Vernallis Analysis - Eminem - Lose Yourself

Narrative:
The video is half performance based and half narrative. The video includes many scenes from the movie '8 Mile'.
The video starts off by showing off Eminem's home town of Detroit, Michigan and shows off many shots of the city. It then cuts between Eminem performing and 'B Rabbit' (the character in the movie) readying himself for a rap battle. It shows B Rabbit performing to himself in the mirror until the lyrics come in. Eminem starts to rap about how nervous and sick B Rabbit is feeling before his battle but how on the surface he looks 'calm and ready'. However when it's B Rabbits turn to rap he breaks down and doesn't rap anything, he just lets the music play while he anxiously watches the crowd boo and insult him.

During the second verse of the song it still cuts between Eminem performing and parts of B Rabbit from the movie. The parts of B Rabbit start off with him being violent at the start of the second verse due to the frustration suffered from his previous rap battle. It looks as though B Rabbit is giving up as he's going home but in fact he is trying to practice further. He then enters a new rap battle to which he seems more ready for, it then cuts between him practising even more with jump cut fades to show the amount of time lapsed while he's practising. We then see him coming home since a long time to his daughter who barely recognizes her own father due to his time spent battling.

During the second chorus we now see B Rabbit performing to the crowd who are reacting wildly to his lyrics. It seems as if he now has the crowd on his side and has faced his fears of being a white rapper and has won over the crowd. During the third verse we see B Rabbit again battling against an opponent and looks much more confident. It then cuts back to the scene where he's meeting his daughter who eventually runs away from him as she doesn't recognize him. When the third chorus kicks in we see B Rabbit performing in a rap battle while the crowd are holding him up. There are also many cuts of B Rabbit and his love interest when they're together and when they're not. Towards the end of the song Eminem says 'you can do anything you set your mind to man' and then walks away. This could be suggesting that if like B Rabbit you don't succeed at first you can still succeed eventually if you keep your mind to it. The video then finishes with night shots of the city.

There is a visual response to the music as the scenes represent the lyrics. Eminem's lyrics says 'there's vomit on his sweater already, moms spaghetti' while the scene is of B Rabbit throwing up in the toilets.

In this video there is more performance than narrative as we can see Eminem rapping towards the camera in this shot. The narrative is slightly confusing as we don't see the whole story, we only see partial bits from the movie which have been selected. There also doesn't seem to be a clear beginning, middle or end. The music is very upbeat and the lyrics are rapped with passion to give the video more drive and effect. During the end there are just shots of the city to which it zooms out and fades out to finish.
The video doesn't really answer any of our questions whether he makes up with his daughter or what happens with his love interest.

Editing:

The editing is fast and sometimes it is difficult to see what is going on. The edit is cut to the beat in some places to give the video that extra buzz. The video also shows something happening in B Rabbit's life, and then later on in the video it shows something that happened prior to that which breaks continuity. There are many jump cuts while Eminem is performing as we can see in the two images below.

Camera Movement and Framing:

We see in this shot below that this is an extreme close up of B Rabbit's daughter. 

We see Eminem perform during the video at fairly similar shots. He is always in the centre of the frame and is always rapping towards the camera.

 During the start and end we see many establishing shots of the city during day and night as we can see below.

Diagesis:

We are unsure of what is going on at the start, and the video only makes slight sense to those who have knowledge of the actual movie. As the song is the soundtrack to the movie, the music video will not want to reveal much about the movie. Therefore this music video doesn't give us much of a clear cut story as the video is meant to entice us into watching the movie. A lot of the scenes from the rap battles are repeated. Also, the beat is the same throughout but from the start and end, the video is also very dull throughout, which maybe represents the life that B Rabbit lives in. 

Artist Name

Our artist will be called Iceburg. Although our track features our artist saying 'It's Rizz!' at the start of the song and we also have a track called 'Rizz' on our album, this is because this is Iceburgs alternate name. Most rappers nowadays have an alternate name. For example, Eminem is also known as The Slim Shady and Tyler, the Creator is also known as Wolf Haley. We are just trying to promote our artists alternate name in his first song and album.

Digipak Design

We found this tutorial on www.adobetutorialz.com

For our Digipak cover we decided to give our image the 'spotlight effect' from photoshop pointing on to our artist. We were all not familiar with using this effect on photoshop and therefore had to find online tutorials in order for us to find out how to use this effect. We had trouble getting to grips with using the effect at the start and had to mess around with it a few times. We were going by an online tutorial and found that it was too vague, and we then decided to use YouTube to find another tutorial and then found it much more easier to use this effect as we could follow what the tutorial was saying. This tutotrial was much better found on YouTube

 

This is a preliminary Digipak cover for our artist's album. This is just a rough idea of what we plan to do, we may not use this image for the final cover.

Test Shoot

On Monday 17th October we decided to take a test shoot for our first sequence. From this we inferred that our artist needs to put on more of a performance during filming and that we need our artist to practice the lyrics more. Overall the lighting and the angles for our test shoot were fine. On Thursday 20th October we will be filming in the booth again, but this time we will be hoping to film for our real video. We will be uploading some of the test shoot soon.

