The making of 'They Don't Care About Us'

This video is a making of a Michael Jackson video: 'They Don't Care About Us'. This video has high relevance to our group as it has high influence on our filming and production of our music video. Michael Jackson reignites theme in his video through costume, lyrics and energy within this video. As this song is about an attack on institutions who are victimising him, he shows his passion through perfomance, and the lyrics with powerful words such as 'allegations', 'trepidation', 'speculation'. These powerful lyrics are used to enhance his passion about his performance which is why he made this song a hit. The contradictory prison costume connotes the freedom of Michael Jackson's life and claims he is being imprisoned, as he states 'black men, black mail, throw a brother in jail', arguing in conspiracy, these institutions underclass black men, and this powerful message is across through the use of the cotume, which is why costumes can play a major part in our video. Also the fact that it shows Michael Jackson perfoming in an ordinary camera shows how our group has to perform, as he shows everybody around him he doesn't get nervous when he perfoms, he keeps his eyes on the camera and he sing with deep meaning and passion. Director Spike lee shows his appreciation for working for Michael Jackson and played a huge part in this video being high in performance, which is something as a group we have taken.

Shot List

1. Low angle shot showing two girls stretching

2. Medium shot showing girl watching him

3. Long shot showing boy walking and looking

4. Two-shot showing two girls together

5. Close up of boy

6. Close up of girl

7. Cutaway of the pedestrian and own centre

8. Long shot of boy taking his jacket off

9. Medium close up of boys actions

10. Over the shoulder shot of two girls looking at each other

11. Full shot of the three dancers dancing

12. Dutch angle shot to show confusion of the girl

13. Tracking shot from left to right to make the dancer look more effective

14. Establishing shot of the whole scene

15. Panning shot to show the whole scene and setting

16. Eye-level angle shot shot of one boy dancing

17. Eye-level angle shot of the other girl dancing

18. Eye-level angle shot of the other girl dancing

19. Low angle shot of the boy dancing

20. Tracking shot from left to right tho show them all dancing

21. Close up of boy

22. Two-shot of the two girls

23. Long shot of them all dancing

Inspirations and thoughts

We have done a lot of research in terms of knowing the genre of our chosen music by the Legendary Michael Jackson, in addition to all the research and knowledge we know about our chosen music we have put together as a group ideas and thoughts into the reasoning of us choosing a song by Michael Jackson. In our group we have a mixture of races and therefore we believe having our different ideas coming together in achieving a good piece of work. The "Black or white" music video, inspired us in the sense that our group can relate to it. Looking into the ideas we have come up with as a group we have thought outside the box in terms of what to include and were to shoot our video e.g location, style of dance (which we have explained in other posts who has inspired us). Although we have researched into different types of music and dance , we are putting together our own piece to create an original piece. At the moment, we have taken a few styles up to create our dance scenes such as : Hip-Hop, Popping and locking, Salsa, Ballet, Contemporary and also a few movements that Michael Jackson himself has done in previous music videos.

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Production Treatment

The music video: The title of the music video will be 'Jam', a Michael Jackson music video from the early nineties.


Duration: The length of the video will be around four minutes long, as there will be a lot of footage due to performance we wish to include in the video as its a vital part of the work we are producing.Also Othe video needs to be long enough to tell it's story and get the message it is trying to put across correctly.


Audience: Our target audience is mainly the youth from the ages 15-25 as it is pop music, also it will be aimed at older Michael Jackson fans from the black background from the ages of 40+ due to the fact that they grew up in the Michael Jackson's era in the 80s, when Michael Jackson was at his peak in the music industry during segregation and racism. However as Michael Jackson almost created his own genre of music, he broke barriers between all races hitting an audience of any race, gender and age who learned to love his music with his exceptionality. So the audience for our video may be broader as his genre of music reached from white American and English fans, to Japanese fans who didn't even have to understand the lyrics.

