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. 

Planning: Final Story

Plot

The main plot of the music video:

protagonist goes through a trippy ride in time.

Gets beaten up, thrown out of club. Beat drops, goes down into his head, dancers come in and dance. Goes back to the original setting. Carry on with this for another verse. Music video ends. 

Above is the final plot of the story. To tell the story in detail, the music video introduces the concept of a drunk person who walks along a dark road alone late in the evening after a night out at the bar drinking alone. As he walks along, there is a mugger following him and suddenly, the protagonist gets attacked by the mugger for a couple of seconds. After suffering blows from the mugger, the protagonist takes a minute to recollect what is going on, as soon as that happens, the audience goes on a ride into the protagonist's mind to discover what is going on in his head. The camera then transitions to a white room (representing his empty mind) and discovers three unique colourful dancers dancing within. After the first chorus, the boy goes through a certain transformation, his mindset starts to change and he is being influenced by the DJ's that had mugged him and were seen in the music video. End.

This is a brief overview of what will happen in the music video.

Enigmas:

From the moment we start the video, we decided to not film any scenes where our protagonist is drinking at a bar or privately, firstly because we want to set an enigma to the audience, leaving them wonder what has happened before the boy got drunk and what went on in his head as he carries on walking. We also believe that leaving a drinking scene out of the music video would give a stronger outcome and reaction of the audience since the rest of the music video, we planned for the audience to witness a P.O.V of what it is like being drunk.

The next enigma is, why isn't there an antagonist or a girl character that follows the plot of a love story? That is because similar to the deletion of the drinking scene, we thought that not having a girl in the music video would be more powerful leaving the girl a mystery person. However, the subjects that replaces the main girl characters are the use of the dancers who will be girls. Them and their dance moves will act as a mock and a hypnosis in the mind of the boy when he is drunk, which signifies that he is not over the girl.

Representing the "High end life":

In the music video, there will be props and costumes that cameo DJ's would have to promote the life of a "hypebeast", the life of an "urban culture" and the life of "living the high end", these props will be seen through street clothing and the prop of a car.

via GIPHY

Planning: Location Scouting

Planning: Making Our Website

The Making of Oni 8

In the end of our plan, we chose to name our music company Oni 8. The reason we chose the name of Oni 8 is because the pronunciation of the name is similar to the numbers 808 and 88. The number 808 is significant to the name of the sound of trap music for dj's.

Ten, our group member, designed a logo on photoshop for oni 8 and this is our product.

For the platform that we used for the official website, we designed the web on wix.com. 

Planning: Researching choreography

Researching Choreography

For Faded 2.0, the chorus will consist of dancers dancing in a white studio room. There will be a total of 3 dancers. In terms of movements, the dancers must have choreography that moves along with both the rhythm of the music and also the bass of the music.

We recruited 3 dancers who are part of the school dance group gave them choreography ideas on what kind of movement, and rhythm we would need.

Here are some inspirational videos of dance movements and also choreography that already has a cover of faded 2.0.










The similarity of these movements of different music videos is that the choreography is sharp and striking. Moreover, the movements are powerful and violent, similar to the bass of trap music where it is short and powerful. Therefore, to match the power, the movement of the dancers must be sharp and strong, hand movements must be quick and precise.

We also looked at the Korean Dance crew called "One Million to look for choreography inspirations. The music that the crew dance along with relies on a lot of bass and trap-like sounds.




Finalizing

Finalising our work, we looked at choreography that were done under the cover of "Faded 2.0", to have an idea of what we wanted.