Vladmirr Propp

Vladmirr Propp was a Russian Scholar who analyzed the Russian folk tales. He did this by breaking them down into 31 components which consisted of a hero, villain, confrontation between the two and eventually a resolution. A music video which I feel that I can apply his theory to is Mariah Carey - Heartbreaker. This follows his theory as it begins with 'absentaion' where the heroe (in this case 'heroin' who is Mariah Carey herself) leaves her comfort zone as she suspects that her boyfriend is cheating on her, so she is seeking with her friends to catch him in the act. This then leads to the stage of 'interdiction' where the hero is warned against something (dont go there). In this case Mariah is sitting in her car contemplating whether she should go into the cinema and confront her boyfriend, however, she is egged on by her friends and chooses to do so anyway. The 'violation of interdiction' is where the villain is introduced and in this case it is her boyfriend watching the film with another woman which indicates that he is having an affair.

Jumping a few of the steps, the music video then leads to the 'first function of the donor' where the heroe is attacked by her boyfriends 'other' girl in the toilets as she goes to confront her. She then reacts which leads into the 'struggle' where the villain and heroes join in direct combat - they have a massive fight in the girls toilets. 'Victory' is then gained as Mariah 'returns' back to the cinema once again which obviously means she has defeated the other girl and 'returns' to the other 'villain' who is her boyfriend to lead to his punishment. She is then faced with a 'difficult task' as she now has to confront her own boyfriend about his dirty deeds and he is 'exposed'. She is given a new 'appearance' as she is holding a drink which she then pours onto her, now, ex-boyfriend as 'punishment' for having an affair on her. In this case, the 'wedding' of the story is her happy ending of walking away from a relationship where she was not being treated with respectand honesty.

Locations

Our chosen location is in Camden Passage. This is very local to our college which means that we can film on the go and re-do clips if it is necessary quite easily. Also, the passage is not too crowded which makes filming more easier for us as we have less disturbances and people getting in our way and nicer for the public as we will not be inconveniencing anyone on their day. We plan to film in certain shops which suit our theme of 'pinks' and femininity, however, to do this we will ask permission of all shop owners before doing any filming.

Pitch 13/14/15

Production Schedule

1st Ideas For Digipaks

These are some rough mock up ideas of images and texts that I will use on my digipak. In the digipak i have the main concepts that will be in the pop video, such as several images of the new artist Bella, images of hearts and girly things, the main colour pink and the main lyric from the song, "I just want your kiss".
These digipaks are all consistent they all have the same theme, these are only rough and made on powerpoint but my real digipaks will be made on Quark and i will have 4 panels.

Digi Pack



I was looking into doing a 6 plan digi pack, but i might result in doing a 4 pannel pack.  I want to create a flow of pink green coral and bright floral colours throughout the pannels and get a good range of angles of Bella's face and body especially the lips. It will contain information on the artist and record company, a good range of images, barcodes etc. The didgi pack will attract an audience that is really into girly stuff, romance, playfull, sexy and cute at the same time. This will attract a lot of female attention. The image above is just a breif look into how i want the images to look like and colours, in my actual digi pack ill inculde all the essentials.   

Planning: Mood board

Digi Pack

i have decided to do a 4/6 panel digi pack.

My digi pack will have some aspects of pink and i will include some images of pink lips. i will aslo include an image of my artist; it will show her from her shoulders/torso/full body shot either standing up or laynig down with her hair spread on a flat white surface with some sweets hopefully around her.

It will contain information on the artist and the record company, maybe a thamk you page and images etc. standardly i will put the barcode and logos on it as that is standard procedure. I believe that my digi pack would meet the needs of my target audience as the images, text, colour and font attract my audience.

the link betweern this and the video would be the clour mostly.

