Potential actors

Rhiannon

Our first potential actress was Rhiannon. We chose Rhiannon because of her out-going personality. We decided this would be helpful in the filming of our music video as it meant she would be confident in front of the camera. Although she is able keep a straight face, her overall bubbly and spirited personality created a 'happy' atmosphere which we concluded would not suit the theme of our chosen song. Another aspect that didn't fit in with our video was Rhiannon's clothing style. Her clothes are more vibrant and indie which would create a fun-loving atmosphere that would bring the audience joy, whereas Kehlani's style is more urban and grungy. Although this is a theme that our viewers may enjoy, we decided that it wouldn't suit the song which is dark and serious; overall contrasting Rhiannon's personality and style. In conclusion, Rhiannon's personality meant she was able to work well with the camera, however it wasn't similar enough to Kehlani's style and dark/serious personality.

Balinder

Similar to Rhiannon, Balinder also has a radiant personality. Her audition was comical and funny as she was able to lip-sync as well as dance. She was able to create an atmosphere that would make the audience laugh and although this is a great aspect to have, we decided that it would not fit our music video as it is again grungy and dark. As well as this, it was easy to point out that she was not comfortable enough to play the serious role of Kehlani and she hid this by dancing and over-acting. In regards to Balinder's clothing style, she wears indie clothes that are usually either of a dark/plain (such as in this picture) or vibrant nature. However she did not have a similar wardrobe to that of what Kehlani does, meaning it would be harder to match the theme we was trying to create. Balinder also does some out of school curricular activities and has a job at a tutoring centre. This means she wouldn't be flexible in regards to when we wanted to film the music video. This would be inconvenient as it means we'd have less time to edit and finalise the video. Overall, Balinder has a positive and out-going personality which would make it easy to work with her, however it unfortunately didn't cohere to our theme.

Mikah

 Our third potential actress was Mikah. Mikah has a sweet and innocent personality, however, she is also able to be serious and act well in front of the camera. During our auditions, she was able to use different techniques to engage with the audience by moving around and showing her confidence. Whilst doing this, she also set an atmosphere which was dark and persuasive, which was the theme that we was aiming for. Another aspect of Mikah that cohered to our music video ideas was her clothing style. Mikah has a wardrobe that consists of a large variety of clothes including dark/grungy colours such as black, khaki, grey and white. She also owns a lot of clothes that branded, such as Nike, Adidas and more. This appealed to our group as this is very similar to the style that Kehlani wears so we decided this would attract a similar audience as Kehlani has. Mikah was also very flexible with our timetable of when we wanted to film and she was able to drive us to our various locations. This overall made her the perfect candidate for our music video. Overall, we chose Mikah because she was the best choice for our music video as she was flexible with filming times, was able to provide us with transportation and also had the most similar costume choice to Kehlani.

Advertising for our auditions

In order to get people to audition for the role of the main artist, we decided to make a simple poster to convince people to audition. This was our final product.

We wanted to include vibrant colours as this matched the theme of other R&B posters, digipaks and more. This is good for attracting the audience's attention. We also included the date, time and location to make it clear to the individual's when they should turn up.

Auditions

Auditions

In this video we auditioned three individuals to lip sync to our song. After analysing the video, we decided that Mikah, the second lip syncer, best fit the role. This is due to her naturalistic lip syncing of the lyrics and her outgoing yet serious personality that ultimately made her confident in front of the camera. We felt this would all contribute to making the music video the best it could be. 

Despite her perfect performance, we decided not to choose the first person; Rhiannon. This is due to her indie style not suiting the song that we have chose which is more dark and serious compared to her bubbly personality.

The third individual, Balinder, was also not chosen for the same reason. She creates a fun and playful atmosphere for the audience, however in this case it's not what would suit the song best.

Lip syncing practice

Lip-syncing practice

It was hard to lip sync for the first time in front of the camera as we found that the individual needs to feel extremely confident in order to make their lip movements seem more believeable. This is a video of my group and I practicing our lip syncing. The reason behind this was to learn how to move our lips to the lyrics in a naturalistic way that would ultimately make the audience believe we was singing the lyrics ourselves. 

