Final social media page

 This is the link to our social media page

https://www.instagram.com/theofficialdonpedro/

Final website

This is our final website

https://milantharmaratnam.wixsite.com/donpedro

Final digipack

This is the front cover of our final digipack

This is the spine of the final digipack

This is the back of cover of the final digipack

This is the 1st inner sleeve of our final digipack

This is the 2nd inner sleeve of our final digipack

Final video

 This is our final video

https://youtu.be/oPlpkj2Rg3E

Straight Outta Compton music video and digipack analysis

 

S T R A I G H T  O U T T A  C O M P T O N 

Straight Outta Compton is the classic stereotypical 90s hip hop rap song and video, with a very iconic album cover of this time. First of all the whole band is wearing very casual, classic 90s clothing which would make the audience feel they can relate to them better. This also represents them as more lower class, making this band possibly more popular to this specific audience.. As well as this, the beginning lyrics "You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge" is obviously a direct referral to the audience watching, this is shown with one of the members in a close up shot directly telling this to the audience with a flame overlapping the video, showing the violence these bands have. Throughout the rest of the video it mainly shows shots of the band walking and rapping, but then also a man receiving a phone call and shots rapidly changing from the band to police themed photos.Then the video changes where the band is being chased by the police and eventually get caught and thrown into jail vans. Quickly after this, it switches to videos of N.W.A throwing stones and the van as they somehow been released, and shouting at police cars which go past.

 THEMES OF RACISM

Throughout the video there are many of themes where racism is apparent, and N.W.A make this obvious by showing the police brutality throughout the video. These references will draw in black audiences and other minority groups who have experienced similar or the same racism with the police. N.W.A are shown to almost be conforming to the sterortypes of criminals being black, and using this to translate how tough they are instead and how actually the police should be scared. Police brutality is shown when they have finally caught up with the band and are handcuffing them with some of them on the ground looking in pain, and then also being brutally shoved into the police van. Interestingly, I noticed that one of the police officers were black, which completely contrasts this which N.W.A maybe did deliberately. In many of N.W.A's songs they speak about racism, and how the racist should be afraid of them for example the lyric in 'Straight Outta Compton' that if anyone should see N.W.A they should 'duck'. These themes of resilience and fighting back from racism is still appealing to a modern audience especially a black audience who might have received the same or similar types of racism. In modern society we are more aware of police brutality towards minority groups especially people of black ethnicity due to the Black Lives Matter campaign. The song highlights how long this has been going on for. 

D I G I P A C K / A L B U M   C O V E R 

This iconic and powerful album cover features the N.W.A title in the top in the middle in a red colour, which reflects blood and violence possibly giving the audience an understanding of the themes they carry. Below this is the album name "Straight Outta Compton" in similar font to the bands name, which is in white possibly reflecting on there desire for peace. The photo in the middle features the whole band standing from a height looking down at the camera which is on the floor, this makes me as an audience feel intimidated by this powerful photo of the band above. They are dressed in the same 90s baggy clothes as they always have throughout there videos, which immediately tells the audience which class the band falls under (lower class). I believe the audience will find this photo very striking and powerful, feeling intimidated by them by there positioning above almost as they are looking at you.

Frank Ocean website and social media page analysis

 FRANK OCEAN

SOCIAL MEDIA

Although Frank Ocean does have social media pages, he has no tweets and no instagram posts on them. His profile picture on instagram is a selfie on an iPhone which he is smiling in, making him appear friendly. He has a simple bio of "Frank" with blonded, his website link below making it easily accessible for the audience, promoting more publicity. His following also shows an insight to the people he associates himself with such as Playboi Carti and Kanye west. In our own social media page we included the friendly aura Frank gives from his social media page, so we included Don Pedro's profile photo a picture of him smiling making the audience feeling welcome, and maybe even safe on there page which could be an example of escapism for them. 

WEBSITE

Frank oceans website is very outstanding, the front cover is very large writing with 'VOTE' in capitals reflecting on his passion for politics, instead of information about him.

https://blonded.co 

It also includes the time at the top, and options for each page saying 'ALL, PHOTO, VIDEO, AUDIO, VOTE' again in capital letters to draw in the audience. He has contained factual information as well about voting saying "The largest political group in America is the 42% who don't vote". Due to the large amount of campaigning he is clearly particularly passionate about this, to the point where his main front cover of his website is about voting in America. This is quite similar but not as extreme in our case with our social media, we have included lots of awareness and a hi light dedicated to black lives matter. As you scroll down, there is more information about voting and then pictures of album art for some of Frank Oceans albums, his music video 'In My Room' and two others, and his various album covers from over the years. There is also an album created by Frank himself on Spotify, this gives the audience more understanding about his personality making them feel closer to him. We have also done this in our video but instead by including photos of Don Pedro with friends and his girlfriend, leaving the audience feel closer to the artist and him appearing more relatable. There are also photos of Frank looking at his albums, acting almost as sneak peak photos for the audience.  