9) Pitch - Initial Ideas for digipack

As 'Bella' is a new artist I have chosen to do a 4 panel digipak as it is more simpler and there is only so many 'lips' you can put on the cover of her CD. The digipak will contain a large image of the artist on the front cover. This is because she is knew so we would mainly want her face to be seen so that she is remembered and recognised by the audience. I will also use pink/red and itallic font throughout the digipak as it represents her femininity and the love which is talked about in the song. The use of lip prints will also be used as I feel they are very girly (like our artist) and relates to the words 'I just want your kiss boy' which is repeated in the chorus many times. 

This will relate to our audience as they will be mostly young girls and the digipak will be very pink and bright which would attract them to buy it. Also it has a link with the video as we will be using a 'kiss me boy' sign which has the same red lips which i shall be using on my digipak. 

Although I haven't shown it here; I will also include a barcode and the record label on the back cover of my digipak and the artists name and song of the front and side of it.

Pitch

Pitch Movie

Animatic Storyboard

Final Song Choice

Our final song choice is Kate Nash's 'Pumpkin Soup'. After several song choices we narrowed it down to this song as it is has a video which could help us plan what we visualise our film to be. Although it is a bit out of our comfort zone, as it is a genre of music which we would not usually listen to, I feel that it could be a challenge for us to excel and produce a top notch 'pop' music video.

The main theme of this song is about love and kisses which could easily be shown through the use of colours (reds and pinks), location (bright and crowed streets) and costume (pink dresses). We plan to involve members othe public within our movie by making theme hold related posters which could be editted into our final cut. This would be effective as involvement of the audience makes it seem more realistic and differs from just seeing the artist on the screen all the time.

Although this song already has a video we will only use it to guide us in them aking of our own, this will ensure that our music video is original and something people have not seen before. We will, hopefully, do this by bringing the song to the streets of London instead of using an inside 'set' location like Nash did.

All in all,  I am excited to begin our music video as I am sure it will be a fun and challenging project to create.

Final Song Choice

After experimenting with a range of songs to use in our pop video like 'Round and Round' By Chuck Dem Gee, 'Big Boys' By Princess Nyah and 'Show Me Love' the Robin S remix,  my group and I decided on 'Pumpkin Soup' by Kate Nash. We wern't too keen onthe song because it's not usually the type of music we would listen too, but after talking about different things we can do in the video and how we would film it we are now enthusiastic about doing it because it's a really British pop song and we have good ideas for the video.

Final Choice

The Song We Have Decided To Do For Our Music Video Is kate Nash Pumpkin Soup.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCr81kVTdqE&ob=av2n

We decided to use this song for our music video. The style of this video is really a pop video and we are going to interpret this in our own way. Our theme is pink. We are going to use this theme hopefully throughout the whole of the video. We decided to use pink as in this video, red is seen quite a lot. The video is more on the luvy duvy side and we want interrpret a young girl falling in love. The feeling when girls are happy makes them feel all childish inside, and pink would represent this.
We have planned the possible locations, props, shots, make up & costume.
Preperation we believe is the best policy when it comes to creating a successful music video.

Short List Of Song Choices

Above is Princess Nyah - Big Boys; this was one of our song choices. It wasnt a great song choice due to the complex lyrics, which although we no, would be hard to match when it came to editing the lip syncing.




Above we have M.I.A - Paper Planes; this was a good choice as it was unusual and original. The only down fall is that the artisit had her own individual flow when it came to singing/rapping. This would have been difficult to interpret.





Above is a song called Round and Round;
We chose this song because it was easy to lip sync and had many ideas.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp is a Russian philologist and structuralist who analysed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.

