Capstone Proposal: Cosplay Music Video

For my senior capstone project I will be making a cosplay music video. This is something that I feel will cover specific areas of my education that I have not experienced in my academic learning. These skills are also ones that I believe will make myself more marketable to possible future employers.

Cosplay music videos are not uncommon on the internet. With the wide growth in popularity and acceptance of cosplay, and the increasing number of conventions, almost every con goer takes photos or film of cosplayers. Any photographer who has a video camera can film cosplayers and add music to make it into a cosplay music video. But few have gone so far as to customize the music added to the video.

There are few names that come to mind when one thinks of a music parody artist. Weird Al Yankovich, Instalok, and those at College Humor are some that come to my mind. But overall there are very few who chose to take on the challenge of writing lyrics to music. This is one of the challenges I will be facing during my project and one of the defining differences between my cosplay music video and others on the internet.

For this project I will be facing many challenges that require me to learn a variety of new skills. For instance, I will not only be writing my own lyrics, to the song 'Domino' by Jessica J., but I will also be performing the vocals. Since I am no Katy Perry I will have to learn how to edit audio and work with auto-tune to improve the vocals. I will also be working with a video camera for the first time and using advance editing software.

In order to produce this video I will  need to learn to direct a film in the way that will make sense to my audience, cosplayers between the ages of 13-30. The majority of my filming will take place at Japanese and Comic cultural conventions. This allows me to socially and culturally connect with a wide variety of cosplayers.

I have been looking forward to creating a cosplay music video for some time. I am very excited to get started with this project and learning the new experiences that it comes with.