Bruno Mars Album Cover Analysis

This album cover is for Bruno Mars’ album ‘Doo-Wops & Hooligans’, this is a very different album cover to the Usher and Chris Brown ones although they are in the same genre. Bruno Mars doesn’t feature on this cover as he has gone for a completely different style to Usher and Chris Brown in their albums. He has gone for a completely arty cover, which involves a rocket flying away and somebody walking on the same path as the rocket. The yellow in the cover really stands out and the colour yellow has connotations of joy and happiness. It is quite a simple cover with not too much going, although the image could have a meaning behind it. The name of the album doesn’t really stand out at all but the bold lettering of his name draws attention to this.

Locations Ideas

The locations we are thinking about shooting our video are places such as a basketball court, a studio and an audition room. We are you using these locations in our video because they are suitable because they fit in with the narrative of the song we have chosen to do. We have an idea of where we could find such locations, which we will be able to some filming.

We could use these locations for the filming for the dancer and the singer because its a suitable place both for music and performance. There is a piano there our singer could use to perform which would look good. We also have a dancer which will need to perform, this a suitable place because this room is also a dance performance room because there is a mirror which shows its professionnal.

THIS POST WAS MADE BY SOLOMON AND FATAH

Chris Brown Album Cover Analysis

This is the album cover for Chris Brown’s album ‘F.A.M.E’, he is from a similar genre to Usher and there are similarities between the two album covers as well as some big differences. Chris Brown like Usher uses his star image mainly for his album cover, but he is in bright and energetic colours. The bright energetic colours are in contrast to the colours in ushers album cover and are shown in the difference of meaning of the songs in the two albums, Chris Browns are more fun and lively songs, which is expressed in the choice of colours and style of the album cover. This is more of an arty cover compared to most other album covers in his genre of music with all the colourful images of him in the background. These colours make the cover stand out from most of the other album covers in this genre.

Usher Album Cover Analysis

This is the album cover for Usher’s album ‘Confessions’, which was released in March 2004. This album cover is quite typical for this genre, which is just simply a picture of the artist. This is playing on the star image of the artist, because he is such a big artist he can use this technique for his album cover whereas smaller artists may have to do something different for it to stand out. The picture of usher is of him looking fairly serious which is expressed in the songs from his album, especially the main song from the album that is ‘Confessions Part II’. The name of the album doesn’t really stand out on the cover but his name on the cover does, the brand of usher is clearly the main thing they are using to attract people to this album.

FIRST DRAFT STORY BOARD: Basketball scene

1.For our first idea, we thought that we should have a Long shot. The purpose of this is for our viewers to see the setting. And that they know what the main purpose of the shot is to establish a Basketball Player in a Basketball court.










2.We thought that this basketball scene would have many shots that would help establish one of our main characters. I think the purpose of this shot is to create this certain tension between the basketball player and the hoop.










3. In this shot we see the character thingking of his dream to be a famous basketball player one day. This shot links back to the purpose of our video and to the meaning of the lyrics of our song.











4. In this shot we see our star singer R Kelly (Solomon). We made sure that we dont get carried away by leaving our main star singer out ,so we decide to put him in every story in the background because he is our star icon.

5. In this shot we see the basketball player taking a shot. In this shot, we are hoping that it will also create a certain tension. This shot's purpose is to make the viewers think that would he make the shot or not.










6.We thought of getting a long shot while he takes the shot. We also thought that this could be in slow motion, to create drama.












7. We chosed to have a close-up shot of the ball going in the hoop. We also thought that we can do this shot in slow motion, also to create a dramatic scene.











8. In this shot we see a close-up of the Basketball player so we can get a look of his expression.

R - Kelly Background Information

Robert Sylvester Kelly (born January 8, 1967), known by his stage name R.Kelly, is an American R&B singer-songwriter, arranger, performer and record producer. A native of Chicago, Kelly began performing during the late 1980s and debuted in 1992 with the group Public Announcement. In 1993, Kelly went solo with the album 12 Play. He is known for a collection of major hit singles including "Bump n' Grind", "Your Body's Callin'", "I Believe I Can Fly", "Gotham City", "Ignition (Remix)", "If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time", "The World's Greatest", "I'm a Flirt", and the hip-hopera "Trapped in the Closet". In 1998, Kelly won three Grammy Awards for "I Believe I Can Fly".

Kelly has also written, produced and remixed songs for many artists including Ronald Isley and The Isley Brothers, Quincy Jones, Luther Vandross, N-Phase, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, Michael Jackson, Maxwell, Gerald LeVert, Britney Spears, Usher, Ray J, B2K, Ciara, Mary J. Blige, and Jennifer Lopez among others.

