Pre-Production Evaluation Charlie Hill
My pre-production I gained an insight into the media concepts behind my project. I researched similar music videos related to my chosen genre other than the original track ‘ALL CAPS’ to get more of an understanding of what defines a Hip-Hop act, and to get inspiration from their work to reflect into my own music video. I noticed that they use dull lighting, in many of their videos, and they often use a spot like lighting to emphasise a verse. I liked the idea of having a dull, monotonous atmosphere within my video because it would make the spotlight scenes more captivating and draw your attention to the song/specific verse. I also researched A Tribe Called Quest’s music video ‘Jazz (We’ve Got)’, as they share the same genre, and additionally had similar lighting techniques. This gave it more of a chill feel and exerted the exact vibe that I want to portray in my music video. The gloomy lighting used by both artists perfectly conveys the alternative sub-genres of Hip-Hop, this is the sort of style that will attract my target audience of young adults.
From my research I found that Madvillain uses many different camera angles in his videos to give some diversity within his filming. They use a lot of extreme close ups of people’s faces in both music videos for ‘Accordion’ and ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’, the artist is renowned for wearing a mask, hiding his identity, creating a feel of mystery. This influenced me to use extreme close ups in my video, because it too will allow the audience to be enthralled with a sense of urgency to discover the masked hero. Furthermore it will help identify the mood of the song by focusing on expressions made.
I researched the act Roots Manuva’s music video for his song ‘Witness’ because he used interesting long shots and action scenes to show a creative and attention holding music video. Roots Manuva influenced me to film shots with a diverse range of camera angles such as long and mid shots to vary the footage.
The acts that I researched gave off an individual feel and quirky vibe in their songs and music videos, and I plan to portray this representation in my own video. The acts typically wear skateboarding fashion, including beanies, skinny jeans, shirts with sleeves and printed tees, presenting a laid back feel. I plan to abide by these dress code by including the fashion into my video so that the target audience can relate, whilst keeping in mind the budget is low.
I noticed that none of the acts that I researched made a particular point of singing along to their songs in their videos, due to this I was discouraged to use miming in my own video, as that might make it too similar to other main stream Hip-Hop acts such as Dr Dre and Lil Wayne, who’s target audience are younger than mine.
My pre-production helped me to acknowledge YouTube as an institution that I could use as a platform for my artist, due to the fact that a large amount of young adults use YouTube every day to listen to consume music. YouTube can help me create a larger fan base by the ability to share content on other platforms such as social media websites, creating the potential for the video to go viral.