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-Brief review of our pitch and Rohan’s feedback on it-

Our group had to do the pitch presentation a few days earlier than the usual date because i was going to be away for that week to New Zealand. We had a tight schedule to prepare for the presentation but once we had the concept, everything else fell together quite easily. Our concept of the main artist singing and flirting one way towards the lead female actress who does not notice him has been incorporated in a few other music videos before. Our inspirations were Don’t do that by K-POP boy band B.A.P and Just haven’t met you yet by Michael Buble. We liked the idea of keeping the whole narrative mysterious and light-hearted. We thought of the final scene of the two characters finally coming together and exchanging intense eye contact in a night club but for that moment to build up we wanted to introduce three or more different settings. Since we already had a mechanic suites as a prop, we included a self-car wash, the spa and gym for creating sexual tension between the characters and the street for the begging of the music video. When we shared our plans of filming in all these different settings to the class, Rohan was concerned that it was too much and we might not get permissions for all those locations, therefore we need to come up with some alternatives if they don’t work out and that we can even take out a few and stay in one location for longer, which would also save us more money and time.

Rohan also mentioned that the storyboard shown in the presentation was way too rough and that a more detailed storyboard that illustrates the music video shot by shot was required. He also gave us a suggestion to ask the karaoke bar where we intended to film our last scene for a discount on our entry fees in return for their business to be advertised on our music video sort of like a sponsor.

What our group need to do now is

• Ask for permission from my apartment if it’s ok to film in the gym/pool facility area, contact the carwash for their most quiet hours and get permission to film, Contact Kareoke
• Search for a female actress to star in the mv
• Create a shot list

Yay i finally finished the storyboard to go into our pitch presentation for Good Vibes and Regrets by NeuMark. It’s actually not really a storyboard but a set of pictures that give a very rough overview of the narrative and the settings of the music video. It is just to give the audience an idea of the beginning and the end of the music video and some of what i thought was to be the important scenes in the music video. These pictures might not exactly be the shots that we end up filming and we might even change up the settings but ideally we will follow the structure of the narrative that we brainstormed and all agreed on together. The first picture is of the back of the female character leaving her house then a picture of her on the phone than it shows that she’s playing the song ‘Good vibes and Regrets’  The music starts playing and NeuMark shows up on the street walking along her and serenades her with his song but she doesn’t see him, the next pictures are them at the carpark and the spa then the last three pictures are how we visualised the music video will end. NeuMark singing into the mic while the girl watches him and later they finally meet and exchanges eye contact.

It was finally time to decide and our group was going back and forth with a couple of songs of NeuMark. One was a hiphop genre with quite a bit of rapping that addressed the issues of homelessness and the other was a jazzy house beat about seducing and being seduced by a lady. They were both good but we felt like homeless with its more rhythmic tone might be easier to chop up shots in accordance to the beats so at first we thought we’d go with homeless. However we could’ t think of a good concept for the music video, as the lyrics were too strong to gear away from and we considered the subject he talked about in the song was too heavy to interpret visually. At the end we settled on Good Vibes and Regrets as there were much more freedom in which directions we can take creatively and also we thought it was a better song we can experiment with cool editing techniques.

So i chose the music video of Ariana Grande’s Into You to analyse and present to the class. I chose it because first of all I like her music, I like her fashion sense and i remembered how much i’ve enjoyed watching this music video in particular.

I’ve already talked about everything in my presentation so in this blog i’d like to just point out what i found most interesting about this music video piece.

First of all the storyline. The romance between Ariana Grande and her guy are every girls fantasies. She is a famous celebrity in an unhappy relationship with her jerk boyfriend also seems to be a celebrity and there’s her smoking hot bodyguard to protect and love her. (Their occupations of such are only found out by the audience in the end which i thought was very clever.) They runaway across the dessert arriving at this motel called the Honey Moon Inn where they can’t take their eyes and hands off of each other. The whole running away with my bodyguard to a motel in the middle of the desert definitely gives out a sort of star crossed lovers vibe which i think appeals to a wide range of females.

Secondly i like the colour scheme of the music video. The pink lightings and soft colour grading which looks like they used an overlay with a pink tone sets a romantic mood to the whole movie. It also looks very consistent. It provokes a dreamy, young, and super romantic warm feeling to it.

Thirdly watching this music video, i realised that the acting by the characters was one of the main reasons what made the mv so good. They had really good chemistry between them and they looked so comfortable and natural with each other as if they were a real couple. I think this is important and when filming my own music video, i will make sure to bring that out of the characters and be able to capture it as nicely as in this music video.

Our class reading on race and femininity in music videos by Diane Railton and Paul Watson had some interesting points and in the end i was convinced of the sexualisation of women according to their race. Not only that but what shook me the most was how black women’s body parts were considered primitive and animalistic which i never really thought about that way. Then when i started looking into the music videos that were mentioned in the reading i understood. Especially in the 90s the distinction between white female artists and black females were clear as mentioned in the reading, the white females were fragile and pure needing protection from men whereas black females were portrayed more to by hyper sexualised and aggressive.

‘The protruding butt is seen as an indication of a ‘heightened sexuality’….Mos Def’s ‘Ms Fat Booty’ which celebrates an ‘ass so fat you can see it from the front’,…the exaltation of the ‘black butt’ in Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bootylicious’.   -The Ferine and The Figurine- Pg97

BBW is an urban slang that stands for Big Black woman. It was used by many rappers including the infamous Drake. There are also adjectives such as ‘thick’ to describe women who have vuloptuous figures.  I don’t know about before in the olden days but right now we are living in a world where it’s all about big butts. Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda is an example of how glorified big butts are these days to the point where the ‘guys don’t want none unless she’s gone buns’. Having big butts has now become whats good and i feel like a lot of black female artists have come so far to change the racial inferiority for the black women to be on the upper. I think it’s truly wonderful the way they empower black women to be more confident with their bodies and to embrace it but when they have to make other body types to feel lesser than them, it may discourage other females who do not have that booty and just like Nicki Minaj says the guys are more interested in the booty.

In the first class where everyone had to introduce themselves and talk about one of their favourite music videos, i couldn’t really think of any but i chose the mv for Ciara’s I’m Out. I was nervous talking in front of a big group so i remember just talking about how much i liked her outfit in one of the scenes. However when i think back the reason why it was memorable was definitely not only because of that beautiful white two piece  Ciara had on but also because a feeling the mv evoked in me that made me watch it twice. The feeling of female empowerment. Not because she just looks pretty in it but she is portrayed as a strong confident woman that encourages us to be like the boss that she is. Some other music videos that represents the female artist in a similar way are  Jennifer Lopez – Love don’t cost a thing, Destiny’s child – soldier, Amerie- 1 thing and Cassie – long way 2 go etc. All the female artists in these music videos wear clothing that accentuates femininity, have long hair with glow makeup that are never over the top. I started with Ciara but as i searched for more empowering figures, Youtube led me to music videos of all these 90s iconic hiphop female artists and i found myself depicting some typical scenes that they all share such as the extreme close up of their faces, hair blowing in the wind and most of them have  male figures in the background to stand in awe complimenting the females. The difference between then and now is that there are more diversity within race, body type and fashion style of female artists that represent different women. If before, they all wore similar tone of eyeshadows and lipgloss was a must these days, the makeup and costumes in music videos are getting bolder and more experimental.