal clothing to show she was emotionally exposed. We wanted the main performer to be an angel therefore we used a classic cliché look of an angel, so we used angel wings and over exaggerated eyelashes to give it a spooky effect. She was dressed all in white to emphasize her purity.

We wanted a urban city setting as it reflected our choice of music genre; therefore we used city car parks with backdrops of city buildings, we also wanted to show vulnerability at the present time so we used a location with creepy overbearing trees that were intimidating making her feel overwhelmed and intimidated. We used a house that had little personal possessions to not distract from the main characters; it was also quite modern which we thought reflected our genre of music. We waited until it became dark to film the final scene the cause the darkness to show a symbolic ending.

Technology

We used a range of technology in our music video. initially we used a hand held digital camera for our filming. This helped us use a wider range of shots a shots, a shot reverse shot sequence, close ups, extreme close ups, long shots and mid shots were all used in our video. At first we found that this limited our quality of filming so we got inventive and found that the use of a fig rig enabled us to create a certain effect for our video, we did this so we could do a panning circular shot.

Throughout the majority of our filming we used a tripod, it allowed us to have steady shots when filming.

For certain parts of our music video we used the studio where professional equipment was available to use. We used industry cameras; lighting and vision mixers to add a more professional look to our film.

When it came to editing we used the software called ‘Final Cut Pro’ in this we were able to add transition fades, overlays, color compositions. We were also able to use slow motion and speed-ups to create a major effect on our video. It also made it more effective to be able to edit to the beat of our music this meant using very precise editing shot shots which we found difficult at first, however it helped bring the video together.

How We Used Conventional Narratives

Our music video had two aspects a performance and narrative, in some ways this was conventional for music videos in today’s pop culture in which many have a split narrative. In our music video although ours was split between performance and narrative, the performance was relevant to our narrative. The guardian angel that is displayed in the narrative watching over (as the couple argues and domestic abuse is symbolically displayed) is the key performer. In the performance we wanted the whole performance to be focused on the angel, grasping the spectator’s attention and illustrating her importance in the music video.

The narrative aspect of our music video fit a conventional linear narrative, we tell the story from beginning to end. the beginning being the domestic abuse, the middle being her running away and the end being the symbolic ambiguous ending, one that’s for the spectator.
We blend the narrative into the performance by fading images of the performance over the top of the angel singing (the performance). We thought this helped keep a sense of drama element and helped build the tension in our music video.

Overall we used two performance and narrative together effectively it made the video visually pleasing and conventional.