We found it hard because of the speed of the song. Due to it being slow, we found that it was increasingly difficult to use body and lip movements in a way that would amplify our confidence across to the audience to ultimately make the music video look believable.

The main problems we endured were finding confidence to perform in front of the camera. Therefore to overcome this we found that making the individual feel as comfortable as possible was a key element in making the music video as good as it could be. We did this by giving the actress their instructions on what to do in the video, but when we began to record we wouldn't stare at them. For instance we would either look into the camera or look away; but never directly at the individual - this would help us avoid laughing or messing up. After the shot was finished, we would analyse our video and come up with ideas and solutions on how we could improve.

Artist Biography

Artist Biography

Kehlani Parrish, known professionally as Kehlani, was born on April 24th,1995 in Oakland, California, U.S. She became known as a popular American R&B singer-songwriter who is currently signed to Atlantic Records. Kehlani's career effectively began as the vocalist for Poplyfe. After the groups performance in the show 'America's got talent', the artist was told that she had great potential without the group. After this, she became a solo-artist due to being offered several managerial and contractual disputes.

She released her first mix tape, 'Cloud 19', in 2014. The album was listed among Complex's '50 best albums of 2014'. Kehlani's second mix-tape, 'You should be here' debuted at number 5 on the national R&B/ Hip-Hop chart in 2015 and preceded her sold-out North American promotional tour.

In 2016, she was nominated for the best Urban contemporary album Grammy award.

Throughout 2015 she also received individual plaudits. Complex called her one of the '15 artists to watch out for in 2015' and Rolling Stone named her one of the '10 new artists you need to know'. She was also nominated for a 2016 Grammy award for 'Best Urban contemporary album'. Kehlani collaborated with Zayn on the track 'Wrong' from his debut album 'Mind of Mine', released on March 25, 2016.

We chose Kehlani as our artist as she possesses all of the qualities that we wanted our own artist to have as she is very successful. By our chosen artist being successful, it means her songs will attract a large audience that she has built up, meaning it will be good for marketing our A2 music video, as people will be interested in viewing our own interpretation of her R&B music video.

Location research

Location research

This collage was put together to give my group and I a guideline of where we would like to shoot most of our scenes. Due to our song choice being dark and mysterious, we thought that locations such as graffiti tunnels and spacious areas would best suit the theme we are trying to create. For instance, empty areas such as Darland banks would set an atmosphere of loneliness and emptiness of her heart; since the lyrics are based on the actress trying to find her soul mate. 

We also thought the London-eye would adhere to this theme because it gives the impression that the actress is looking over the city of London to find her true love. This also gives a sense of dominance of her looking over everyone, which coheres to the lyrics as she's looking for a 'gangster' which suggests rather than her being an innocent girl, she's instead looking for someone with an authoritative and risk- taking personality such as herself. In contrast, the use of colourful and vibrant graffiti tunnels and the embankment skatepark with large masses of graffiti in London would give an example of the singers childish and playful personality, therfore giving the impression she wants someone to act out her adolescent years with; as well as linking to the 'gangster' theme. 

These locations would overall make the video more realistic and will bring the lyrics to life, therefore keeping the audience intrigued. Overall we would like to visit London, Darland banks, Chatam, Riverside Country Park and abandoned schools within Medway. Despite London, all of these locations are not a far distance from our homes. This is an advantage for us as it means travel cost will not be a problem and will also not be time consuming to get to, therefore we can make the most of the natural sunlight during the day as travel time won't take long.

Mood board on our chosen genre

Mood board on our chosen genre

Within this mood board, I have included pictures of artists such as The Weeknd, Chris Brown, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Kehlani herself (our chosen artist for our music video). This is because I feel these artists best represent the genre 'R&B Soul' in regards to their style, lyrics, themes and personalities. These typical characteristics adhere to the conventions of the R&B Soul genre such as tattoos, modern yet indie outfits that stand out against other artists and themes on love, money, blues and more. 