Basically what he does is he disects folk tales and has a theory that in majority of folk tales there are different functions. To name a few of these functions:

1. ABSENTATION: A member of a family leaves the security of the home environment. This may be the hero or some other member of the family that the hero will later need to rescue. This division of the cohesive family injects initial tension into the storyline. The hero may also be introduced here, often being shown as an ordinary person.
2. INTERDICTION: An interdiction is addressed to the hero ('don't go there', 'don't do this'). The hero is warned against some action (given an 'interdiction').
3. VIOLATION of INTERDICTION. The interdiction is violated (villain enters the tale). This generally proves to be a bad move and the villain enters the story, although not necessarily confronting the hero. Perhaps they are just a lurking presence or perhaps they attack the family whilst the hero is away.
4. RECONNAISSANCE: The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance (either villain tries to find the children/jewels etc.; or intended victim questions the villain). The villain (often in disguise) makes an active attempt at seeking information, for example searching for something valuable or trying to actively capture someone. They may speak with a member of the family who innocently divulges information. They may also seek to meet the hero, perhaps knowing already the hero is special in some way.
5. DELIVERY: The villain gains information about the victim. The villain's seeking now pays off and he or she now acquires some form of information, often about the hero or victim. Other information can be gained, for example about a map or treasure location.

Some of these theories can be used with music videos. If the music video has a clear narrative then most likely these theories will be seen as successful.

Lip Syncing

In one of our college lessons, we were given an induction on how to lip sync. Lip syncing makes it look as if we are singing the actual song.
To do this we had to sing the song when we were filming, and then later remove the sound from our recorded clips on final cut pro and attach the original backing track - if this was successful the words on the track would play at the same times as our mouths moving.

One thing that threw my group was the given task it self. We learnt the hard way, that we had to record with the WHOLE song, beginning to end, not little snippets. This is because it makes it a lot harder trying to match up the actuall sound track and the recordings we had done.

Now knowing what we are ment to do when it comes to editing our recordings to the OST, I feel a lot more confident in making our music video.

I believe that with the right shots and a lot of hard work, I can edit this music video to the best of my ability.

Copyright Letter

29^th September 2010

 XL Recordings
One Codrington Mews

London

W11 2EH

Dear XL recordings,

Request for Copyright Permission to use part or whole of: M.I.A – Paper Planes

I am a student of A Level Media Studies and for my Advanced Portfolio I will be working in a group to produce a promotional package for the release of a new album track. I would like to request permission to use the above track for this project.

The finished project will not be made available publicly and will be used solely for coursework purposes. The holder of the original copyright will be fully acknowledged in the finished project.

If you do not hold the rights for this song i should be grateful if you could forward this request to the appropriate person, or return it to me with the contact details in order that i might approach the copyright holder directly.

Yours faithfully

Tshala Philip

Copyright Letter;

City & Islington College
Angle, Goswell Road
London EC1V 7LA
Thursday 30th September 2010

Moshi Moshi Records
Rhoda street
London E2 7EF


Dear Moshi Moshi Records,

Request for Copyright Permission to use part or whole of: Pumpkin Soup by Kate Nash

I am a student of A Level Media Studies and for my Advanced Portfolio I will be working in a group to produce a promotional package for the release of a new album track. I would like to request permission to use the above track for this project.

The finished project will not be made available publicly and will be used solely for coursework purposes. The holder of the original copyright will be fully acknowledge in the finished project.

If you do not hold the rights for this song I should be grateful if you could forward this request to the appropriate person, or return it to me with the contact details in order that I might approach the copyright holder directly

Yours Sincerely


Tshala Philip

Planning: Short List of Songs

In our group we decided to make a video based on the genre of funky house music and/or pop. This led us to artists such as Princess Nyah, M.I.A and Chuck Dem Gee. Our first choice was to choose a funky house song, however, after listening to a variety of tracks we came to the conclusion that those types of songs maybe had to lip synch. This was due to the fast pace of the music and lyrics. We then settled for M.I.A - 'paper planes' which had a slow pace and still kept to the theme of house music. However, we felt that the artists pronouncation and style would be hard to replicate as she had her own attitude and way of saying certain words. Finally, we came back to square one and decided to stick with funky house - Chuck Dem gee - 'round and round' this song was sung by a female artist, suited our style and was not too fast for our lip synching.