Here is Kelly's discography's showing how much work he has put in since he went solo in 1993 :

12 Play (1993) R. Kelly (1995) R. (1998) TP-2.com (2000) Chocolate Factory (2003) Happy People/U Saved Me (2004) TP.3 Reloaded (2005) Double Up (2007) Untitled (2009) Love Letter (2010) Black Panties (2011)

Shot List - Not final ideas

Close Up;
A close up shot of the feet of the basket baller dribbling with the ball. We can use close ups on solomon in the studio. We can do this to show his facial expressions to the audience and get clear view of what he is saying. The close also can represent the star image and make the audience notice what the most important thing on that scene is.


Mid-Long Shot;
This shot is used to capture the atmosphere and mood that the basketball player shows. We can use this as a panning shot so that the viewer can get an insight of whats happening. We can use this when we are filming the part where we are on the roof the scene where our star image is performing. The shot shows the sun and buildings behind him.

High Angle shot;
This shot can be used when the singer is performing sat down on the piano and the camera looking down at him.

Tracking Shot:
This shot can be used as our lead singer is performing just following him around. This shot tracks solomon when he is doing the hook near the end of the song. This shot is useful because it makes our video a little bit more entertaining to watch.

Low angle shot;
This can be used on solomon as he performs because it suits the narrative of the video. This kind of shot will show that solomon is the most superior character on the scene because we are looking up. The narrative it to succeed in what you like and this kind of shot will show that the star image has fulfilled his dream which is singing.

Long shot;
This can be used on the on solomon when he is walking towards the church. This kind of shot would be good because it shows the star image and his surroundings. This gives the audience an idea of what kind of area solomon is. It also shows the church behind him.

Mid Shot;
On the dancer while in performance which shows her gestures to the audience. We can use this shot from different angles which will show the audience the dancers moves in different angles which could make the shots look more interesting.

Chosen Music Video

The song that we have decided to use for our music video is Worlds greatest by R-Kelly. We believe that it will be a fun choice to do because it will be an interesting song choice to make into our own music video. This video inspired us because we all thought that the narrative of the original video fit in with the narrative in our video. Here is the original video for the song we are going to use for production. The original video and the video we going to make for this song will have a similar narrative, which is people trying hard to succeed in what they enjoy doing. In the original video for the song the narrative is shown by a boxer which wins his fight. We can use this kind of narrative in our by showing a couple characters struggling to get what they want and then they perform and the succeed.

How did you use media technologies in the, planning stages?

How did you use media technologies in the, planning stages?

Google Maps : With the help of google maps & street viewer it helped us find a couple good potential spot to shoot our video, and we were also able to see the location in a 360 degree angle. the lyrics of our songs were also found on google which is also aiding us to learn the lyrics.

Youtube : Youtube played the biggest role in our planning of the video, without it we would have never been able to view the video we are looking to do & we wouldnt have got the videos that we analysed witch gave us the ideas on our final video project.

Ideas for the music video

Editing

The editing on our video is going to be slow paste. The scenes will include various camera shots, which will include different effects for the some scenes on our video. We will use quick cuts to make it seem like the video is cutting to the beat.

Blog

We all agreed to try and show every step into the creation of our music video. We will do this by analyzing real life videos and taking pictures of various locations and show our final edited video and make an evaluation to it.

Current ideas for the video

At this moment we only have few ideas on how the video will be like but we will make changes to it as we are filming. The style we are going with is an RnB song and we will make a video, which has a narrative. We would like to do something related from being a person with nothing to becoming successful and fulfilling your dream.

Ideas for magazine and CD pack design

The ideas we have so far is to make the magazine is to put a picture of the star image which is Solomon and text which will include release dates and such things.

Production Treatment

R Kelly – World’s Greatest

Duration of video – The duration of the official video is 5:15, but we are not having an introduction and going to fade the song out at around 3:30.

Audience – The main target audience is 15-25 year olds, male and female. However the song could be listened to by anyone of any age group, as it is an inspirational song that people could listen to and take something from.

The video will mostly be narrative with some performance attached. The narrative of the video will be about 3 people trying to achieve their dreams of becoming a basketballer, dancer and a singer. The video will show them going through auditions and training hard to make it in each of their professions and to reach their goals as this matches the lyrics of the song which is about, becoming the best you can be and becoming ‘the worlds greatest’.

Performance – Solomon will be performing the part of R Kelly in the video, there will be various shots of him, which will cut to at various points whilst the narrative performance in the video is taking place. The other performances in the video will be of the 3 people working for their dreams; this will be of a basketballer training and working hard until he gets signed at the end of the video. The dancer and singer will be doing the same but they will be going through auditions in order to achieve their dreams.

