Music video evaluation

For the music video project, as a group we chose to produce a video for the song ‘my 9ine’by Kojo funds. Before filming the video we had to prepare by completing pre-production tasks. Our pre-production consisted of secondary research, primary research, call sheets, risk assessments, consent forms, story boards, location recce and analysing music videos. Firstly I analysed a successful music video for an alternative song and looked at different camera techniques used, story lines, editing, mise-en-scene and representation. This helped me to understand the techniques used to make a successful music video and allowed me to use similar techniques in my own documentary. The next step in our pre-production was doing some secondary research. In my secondary research, I had done research on the artist of the music video, Kojo funds. From my research I had found that he is a rapper based in East London therefore we had chosen to shoot our video in the ‘heart of east London’ Westfield, Stratford city. In my secondary research I also looked into the songs current music video, the lyrics, similar music video and target audiences. Researching the songs current music video allowed me to understand the narrative of the song better and use elements of the video for my own. Similar to the current music video, research into the lyrics gave me further information on the narrative and story line of the song and allowed me to create a music video which related to the music video. Researching into similar music videos gave me an idea of what the genre is about and what elements are needed in the music video. Secondary research on the target audience was the most useful and helpful through the pre-production. This is because researching and identifying your target audience allows you to produce a video that is suitable and entertaining for that specific group. From the research on kojo funds and rap/ hip-hop music I was able to identify that our target audience would be teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15-24 years. The target audience is mainly based in London and surrounding areas in England. Whilst researching about different target audience I found out that artists who are based around London have mostly London based fan bases.

For our primary research we created a survey containing questions about music videos, music genres, and artist and music preferences. We asked various people to complete our survey considering their age gender and cultural background. The point of using different people that had differences from each other was to ensure our survey and data was as un-biased as possible. Once we collected all our data from the surveys we created pie charts to study the results and understand what different groups of people prefer and what they would like to see in a music video.

The call sheets, risk assessment consent forms and story board was used to plan and prepare ourselves for the filming and producing of the music video. the call sheets was used to book a slot with the actors in our music video and have a schedule for the shooting. this helped us as we were able to follow the schedule and ensure everybody was available for shooting. the risk assessment was used as a pre caution to the actors and ourselves whilst shooting. the risk assessment allowed us to evaluate the risks during filming and to have organised any solutions should we have had any problems. The story board was used to plan out the main points we and and allowed us to get an overview of the music video. the story board included diagrams of what we would like the actors to do and annotations to briefly note down any ideas we had.

Production and Post Production

For the production of our music video we had decided to shoot on the location of Westfield Stratford city. The reason for shooting at this location was due to our research and discovering that the artist kojo funds was born and raised in Stratford, moreover the location matched and related to the theme of the song. In our groups there were four members; Dorcas, Aaron, Nk and myself. During

our pre production we had assigned different roles to each member of the group. I took the role of first director and Dorcas had the role of assistant director. Being the director meant I had to make decisions on the different shots when shouting, the location within Westfield, the length of the shots and what the actors would be doing in each shot. In our pre production we had planned to have two actors, one to play kojo funds and one to play the girl the song is based on. However due to confusion and a lack of communication we were not able to use the planned actors therefore had to use two members from our group. Although this was difficult to have a change of actors we managed to shoot within the time period we had and everything managed to go well.

Our music video was shot in a narrative and performance style. The narrative of the music video was of the main actor, Aaron performing parts of the lyrics from the song at different parts of the chosen locations. We also showed Aaron and his 'girlfriend' in the music video, around Westfield and we captured them at different moments of the day shopping and enjoying a couples day together as this is what the tracks lyrics implied.

When filming and editing this music video we considered a lot of things, for example we considered the mise en scene , camera shots, choosing what scenes to include into our video and sound. We did not need any costumes however we told our actors to wear clothes that looked young and urban as this would appeal with our target audience and would match the theme of the song. We decided to have the boy in familiar brands as this would allow the audience to recognise it and feel familiar with it. The girl actress also wore familiar brands. we did not need any props as we wanted to make the music video look natural and wanted to focus on the actors life rather than making the production look conceptual.