Copyright Leter

Dear Interscope Records

We are A level students from Bishop Stopford’s School and we are writing to request permission to use one of Eminem’s tracks from his Album, Relapse. The track that we intend to use is Beautiful.

With your permission, this task would be used in our Advanced Media portfolio, which involves creating a music video, advert poster and a dig pack for a choice of our own song. We felt inspired by the song ‘Beautiful’ and felt that the message was something we wanted to get behind.

With your permission, this task would be used only for educational purposes and not for our own self promotion; the video would be put on Youtube in order to gain feedback from our fellow classmates. The video will only be seen by our fellow classmates, our teachers and the OCR exam board moderator.

The artist and your production company will be fully recognised throughout pre-production and the final video itself. A copyright notice with wording supplied by you can be included in the records of the project. If this is required, please send full details.

We look forward to hearing from you

Regards

Tyrell Chetty-Wilson

Shayne Thomas-Gordon

Leyon Stolz-Hunter

Michael Phillips

Final digipack album cover

Evaluation Question 3

http://www.slideshare.net/michaelphilips/evaluation-answer-3-20467326 

Evaluation question 4

Initial Music Video Ideas

Example- Playing in the shadows                                                                

                                                                                         

Eminem- Not afraid 

 

 Eminem Beautiful

 

Evaluation question 2

Evaluation question 1

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3GB1jaCI57Nd0ctVjVrUVg4dUk/edit?usp=sharing

This is a document that I uploaded onto Google Documents for my first evaluation evaluation question. I could not input some of the photos onto blogger so i decided to use Google documents instead 

About our artist

The artist that my group have chosen is Eminem

 












Eminem(Marshall Mathers) is an American rapper and songwrier

 About Eminem
 Birth name: Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), better known by his stage name Eminem (stylized as EMINƎM) and by his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem, along with his solo career, is a member of his group D12, and also one half of the hip hop duo Bad Meets Evil, with Royce da 5'9". Eminem is one of the best-selling artists in the world and is the best-selling artist of the 2000s. He has been listed and ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time by many magazines, including Rolling Stone magazine which ranked him 82nd on its list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The same magazine declared him The King of Hip Hop. Including his work with D12 and Bad Meets Evil, Eminem has achieved ten number-one albums on the Billboard200. He has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, including 42 million tracks and 49.1 million albums in the United States

 Albums:

·          Infinate (1996)

·          The Slim Shady LP(1999)

·          The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

·          The Eminem Show (2002)

·           Encore(2004)

·           Relapse(2009)

·          Recovery (2010)

       

      Allocations

·          13 Grammy awards

·          4 Brit awards

·          12 MTV Video music awards

·          Academy Award for best song in 8 mile (Lose yourself)

·          Record company: Shady Records (founded by Eminem in 1999)

Intertextuality

Intertextuality

Intertextuality

Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls


This video has clear intertextuality in that around every 5 seconds it changes from a modern day theme to a 80's theme and it shows how the same diner has changed and peoples different dress senses. You see towards the end of the video Sean Kingston singing on a black and white screen which could further demonstrate how long ago it was.

Eminem - We Made You

This video is really good example of a parody music video. Eminem mocks a lot of different media areas such as reality TV stars and film stars, in a four minute video he Jessica Simpson, Bret Michaels, Britney Spears, Kevin Federline, Lindsay Lohan, Samantha Ronson, Amy Winehouse, Ellen DeGeneres, Portia de Rossi, Jessica Alba, Elvis Presley, Tony Romo, John Mayer, Jennifer Aniston, and Kim Kardashian. Eminem even spoofed himself, wearing an ALF t-shirt and holding a cake, referencing a commonly circulated pre-fame photo of him of when he was a youth.

Fergie - Glamorous

This video intertextualises a "Glamorous" life style and a big stars life style. It starts with a shot that goes back to 1994 so older people can remember and relate to it. It also goes from the present day back to that era and you see how things were different such as their dress sense and what car they had. It then goes to an old fashion western movie set.

Initial song choice idea

Playing in the Shadows song lyrics	Our music video’s Mis-en-scene representation
‘I got someone waiting at home for me’	A parent at home, while their teenage child is out very late at night.
‘Tomorrow she’ll probably disown me’	A teenage that does not have a good relationship with their parent or guardian due to a bad up bringings.
‘Playing in the Shadows all night long’	Adolescent children staying out very late at niht and meeting up with other teenagers. The ‘Shadows’ can be seen as very dark characters in which the music video’s protagonist is getting involved with.
‘So good to play with bad girls’	This can be used to show children mixing in with a group of friends that can be seen as a bad influence. Teenage promiscuity.
‘All those calls ignored’	An adolescent child could be shown to be ignoring/disrespecting their parents who are trying to contact them very late at night, as they are worried for their safety.