The key locations in the video will be in a gym for the basketball player, in a studio for the dancer and on the stage for the singer whilst they are all going through their auditions and trials to achieve their dreams. Also we will be shooting some of Solomon’s scenes around town in places that suit him and who he is in the video.

Recording days – We will be recording in all lessons (2 a week) for a number of weeks, also during times when we are all free in order to get a good variety of shots which we need to make an effective music video. After we have finished the filming we will spend a large amount of our time editing the video as we will have a number of different events happening that we will need to bring together through editing.

Looking Into The Meaning Of Our Song

Here is our chorus;
"I'm that star up in the sky
I'm that mountain peak up high
Hey, I made it
I'm the world's greatest
And I'm that little bit of hope
When my back's against the rooopes
I can feel it
I'm the world's greatest"

Our song's genre is RnB and normally these type of songs are calm-based songs and that they normally have a story behind there music videos. We decided that instead of having just one main story in the video, we decided to have a couple of storys in our video but they all have similiar stories in their lifes. Because our song is about not giving up, we based our stories in people's lifes where they face something thats hard to reach or achieve.

"I am a giant, I am an eagle, ohhhhh
I am a lion, down in the jungle
I am a marchin' band, I am the people, ohhhhh
I am a helping hand, I am a heroooo"

Above is one of the verse in the song. Cleary, its about being the best and being number one. In the stories in the video, we see people that are trying hard and struggling to reach their goal or whatever they are trying to achieve. in each story we see them attempting something they want to achieve but along the way, they struggle and start to let themsleves down and other people down. But in the end they srated believing in thereselves again and putting thereselves on the right track. Because the song is about achieving something, each story we see the characters achieving what they were attempting in the first place.

We believe that our music video is a good example of a good RnB based song because The video doesnt only have a performance bit but also we have a story behind it and that we made sure that the story links to our song.

Costume Research
We believe that the costume should link to the song and because our video has certain amount of actors including the star, as a group we decided that we need to have a good amount of individual costumes that represents their roles in the video. Our main star R Kelly (Solomon), has to have a costume that can link to the song genre for e.g. a rock song will have bands dressed in barbaric costume to represent and link to the song. Our song’s genre is RnB so we decided that our main Star should have casual clothing.

One of the main actors in our video is a Basketball player, for us this was really easy to decide what costume the character would wear. In the video there is a scene where he is training shooting hoops in a basketball court. We decided that he would be wearing shorts and t-shirt or a vest top.

Another character in the video is a female dancer auditioning in a dance competition. We decided that the character would have a Hip-Hop style of dancing so we thought that her costume would be linked to her style. That style of clothing will include loose jeans, jewellery, hat etc.

The last main character in this video is the singer trying to sing a song perfectly. We decided that this character would have more of an Indie but casual style of clothing. WE had brainstorm of ideas of what clothing he would wear in this video. At first we decided that he should just wear a normal casual type of clothing but we thought that it’s a bit dull and we wanted something that would link more to the whole idea of his role and so we came up with the following; A hat, casual shirt and skinny jeans.

We focused more on our main characters and our main star rather than coming up with ideas of what the ‘extras’ would wear. We came up with other ideas of clothing with each characters including the star from there, it helped us decide what is the right clothing (costume) to create that strong link to their styles and our main song.

Locations

These were our ideas before we started filming.
The locations we are thinking about shooting our video are places such as a basketball court, a studio and an audition room. We are you using these locations in our video because they are suitable because they fit in with the narrative of the song we have chosen to do. We have an idea of where we could find such locations, which we will be able to some filming.

After we looked at few locations we didnt think the previous ones we good enought so we changed some of the locations. One of the new locations we chose to do is the roof of the college which enabled us to get a good shot of our performer. The shot contained him and the background were tall buildings. Another location is the the assembly hall which was blacked out with just a spotlight coming down on our singer. We thought that would be suitable because it shows the audience that he is the most important thing on the shot.

Kelly Rowland - Motivation ft. Lil Wayne Analysis

This video is a more of a performance based video, were there is a lot of dancing to illustrate the true meaning of the song. Through out most of the song, the cuts were in sync to the beat, but very slow in motion, this i because the song it self is slow, but as it gets to the second verse the lyrics become a lot faster & so do the speed of the cuts. There are many close ups to show who is the star in the video & they are always in the middle of the frame which also emphasize who is the star in the music video. There is a green/blue lighting used throughout the video to also create a calm atmosphere & this links in to why they're a lot of slow motion shots.