Princess Nyah - Big Boy
As you can see this song would have been difficult, when it came to the versus, to lip synch as the rap is very fast and hard to pronounce every single word

M.I.A - Paper Planes

Although this song is slow pace and would have been easy to match the lip synch we felt that her style of rapping would have been difficult to mimic. Also, as this song already has a video it would be very tempting to immitate certain aspects of it which could loose us marks



Chuck Dem Gee - Round and Round

We felt that this song would be most suitable for creating a music video for. This is because we could easily lip synch and it is a good 'girly' choice for a all-girl group. Also, the fact that this song has no prior-video means that we could do anything with it and be able to be as creative as we want without accidently copying the original.

Final Choice - Copyright Letters

29^th September 2010

Dear Fiction Records,

Request for Copyright Permission to use part or whole of: Kate Nash – Pumpskin Soup

I am a student of A Level Media Studies and for my Advanced Portfolio I will be working in a group to produce a promotional package for the release of a new album track. I would like to request permission to use the above track for this project.

The finished project will not be made available publically and will be used solely for coursework purposes. The holder of the original copyright will be fully acknowledged in the finished project.

If you do not hold the rights for this song i should be grateful if you could forward this request to the appropriate person, or return it to me with the contact details in order that i might approach the copyright holder directly.

Yours faithfully

Jasmin Emmanuel

JasminKitty@hotmail.com

Audience

Our song 'Pumpkin Soup'by Kate Nash would attract a niche audience of young girly girls, the type of girl that would listen to this song would be:

Name: Alice Thomas
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White British
Occupation: School Student
Groceries: Waitrose
Spare Time Acctivities: Hanging out with friends in parks, drinking, shopping
Magazines: Heat, Hello, Look
Newspapers: The Metro and The Sun
Transport: Bus, Tube/Train, Mum's car
Gadgets: Blackberry, Ipod, Apple mac laptop, Straightners
Brands: Pauls boutique, Juicy coture, Ralph lauren
Shopping: River island, Topshop, Selfridges, Hollister
Fvourite drink: Smirnoff ice, WKD
Favourite holiday: Spain (Marbella)

Alice likes this genre of music because it's girly and the music is relevant to a teenage lifestyle, it's also a song she can sing along to with her friends when shes going out or hanging out in the house doing her hair and make-up.

Final Song Choice

We finally choose the song Pumpkin Soup by Kate Nash



This wasnt our first choice, we oringally picked pricness nyah than went onto picking M.I.A paper planes my group were quite focused on that song because we felt the genre was good the different locations that it was set in.
In the beggening we were misinformed that we had copy the video aswell as the song, but this was incorrect, as a group we thought hard about the outcome of this video if we were to pursue it.
So we decided it will be quite a difficult task to pull of so we resulted into choosing Pumpkin Soup.
We really like this song it has a good verse and hook and will be easy to lip synch, we as a group can put our own creative artistic flare to the video.

Shortlist Of Potential Songs

This is a shortlist of songs and ideas which we had to create before choosing our finial song:

Princess Nyah - Big Boys (Dj Glamour)


Lil' Blu Feat. Shanique - Say Yes! (Funky House) 09'


Katy B - Katy On A Mission


Robin S - Show Me Love Remix


M.I.A. PAPER PLANES


CHUCK DEM GEE Round & Round


The next step was now to decide which song will be doing.

Analysis Of previous Students Work (group 24)

Adam, Lisa, Nasima & Sayvita from 283goswell on Vimeo.

I choose this video because i think this group did a very good job and by watching this music video that they created you can tell that they spent alot of time planning.
There are a huge variety of different shots ranging from mid, long, low, pan, close ups, ext close ups etc,
I liked how they edited it and the black and white theme, but still kept the red colour to emphasize the meaning of Love! that they were trying to get across.
They suceed by the the banners that say 'everybody needs love', the red heart earrings, red high heel shoes and the red lipstick were still highlighted which gave more power to the video and portrayed a clear understanding and clearly represented love.
I think this is quite a broad audience ranging from early teens to 50s, its a bubbly happy love song that most ages will love to listen to from a indie mixed RnB genre.

