Plan B

Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew (born 22 October 1983), primarily known as Plan B or Ben Drew, is a British rapper, singer-songwriter, actor and film director from Forest Gate, London. Plan B first emerged as a hip hop artist releasing his critically-acclaimed début album Who Needs Actions When You Got Words in 2006. His second studio album The Defamation of Strickland Banks (2010) was a soul record and went straight into the UK album chart at #1. He has also collaborated with other artists such as Chase & Status most notably on the top ten single "End Credits" (2009). Drew has also had a successful film career as an actor, with roles in Adulthood (2008), Harry Brown (2009) and 4.3.2.1 (2010). In 2011, he will release Ill Manors his first film as a director.

Genre:

Hip Hop: an urban youth culture associated with rap music and the fashions of African-American residents of the inner city.

Grime: is a genre of urban music which first emerged in Bow, East London, England in the early 2000s, primarily a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop.

Acoustic: Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means.

Soul: a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues.

Plan B believes that the public are wary of approaching him after viewing his violent film roles. Speaking to FHM about his villainous part in 2009 British crime drama Harry Brown, the 'Prayin' singer said: "It's my job to make the audience hate me. And it's much easier to make people hate you than like you." He added that critical reaction to his first album, 2006's Who Needs Actions When You Got Words, had contributed to this perception.

"People find me unapproachable and are intimidated by what's written about me. It's just playing on that, it's f**king easy for me."

However, the rapper also believes that the mainstream success of his second album, the platinum-selling The Defamation Of Strickland Banks, has helped soften his image by appealing to numerous demographics.

"I've had grannies and all sorts coming up to me," he revealed. "What's great about the new album is it's old music that dads and grans and s**t can be into, but also kids and teenagers because it's got rapping in it."

Plan B recently stated that he wasn't interested in becoming a role model or acting responsibly for the sake of his fans.

Chase and Status

Chase & Status are an electronic production duo from London consisting of Saul "Chase" Milton and Will "Status" Kennard.




Chase & Status have had three number one tracks on the UK Dance Chart in 2007 with the double A-side "Hurt You"/"Sell Me Your Soul", and in 2008 with "Take Me Away"/"Judgement (Informer)". On 5 October 2008, they reached number 70 on the national singles chart and number one on the UK Dance Chart again with their single "Pieces" featuring vocals by Plan B.

In 2009, they made number 45 with "Against All Odds" which featured UK rapper Kano.
Chase & Status' first album, More Than Alot, debuted in the UK album charts at number 49 on 19 October 2008 and entered the UK dance album chart at number 2.
Their album More Than Alot received the Best Album Award at the 2009 Drum and Bass awards, Birmingham, UK.

Following the success of their last album the band wanted to gain a more global success. After meeting with a long time favourite of theirs, Cloud9, they decided to move in a different direction. Together they agreed that the band should do more pop collaborations in order to achieve a more mainstream fanbase. Soon afterwards they quickly began working on the album. On 8 November 2009, the duo entered the UK Top 40 for the first time with the track "End Credits". The track was released on 2 November 2009 and featuring British musician Plan B managed to reach a peak of number 9 on the UK Singles Chart. The single was written for the movie Harry Brown, which also starred Ben Drew, aka. Plan B.

Genres:

Drum and Base: is a type of electronic dance music which emerged in the mid 1990s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats (typically between 160–190 bpm, occasional variation is noted in older compositions), with heavy bass and sub-bass lines. Drum and bass began as an offshoot of the United Kingdom rave scene of the very early 1990s. Over the first decade of its existence, the incorporation of elements from various musical genres led to many permutations in its overall style.

Breakbeat (sometimes breakbeats or breaks): is a term used to describe a collection of sub-genres of electronic music, usually characterized by the use of a non-straightened 4/4 drum pattern (as opposed to the steady beat of house). These rhythms may be characterised by their intensive use of syncopation and polyrhythms.

Dubstep: is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South East London. Its overall sound has been described as "tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals".

Liquid funk (alternatively, Liquid Drum & Bass or Liquid): is a sub-genre of drum and bass. While it uses similar basslines and bar layouts to other styles, it contains fewer bar-oriented samples and more instrumental layers (both synthesized and natural), harmonies, and ambience, producing a calmer atmosphere directed at both home listeners and nightclub audiences.