Editing our video

 Editing our video 

Our editing for our video was generally very simple, as all we needed to do was chose the best two clips and put them together using the split screen. After successfully choosing our two favourite videos we combined these together. We felt we could improve this by zooming on on the videos when Don Pedro is seen sitting down, which we also added. The link to the final product of our video is below.

Here is also the link below

https://youtu.be/oPlpkj2Rg3E

Shoot day and setting up

SETTING UP

Our shoot day was on Monday, but first of all we needed to set up for our set on Friday. We started up by putting up the boards of the sides of the room, which has a door each side so our actor can exit for each of the shots. We then filled the room with the props including the table which he drinks the water from, the sofa, the dressing table, the TV and the side table. After this, we then started our graffiti for the back wall, which we asked an art student and Milan to create graffiti on our which we have running through our whole digipack, website and social media page. We let this dry, and after added our posters onto the wall which represent the appreciation our artist has for the different genres. 

SHOOT DAY

As we had already prepared our set on Friday for the shoot, we called in our artist who was already dressed in his suit. We decided using the champagne bottles and flutes didn't work with the video, so we chose the alternate choice of water jugs and plastic cups instead. After setting up our cameras in the right place, ensuring we had a new battery for the camera and gathering props for the video we were almost set to go. Our artist had already been practicing the choreography we gave him, however we ran through this to ensure the best performance. We then started the test shoots, or practice run throughs, to ensure accuracy to make sure our video went as smoothly as possible. Roxy's job was to advise our artist any improvement during these practice run throughs, but also to turn on the plug which turned on and off the television. Milans job was to film and make sure our camera stayed as stable at all times, this was very important as we had to film the reverse and non reverse clip which we would after blend together with a split screen. My job was to use the clapper board to ensure when editing our video we had the same timing, to play the music for our artist and to call out instructions of our Artists movement ensuring he knew what to do when (as our whole video was taken in one shot, it would have been hard for our artist to remember every single action. I felt this prevented mistakes very effectively). After doing many test shoots, we filmed 5 real shoots so we had a choice and to chose the best one for our video. Then this we prepared our set for the reverse video, and again went through tests shots but more this time as this was a lot more complicated than our in-time shot. After taking 4 more videos and confident we had the perfect shot for each half, we did some other close up shots of the artist in case there was a mistake in the videos. We had finished our shoot after this which as a group we all agreed went incredibly smoothly.

Diary entry 27th November

IN THE LAST FEW DAYS...

In the last few days we have been organising our props and costumes for our actor and our video. Our actor needs two different outfits for our video, as he is shown getting undressed from a show so he is wearing a plain black suit. Our actor said that he could bring this in himself, however without the bow tie and instead a tie as we feel this is not the look we wanted to capture (with the bow tie). 

To reflect his more relaxed look we then provided a 'Wu tang Clan' jacket for him to easily put on during our video. This is a similar version to the bomber jacket we will be using in the video will look like. 

PROPS

As the video is set in a dressing room, we need props to reflect this so we are including makeup brushes and other makeup kit to reflect this, Roxy and I will be bringing this in. Milan will be providing posters of Oasis and Frank ocean to reflect the appreciation Don Pedro has for other artists and bands. As well as this, Roxy will be bringing in

- Champagne flutes/glasses

- Champagne bottles 

- Empty wine bottles

Foe a back up in case we feel the wine bottles and champagne flutes don't work, she has also provided water jugs and clear plastic cups. The food which he will be eating in the video our canteen will provide for us (these are oranges and bananas).

Diary entry 24th November

 THIS WEEK...

This week we have been mainly preparing for our official shoot of our video on the 30th November next week. We have been finalising our idea together, to make sure we have a clear idea of how our shoot day will plan out to ensure it goes as seamlessly as possible. 

We have made sure our actor definitely knows all the words for our video, which he says he does now although it was difficult at first as at first we couldn't find an online document of the lyrics which we now have found. 