Vladimir Propp

Vladimir Propp on April 17th 1895 in St. Petersburg to a German family. He attended St. Petersburg University (1913–1918) majoring in Russian and German philosophy.
Vladimir Propp extended the Russian Formalist approach to the study of narrative structure. In the Formalist approach, sentence structures were broken down into analyzable elements by breaking down a large number of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units.

There are 31 functions which are shown below:

1. ABSENTATION: A member of a family leaves the security of the home environment. This may be the hero or some other member of the family that the hero will later need to rescue. This division of the cohesive family injects initial tension into the storyline. The hero may also be introduced here, often being shown as an ordinary person.
2. INTERDICTION: An interdiction is addressed to the hero ('don't go there', 'don't do this'). The hero is warned against some action (given an 'interdiction').
3. VIOLATION of INTERDICTION. The interdiction is violated (villain enters the tale). This generally proves to be a bad move and the villain enters the story, although not necessarily confronting the hero. Perhaps they are just a lurking presence or perhaps they attack the family whilst the hero is away.
4. RECONNAISSANCE: The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance (either villain tries to find the children/jewels etc.; or intended victim questions the villain). The villain (often in disguise) makes an active attempt at seeking information, for example searching for something valuable or trying to actively capture someone. They may speak with a member of the family who innocently divulges information. They may also seek to meet the hero, perhaps knowing already the hero is special in some way.
5. DELIVERY: The villain gains information about the victim. The villain's seeking now pays off and he or she now acquires some form of information, often about the hero or victim. Other information can be gained, for example about a map or treasure location.
6. TRICKERY: The villain attempts to deceive the victim to take possession of victim or victim's belongings (trickery; villain disguised, tries to win confidence of victim). The villain now presses further, often using the information gained in seeking to deceive the hero or victim in some way, perhaps appearing in disguise. This may include capture of the victim, getting the hero to give the villain something or persuading them that the villain is actually a friend and thereby gaining collaboration.
7. COMPLICITY: Victim taken in by deception, unwittingly helping the enemy. The trickery of the villain now works and the hero or victim naively acts in a way that helps the villain. This may range from providing the villain with something (perhaps a map or magical weapon) to actively working against good people (perhaps the villain has persuaded the hero that these other people are actually bad).
8. VILLAINY or LACK: Villain causes harm/injury to family member (by abduction, theft of magical agent, spoiling crops, plunders in other forms, causes a disappearance, expels someone, casts spell on someone, substitutes child etc., comits murder, imprisons/detains someone, threatens forced marriage, provides nightly torments); Alternatively, a member of family lacks something or desires something (magical potion etc.). There are two options for this function, either or both of which may appear in the story. In the first option, the villain causes some kind of harm, for example carrying away a victim or the desired magical object (which must be then be retrieved). In the second option, a sense of lack is identified, for example in the hero's family or within a community, whereby something is identified as lost or something becomes desirable for some reason, for example a magical object that will save people in some way.
9. MEDIATION: Misfortune or lack is made known, (hero is dispatched, hears call for help etc./ alternative is that victimized hero is sent away, freed from imprisonment). The hero now discovers the act of villainy or lack, perhaps finding their family or community devastated or caught up in a state of anguish and woe.
10. BEGINNING COUNTER-ACTION: Seeker agrees to, or decides upon counter-action. The hero now decides to act in a way that will resolve the lack, for example finding a needed magical item, rescuing those who are captured or otherwise defeating the villain. This is a defining moment for the hero as this is the decision that sets the course of future actions and by which a previously ordinary person takes on the mantle of heroism.
11. DEPARTURE: Hero leaves home;
12. FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR: Hero is tested, interrogated, attacked etc., preparing the way for his/her receiving magical agent or helper (donor);
13. HERO'S REACTION: Hero reacts to actions of future donor (withstands/fails the test, frees captive, reconciles disputants, performs service, uses adversary's powers against him);
14. RECEIPT OF A MAGICAL AGENT: Hero acquires use of a magical agent (directly transferred, located, purchased, prepared, spontaneously appears, eaten/drunk, help offered by other characters);
15. GUIDANCE: Hero is transferred, delivered or led to whereabouts of an object of the search;
16. STRUGGLE: Hero and villain join in direct combat;
17. BRANDING: Hero is branded (wounded/marked, receives ring or scarf);
18. VICTORY: Villain is defeated (killed in combat, defeated in contest, killed while asleep, banished);
19. LIQUIDATION: Initial misfortune or lack is resolved (object of search distributed, spell broken, slain person revived, captive freed);
20. RETURN: Hero returns;
21. PURSUIT: Hero is pursued (pursuer tries to kill, eat, undermine the hero);
22. RESCUE: Hero is rescued from pursuit (obstacles delay pursuer, hero hides or is hidden, hero transforms unrecognisably, hero saved from attempt on his/her life);
23. UNRECOGNIZED ARRIVAL: Hero unrecognized, arrives home or in another country;
24. UNFOUNDED CLAIMS: False hero presents unfounded claims;
25. DIFFICULT TASK: Difficult task proposed to the hero (trial by ordeal, riddles, test of strength/endurance, other tasks);
26. SOLUTION: Task is resolved;
27. RECOGNITION: Hero is recognized (by mark, brand, or thing given to him/her);
28. EXPOSURE: False hero or villain is exposed;
29. TRANSFIGURATION: Hero is given a new appearance (is made whole, handsome, new garments etc.);
30. PUNISHMENT: Villain is punished;
31. WEDDING: Hero marries and ascends the throne (is rewarded/promoted).