I have mainly used pictures of female artists as we would like our lip-syncer to be a girl due to it best representing our chosen artist- Kehlani. We have also decided that we want our female artist to possess all of the dominant characteristics of other male artists in typical R&B songs, as we wanted to create our own unique interpretation of the genre. We did this by using a consistent prop which was a bat, which made her look manly and dominant.

The mise-en-scene within these pictures consist of our chosen lighting, costumes and more. For instance, using dull yet vibrant lighting (such as in the picture in the top left) would set the modern yet original rhythm and blues atmosphere we are aiming to create. We would like our character to wear costumes that cohere to the R&B Soul genre which includes urban clothing as this will be appealing to the audience and will suit our song. Additionally, my group and I also agreed that our genre best suits our target audience age as the songs are modern and up-beat.

Mood board on our chosen target audience

Mood board on our chosen target audience

Our chosen target audience are women/girls within the age group of 16-22. We have chosen this specific age group because we believe they will relate best to the lyrics of falling in love with someone in their adolescent years that they now question when they look back on it, this may bring them back to their wild decisions when they were young and naive. We also decided to choose this gender to appeal to, as we wanted our artist to be a positive role model for them. We are going to try to do this by getting our chosen artist to wear modest clothing, which subverts from the R&B genre which usually makes women look seductive and sexual. Therefore being a good role model meant it would entice our audience to watch her more and aspire to be like her. Thus modernising the R&B genre.

We also agreed that this age group and gender will respond best to the Urban/casual costumes we are going to use as they are more likely to wear Kehlani's/our actresses style of clothing which will be modern and edgy. This will help create a relationship between the artist and audience which will inevitably aid them into following the story-line of the music video. I have used pictures of artists such as Rihanna, Willow Smith and Kehlani herself, to try and represent the R&B style best. There are also pictures of various social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook as our age group is most likely to spend their time using these apps. This will enable them to share the music video to their friends and family on different social media platforms, which is inevitably good for marketing and promoting our artist. Overall, we have chosen this specific target audience in order to create a relationship between the artist and audience. Additionally, this age group is most likely to listen to our genre, R&B, as it is modern and up-beat. This means it will receive more views and will enable the audience to relate to it.

Mood board of our character

Mood board of our chosen character

My group and I are looking to create a casual yet urban style that will best represent our artist, Kehlani. We will attempt to do this by incorporating clothing brands such as Adidas, Urban Outfitters, Topshop and more. These brands are easily accessible as they are all high-street stores which is easy to access and isn't too expensive, therefore cohering to our limited budget. I have chosen pictures of various hair styles that we are hoping to create that also is similar to the artists hair, as it reflects her style of music and message she puts across to her audience.

 For example, transitioning from short to long hair would adhere to our lyrics and show the audience that the character wants a change in their life by trying something different and outgoing. In relation to this video, it would show that the artist no longer needs love to feel loved. Overall, we are going to include use this style to our advantage, in order to intrigue our audience and cohere to the genre; R&B Soul. Kehlani typically wears dark clothing such as black, white and khaki. We felt this best represented her dark personality for the song 'gangsta' so we want to continue this image by styling our singer, Mikah, in the same way. Since Mikah is quite shy, we want her to bring out her more dark and daring/seductive side by reflecting the type of facial and body expressions that Kehlani does in her music video as this coheres to the seductive properties women seem to have in stereotypical R&B  music videos. 
Edit
We decided to change this by making Mikah a positive role model for our young female target audience. We did this by costuming her in modest, not seductive, clothing, which meant that we created a character that was strong and independent. Rather than submissive and sexual. We thought this was a more accurate representation of women in the 21st century, and brought a unique aspect to our R&B music video.



Final song choice

Final song choice

Shown above is the youtube video to our final song choice video. After analysing our previous song choices for our A2 music video, we decided on one song which is 'Gangsta' by an artist named Kehlani. In this video we will talk about the strengths and weakness of our other song choices and why we came to our final decision.

Different song choices

Different song choices

In this video my group and I analyse three different songs to come to a consensus on which would most suit our style and theme we would like to create for our audience.