As well as this as other members in our group have already shot there videos so we asked for advice on our video, and they told us that the organisation is absolutely key to make sure that our video goes smoothly. From this advice, we first went straight to our actor to make sure hey knew the song and the action in the video. Then we spoke to our teacher to ask what props and costumes we needed to bring in and what props the school was providing. We then each created a list of the props which we each needed to bring in.

We haven't done too much development onto our digipack and our website this week as we have been making sure our music video is organised, however for the social media pages I have been editing more pictures to go with the theme of our video and digipack overall. As well as this, I have planned to go to areas of London such as Camden, Croydon and the Southbank Skateboard park with our actor to take photos of him in front of the graffiti. We will use these photos for the social media but also for our digipack, and the website. 

Edited - SOME OF THE LONDON GRAFFITI PHOTOS I TOOK FOR OUR SOCIAL MEDIA PAGE, DIGIPACK AND WEBSITR. THIS ALSO GAVE US INSPIRATION FOR OUR OWN GRAFFITI IN THE VIDEO: 

Diary entry - 19th November

 THIS WEEK

This week we have allocated different roles to each person in our group, and then showing what each of us have done at the end of each lesson, so we can give and recieve feedback. Milan has been in charge of our digipack, Roxy has been creating website designs and other ideas for it and I have been creating the social media page for our artist. From ensuring we communicate all of what we have created at the end of each lesson and on our group chat, we have made sure all of our ideas are connected in some way and have the same colour schemes and ideas throughout. As well as this, we have asked our new performer to learn the words to the new song we are organised before our shoot day on the 30th of November. We have organised costumes for our performer as well, which is a plain black suit and then causal wear.

Group website idea/decisions in our group

WEBSITE IDEA

We wanted to keep our website design relatively simple compared to the digipack and social media pages, we will have one page with all of the content going down the page. On this we will include social media links, merchandise, single releases, album releases, music videos and vinyl releases. We want to make it a simple design so it is easy for the customer to access our website, and also to make it appealing. The background we have used for this has similar colours to our overall digipack. We have placed 'COCA' on the top left as well to advertise the song, and the fonts we have used are similar to the rest of the fonts we have used in our digipack, to ensure everything looks somewhat connected. 

Group digipack idea/decisions in our group

 Group digipack idea 

As a group we discussed ideas for our digipack.  Here is the idea we came up with, it is Matt, who is our new performer, but drawn in graffiti by Calki an artist at our college. We used yellow and black as it is a typical colour combination from the 90's.We wanted to use graffiti as in the original front cover for 'Coca dreams' they had graffiti and we liked this idea so wanted to interpretate this into our own digipack. We think it is important to have our artist on the front cover as well so they will be recognised easily by the public, which is why we have combined the ideas. This is the front of our digipac.

Here is the spine of our digipack, it has the name our artist and the album name with yellow font, which we will use throughout our production process.

This image is the left inner image of our digipack, which is a person almost trying to be a ghost with a sheet over there head. The background is a plain wall and graffiti as it represents our 90's hip hop chilled vibe overall, we will use this ghost picture reacurringly in our production process as we believe it is a very iconic design.

This is the right inner sleeve of our digipack. It is a relatively simple yet very effective image, again following our yellow colour design and including the graffiti. 

This is the back cover of our digipack which is another image of graffiti. It has the dark but chilled idea we want, it is also has a collaboration with Easy Life who is an artist who carries the same kind of music.

New song

 COCA BLESSINGS - DON PEDRO

We have since updated our song from the one we initially chose after Jacob, as the others song had over 1.3m views on youtube which we did not realise. We have since chosen not to include this song as it has too much publicity which could risk our version being taken down for copyright. THE NEW SONG is called 'Coca Blessings' by Don Pedro and UFO Fev x Big Ghost Ltd. The album is called 'The Ghost Of Abizu' which 'Coca Blessings' is apart of. 

Here is the link to the song, and the album cover.

https://youtu.be/dLmMfjeuIlo

Logo practice on canva

 

Here are some of the designs which I have designed for possible ideas for our artist, which we have desided to call our artist "Don Pedro", which I designed on canva. I did this to improve my practice with canva overall, so I could use these skills for the logo designs for my music video and also the digipack. As I wanted to start off slow with the editing software so I used a designs which were already created by canva, and then I changed the colour of the logo and the font. After I then changed the writing so it was our artists name. This first draft for our logo will unlikely be our final design, however I found this very productive practice which I tried to reflect our chilled, hip hop music and video in the logo. 

