Final Music Video Edit - Dappy - No Regrets

This is our final, edited version of our music video for 'Dappy - No Regrets'.

Music Video Storyboard.

These are our scanned drawings of our storyboard, depicting the shots we would use to create our music video, drawn by myself Dan Cummings, compiled by correspondence from Dan Cummings, Dan Russell and Mitchell Banks.

Audience Feedback

This is the feedback we recieved from the class after they had viewed our final edit to our Dappy - No Regrets Music Video.

Feedback 1:

·         Good fx

·         Good Settings

·         Sometimes focused on the same shot for too long

·         Sometime the artist was out of shot

Feedback 2

·         Very well put together, editing and the special effects were good. The acting and lip syncing could have been better but it still had quite a professional feel and look to it.

Feedback 3

·         Good amount of locations

·         Some special effects were good

·         Lip syncing worked

·         Good quality

·         Could have done with a narrative

Feedback 4

·         A lot of good locations used

·         Good camera angles

·         Editing went really well with video

Feedback 5

·         Good variation of locations

·         Good use of visual effects

·         Visual effects linked with lyrics well

·         Lip syncing slightly off in places, narrative possibly needed

Feedback 6

·         Good editing

·         Good sfx

·         Looked profesional

·         Video fits genre well

·         Lip syncing seemed off at times

·         Some shots seemed to be too long (Went on a bit)

Feedback 7

·         Good effects with the fire, bullets and tv

·         Lots of locations involve

·         Good editing going back and forth

·         Reflected well with genre

·         Didin't look comfortable lip syncing

·         Could have used a different background instead of black

Feedback 8

·        Really like the way that it was filmes, the locations fitted well with the genre

·         Lip sync was good

·         Like how the footage from the Italian job was put in

Feedback 9

·         The quality of the filming was really good and the video looks professional.

·         Camera angles are varied and interesting

·         The urban filming locations really suit the song genre.

·         Special effects were really good-fire especially, no-one else could have done them!

·         Convincing Dappy acting was good

·         Some of the lip syncing was off in some places but it's barely noticeable!

Feedback 10

·         Good use of effects and props (Hat)

·         Lots of scene change

·         Not much emotion with the lip sync

·         Very good editing throughout

Digipak Analysis

Front Cover Pane

This is our final edit of our cover pane for our digi-pack. Dan Russell and I presided over the creation of the panes entirety, as Mitchell focused on his poster work. We chose to give this an urban feel, whilst adding in the antique frame around the edge, which was adapted from a picture Dan Russell took at home, to add a contrast between the urban genre and the high class lifestyle of music artists. There are two main focal points within this pane, the predominant image in the foreground of our subject (Mitchell Banks), and the image in the background of a rescaled and edited image of Telford Plaza, a mainstay in our music video. Dan Russell, being much more technically gifted than myself, took control of the editing of both images, both using ‘Adobe Photoshop. To grey scale the foreground image of Mitchell, and give him a statuesque appearance, he researched tutorials on ‘Google’ and ‘YouTube’ and then followed various steps until we had the desired effect. The image was created through multiple layering, and trial and error changes to various colour effects. With the background image, we played around with various effects, contracts and edits until we got to our desired scale. We chose to do this to both images as we felt it urbanised them, keeping in touch with our UK hip hop conventions. Once these foundations had been layered down, I took control of the more simplistic effects such as the background colour, and various splattered colours through the image. I did this by using he paintbrush tool, and then used feedback from Dan Russell, combined with my own initiative, to create the eerie-grungy feel to the cover as whole. The cover also contains the title of our artist ‘Dappy’ in a script font, which we chose to intertwine with the artists signature neck tattoo.

Inside – Pane 1

This was our second pane, and again we chose to incorporate an image of our subject, once again as a dominant figure. We chose to carry through our urban theme, and to do this we inverted the colours of the image and increased the contrast to give the black and white view. We chose to completely contrast the block-coloured background from the cover pain, and changed to a block-black background, which played into our editing of our image, and added emphasis to the dominance of the character. Throughout our inside panes, we chose to quote lyrics from the title song ‘No Regrets’, which we felt were iconic. On this pane, unfortunately, we misquoted the lyric as we rushed to complete the pieces. The lyric should say ‘’Now I’m flyer than the birds, Richard Branson’’. As a simile within the song, we felt this had various connoted meanings. Firstly, within urban culture ‘fly’ is related to the way a person dresses well or acts within a ‘cool’ fashion, this relates to Dappy in that he is very egotistical, and very self assured, so from this he is stating that he is better than most. Another connotation could be that he is referring to his self made fame, in the same way that Richard Branson is the self made billionaire founder of the company ‘Virgin’ amongst others. To add emphasis to our lyrics throughout we added some different touches to the black background, or the lyric itself. In this image, we added subtle light blue and transparent black tints to the lettering to enforce the urban theme, almost as if the font has been defaced with graffiti.

