Star Image

Kanye West has created an iconic brand image.  The idea of this is that when people see this image they will recognise it to be associated with Kanye and his music. Kanye’s image has helped him to stardom, not just his music.

He has links with other types of media,  he does concerts and has been known for his outbursts during award shows, which has also assisted his brand image. Kanye West uses connotation in the sense of acting cool to reach out directly to his target audience.

Kanye West tends to wear sun glasses in all his videos and even when seen in public, this shows a form of connotation as he is acting cool and this relates to his fans.

Cross media convergences have been used by Kanye West as he has featured in video games and some movies.  The idea of Kanye constantly being in the spot light makes more people listen to and buy his music.

West's mascot and trademark is "Dropout Bear," a teddy bear which has appeared on the covers of three of his five albums as well as various single covers and music videos.

Group Meeting

We met up to discuss how we are going to start our group blog and how we can make the work load even, we found that it is best to just blog once a week each. We believe that this will make the work even and will make our group blog have loads of posts.

Preparation

Before we start out music video, there is a few steps we need to take. First being the innicial idea and choice in song. The song we have chosen is Magic - B.O.B ft. Rivers Cuomo.

Image: Rivers Cuomo & B.O.B (Magic).

We chose this song as we feel it is very suitable for the upbeat idea we have. Our idea is to have a person waking up in the morning and making his way to an audition which he is the judge of. When he gets there, all different auditionees will sing the 1st verse of the song and when the chorus comes back, the man will walk out the audition through a door and go on to sing the chorus, ready for him to come back to the audition to watch more hopefulls sing the 2nd verse. for the final chorus the man will get annoyed at the lack of talent and sing the rest of the song himself. This idea goes well with the song as it is very upbeat and we can use a variety of shots and quick cuts.

After we seltected 'Magic', we had to create a shot by shot storyboard which will assist us and give us guidelines when filming. Storyboards are very important when filming as if you don't have them you may go off track and lose control of what you are filming.

Editing the Lipsync

Whilst editing our lipsync-ing, I found that the software was not that hard to learn once you get the hang of it. We firstly looked at the instructions and it made the software seem really hard to use, but then I started using it and found it wasn't that difficult after all. We made all the cuts we needed and made the sound in time with the video to make it seem as real as possible. Afterwe had put all our cuts in and put it all in line, we tried out all the effects to see how they would help us for our final task. We found that some of the effects didnt really do much but others will come in handy in our music video. I feel I have learnt all I need to know on the software to create a good music video and overall I am happy with the progress out group is making.

Snatch Analysis

This is a screen shot is from the film Snatch. I chose this image as I felt it had a massive effect on the film. Brad Pitt is sitting there very casually smoking a cigarette whilst his two ‘trainers’, Turkish and Tommy (because of the gun) are looking extremely nervous, due to the fact that they will be killed if Brad Pitt doesn’t go down in a specific round. Brad Pitt’s outfit is very ironic and doesn’t match what you would expect a normal boxer to wear; he is wearing a trilby hat, trousers, casual trainers and boxing gloves whilst smoking. The effect of him wearing boxing gloves whilst wearing his every day clothes suggests that this is no abnormal day for Brad Pitt; this is a normal day to him, fighting and death.
This image makes the audience feel as though he is either very confident or doesn’t care about the fight like Turkish and Tommy do. Turkish and Tommy are wearing suits, this emphasises the idea that they are both trying to be professional and want to win (lose). In the background you can see a group of un-orderly men who do not care who wins but just want to see a good fight; the background has a huge input to this image as Turkish and Tommy are in the complete opposite position, they do not want to see a good fight and they do care, they just want it to go well for them.
In the top right hand corner you can see the referees hand with a light shining from it onto Brad Pitt; this is lighting shows how the referee has the power and is in control of the fate of Turkish and Tommy’s life. The dull lighting within the boxing ring conveys a dull mood and the fear of the two boys; they are both wearing black to carry on this portrayal.

Ideas

In a nut shell... We have been discussing ideas to do for our music video, and have came up with a few ideas. We have came up with a few ideas with a variety of songs:

B.O.B - Magic ft. Rivers Cuomo: We feel this song is suitable as it has a good beat and will allow us to use various types of shots in out video. We will all enjoy filming this video as it is the type of music we like which will give us motivation when filming. The idea that we have is to have one of us walking to an audition whilst singing and using a variety of shots, show the person entering the audition and setting him self up to be the judge, then various artists will do an audition singing this song to create irony within our filming.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Can't Stop: This song has a great fast paced beat which will force us to make quick cuts which I feel will make the whole video better as fast paced cuts generally build up tension and make people want to see it more. We want to use the same idea as we believe it will be the best idea.

The Stranglers - Peaches: Peaches by The Stranglers is a slower song to the rest of our ideas, but we feel we could get a great effect from the song. There are not much lyrics to this song, although it has a great beat and goes very well with our idea.

The White Stripes - 7 Nation Army: The bass and guitar solo's in this song will create a good effect and allow us to make good and fun cuts in our video. We like this song as a group and feel it will go down well in terms of using it for a final piece.

Lil Wayne - Prom Queen (Analysis)

The opening lyrics correspond to the video as he mentions the girl he fancies and shows him looking at her across the classroom. This agrees with Goodwin’s theory.

Lil Wayne is seen looking all scruffy and on his own at the prom as he is bullied just as the boy in the No Love video is.

He talks about how she ‘laughed and walked away’ and now she should regret her decision to bully Lil Wayne as he turns into a superstar.

The video agrees with Vernallis’ theory as it is a typical Hollywood style continuity.The video is correspondent to the lyrics as well as following Vernallis’ style.