Short Creation Video =]

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Matador Record Label Artists

After researching into ‘Matador Records’ I found this band ‘Perfume Genius’ Just from looking at the album cover it reminded me of our video the dingy colours and even the physical hand gestures reminded me of our music video. After reading the write up about this band I realised there music portrayed similar themes of exploring the darker side to the world. Knowing that this band (although they are American based) is on ‘Matador Records’ makes me realise that this is the right independent record company to use if we were to branch off into American waters.


Band: Perfume Genius Album: Learning

Even though he is only in his 20s, Mike Hadreas, aka Seattle’s PERFUME GENIUS, has a story with the twists and turns of a person who has seen a lot of darkness. Hadreas explains: “I spent my whole life hiding from the things that happened to me, to my family and friends. The entirety of all these experiences: abuse, addiction, suicide, all that cool stuff, I couldn’t bear to look at it.”


This extraordinary debut album explores that world through home-recorded songs that bring to mind early Cat Power, Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens and Pink Moon-era Nick Drake. Mostly simple vocal and piano, the minor-key melodies work their way into your brain and stick there. “Mr Peterson" is the seemingly innocuous tale of a high school teacher turned inside-out. “Gay Angels' is a gorgeous soundscape of layered organs and synths. “Write To Your Brother' contains elliptical allusions to a mother treating a song “like a lover.' Hadreas’s life is a catalogue of remembered pain and sadness, and this album is an indelible testament to that.

http://www.matadorrecords.com/store/index.php?catalog_id=508

Band: Belle and Sebastian  Album: Write About Love

Back after a 5-year hiatus doing solo projects, soundtracks and more, Glasgow’s beloved BELLE AND SEBASTIAN have returned with one of their finest albums. Marrying the intimacy of early works like Sinister and Tigermilk with the production values of their more recent work, Write About Love is a varied, captivating and occasionally disturbing trawl through the mind of Stuart Murdoch and his colleagues. Tracklisting:


I Didn’t See It Coming
Come On Sister
Calculating Bimbo
I Want The World To Stop
Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John
Write About Love
I’m Not Living In The Real World
Ghost of Rockschool
Read The Blessed Pages
I Can See Your Future
Sunday’s Pretty Icons

http://www.matadorrecords.com/store/index.php?catalog_id=539 

How is your research into institutions responsible for the production and regulation of the media influence your production work?

At first the institutions we looked at were major record company labels such as Universal and Island Records (the record company Florence + The Machine are with) However we realised that these labels weren’t very specific to our genre and were very big companies that had a variety of artists under their name. After choosing a specific genre and target audience we had to find a record company that portrayed similar artists to our band ‘The Rivals’. We researched further into independent record labels, as this would be the best starting point for us to promote our single to and independent label before branching off afterwards to the bigger labels such as Universal Records. We found lots of specific record labels in America, such as ‘Bloodshot Records’ who based in Chicago have been able to keep their independence they are interested in fresh new Indie alternative rock bands that don’t conform to the original stereotypes and I thought this was a good match for us, however we carried on looking for British based record labels as we are an English group with a predominantly British target audience. Looking at ‘XL’ record label an independent based in the United Kingdom, although started off with artists like the ‘Prodigy’ they have branched out to take the best artists in their genres including ‘White Stripes’. This influenced our decisions to try something different in relation to the themes behind our video.

The Canadian-American band ‘Arcade Fire’ have also kept to their routes of not conforming to the major record labels but kept with the independent record label ‘Merge Records’ since they first began. The band often records its albums in its own studios, to exacting and personal specifications, and retains ownership of the music, which it licenses to Merge. Its previous two albums have gone gold, or close to it, and “The Suburbs” is expected to do the same, or better. This is the same type of exposure that we want our band ‘The Rivals’ to do and as ‘Arcade Fire’ sit in the same genre of and uses a record label focusing on the manufacturing of the product similar to the independent ‘Matador Records’ although these are American based record labels, this would mean we could branch out into the American market thus expanding our marketing techniques and receiving a bigger profit and larger amount of single sales.

How did your research into audiences contribute to your production work?

Upon looking at these various artists we realised that even though the music tastes are quite different our main target audience would be predominantly  White, British females in their late teens around the 16-25 from a middle class background as this age group are already fully engaged in music and pop culture and is the main group that make up the majority of people at Festivals, therefore after researching into different festivals, we realised our target audience would all have similar interests and hobbies, one of these going to Festivals. By targeting this audience we can capitalize on our single sales whilst enhancing marketing strategies by publicising our band. As we chose the Indie rock genre we researched other artists that our target audience would want to see such as Marina + The diamonds, which play at festivals just like our main band Florence + the machine played at many major festivals last year and our target audience is the most popular age group to be seen at Festivals. Researching other Indie bands such as ‘Arcade Fire’ ‘Imogen Heap’ and ‘The Killers’ showed that the Indie rock genre incorporates a wide range of male, female solo artists as well as bands, thus giving us a bigger target audience to engage with culminating in bigger sales of our album. To reach out to our target audience we would our own experience of Myspace and Facebook to reach out to wider audiences, as these websites have thousands of members as well as trying to get TV Promotion and potential magazine coverage such as  ‘Amplifier’ and ‘NME’ and general poster distribution whether at Festivals or other social events. All of this audience research culminated into going for an alternative genre to the traditional pop or rock, and created a video that contributes to the modern world of media by giving a narrative a darker side to intrigue our audience.

How did your research into genre contribute to your production work?

