In the lead up to shooting on Thursday, I took time to watch the text inspired by Willy’s namesake. Willie Dynamite is a 1974 blaxploitation film which came out of New York City that follows the story of an entrepreneurial pimp trying to make his way up in the city. Willy holds and controls a specific block within New York. It is situated within a high earning hotel area and neighbourhood, however due to increasing police pressure and rivalry from the other Pimps, Willys’ control of the neighbourhood and his respective women slowly deteriorates. The main focal points I took from this movie were in the colours and textures used. I wanted our piece to translate these tones across properly, which inherently was hard to do considering our limitation of budget and props. Below you can see one of my favourite locations within the film, Willy’s apartment living room. I loved the constravitive elements of the furniture, clothing and especially the walls. To push this within our piece, I felt it was ideal to up the contrast much more than I usually would, and then wash it out slightly to achieve a film quality.

Another element within Willie Dynamite is the costume choices made, His outfits quite often popped out from the screen! The shine from some jackets would overstate the other elements within the frame, placing a heightened importance within his character. Luckily Willy had a few outfits with these qualities we could draw off within our MV.

The following video was my second choice for Project Brief 2, it was also directed by Romain Gavras who also did Gosh – Jamie XX. I found this piece interesting as it went against, and in some ways rejected the standard music video form. Its short film style drew strong inspiration from pieces such as the Hurt Locker and Punishment Park. Most of the cinematic techniques remained very close to Gavras’ style, with beautifully long tracking shots (with the subjects also moving), shaky handy-cam, slow mo, grain etc. The video itself was released without the record labels knowledge, as it was deemed very controversial at the time. The central theme of ‘genocide of red hair males’ was a direct comment on the under-reported circumstances of the extra-judicial killings of Tamil males by the Sri Lankan army. Setting the video in the Californian desert brings the idea closer to the viewers who would most likely be from an American or European background. The tone and sound of the music is quite far from M.I.A. standard of Hip-Hop and electronic sounds, therefore when transposed against this piece it adds a much stronger emphasis and importance.

The trials and tribulations of another collaborative project are at an end. Although the actualization of the initial briefs were never realised, I strongly feel we achieved something of high quality and worthy of some distribution. Albeit maybe not television standard, perhaps something more suitable for a promotion within Social Media.

 

Despite the fact I have participated in group work before, since articulating into this degree mid-year 2017, this was the first assessment which I have completed that focused on the creative output being the most critical element. On the contrary, it also happened to be the most staggered in terms of conception to action. This was attributed to multiple reasons, although mainly surrounding talent availability and his degree of commitment to the project. Unforeseeable yes, however on my behalf, we perhaps jumped into something far too gradiouse to begin with. Stepping back and finding an artist that everybody had the same degree of interest and conviction in could have provided a better outcome. This would have allowed us to be much more creative and experimental with our filmic/cinematic techniques (something which I personally regret not furthering throughout this semester).

 

Artist commitment slowly became the crux of our group, which led to further difficulties leading into the formation of roles and consequently disruptive/dysfunctional actions of some. Despite producing something which doesn’t look entirely amateurish, we never reached the heightened level of performance available by all members. Nothing ever normalised and the project/group felt somewhat un-adjourned.  Ideally, initial time should be focused on the forming of the group to remove subjectivity in the latter stages.

 

Unavoidable constraints also came from things such as; time we had available, family/relationship commitments, weather etc. After determining the initial days to shoot, the artist cancelled on the day of, due to car/mechanical issues. From this we rescheduled, however ended up cancelling a further two days of shooting due to incremental weather (Melbourne’s random ‘Summer Superstorm’). We managed to lock in one day of shooting (retrospecitivly grabbing much more footage than we originally intended). Finally on the last day of shooting with approximately 60 seconds of footage to collect (Date of submission also), the artist cancelled on us once more due to time constraints/moving commitments.

 

From all of this, I ended up juggling between production and directing. I was the direct contact for the artist in question, therefore I felt obliged to both him and the group. Therefore not having enough time to flesh out what I envisioned, took away from the susicintness of the narrative which we intended to present within the video. Special mention to Luka for being so encouraging, intuitive and technically proficient. I knew initially from the outset we could produce something together that would would satisfy us both creatively and aesthetically.