Target Audience

Now that we have decided the genre and song it is important to identify our target audience. It is necessary for your audience to recognize that you are talking specifically to them. It also creates a sense of a brand and gives its members a sense of belonging to a certain community. During our research a website which has been particularly useful is UK Tribes.com. The website is a project which looks at youth culture and offered a tribal breakdown based on the social glues (music, sport, fashion, technology etc) around which young people gather. One of these "tribes" labeled Mainstreamers is the market we will be aiming at. Not only must our music be relevant to it's genre but as this website has shown us young people take themselves very seriously. It is important to them to feel like they "belong" and we must therefore cater to what it is they are familiar with.

The Mainstream is the biggest part of the market, but with alternative/trendy lifestyles and music now much more accessible, the various Mainstream Tribes also lose much of their membership in later years. Those who remain tend to specialise into more aspirational subsets like Casuals, Boy Racers and Sports Junkies. Siege mentality makes the alpha males among Mainstream tribes suspicious of trendy music or clothes and quick to criticise peers who seem to be standing out. Big brand sportswear and high street fashion predominates with Mainstream tribes and music, even for Ravers, is mostly commercial.

I also found that the media consumption for this group is very large;

From this we can see that TV is by far this tribes heaviest media consumption by far! Which gives us the idea that the visuals are important to this audience, therefore our music video should be relevant to the song and include an interesting story or twist.

The brands that this mainstream 'tribe' like to shop for the most is as follows;

From these brands we know what our characters should wear in the video to interest our target audience.

Lyrics

Conventions of a music video

Camera Shots: Music videos tend to include many long shots, close ups and mid shots. This is to create emphasis on the artist, location and emotions. Also, close ups are used not only to show emotions but to reflect the words of the song with the movement of the lips of the artist.

Camera Movement: The movement of the camera is used to follow and trace the artist or band. Camera movements include tilts (such as in daniel beddingfield's - never gonna leave your side video where the camera tilts up the building away from him), pans, tracking (also in the same video where the camera tracks her galloping) and crane shots.

Mise-en-scene: This refers to the arrangement of performers and props on stage or in a scene for a production of a music video or any other media text. Mise-en- scene puts importance on the representation of something. An example is, ‘Mad’ by Neyo. The mise-en scene involves him walking down a road alone, being in an isolated room. This reflects the isolation from his lover. Also, the props include hats and dark clothes which represent the down mood of the song. Similarly, the lighting is kept very dark as it is black and white; this connotes the angry and depressed mood.

Editing: Jump cuts is the predominant editing technique used in music videos. This is because this allows a sudden change from one scene to another. Similarly, transitions such as fade and dissolve are very common in music videos as they create a different effect to cuts for example in JLS video beat again where the scene fades to jump to the next scene.

Lighting: Some music videos are black and white which help emphasise a particular mood like in Nelly's video just a dream and some videos have artificial lighting which put the artist/s in an enhanced look for example in Beyonce's video she is lit up.

Sound: Sound is mainly the vocals or the song but in some cases such as Michael Jackson – Thriller, the producers can make the music video into a short film.

Props: These are vital in aiding to add to the scene and create significance on particular objects or people like in JLS video one shot the microphone is an important prop.

Costume: This goes with the scenes in the song and reflects the genre - for example they are dressed in smart yet old fashioned clothes that make them look upper class in Beyonce's video naughty girl. Costume is an important factor because it has a slight influence on how the viewers will dress because they use some of the celebrities as role models.

Colour: Colours tend to set the mood of the song through creating an atmosphere. For example, dark colours are used more in rock songs such as Kings of Leon and bright colours are seen to be used more in hip hop and pop videos such as lady gaga's video telephone.

Moodboard

We decided to create a mood-board to put our ideas into pictures so that they are easier to understand. Whilst Sam and I searched for pictures we thought most represented our music video theme, Stef carefully put them together adding text which related to the video and also the lyrics of the song.

