For this assignment, we got into groups and with my group there
wasn’t an original plan, it was the only plan because we knew what we wanted to
do. We realised we’d be a perfect fit for each other as a group because we’ve
worked together before and we make a pretty good team. But with this project, we
knew what genre we were going to do because we’re into the same music and came
to the agreement that we were going to do Afro-beats.
How we worked with the artist, was very easy and simple,
meaning we had no trouble with him. He was very easy going and met our needs as
much as we met his, such as me and the group and him had to work around each
other’s work/college schedule which wasn’t a problem but if we had known about
some days he couldn’t work it would have been easier on us as a group because
that meant we could have used that time more wisely in the editing suite
instead of waiting for a reply from him to find out that we couldn’t film which
meant we waste a day of not filming. So to summarise that the only needs he
really had was that we had to work around his schedule.
For the audience and how we met their needs were easy but
not that easy, as it was an afro-beat video that we were making so it was
basically a dance video but all the in-between stuff was the harder part, like
the routine the girls came up with was one of the hardest, without mentioning
the order of the clips for the video. As the group and I listen to afro-beats
we decided that it was a good idea to choose that genre and people who we know
also listen to it so that helped even more as they have a range of audiences. For
nearly every afro-beat video there’s sort of a story line as there’s always the
main singer and a main girl who they’re meant to be singing/talking about.
Myself and the group tried to replicate that idea and portray it in our music
video which was harder than we thought. But with that idea used we tried to
meet the audience’s needs and the conventions of it, with things that are
usually done in an afro-beat video.
For the first part of the project, we had to do our own case
study, in which I chose Fergie – MILF$. The
reason I chose this this song and video is because it’s different to all the
other female videos I’ve seen and it had one of the most powerful meanings
behind it, which can be seen from the video and understood from the lyrics. The
video is basically empowering women who do it all and have had a baby, by
telling them you can still be sexy, even when you have a career, a family and
still have time for yourself. Which is why it’s called ‘MILF$’, which Fergie changed
to ‘mother I’d like to fuck’. ‘I got that milf money’ is one of the lyrics in
the song meaning she works for her money and still looks good.
For our research, we took a little bit longer than we wanted
to find a song we were going to use as some of the ones we wanted to do already
had a video for it and because of that we wasn’t able to use them, we finally found
a song that we were going to use, K-Weezy
– Million. For the audience, we didn’t have trouble with that because most
people we know like Afro-beats which made it easier for us. We all contributed in this part of the project
and in everything else. For our research we also looked at a few videos to help
us with inspiration and looked at how many views the
For the planning process of it, we all took something on so
it got done quicker and we can all rely on each other to get it done so we
didn’t have any problems at all. We all made an input on where we should film,
and what we ended up with were, studio (college), Leak Street tunnel, Canary Wharf
gardens, Canada Water, Stratford car park. We had other locations like London
Bridge, rooftop but they came with issues like the weather, travel and crowding
of people. So we ended it sticking with the other locations which were better
suited to us anyway. With this came travel, we’d make sure we had money for the
travel and if one of us didn’t have enough, we’d chip in to give them some so
they could get through the barrier.
Filming had the most team work in the whole thing, me and
the group had no problems with each other or the artist. With most parts of the
filming it was very easy (not rushed) because we knew what we wanted, such as
what we wanted it to look like, the angle and what it was representing.
In my opinion, I think editing was the longest one out of
all them, we had so much footage just from one shoot at a the first location it
was hard to pick what clip we wanted in the video. This happened a lot
throughout the editing process as we got so much footage from all the locations
that we went to. As we had a lot of clips from everything we shot, it was hard
to figure out what was going where as we had a storyline to the video, like
most afro-beat video’s do.
For me and the group there weren’t really any roles because
we all played an equal part. Such as when the girls were dancing I would film
them and when it came to their solo freestyles they would film each other and
when they were doing that I was the one who played the music, as I was the one
who had a speaker, so I took that to the locations that we were going to. We also
took turns to film Chris who was our main guy and Sephora who was the main girl
in the music video so everyone got the chance to film. As a group we worked
really well together, no problems at all, even if one of us wasn’t in, we were
still able to get on with what we were doing because there wasn’t one specific
thing to a person. Filming was easy for us, we knew what we were doing, who was
doing what so there wasn’t any problems there, if the footage wasn’t good, or
one part we didn’t like, we’d agree on it, maybe change it or leave it and crop
it out. For how well we worked together while editing was the same with
filming, we’d each have a turn on the Mac and if one person was doing it, we’d
give our input whether it worked or not so it was still equal between us. For how
we worked with Chris as a group, again there was no problems at all, we’d give
him feedback on how it looked, tell him maybe change it a little and if he had
any input on how he looked, we’d change it, not use it or just simply crop it out.