 

Moving forward I hope to shoot more music videos like this in the future. Hip-Hop culture is something I have always been drawn to and i’m interested to see how it progresses, especially in the ever changing context here in Australia.

 

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.

The following blog notates how the production and shooting took place. The discoveries and successes of the overall process. Upon grouping up with Luka, I suggested we make a Music Video for a guy i’ve met through the local music scene, Willy Dynamo. I established a Egg Hunting Google drive with sub folders labelled; Clips/Footage, Inspiration, Location Scout 2, PB3 Presentation, The Shoot (which Russell allocated for Call Sheets). Hoping this would streamline our processes and provide some much needed accessibility to files.

 

A production schedule was also created as a centralised document, which notated due dates, contact numbers and key communications. The schedule wasn’t utilised as much as I initially hoped, and most/if not all communications ran through a group facebook message. This often led to confusion as to who were allocated which specific roles and at what period of time, as nothing was written down in a binding contract. In future groups I will stress that binding clauses be set down into production schedules for more accountability.  An excerpt of the the production schedule can be seen here;

Week		Task / Item Due	Date
1		Orientation
1.5
2		Lock Down and Confirm (with Willy) direction of Video.	Due: 14-11-17
2.5		Story-Board & Shot List	Due: 16-11-17 A dot point narrative worked out – Russ
3		Collate all Information into Presentation	22-11-17 Willy Dynamo Album Launch
3.5		PB3 (Part 1) Pitch Presentation (15%)	Due: Sean introducing concept, Melody story, Russell locations, Luka doing visual styling/storyboard.
	25th	Saturday – Shoot?
	26th	Sunday – Shoot?	Russell can’t do shoot this day
4 –	27th	Monday	DAY FOR LOCATION SCOUTING/LOCKDOWN. Russell not available (working).
4.5	30th	Thursday
DEC	2nd	Saturday
	3rd	Sunday	SHOOT CANCELLED
5	4th	Monday	SHOOT CANCELLED
5.5	6th	Wednesday
5.5	7th	Thursday	SHOOT (CONFIRMED – BE AT ROSE STREET CAR PARK BY 9AM)
5.5	7th	Thursday	Edit Rough Cut (Afternoon/Evening)
5.5	8th	Friday
6	11th	Monday	ROUGH CUT DUE TO PRESENT
6.5	14th	Thursday	SHOOT IN ST. KILDA, BIKE SCENE/INFINITY POOL (NOT CONFIRMED)
	15th	Friday	FINE CUT DUE TO PRESENT
6.5	14th	Thursday	OVERNIGHT EDIT PROCESS
7	18th	Monday	PB3 (Part 2) Video Submission (30%)

 

My initial ideas were surrounding a main music video, complemented with some sort of interlude. I felt it would be a good opportunity to switch up the standard music video form and do something slightly more experimental. I hoped we could have the protagonist and 4-5 supporting actors for a blaxploitation style short. However Russell was somewhat against the idea, contemplating that it may end up being too much work. Which now in hindsight was completely correct and would have ruined us in the long run.

After the pitch presentation, we ended up on choosing a much more stripped down version of the initial conceptualisations. Luka and I went to a inner city fitzroy location, suggested by my housemate. We ended up finding very appealing car park and alleyway locations shown below.

Due to weather and commitment complications, I knew on the shoot day we needed to get enough footage to put together a full video. Most of the first few hours were situated with setting up and deciding on establishing shots.

I told Willy to bring two different outfits so we had some form of contrast. Opting for rapping directly to camera was ideal as it could provide fill between the narrative. However as the day progressed the artist was less eager to start shooting in character. So a striped down version of the narrative was contextualised.

Learning from this shoot, my approach to directing in the future will change substantially. Confidence and surety of script/shot list must be on the forefront of my mind. I found I was too bogged down within the production side of things and lost focus on the shots at hand. Directing can be overwhelming but completely manable with the correct tools in place.