Researching songs

We began our search for the perfect song for our music video by listening to music on our ipods and also others as everyone listens to different genres of music. We heard a few that we thought would make an entertaining music video and wrote those ideas down, but we still was not definitely sure with what we had chosen so we searched further looking on websites such as Youtube.

We listened to the music without looking at the video so that we could picture what the music tone and lyrics was saying. It was hard to think what to search so we searched an artist that we had heard already on our ipods and then Youtube itself makes other video suggestions of the same genre.

For a song to catch your ear the lyrics have to have a story or mean something whether it is to do with love, hate, memories or cheating to be able to make a video out of it.

- Song Choices - Chase and Status ft. Plan B - Pieces/ End creditsThe Script - BreakevenBloc Party - One More Chance/ FluxKillers - Mr. BrightsideArctic Monkeys - When The Sun Comes DownFree Widgets

After searching through these songs we chose Chase and Status ft. Plan B - Pieces. This choice was made because it tells the story of a boy and girl who are not together anymore and the boy is saying how 'you don't care about me anymore'. We imagined seeing the two together and then the boyfriend finding out that she is cheating by finding different 'pieces' of clues and putting them together.

Chase and Status ft. Plan B - Pieces

You don't care,
About me,
Anymore,
Thats why you, you wanna break my heart,
Into pieces on the floor.

If you don't care,
About me,
Anymore,
Why do you, you wanna break my heart,
Into pieces on the floor.

You don't care,
About me,
Anymore,
Thats why you, you wanna break my heart. (echo)

I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, now-o-ow-o-ow i'm just cold inside.

I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, now-o-ow-o-ow i'm just cold inside.

I remember when i used to feel sutin, now-o-ow-o-ow i'm just cold inside.

I remember when i used to feel sutin, now-w-w-w i'm just cold inside.

If you don't care,
About me,
Anymore,
Why do you, you wanna break my heart,
Into pieces on the floor.

You don't care,
About me,
Anymore,
Thats why you, you wanna break my heart...

I remember when i used to feel sutin, now-o-ow-ow i'm just cold inside.

I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, i remember when i used to feel sutin.
I remember when i used to feel sutin, now-o-ow-o-ow i'm just cold inside.

You don't care,
About me,
Anymore,
Thats why you, you wanna break my heart.....

Digi-pak Research

"Digipak is a patented style of compact disc or DVD packaging, and is a registered trademark of AGI Media, a MeadWestvaco, Inc. resource, which acquired the original trademark holder, IMPAC Group, Inc., in 2000. MeadWestvaco licensed the name and designs to manufacturers around the world".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digipak

For our project we will make a digi-pak to relate to our video. A digi-pak is an album which we will create, designing the front cover, back cover, inside design and the cd design. I decided to research different album and cd covers to get a good idea of what we need to design.

I like the design of Kano's album cover. It is very affective as the background is dark (black and white) with the pattern in coordinating colours. The writing is done so that his name stands out to the audience. The font of the album name and songs on the back is matching but hard to read. This example gives me the idea of the back and front matching and also to include the name and album cover down the spine.

I then went on to look at Plan B's recently released album. I found images of both the album cover and the cd. This album is by the featuring artist of Pieces which means we can relate to the design more. The cover is very dark showing black around the outside and showing the title in an American style theatre lit up which also lights him up in the centre. On the back of the cover the list of songs is also in the same style as the title. The cd has no images just two bold colours; red and cream.

As an idea of what we are aiming for with our digi-pak we created our own using photoshop with the actual artist on it as a rough draft of what pictures we need to get.

We found templates of a digipak which will help as a guidline of shapes and sizes.

After researching these templates we knew what to aim for and decided to create our cd first as we were not going to use images. for the other covers we needed multiple images of our artist so we could choose the right one to put on it.

The album covers above demonstrates the selling point of their album is a close up of the artists face. This is an effective form in targeting their audience as they can easily be recognised. Also the album covers clearly state the name of the artist, catching attention from the audience.

For the front cover of our album we have decided to go for the same idea as Olly Murs' album and have multiple images of our artist in different posing positions. Although we are using ideas from this album the clothing of our artist will not be the same as this but the same as what is worn in our music video. Such as a hoody, jeans and shoes.