Inside – Pane 2

Meeting our continuity purposes, the second pane again featured a block-black background, a dominant image of our subject, and a significant lyric from our title song. In this image, Mitchell is striking a very powerful, and often offensive, pose. This is to tie in with the urban iconography, and with the Dappys’ troubled past, and again the object has been inverted and then had the contrast increased into black and white. The lyric on this pane reads ‘’Kate stays in my dungeon when her sister’s round’’ This is derived from the recent hype around the royal wedding, in which Kate Middleton was said to have been ‘upstaged’ by her older sister Pippa. This could be seen to be Dappy comparing himself with royalty, and the archaism that the Royal family use dungeons. It could also have sexual connotations, teamed with Dappys’ arrogance, seemingly projecting that he feels he could obtain both sisters, despite their hierarchical status.  Our subtle change to the piece this time is a red, blood-like splatter to the font. We chose this as we felt it intertwined with the dark connotations of a dungeon, referenced within the lyric.

Inside – Pane 3

This is our third pane from the inside of our digi-pak. Again the prominence is held by the character image,  and again this has been effected into a black and white theme. The lyric we chose for this reads ‘’I’m a changed man now, Chris Brown’’ This is in reference to recent debacle that was the Brown-Rihanna saga, in which Chris Brown was convicted of the assault of his then girlfriend. In the song ‘Champion’ with UK artist and Dappy affiliate ‘Chipmunk’, Brown’s signature verse is written and performed in a pensive manner, as he expresses his feelings towards repenting his sins. We felt this would be the basis for the lyric, and could possibly connote, closer to home, his venture from his group N-Dubz into becoming a solo artist, following a new musical path. As with our previous and further panes, we added a different touch, however in this pane it is evidently more prominent. We used a green/yellow mist around the corners, and borders surrounding, and adjacent to, our main image. This was used to signify the ‘change’ referenced to in the lyric chosen, and adds a grimy aura to the pane.

Inside – Pane 4

This was our final inside pane, and we followed on with our continuity by keeping a block-black background, prominent image, and featured lyric. With this image I felt that as the final inside pane, we should accentuate the prominence of Dappys’ recognised iconography, in our piece, this was his hat. By carefully adjusting the contrast, I managed to leave the hat with enough dominance to overpower the body, although some detail remained on the torso. To counter this I used the paint tool to whiten out any detail and leave the simplified white body, leaving just the hat with detail. The final lyric we used was “I’m Kurt Cobain, but I just couldn’t do it’’. This is in direct reference to the suicide of grunge band Nirvana’s lead singer in 1994. This could refer to a feeling that Dappy has had suicidal thoughts, although I think it most directly links to thoughts of less sincere motives of quitting music. We felt this was an iconic lyric, not only in the song, but in our video as we used ‘After Effects’ to install an image of floating shotgun cartridges, linking to Cobains’ death, to coincide with the “I’m Kurt Cobain..” section of the lyric, then the cartridges dropped out of shot for the “Couldn’t do it” section. Our subtle touch on this pane was a transparent black paint added to the font, adding a grimy edge.

Back Cover

This pane was heavily chosen to show continuity with our opening cover pane, accentuate the picture frame theme. This is our simplest pane, as it is, in its entirety, an image taken by Dan Russell, of the back of a photo frame his parents own. We simply chose to add the artist name, ‘Dappy’, and created a 2 song track list with, what we felt, were Dappys’ most notable solo songs, the title single ‘No Regrets’, and Tinchy Stryder collaboration ‘Spaceship’.  The font for ‘Dappy’ was chosen as we felt it blended with the authenticity of the image, almost as if it has been stamped, or branded, by its owner/creator. The font for the track listing was chosen in continuity with the ‘Dappy’ on our front cover, again intertwined with the artist signature neck tattoo. In deeper thought about this font, I feel like we used it to represent this single as a defined characteristic of the artist, as it is his first solo release, it will be a permanent part of himself, and his career, in metaphorical comparison with a tattoo.

Individual Test Digi-Pak

Front Cover

This was my test front cover for my digipak. It is very simplistic with graffiti-style fonts and an edited image of Dappy. I personally like this as it is very colourful, making it eye catching to a customer, however it is slightly too cartoon-like, and i feel a realistic cover would be suited to the artist.

Back Cover

This is my test back cover for our Digipak. Again it is very simplistic, colourful, but this time it incorporates a blacked out image of a conventional studio microphone, a feature of iconography in the urban hip hop. To keep continuity i kept the colours the same, and also the fonts, however i changed the positions of the fonts, squiggles and splashes to add an element of variation.