Railton (2011) Music Video and the Politics of Representation, touches on many areas within popular culture, feminism and ethnicity within her text. Through which many case studies of current day music videos are dissected and discourse is provided around the central themes. Chapter 4 focuses on the black and white representation in music video. In particular Christina Aguilera’s video for ‘Can’t Hold us Down’ shows the depiction of contrastive elements between white and black bodies, which in essence date back hundreds of years to the original perceptions of women’s curvature and religious notions of purity.

 

A notable video I found which is a champion of true afrocentricity and representation of the human form was Don’t Touch My Hair – Solange. Although there is no direct contrastive element physically represented through individuals ethnicity, strong messages are portrayed through the adherence of timely stylistic decisions, movement and dancing.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTtrnDbOQAU

After seeing Sophia’s wonderful choice for Project Brief 2 of SIAMÉS – The Wolf, I was contemplating on which music videos I found were the most engaging that used the medium of animation for expression. After short deliberation I remembered one of my favourite music videos being that of Flying Lotus – Putty Boy Strut. Dir by Cyriak. There’s something about this video that is completely captivating, its a pure amalgamation of audio and visual. Rhymically and sonically the music fits perfectly with the movement and feeling of the world. Extremely surrealist in nature but close to everything we know is happening within modern society in terms of consumption, nature and technology. Cyriak is a prominent animator who is based out of the United Kingdom, many people know him from the viral video ‘cows & cows & cows’. In which the cows shapes are manipulated rhymically to form strange adaptations of themselves or other ‘cow-like-beings’ all together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuQGfk9Gmgo

Flying Lotus – Putty Boy Strut (2012)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY

cows & cows & cows (2010)

 

The main text that we looked as this week was Dawn Shadforth video for Hurts – Lights, the piece was set inside a somewhat avant garde club space. Hosting a variety of obscure costume and clothing styles, counter driven by a choreographed scene of the singer Theo (Matadorian-esk man) and Woman protagonist (Bull) played by Lucy Martin. The main takeaways from Dawn Shadforth article was that when collaborating with a large amount of people for music video, it’s important initially to allow the artist to formulate the ideas for this, and then set the scenes and shots off the basis of how you think they would perceive the final video, overall adding to heightened degrees of succinctness and cohesion between all of the parties (DIR, DOP, CHORIO etc.). The process should be structured however ultimately open for change as any good collaborative piece should be. Reflecting on the choice of artist for PB4; Willy is an interesting artist as his identity as a performer has been fabricated since his conception earlier this year. Most of his persona/songs off his Dynamic album were based off the blaxploitation film ‘Willie Dynamite’ (1974) a story of a New York City Pimp trying to make his mark on the city (In a time of extreme disadvantage, poverty and inequality stemmed from control by ‘the man’) Aesthetically I feel the closer we can allude to the cinematic conventions of the late 1970s, Taking a broader understanding of the history behind blaxploitation and unpacking budget cinema of the time moreso we will be able to connect with a willing audience who can engage with the character transfixed by the unspoken world of pimpin in today’s modern society.  To focus the narrative further, we will embed a theme under the story focusing on martial arts, within internal conflict and self development.

For this initiative post id like to further explore the influence and expansion of Chinese popular culture discourse through Hip-hop artistry. In particular how specific channels through youtube can provide a platform for these usually inaccessible artists. ZHANG.TV hosts clips which at a baseline standard offers quite cinematic and spectacular footage on what seems relatively small scale artists, these clips are often showcased against larger artists including GAI and AL ROCCO. Throughout 2017, Hip-hop from China itself moved into mainstream consciousness further with the enactment of television reality shows such as ‘The Rap of China’. Chinese Diaspora can find these artists through channels such Zhang.tv and other variety channels (in which would be previously found also on sites like Weibo). As a Hip-Hop fan, I have personally found that the accessibility of these smaller scale artists to a broader transnational western context is quite limited unless the art direction, subs, and overall editing style of the Music Videos coincide properly with the preconceived notions of Chinese national identity. Something at which channel/label 88Rising has done quite well.