Proforma for obtaining copyright permission

City & Islington College

Goswell Road

London

EC1V 7LA

Saturday 1st October

Sound Bwoy Entertainment
Lancelot 2221 N.E. 164th, Suite 225
North Miami Beach, FL 33160

Dear Sound Bwoy Ent

Request forf Copyright Permission to use part or whole of: Round & round by Chuck Dem Gee

I am a student of A Levl Media Studies and for my Advanced Portfolio I will be working in a group to produce a promotional package for the release of a new album track. I would like to request permission to use the above track fo this project.

The finished project will not be made available publicly and will be used solely for the coursework purposes.
The holder of the original copyright will be fully acknowledge in the finished project.

If you do not hold rights for this song i should be grateful if you could forward this request to the appropriate person, or return it to me with the contact details in order that i might approach the copyright holder directly.

Yours Faithfully
Annabella Okene

Lip Synch Tutorial

In lesson we were taught how to lip synch . This is to make our video more realistic, we sing the song just to get the lip movements then we cut out the sound and out the real song over it matching with the movement of the lips which makes out as if the person actually sang the song.
Firstly we were given a song with scenes from an indie artist including a wide range of shots

For example high angle shots, long angle shots, midshot, closeups and over the shoulder shots. We then had to choose a word from the song and make a marking point.
Marked the spot of the word and matched it up with the song, which made the artist movement match perfectly with the song that they were singing.
The editing was abit difficult because I found it quite hard to match the performance with the vocals, sometimes the performer was slower than the song.

In out groups we had to create a short music clip, only recording a verse and chorus from the song, the song we did was ‘Freak Out’, our group didn’t fully understand the task we did not film a whole clip of the verse and chorus but instead filmed it separately starting and stopping at different times.
I think this is why we found it quite hard to edit it on final cut pro, we learnt how to use the marker tool, so we then marked on the audio ‘Freak Out’ of every piece of the minimal footage that we had and lined them up.
We then used the razor tool to cut the footage to the beat.
This was very different to a opening of a thriller, we planed before hand and had a lot of practice and got comfortable.
With lip-synching we have to match it very well to the mouth movements to make it match the lips so it looks as if the person it actually singing the song.