Poster Production

When it came to designing our poster, we decided to keep it extremely simple, whilst intertwining concepts between this and our digipak. The production of our poster was left to Mitchell Banks, whilst Dan Russell and myself were continuous correspondence to ensure our ideas were incorporated. Our first effort (seen on the right) was a block coloured background, simplistic font, music related logos and a large scale image of our subject, Mitchell Banks. We chose to keep it so simplistic as we didnt want to take much away from the posters objective, selling the single. We also chose to use various influential music websites and magazines as quotes of '5 stars' to show the audience the quality of the music. This is a heavy iconograph of the worldwide music scene, and we felt it extremely vital to incorporate this. The use of the HMV(c), Amazon (c) and iTunes(c) logos was as vital as the use of magazine quotes, as it directs the viewer to places from which they can purchase a single, and I feel we chose 3 companies at the forefront of the music business, and also heavily recognisable within society.

When it came to polishing off our poster, we changed various aspects, and I personally added a few extra touches, aswell as changing the spelling mistakes. We chose to change the background to a more mellow grey scale, to match the edited picture of Mitchell. This was the main significant change to the piece. I chose to add some more logos, to make it more official. This required some research into various aspects of dappys' musical background. From the research I did, I chose, with correspondence from Dan Russell, to add in the Takeover Entertainment logo, Dappys record label, aswell as an offical 'Dappy' logo, which is recognisable to Dappy as a brand.

Overall I personally think we didnt put enough time into our poster, thus Mitchell Banks ended up rushing the design in our final in-lesson session. However, I feel we managed to create a poster which meets its criteria, and possesses enough Iconographs to ensure that a viewer understands it, and can associate it with the intended purposes.

Journal Entry 1 – Week Beginning Monday 14th November 2011

The 14^th was my first day back in lesson after half-term and weeks holiday. On return , we made the constructive decision to re-shoot all of our studio based footage as we felt our previous shots lacked technical quality and we found certain continuity errors in terms of shot transition (our previous footage is linked in an earlier post). From these errors and lacks in continuity and quality, we made various changes to the mise en scene of the shots. Firstly we changed our background from a plain white, to the use of a green screen, as it provided a more solid basis for technical editing. The main reason for this is that the white background was very creased when we were editing the shots, and this led to inequality issues between shots and throughout transits. Another of our reasons for re-shooting was the costume chosen, we chose to revert to a smarter yet casual option, and dressed our subject (Mitchell Banks as Dappy) in a suit jacket, blue shirt, denim jeans and a hat which maintained iconography with Dappy’s personal attire, and this outfit was used throughout the video to maintain consistency.

I feel that being present I added an extra element to the team, as they conveyed difficulties with setting up and filming whilst I was away. As a group we began by re-arranging the rooms furniture in order to allow room for shooting with a green screen, which we assembled shortly after. We only had a relatively short period to film, due to room availability issues, so we began filming promptly and concisely. Within our studio-based footage, we focused on the opening 15 seconds of the video, as well as incorporating emphasis on certain iconic elements further on in the song. Personally, I took the role as a second cameraman, assisting Dan Russell in keeping continuity and balance the camera when using moving shots i.e. pans. In the second half of todays lesson we moved into the Mac room where we began combining our shots, and editing within the programme ‘’After Effects’’ which Dan Russell, and I took leading roles in. Dan possessed a greater technical aptitude, so he led procedures involving things such as editing the shots replacing the green screen with a black fade, and the cutting and placing together of edited shots. I took a creative lead and led procedures including the timing of cuts. As a group we had chosen to mimic a group of shots from a video by the artist ‘Labrinth’ for the song ‘Earthquake’ featuring Tinie Tempah, in which a serious of pans are used to establish Labrinth as the videos key subject, and I felt that I possessed the right creative imagery to help in this stage. Luckily, we managed to obtain enough footage on this day to eliminate further need for studio-based shooting, and this allowed us focus on locational-based shots on further lessons, and this led us into planning filming for our next lesson, Wednesday the 16^th, which we planned to film on various locations in Telford town.

On the 16^th, I woke up to quite adverse weather conditions, but as a complete group, we ventured out into the cold of Telford town centre to get the remainder of the footage we needed to complete the video. From our initial location report, we ended up shooting on 3 locations, 2 were rooftops of the ‘Cherry Tree Car Park’ and ‘Lemon Tree Car Park’ respectively, and a grass verge near the local Park inn. The Park Inn was our second hand choice due to administrations issues with shooting at the Telford Plaza forecourt. This was due to a lack of prior contact between the plaza officials and ourselves. The main reason we chose to use a number of locations, as well as studio footage, was to add variation thus enticing the viewer into watching the whole video.

Our first location was the Park Inn grass verge, were we shot numerous sequences of the whole songs, as well as various key shots such as the choruses. There was also a large group of containers on the site, and we felt this would an urban element to the shots, so we shot a further run through next to one of these. Next we moved on to our first rooftop, at Cherry Tree car park. As with the grass verge, we shot various run through’s, and key shots such as the choruses so as to give us more footage to choose from. We were then asked to leave due to the car park being in use, but the shopping centre staff were very helpful, and offered to close the top floor of the ‘lemon tree car park’ for us too finis filming. This ended up being my favourite setting as the scenery and skyline gave a spiritual feeling to enhance the meaning of the song.