However, we were forced to scrap this idea, when we had realised that this type of music video would need to be shot at night due to its dark tone and lyrics. We wouldn't have been able to carry this out at night since the lighting would have made the music video extremely hard to see.

After this my group had considered a number of other songs to base our music video on. These suggestions had included 'Yesterday' by the Beatles (1965), 'Lego House' by Ed Sheeran (2011), and 'Too Close' by Alex Clare (2011).
We had found that all of these songs had a good amount of potential for creating a music video, however we had found that all of these songs had featured limitations to them that would prevent us from achieving the most amount of marks that we possibly could.
Another factor that had prevent us from using these songs where that most of these songs were very mainstream due to the fact that the artist had gained much popularity in the past years. This would be a problem since my group would be required to contact the record company of the artist so that we can inform them that we are using their property to create a new media text. This would be a main problem for the music artists that are based in America.

However we had ultimately decided to use the song 'Beautiful' that was released by Eminem in 2009.
Me and my team members are all familiar with Eminem's music as we all enjoy listening to his music in our spare time.We chose this song as we felt this song had contained very meaningful lyrics which we would be able to generate mis-en-scene from. We had noticed that the overall tone of 'Beautiful' is very emotional which features a few dark elements. This had helped us to think about what kind of video we would want to create ,in terms of it being a very positive video with lots of colour or being very negative with dim lighting and sad images.
Despite the fact that this song has emotional and depressing tone, it conveys a very positive message of accepting one's self for who they are and not to care what other people think about them. This message is  conveyed through the song's chorus which includes the lyrics # But don't let em say you ain't beautiful, They can all get f**ked, Just stay true to you'.
My group are fully aware of the fact that Eminem is a music artist who is american which would mean that his record company would be based in the United States. However we will only need to show that we had genuinely attempted to contact the record company.

Analysing an Album cover

 

Eminem’s cover for the album ‘Relapse’ consisted of pills that were merged to make the face of Eminem. The reason as to why Eminem used this for his album was down to the fact that he was a drug addict. 

Final finished music video

Roles and responsibilities

My team

• Leyon Stolz-Hunter
• Michael Phillips (me)
• Tyrell Chetty-Wilson
• Shayne Thomas-Gordon 

As there are four of us in this group we will all be contibuting to our project indivuidally aswell as working together as a team in order to get the best grade possible in A2 Media. My team members and I will achieve this by communicating with each both in school and out side of school so that we are consistantly working on project and supporting each other whenever someone needs help.

As a group, I am certain that we will be able to find time around our other A level subjects, and social life to organise dates when we can meet and carry out work outside the school environment such as our planning and filming.

It would not be difficult for us to communicate since we socialize with each other everyday in school.  

Job roles of me and my team members 

Leyon Stolz-Hunter(Actor, co script writer)- Leyon will play the role of the main protagonist in our music video. As a group we had all decided that , Leyon would be the most suitable out of all of us the to play the lead role in our video since he has the quality of being a talented actor. In the past, Leyon has had much experience acting in dramas and plays and is currently studying Performing Arts as one of his A level subjects. Aditionally Leyon has also served as one of the co writers of our music video's narrative script.

Michael Philips(Script writer, Main camera operator)- My key role in our project will be to record most of the scenes in our music video. To aid our project, I had contributed by providing his own camera for us to film. In addition , I has also contributed a great deal amount to the planning of our music video during its stage of Pre Production. When we were planning the story of our music video's narrative plot, I had given very useful ideas for what we could include in our music video and also advice on what would be useful to include and what would not be very useful to include.

Tyrell Chetty-Wilson(Actor)- Tyrell's role in our music video will be very similar to Leyon's role. Tyrell will also be acting in our music video as the secondary actor that would be shown interacting with Leyon's character. The character that Tyrell will play will have a cruical role in the story near the conclusion of our music video. Similarly with Leyon, Tyrell is also a very experienced actor as he has had much experience in acting in the past and is also studying Performing arts at A level. My group is vey priviledged to have two experienced actors which could both contribute their performing skills to our project.

Shayne Thomas-Gordon(Script writer, Storyboard sketcher,co camera operator)- During the Pre production stage of our music videos production, Shayne had a very prominent role during our planning. When my group was first planning our music video, Shayne was one of the key script writers of the music video's story narrative plot.  For example , Shayne had provided the music video idea in which the protagonist is walking very close to a cemetery which connotes that this character is very close to his death.

