Crop Circle

Crop circle is a short film Written, Directed and starring Ice City grime rapper Nines. The film was made as a companion piece to nine's new 'Crop Circle' which tells the story of young man who has recently come from university to try and make a living for himself, after meeting with his friend 'Nines' he gets lured into a situation where he has to look after a large amount of contraband for Nines after his mother finds the contraband and disposes of it, our main character must go a dangerous task to repay his friend in order to restore balance in his life. I researched into this short film because I wanted to observe a film which had been created by and starring a urban music artist. Nines had written, starred, directed and provided the soundtrack to the the film. Something I liked about the film was how well directed it was and the variation of shots that were used, before I watched the film I didn't think it would be as capably created as technically as I thought it would be, but in the end I found that the film's story and great direction kept me very interested throughout the process of watching it. I found the cinematography really captured the feeling of the streets of deprived areas in London. there are lots of creative shots used to show off the scenery around the area that creates the feeling of grittiness; for example their is a section in the film where 'Nines' is visiting various people around his area and selling the contraband which has recently acquired, this part of the film is very similar to a montage it shows a combination of shots in small snippets and I believe the shots used in these small sections are very creative in the way they introduce each character who 'Nines' converses with has their own unique way of being introduced and the shots set up feel of the characters in the way that they present them, these characters are all mostly rappers who are currently in the UK grime scene so from my understanding they are supposed to be fictional versions of themselves. So much detail has been put into the scenes when constructing them because the, there is always so much going on in the frame that makes the audience want to examine the shots to find what else we can see which adds to the narrative level nicely. Looking into these type of shots can help me develop  how

another feature of the film I like is how well the soundtrack blends in between the sections of the film, they are used in a way that when we are taking a break from what is happening on the screen we are played music which relates heavily to the story and what the meaning of certain scenes are. For example in the scene where Nines is transporting this contraband around the to his customers and the song called 'I see you shinning' is playing, this song written and performed by nines and at this section is going on the song parallels the scene from a narrative perspective. The chorus 'I see you shinning' refers to how nines in this scene is shinning above the darkness, hes prospering in his life, so he is 'shinning' I find this can help me with trying to add music scenes or scenes based of songs off music because the task of trying to blend music with cinema is hard in the sense that what does the music do for the narrative? I think adding music can help the narrative because songs just as much as dialogue can create narrative and putting songs which relate to the overall narrative can create so many more possibilities to how I can create a narrative in my work.