The title of the music video will be 'Jam', which is a common synonym for dancing, relating to what the video is about. The music video will be about the power of anybody loosing their inhibitions to dance, referring to relieving stress from the populations 9-5 jobs. The lyrics state 'it ain't too much for me to Jam', connoting that you should dance if you hold the feeling, and there is no right way to dance as their are a variety of different styles of dancing. This is shown through the variety of dances that will be shown in the video from ballet, tap dancing, 1950s 'shuffling' and the urban dancing of modern society. Which have been inspired by dancers such as Fred Astaire, James Brown, Gene Kelly, Anna Pavlova etc. The diversity of dance and theme will also be shown through costume, as the females in the video will be dressed in modern urban clothes, inspired by role models in this present decade, contrasting to the dress code of the male, who will have his shirt tucked in to his tight pants, wearing modern shiny shoes representing leather black patents being in fashion from black soul music in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. The locations will be diverse, showing working class society of poor housing, and derelict areas (graffiti, litter etc.). Additionally there will be locations of the town centre, showing inhibitions being lost. The story will be about two dancers (girls) dancing, coming across a pedestrian who seems to be looking at these two girls in a patronizing way, which he later then shows that 'it ain't too much' for him to dance, as dancing will be shown together and against each other, underlining the differences in dancing which are merged together.


Recording Days: We have planed to spend approximately four days filming in four different locations, then approximately three to four days with the post-production, then the rest of the time polishing the video, and writing the blog, and we have all come to an agreement with time, considering free time and other commitments. we found out that one of our locations can only be available on Wednesdays morning and therefore can not be used on monday filming. We will spend approximately 2 hours filming during our media lessons and free times during dinner time and weekends when we are all available to meet up.

"Like a Boy"-is R&B music which is sang by female artist Ciara. In our chosen music video song we'll include performance were by we dance.Some of the dance moves you will notice in our video are inspired by Ciara's hip-hop dance background as, we believe that it would go well with our chosen song "Jam" by michael Jackson, due to the fact that it would fit in well into the type of dance by Michael Jackson, as they are in some cases similar in the sense that Ciara in her "Like a Boy" video shows a lot of character and puts her heart in the performance and loves what she does, so that would perfectly add a feeling of energy to our performance in our Final video.

The most significant factor in this video was the way it got the message across which is why it was exceptional. The message that was put across in this video was the fact that nobody is bad, as Michael refers to this with the term 'who's bad'. The message was then reinforced through the acapella at the end of the video on the short film, as Michael Jackson repeated the line 'your doin' it wrong, your doin' it wrong' to the actor Wesley Snipes who told Michael Jackson that he isn't 'bad' because he let a victim get away in a robbery, which was part of the short film. The video reinforced it's message through showing a diverse amount of dances, e.g ballet, body popping, Michael Jackson dancing, break dancing etc. What was inspirational about this video is that Michael Jackson looses his inhibitions as shown by his unique, significant facial expressions, but the ideas from this video that we will take is the diversity of dancing, to get the message of 'Jamming' in our video across.




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You Rock My World Idea

'You Rock My World' is another great example which represents the ideas of our video. What our group thought was present in this video was the use of subtitles, as it shows the audience who haven't seen the video before that this video tells a story, and has the same effect as a film, making it eye catching. The quick snaps of the dance moves are very important, and in terms of theme, the video come to life as Michael Jackson has almost universal 'swagger' to him with the significant white socks from the thriller, history and dangerous era in the 1980s and 90s. Also his significant hat which become famous from the Billie Jean live performances, and Chris Tucker starring with Michael made the video lot more eye catching as he is a world famous comedian. As a group we decided that the subtitles idea is an idea we will use and will do this in the editing at post production.





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Smooth Criminal is a Michael Jackson video which is very similar to the video we are producing, referring to dancing. This video tells a story and becomes very present with theme as Michael Jackson set it as a 'hot chicago night' from pre 1950s. Michael claimed that before he shot the video, he had an initial idea of doing a country western cowboy theme. This has inspired our group that there can be a diverse amount of themes that can be conveyed through one song. The dancing in this video is vital as the shots create the effect and on some cases create the illusion of some of his robotic moves. There is a lot of quick shots of him dancing and we have noticed a pattern, Michael uses either mid-shots, low angle shots or eye-line shots when he is doing solo dance moves making his dancing more effective. When dancing in a group he uses a long shot to show every dancer dancing to make it look neat, and sometimes his significant hat becomes effective when high angle shots are used, which is shown in the 'smooth criminal lean' in this video. What we have taken from this video in terms of ideas is the story telling, as we plan to tell a story about losing inhibitions of dancing in our video.

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