Additionally, Shayne was also elected to draw out the storyboards that would include the different camera angle shots that my team would plan to include in our music video for presenting different scenes in the video.

Shayne is also studying A level Art as one of his other subjects, so we had thought that it would me most suitable if Shayne had carried out this job role. Later on during the production stage of this project

Characters in our Music video

• Main protagonist- Leyon
• Man in smart clothes- Myself
• Protagonist's friend- Tyrell
• People walking on the road (3 to 5 people)-TBA
• Protagonist's love interest- TBA
• People at the party(4 to 6 people) -TBA

Fifth day of filming

Fifth day of filming

Date: 20/02/13
Location: Tottenham cemetery and Great Cambridge roundabout
Schedule: Re-film exterior shots, Rooftop scene and cemetery scene

Crew:

Me: Director

Leyon: Actor/ 2nd Assistant Director

Shayne: 1st Assistant Director

Tyrell: Camera Operator/ 3rd Assistant Director

Redo Cemetery Scene

On this day we re-filmed our third day of filming.

We firstly started the day by heading to our original location for the rooftop scene. However we were unable to film due to some legal complications, this added further stress as wood green had been our backup filming location and other than that we had no idea where else to film our rooftop scene so we decided to film the cemetery scenes while we looked for another location to film.

We firstly started the day by heading to our initial location (rooftop scene). We did face a major problem on this day as we were unable to film due to legal implications, this did cause a bit of stress for the group and I as we did not have a backup so we had to rethink of a location which we could film in but due to the lack of time and possible further implication, we decided to film the cemetery scene instead.

Once arriving at the cemetery we set up our equipment and looked over our storyboard to see if there was anything we could make any alterations in order of improving the viewing experience and add a further dimension to the story.  We decided to alter a few of the shots by taking them from different camera angles and trying to film them in other locations of the Tottenham Cemetery in order to see what looked the best visually.

I felt that this really helped us as we got a lot of good shots at the end of the filming shoot and I felt that we improvised and came up with a quite a few shot ideas such as the use of jump cuts while I walk down a long footpath, this was to show the characters journey and also to match with the lyrics 'Here today, gone tomorrow but isn’t got to walk no thousand miles'.

 Another shot that we come up with that day that I felt was very effective was a wide shot of the protagonist as he crouched in front of a grave stone that was in the shape of an angel. This showed that our character was close to death and also showed that the character may have dealt with loss and this may be the reason as to why the character is suffering from depression. The filming went well and the only problem we encountered were people walking through the cemetery meaning we had to stop filming so they could pass by but apart from that we didn’t receive a single complaint.

After we had finished filming the entire cemetery scenes, I recommended that we film the rooftop scene on an underpass below Great Cambridge roundabout. We thought this would be a picture-perfect location as it was right over the A10 motorway and so it meant the POV shot would be very threatening as the protagonist looked at a large fall into fast-moving traffic. It was also a public area meaning there would be no legal difficulties with us filming in the area.

I felt that other than the difficulty that we had faced in getting to film on the rooftop, the day was very productive and flowed smoothly. We managed to film a large chunk of our video. We filmed both the introduction and conclusion to our Music Video as they both took place in the same place and at the same time. We also had to improvise with a couple new shot ideas as we were filming in a different location and a lot of the new shots I believe helped better the music video as a whole.

Fourth day of filming

Fourth day of filming

Date: 18/02/13
Location: Shayne's house
Schedule: Re-filming Interior scenes

Crew:

Leyon: Actor

Me: Director

Shayne: Assistant Director

Tyrell: Camera Operator

The main objective of the day was to re-film all of the interior scenes as Leyon had misplaced the memory card and lost all of our previous footage that we had filmed. This was A slight advantage as it meant that we could perfect all that we had filmed before knowing what went well and what didn't work well. This enabled us to add any new content that we believed would help develop the video and advance it overall.  As a group we agreed that the best option was to film all of the interior scenes.

We chose to film these scenes in the half term as it was very suitable as all of us were free. This day enabled us in having a full day of filming which was suitable as it gave us the freedom in taking our time in filming these scenes

After analysing our storyboard we prepared the equipment and planned out the day to make sure everything flows smoothly in order of making sure that this day isn’t very difficult in terms of how everything pans out. After that we began by filming the interior scenes which occur early on in the music video.

There was shot that we had created on the day which was not on our storyboard. We agree that this shot would enhance our video so we agreed on filming it and this improvisation proved to be very helpful as after looking back it was a shot that we all liked. The shot was a close-up of the pills on the floor after the protagonist had threw them on the floor in anger.