We hope from our shoot on the 20th that our artist is more confident with the lyrics and his own performance. We have advised our artist to use more hand gestures and to look more in to the song. The test shoot went really well and our artist wasn't bad but we just thought for our music video to be more successful that we would need our artist to 'over perform'. We are also thinking of adding in a new shot, which will be an over the shoulder shot of Josh rapping but in the distance you will see me and Matthew through the other side of the booth and we will act as the producers of the track. We will try this out and see if it looks good, If however it doesn't we will remove this shot from our footage or add it to our deleted scenes.

Shot Sequences

Our first sequence will be filmed in the booth

Our second sequence will be in and around the common room

The third sequence will be shot in Josh's bedroom

Our fourth sequence will be shot outside a club in Harrow town centre.

Locations

We have decided to use 4 main locations.

Costumes

Here is our costumes and prop list.

Storyboard

Here is our storyboard that we created for our Music Video.

Photoshoot

Me and Matthew got hold of two cameras, told Josh to bring in his performing outfit, and decided to take snaps around the school. We initially started by just taking random photos of Josh to give the pictures a natural and authentic look. However, for some shots we directed Josh to stand and pose in certain ways and locations. These images that were taken today may be used for our Digi-pack and Magazine Advert. We plan to take more photos during test shoots.

Plan for Photoshoot

During our next lesson we plan to tell Josh to bring in his selected costume so we can see how he will look. We will also take pictures and test how they look on the screen. These pictures will give us knowledge whether we want Josh to take part as the lead actor in our video. They also may even be used for our rough magazine advert and digipak.

Moodboard Represening our Genre

Target Audience Research

Music Television Research

As our song is a blend of a variety of genres, we can promote and show our music video to a range of music channels. Our song could fit under the genre of Rap, Pop, Rock and Indie. As we all know that MTV is the biggest brand in Music Television, therefore we aim to target this channel. MTV has many channels each boasting a different genre. We aim to show our video on channels such as MTV Base (predominantly showing videos of a hip hop and rap genre), MTV Hits (showing a variety of genres, mainly pop), VIVA (again, a variety of genres are shown, mainly top 40 charts) and MTV Rocks (displaying music from the rock genre). Also, as our video was filmed in HD we can also show our video on MTVN HD, a new channel by MTV showing everything in High Definition format. Although MTV are the biggest brand in music television, we also aim to show our video through other channels such as Channel AKA (mainly showing home grown artists), Kiss (a variety of music from all genres), The Box (pop music mainly showing the top singles) and Channel 4 Music (a variety of genres, displaying up and coming talent which isn't necessarily the most commercial). We hope that we have targeted the main music channels in order for our song to gain popularity.

Thinking about the audience

How would you describe the target audience for this kind of music? Is there a core and secondary audience?
The target audience for our song would mainly be teenagers ranged from 13-19 as the lyrics that the artist use can relate to children of that age range as they rap about parties, high school, college and girls. The audience will be mainly for boys however, as the band also come under the genre of pop, some of their tracks may appeal to female fans too. There may be a secondary audience who are maybe a little older than teenagers from 18-23 who are studying in university as they can relate to some of the lyrics that the band use.

How would you describe the tastes and attitudes of the target audience? What other media are they likely to consume? Outline their media consumption profile.


What function does this kind of music serve to its audience (uses and gratification)?
The music gives its target audience a perspective of their lives and actions at things which the target audience participate in like parties and college for instance. The audience may be able to relate to their lyrics and videos as they show it in a humorous way which appeals to their fans.

Music fans often use music to help them construct their own cultural and visual identity - how do fans of your artist or band do this?
The Rizzle Kicks have quite a unique dress sense and wear clothes which represent the youth nowadays. Their clothing is quite eye catching and appealing and can be found in many highstreet retail shops. Many fans may watch their videos or see images of the band and try to imitate their style and clothing. One of the members of the band also uses the guitar and a certain type of drums in his videos. This could encourage fans to try and learn one of these instruments as he makes it look 'trendy' due to his style and way of playing it.

How/when/where is this kind of music consumed?
A couple of Rizzle Kicks' tracks are used in advertisements and in TV shows as they have a memorable beat which stays in peoples heads and are quite catchy. Some of their songs would also be played at house parties or at clubs. The radio is another place where the Rizzle Kicks' tracks would be consumed. The Rizzle Kicks' have their own Twitter and Facebook pages where they have over 200,000 fans where they release gig dates and single and album information. They use it mainly to promote and it's a good and easy way for their fans to consume their music.

Initial Ideas Wordle

Music Video Pitch - I'm 17 - Rizzle Kicks

Media Music Video Pitch

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Album Art Research

This is the Rizzle Kick's first studio album which will be released on the 31st October. The album art shows the two members of Rizzle Kicks sitting with blank expressions on their faces, with their title name on the top left with the album name just below it to the right of it. The background is bright and plain which doesn't necessarily represent the genre of Indie/Rap. There is no real way of portraying what the genre 'looks like' as its a new and fresh type of genre which not many artists can do.

Some Artists similar to the Rizzle Kicks are The Streets, Ed Sheeran, Wretch 32 and Mann and their album arts look like: