Digipak Photoshoot

For our digipak, we were inspired by the theme of Trap Music, being an urban and street. So the scenery and feel would have a city feel with urban clothing and nightlife. We were inspired by many different artist digipaks. These inspirations vary between catregories:

1) Composition: In terms of this, I was inspired by DJ Dillion Francis' digipak "Money sucks, Friends Rule". Where the design splits into sections and adjusted in random directions as if breaking down the face of a human.

Another idea that the team decided on was using a scene from the music video and produced photoshop edits in order to produce a trap digipak cover. What Oni 8 has discovered was that Trap Music has no boundaries in terms of concept,  however, the genre of music needs to follow its urban background and mood, with an addition of techno and rebellious nature. As a result, we came out with this.

Here are some of the backgrounds that could possibly be part of the digital cover. Another element that we need is our logo printed on the front cover of the digipak or at the back. In terms of inspiration, the digipak has been inspired by many different artists trap and non-trap, but still have the element of street and urban culture.

Back Story

First, it was Eminem's album cover "Recovery" which features him walking to the distance on the Detroit 8 mile highway. The picture is significant and has intermedia references to street culture, his own personal life and his music. The 8 mile road is a located in Eminem's resided city,  Detroit, a place where he grew up, discovered rap and had most of his struggles before coming into the music business. Moreover, the clothing is the same as Eminem's character "B-Rabbit" in the movie 8-mile which talks about struggles and the will to fight. 

The second inspiration is Skrillex "Leaving" album cover which shows a photograph of a road in black and white filters gives a sense of street culture and explains its own story under the name of Skrillex. 

What I want from this digipak is a story and a background towards the protagonist in the music video. Being a drunk person who had a problem with life, now being introduced by a new lifestyle through three DJ's (Dj Mustard, DJ Snake and ZHU) the people who made the tune of Faded 2.0. The protagonist gets mugged, but after being beaten, he discovers his life's purpose and that there needs to be a significant change. 

Other Pictures 

For the digipak, we also thought of adding photography of actual live DJ events. As a result, we were able to obtain photos from the time where our group members were performing and electronic session at the school's disco. The flashy lighting and the actions of the DJ's on staged igniting the crowd was a perfect fit because it gives an introduction for not only the protagonist about the "high end" lifestyle of partying, but it also influences the audience as well to change their life's perspective, adding a "colourful" life for the crowd. 

Planning: Label Logo

Logo

These are the two different logo designs that we did for our music label "Oni 8". The reason we chose this name was because Oni 8 has a similar pronunciation as the word 808 which is a a specific drum system that Trap and other EDM artists use for their DJ sets. Our heavy influence towards trap music led to following other professional records that uses the pronunciation of the word 808 such as 88 rising that highlights some trap and rap artists such as Keith Ape, Desiigner and Lil Yachty.  More importantly we come from asian backgrounds, therefore we follow the closest urban culture in Asia, Japanese culture. That is where we thought of the word Oni which means "Demon" in Japanese.

First logo

For the first logo, we made it as Japanese as possible from our inspired music label 88 rising and the Japanese culture behind asian rap and trap. The strokes of the brush are inspired from Japanese ink painting and the strokes represent a smooth vibe to our song faded 2.0

Second logo

We did a second video to put in our music video, linking to the scribbling effect that we had already did. Moreover, the scribbling links to the media intertextuality of many other trap artists and record labels that had scribbling effects such as OWSLA and Jack U

Composition

We kept the logo in the middle to mimic what all other trap artists do to their logos whether on music videos or their record label logo itself. This signifies that the label is the music's creation, without it there would not be the song and also to use for overlapping footage on the MV like Trapnation which gives a shoutout to every type of trap music out there.

Planning: Our Digipaks

A Perfect Trap Digipak

For our coursework, not only did we have to make a music video, but another component is that we had to design our own digipaks. After gaining a brief understanding on what the digipak would supose to look like and how the functions of the digipak not only changes the perspective on how the audience looks at the artist, but it also shows the significant growth of them in terms of style of music and the maturity of the artist itself. Moreover, these digipaks need to be eye-catching and have to attract the views of the target audience. When one simply makes a digipak, they must first look at what their target audience are like, but also what the style of music that we are making is like. After thinking it through, our group first started what a normal EDM digipak cover looks like. 

EDM digipaks

Starting off on a less detail and more "open" end, I decided on researching what some digipak covers of Electronic Music artist look like. Here are a few examples: 

After viewing some examples of digipaks from electronic music, the obvious similarity that I found were the use of bright colours that are harmonizing with touches of black and white shades. All of the covers were colourful to an extent (especially Steve Aoki's) because it promotes the theme of partying and clubbing. The soul purpose of DJ's to ignite the crowd at a club and what they try to achieve is to give their consumers a feeling as if they were listening to music that would be found in a club during their everyday lives, and that electronic artists try to bring a certain "color" or a certain "vibe" for their audience who consumes their products. Another similarity which can be seen is that the artists play with geometric shapes in order to get a technologic feeling (Skrillex, Daft Punk and The Chainsmokers). Electronic music is a new style of music and the artists who produce this sort of tune are creating a new revolution - "the music of the future" that gives the audience an idea of the possibilities on how electronic music will evolve in the next couple of years. Finally, each artist has their own logo and its positioning is located in the centre of the digipak to show significance to their art and that the mixes that they make is from their own innovation. 

Looking at Rap Digipaks

FOr my personal research, I also looked at few Rap genre albums because it rap is my favourite music genre and I believe that some of the rap albums show influence to street culture and also the current trends that are going on. Trends link with the idea that Trap Music being a new genre, has to follow the urban trends. Here are a few rap albums I looked at: 

Rap album's similarities to Electronic music were the colours and the use of logos and similar composition. But what makes a rap album a "rap album" are the backstories (Eminem, Kanye) that can be seen through the use of realistic photography and a rap album's heavy influence on street and urban culture. A strong example would be Migos' "Culture" albums which shows a collage of cars, women, countries and fashion squished into the centre of the album. Migos made this their album in order to give the audience an idea on street culture, living the high life, owning expensive cars, expensive clothing and having women beside them whilst spitting "fire" in their album tracks. Another interesting album cover is Kanye West's "The Life of Pablo" album which not only marketed via digipak, but has also gained fame through his marketing on urban fashion trends (Life of Pablo clothing and also the famous Yeezy shoes that hypebeasts of the urban culture are dying to buy). 

Trap Music

Here are some examples of famous trap artists and their digipak covers: 

In my opinion, a Trap album is a combination of both the designs of Electronic music digipak and Rap digipaks. Mixing the reality of urban culture, but also having a distorted, electronic and comic humour to the digipak cover to promote the life of partying, alcohol and drug use. 

Our Envision

Since the Trap genre can be twisted and altered in terms of design, we still need to promote the life of the urban revolution and also the life of partying. However, we can play around with the composition and style of the album to make it look "realistic" and having a back story for what we are planning to do with our music video and the story behind it to make it "authentic" to our Trap style. 

via GIPHY

Planning: The Cameo

DJ Snake's Cameo

DJ Snake is one of the three DJ's who made the remix to Faded 2.0 and what he has done in the past with his other music videos were pretty interesting towards the plan of our music video. Basically what DJ Snake did for one of his music videos "I know you like it" was that he bumped into the protagonist of in that music video. 

Artist Cameos

From what we have seen on previous trap music videos are DJ's being featured onto the music video itself and that having a storyline to the music video is not considered a "mainstream" direction to Trap music videos. However, for "Faded 2.0", Oni 8 agreed on making "Faded 2.0" contradict partly to the conventions of Trap, but still maintain the idea of Cameos

Planning: Casting

Casting

The protagonist: 

Played by: Au Kanison Panichpethwong

Why him?: For this music video, we wanted to see the protagonist as a guy who is helpless and weak, someone who is in dire help of a change in lifestyle but is still capable of having a relationship. We chose Au because he fitted this category, a boy who is scrawny, small and weak but in terms of his real personality, a guy who is good at socializing.

Dancers: We casted three dancers who are part of the school's LOL Dance Crew. We first saw them dancing at the school's house boyband and girlband competition and our reactions were pleasing. We casted them in because their quick and sharp dancing skills fit the mood for our music. Here are the names of the dancers.

Yuchen Che (Carol)
April Thebpatipat
Chingching Rungcharoenwikrai

Planning: Introducing the colour psychology

The Colour Psychology in Films

During our research and planning of filming "Faded 2.0" we came across something which made a lot of sense towards why we chose to have a colourful group of dancers that are dancing in the mind of the protagonist. The reason was because each dancers act as a conscience that are conflicting and rumbling with the rhythm of the base to show a conflict and battle of emotions in the protagonist's head. 

After watching this video, we chose out three different colors that represent the current mind state of the protagonist as he is being drunk and "faded":

BLUE: Is the colour that represents "remoteness". The trigger colour, the main colour in the palette of his mind at the current time. Remoteness not only shows his mental state, but it also represents his physical state at the current moment in the music video. While the protagonist is going to be shot alone in the darkness, but also in his mind, the main emotion is that he is lonely, weak and without a relationship. This is why his remoteness led to him being drunk. 

Yellow: The next colour on the list is Yellow which in this case, represents madness, an emotion which the audience can only see in the protagonist's mind. We used yellow to represent his madness and regret in letting the girl go, his madness in being to weak physically and mentally, not being able to hold on to the girl and letting her go. Moreover, it represents his madness and desire for a change in his lifestyle. 

Bright Red: The final colour of this list is not a negative emotion, but is a positive emotion that conflicts with the negatives inside the protagonist's head.The positive motion is for Sociability. This represents the protagonist's quality of being able to socialize, but this socialisation is also wanting a change for the new culture that awaits him.

 With all of these colours present in the boy's mind, we are able to understand the conflict in his head and also the conflict that visuals have with the rhythm of the music. 

Planning: The Car

The Car

The main prop of the music video is the car. We used it as a prop for many reasons. Firstly, the reason why we used the car was because the car acts as a symbol to support Andrew Goodwin's music video theory of "Lyrics and visuals". The lyrics All I wanna do is drive home to you baby is referencing to the protagonist, being desperate to take his girl home with his car. However the guy could not due to his low standards of living and his current drunk state. 

The second reason is that the car is a key symbol in trap and rap music for "street culture" and living the gangster lifestyle. Having a car was considered cool to have for artists and we can see many artists pose in front of cars in their music videos. But in this case, we were inspired to put in a car from Major Lazer's "Night Rider" ft Travis Scott, where the rapper (Travis) is seen positioned in front of the car most of the time during his scenes. 

Oni 8's origins are from Asia, and in Asian street culture, when it comes to cars, the more neon lights there are in the car, the more lit it is to be posed with.

How we got the Car

In the music video, the car that is used as a prop is a  white Mercedes Benz S-Class that we got from a friend outside of school. His car was the perfect fit because of how the brand of the car is considered a "High End" one, but also this car was customised with neon lights inside and outside of the car. 

Planning: Why Dancers?

Why Dancers?

The dancers are there to represent the different types of emotions that live inside the mind of the protagonist. We decided to use the gender of a girl because it links to the boy's memories of once having a girl and that she is not there anymore. Furthermore, the dancers are used to replace the actual character of the girl that we decided to not add int he music video. 

In terms of them being involved in the music video, our plan was that the dancers' routines will sync with the chorus and we will have the camera follow their every drop and flow to signify them taking control of the protagonist's head. 

Planning: Costume Production

Face Masks

Representation

The representation of face masks in Asian street and urban culture. Once used as a common accessory for locals for hygiene, face masks slowly transform into an urban fashion culture for both Japanese and Korean streets. Face masks that were once surgical white are now decorated with patterns and come in various colours that fit with the wearer's clothing.

Face masks began to be introduced into Japanese and Korean Hip Hop and has been passed on to different trap artists to be an essential key clothing when they decide to film their music video in the far east.

An example on face masks can be seen in various trap and hip hop videos: starting with Keith Ape's "it G ma" which is a mixture of Japanese and Korean Hip Hop featuring together.

Another piece of clothing that we used are "dad hats" and beanies, an essential part of urban streetwear. Beanies has been a significant headwear for street culture since the prime days of rap. It is later developed into street culture and by the 2010's, electronic music used it in their music videos. Urban culture also follows the modern trends, and recently, the most common fashion trend that has been going on other than the Adidas boost sneakers are "Dad hats" and "baseball caps". It is frequently worn by different music artists and has been featured in many asian music cultures. 

For further research on street fashion, I have been following Instagram feeds that feature mix and matches of street clothing. Accounts such as @outfitsociety, @fitrotation and @hypedstreets posts photos daily of street mix and matches.

Throughout the research we figured out the pattern to urban fashion and how our characters in the music video should be dressed and how the camera should be used to make the clothing harmonize with the shot. Streetwear can be seen as mostly black and white with a mixture of denim, however from all of its minimal colors of black and white shades, there will be a small amount of color that is used for the mix and match according to the dresser's choice, whether it would be the t shirt, jacket or trousers.