Storyboard

 

This is our storyboard for our music video, describing and showing a rough sketch of each of our shots.

Updated and final cast list

FINAL CAST

Since the news following Jacob leaving our group, we had to quickly find another actor for our artist and the video overall. We have chosen Matt, who is 6"3 (Jacob is 6”4), he is lightskin with short blonde afro hair. He is a great replacement of Jacob as the look quite similar, he is half Ugandan so he has black ethnicity as well as Jacob so our target audiences do not have to be differentiated. As well as this, he has a very similar laid back, chilled aura around him which is similar to Jacob but also our artist which we have now names Don Pedro. Here are photos of Matt.

Important update in our group

 UPDATE

Unfortunately, yesterday Jacob, one of the members from our group had to leave immediately so we are now left with Roxy, Milan and myself. This of course makes implications for our group, and will be our biggest challenge yet as we had no idea this would happen. As well as this, the most problematic factor is that we had Jacob as our main actor and we were using his song which we now have been told we must change although keep the idea the same.

We now will have to come up with

-A new actor who can replace Jacob.

-A new song to match the same idea of our video.

As well as this, Jacob was going to assist Roxy on the editing in the post production, however as a group we have decided we would all assist her if she needs our help. All of this means we will have to work even harder in the next few weeks to make up for the lost time!

Editing workshop

 EDITING WORKSHOP 

Matt taught refreshed our memories from our opening title sequences on how to edit our music videos in a successful way and giving us typically used music videos tips to make our video more professionally filmed. 

-Firstly of all you watch all the footage you have gathered together from whole shoot to find which clips you might be using.

- Then you sync all of the footage you have up.

-After this you do a narrative cut.

-In the video when it is about to be shot we use an iPad called a clapper board which is used to make sure the audio sync's up to the action which is used. This is especially important during lip syncing scenes. To use the clapper board correctly we need to line up the time in the video exactly to the time code on the time line.

The 3 rules of editing

-Listen to the music and illustrate what you see.

-Group shots together.

-Follow the movement in the shots.

Draft design for digipack and website

 

Analysis of music promotion campaign

Lana Del Rey is an American singer songwriter, her music is known for its stylised, cinematic quality which although she is very well known her music is not typically mainstream sounding. Her common themes within her songs are of sadness, heartbreak, love and glamour. Unlike other popular female artists her voice is low and raspy which has a very sultry tone to it matching her sultry, alternative and sexy star persona.

VIDEO GAMES - MUSIC VIDEO

The whole music video of the song "video games" has a very 50s/60s theme to it, which is generally a montage with a narrative or love although this is somewhat unclear in the video. It starts off with a establishing shot of the landscape with half an orange colour and the other half blue, with what seems like a kind of heaven type feel to it. The lightening bold from the blue side to the orange side I think suggests that Lana is in the orange side, almost as though she is stepping back in time linking to the feel of the whole video. 

It starts off with shots of Lana singing, and then cutting to close up montage shots of signs and landscapes, one of which says "Del Rey". The producers have clearly edited it to make it seem like older videos, almost as though it has been filmed through an early years camera or even a polaroid due to the effects. Lana is wearing 50's makeup and clothes in these mid and close up shots of her. 

As well as this, there are recurring shots of this girl with blonde hair and an orange 60s style flowery top on, she carries a lot of themes of being in love as she is pictured lots with a boy and kissing him.

https://lanadelrey.com

WEBSITE

Lanas website is of course different to when the music video to "Video Games" was released as this was in 2011. Now it is black and has a gothic feel to it, with her advertisement to "Let Me Love You" her new single at the home page of the website. She also has her links to her social media platforms which encourage publicity to her boosting her platform. As well as this, there are links to her music videos, her books and newseletter furthermore boosting her platform. 

https://www.lanadelrey.com/

SOCIAL MEDIA 

Lana Den Reys social media is of course a quick and easy way to interact with her and see updated news about Albums, Songs, Music videos, Concerts and other updates. She does have a theme of using particularly dark photos which could reflect her edgy persona, however this is not particularly obvious compared to other artists with a very obvious colour scheme. She provides lots of information about her upcoming album, and her Instagram highlight also has information about her upcoming events. She also has photos of Martin Luther King, showing her support for black lives, and frequently posts about the black lives matter moment.