This shot cold connote two possible concepts dependent on the viewer’s perception. The first one that the protagonist is on medication and decided to reject the help which was being offered to him, this represents a sign of rebellion advising him on what is best for him. The second possible perception is that the protagonist is addicted to pills (similarly to Eminem was when writing the song ) and the throwing of the pills on to the ground represents the fact that he is trying to break the glutinous circle.

One setback was that the camera kept on dying out on us and this was very tough to deal with as our camera took a very long time to charge, so what we had to do was wait for it to charge for a few hours and then use it quickly afterwards in order of making sure that it does not die out on us again.

Third day of filming

Third Day of Filming

Date: Friday, 4th January 2013
Location: Wood Green Shopping Centre Car park and Tottenham Cemetery

Crew:

Me: Actor/1st Assistant Director

Shayne: Director/Director of Photography

Tyrell: Camera Operator/Actor

On this day the began our third day of principle photography, in the same location we had used the day before.  Unfortunately I couldn't be with the group I had family matter to attend to. The third day itself. once looking back at this day of filming i had 

Like we did last time, they had checked the weather report of this filming day and had found that the weather conditions were similar to Thursday’s weather conditions meaning the shots that we had filmed on the last day would match with any shots that we filmed on that day of shooting.

We met at 11am, in Wood green to begin shooting. We met at this time to give us enough time during the day to film any shots we had missed out on the previous day, and to enable us to shoot in a different location for another scene.

The first thing they did was arrive at the management office in order to get permission to commence the second day of shooting on the car park roof. Apparently, the manger was really nice and gave them half an hour to shoot on the roof and also told us not to include any shots with the shopping centers logo in them. After gaining the manager's permission to film on the car park roof they began the filming.

Second day of filming

Second Day of Filming

Date: Thursday, 3rd January 2013

Location: Edmonton Green and Wood Green shopping centre car park

Crew:

Me: Director/ Camera Operator

Leyon: Actor/3rd Assistant Director

Shayne: 1st Assistant Director/Production Manager

Tyrell: 2nd Assistant Director/Location Scout

On this day me and the other team members decided to begin our second day of principle photography as it was the most suitable day for us all due to the Christmas holidays, however we were still able to communicate with each other through social networking and instant messaging this enabled us to set a date for our filming schedule and also to plan what scenes we were going to go ahead with to film on these days. the timing also pretty crucial as the time of season meant that the days were shorter and this would affect our lighting and meant that we had to work efficiently and also had to be time effective, however the fact that it was winter helped set the tone for the video lighting wise as it gave it a dull and depressing feel.
         

We began the day off by meeting up in Edmonton Green at 11.00am to check our location it was then that we met our first problem of the day. Although the roof itself was perfect visually the roof itself was not high enough and this didn't work for our POV shot in which the protagonist looks over the ledge, this would give a sense of the danger which faced our protagonist and his decision. To sort out this problem  me and Tyrell decided to lookout for a few of the nearby flats to see if we could find a view which would be to show the view of our protagonist, so began our long and rigorous climb up 24 flights of stairs. The view itself was aesthetically pleasing; it was ruined by a dirty window. So we decide that we would just have to use the view from the original roof. As we got down to the roof we were met by two security guards who kicked us off the roof, as it was private property and we were not allowed to use it as a filming location.

Location: 24th floor of a flat in Edmonton Green

Wood Green 

After getting kicked off the roof we luckily remembered another location one of our friends had suggested to us. So we headed for the roof of a parking lot in Wood Green. When we arrived we realized that the location was perfect it was exactly what we were looking for and much better than the first location. This location was good but once again there was a setback as another security guard told us that we were not allowed to film in that scene without permission from the building manager. We had to go to the management office and wait for the building manager to come and give us permission.       

Music Video Stills

First day of filming

First day of filming

Date: Thursday 29th of November 2012

Location: Shayne’s house

Start time:

Finish time

We had started filming this part of the music video right after we had finished the storyboard. In this day of filming we began by filming the parts of the music video which the protagonist was seen at his home. We had to make sure that we filmed this in the morning as one of the shots showed the protagonist getting out of bed in the morning

Filming this scene took place at Shayne's home as he only about 20 minutes away from school. It took us slightly longer because of the bus strikes that were happening during this day. We were filming in two parts of his house, his bedroom and his bathroom.

We did have one setback on this day which was that the camera did not fit on the tripod but after some alterations that we had made to the space between the camera and the tripod, we were able to stick the camera onto the tripod in a short space of time. 

 

This is the edge of the bed in which we see the protagonist his hands over his head.



This is the bathroom in which we see the character washing his face and looking at his drugs.



This is the living room where we see the character dress him and pick up his old pair of shoes.