Planning - Characters

Planning: Characters within narrative

Me and my group were required to look into the characters within my music video. This is important because in order to make our music video believable and correct to our vision, we had to plan every representation and what our performers will be portraying within the music video. If we did not succeed in planning our characters, when people watch our music video the characters won’t look like how they sound on the sound which could make them lose interest as they aren’t seeing the visual representation of what they are hearing on the soundtrack. Both of the characters that are being shown within this post are also the characters that are the 2 main artists within the music video.

Completed by Amani

Character 1:

Name: Amani Sweeney-Fenton (SWEENEY)

Age: 18.

Ethnicity: Black, other.

Physique: Tall Slim. 

Genre stereotypes of artist:

• Money orientated

• Self-obsessed.

• Womanising.

• Confident.

• Intimidating.

• Controlling.  

Costume:

The overall appearance that we are looking to achieve with our artist is that we want him to look successful, trendy in the area of fashion and his image must be quite evident that he is money orientated in terms of the use of jewellery and designer brands. 

The all white look gives our artist a sense of purity and cleanliness as although this genre of music is more directed at Rap, this soundtrack in particular abandons the ideology of gangs which is conventional to the genre and exploits the idea of having fun with your friends and having a sense of swagger about what you do. This helps us to capture an image that maintains all the positives about rappers and people associated with the genre and leave out/ down play direct illegal activity which some people do not like to see which make the music video a better-rounded music video for various people to enjoy. 

Our artist playing as the character SWEENY:

• Straight cut white jeans – (designer).

• T-shirt -white

• Bomber Jacket - white

• Gold watch - (designer)

Hair and makeup: Our artist will have a high-top temp fade haircut (as shown in the image) and won’t be wearing any makeup as we need to portray the realism of the music video through the visuals. 

Body language and facial expressions: This artist/character will have a very relaxed and confident body language to display how he is having fun whilst he feels ‘Wavey’ with his friend. We will show him as having fun and feeling youthful as the lyrics of how the characters behave in the song compliment this.

Representation within your video: Due to the all of these characteristics SWEENEY will be an extremely relaxed character, meaning that he will come across as having a good time. Often UK rap presents this idea which is why we have planned for this too.

Completed by Josh

Character 2:

Name: Michael Okafor (MD).

Age: 18.

Ethnicity:  Black African.

Physique: Tall Slim.

Gender stereotype of role:

• Fun
• Charming.
• Confident.
• Relaxed.

Costume: Because of the overall theme of binary opposites within our narrative we have decided to dress MD in the opposite colours. He will wear causal clothing which will be all black, he will not be wearing designer brands as he is not interested in material items such as brands and designers, however he does have a desire to look good and fit the social stereotypes associated with him.

Hair and makeup: Make up will not be used on our male characters MD will also have a high top haircut as it is a popular hairstyle people have in modern day that grow up in these areas, they have the same hair cuts as it shows that these are two characters that have grown up around the same environment but follow completely different lifestyles, which means they are expected to do certain things similarly. As we are trying to represent the UK rap scene, this is a conventional look.

Body language and facial expression: The body language of the artist will also be portrayed the same as the first which is confident in order to represent the artist as possessing SWAGGER and a 'star' in his own right. The facial expressions of this artist will also be quite cheeky so the artist will be smirking and smiling a lot which he enjoys the company of his fellow artist/character as they party together.

Representation within music video: MD will be similar to SWEENEY, however the only difference is that he will be in all black. It was important that we had a similar representation of our characters as it must reflect the UK rap genre and both characters must compliment each other in terms of how they interact to create a believable friendship on screen.  

Similar characters that have influenced our music video characters:

These artists are also often used as the character/only performers in their music videos to enhance their star appeal to their loyal fans.

Similar findings:

• Black in origin
• Young in age
• Wear white and black
• Urban clothing
• Enhance a confident persona
• Use lots of close-ups and medium close ups on them