My first research task was looking into Taylor Swift’s song ‘Love Story’ and analysing the music video. This was my first look into a genre of a popular music video but I knew straight away that I wanted to do something for the modern female teenage audience. Her video contributed to us creating a narrative structure for our video and using our lyrics to tell the story. Our music genre changed as we started looking at different song choices from Taylor Swift’s contemporary country style to Lucy’s striking Lady Gaga video which portrays strong characters in an artistic abstract fashion. After looking at these two juxtaposing contemporary artists, we started looking at a popular genre that is seen in England, so this is where we found ‘Florence + the machine’ an indie rock band, after listening to their album we knew this genre was right for us and we wanted to create an intense experience for the audience so taking the lyrics of her song ‘Girl With One Eye’ which gave a strong basis of a narrative. Whilst looking at Florence + the machine, we came across PJ Harvey another indie artist who also experiments with rock, pop, electronica, and folk became a prominent artist in our minds, who became a strong influence when looking at album covers and the antique mis-en-scene feel for our actual video.

Mood Board =]

This is the mood board we created to use as inspiration for our music video. We incorporated words that were key to our video as well as visual images we found that relate to our video's concept. We also added the song lyrics from our music video to create an atmosphere. This dark theme is what we want our music video to feel like and to create an indie rock atmosphere for our target audiences to engage with. We culminated our findings and edited them on Photoshop. Using an amalgamation of text and images creates a strong bold and intense mood board to help us keep to the genre of our music video.

Actor's Poster =]

Using Photoshop, Elliot has created a Poster for us to put up around school, asking for two female actors who can play the sisters in our video. Hopefully it will attract some attention and we can find some reliable actors to be in our video. Here is an image of the poster; as you can see we have kept to the style of the video by putting it in black and white, showing an image from our didpack and using the same font as the digipack.

PJ Harvey =]

We researched PJ Harvey as she has a similar genre of music and lyrics, to the song we are using, 'Girl with one eye.' This is her official website. She writes her own song lyrics which are quite dark and serious. This is very similar to Florence + the machine.

 

 

 

 

THE DEVIL

As soon as I am left alone
the Devil wanders into my soul
and I pretend to myself.
I pretend to myself.
I go out to the old mile-stone
insanely expecting

you to come there, knowing

that I wait for you there.

That I wait for you there.

Come, come

come here at once!

Come, come

on a night with no moon,

because

all of my being is now in pining.

What formerly cheered me,

now seems insignificant.

Insignificant.

Here are the lyrics to one of her songs, they show a dark and moving song, similar to Florence, as they both write their own music. They have similar vibes and interesting music, and the instruments add to the effect of the song with guitars and drums. Her album covers are really original, and she is also has a split screen shot one which is the type of effect we want as the back cover to our digipack. Both have the same genre of music and just listening to their lyrics means you can create images in your mind as it was easy for us to analyse Florence's lyrics and create a narrative for the music video.

This is an album cover from PJ Harvey. This is where we got the idea of having a split shot, although hers is of the same person in different colours, it gave us the idea to split our album cover having a split screen of the two sisters. However instead of using this idea for the digipack it has now been used for our poster, making it look like a torn picture instead of just a split screen.

 

Research Task =]

I have chosen the music genre which is made apparent through the key concepts. The genre of the music video is love, which can be seen through the choice of shots, locations, character, facial expressions and the actual song.
I have chosen Taylor Swifts video ‘Love story’ which portrays the classic story of Romeo and Juliet. The narrative works by mixing a modern day high school scene with the olden day Castle where supposed Juliet (Taylor) lives, at the high school two students first meet (love at first sight) Taylor and boy, which then cuts to her being Juliet and meeting Romeo at the royal dance, not knowing who he is till after, creating the concept of forbidden love, and that they are both young. Obviously the song ends with her last verse stating that Romeo asks to marry her,
yet then Taylor comes back from her fairy-tale ending back in high school where she starts talking to the boy that she has just met, it shows the love can be seen as a fairy tale and most girls can relate to these situations when they are young and fall in love for the first time. The ideology shows the story of Romeo and Juliet, every relationships has its ups and downs. People fall in love and someone is always against it or they supposedly live happily ever after in the end.
The main target audience for Taylor Swift would be teenagers to young adults, predominantly female. This is because most of her songs are based upon adolescent memories and previous boyfriend relationships. Representation is used in the video through the characters and location. The song is called ‘Love Story’ therefore the audience would realize before even watching the video that a love story would be represented in the video. In this aspect the video shows the representation of a stereotypical High School scene
  
with a young adolescent boy and girl, it then stereotypes the traditional setting of romantic scenes of a castle and forestry with the use of Shakespearean dresses and menswear this shows a typical young girl fantasy of love. The use of the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet is what teenagers would study at school and a play that is well-known to most. It uses the connotations of betrayal, forbidden romance and rebellion, which can still be seen in schools today on a much smaller scale. The old castle is a beautiful romantic location to set a love story, and many can relate to this fantasy and its every young girls dream to live happily ever after.

The video has a linear narrative, with an intertextual reference to Shakespeare. The beginning of the song has them meet at a party in the first verse. The second verse where she has snuck out to the garden to see him “We keep quiet ’cause we’re dead if they knew” seems to imply that something is going on. In the very next bridge she refers to herself as a scarlet letter, which could easily imply that she’s pregnant. When they finally meet on the outskirts of town and he tells her that he has spoken to her father, and he has apparently consented to the marriage. One good reason for this quick turnaround may be to save the shame of a baby out of wedlock. If this is the case though, there is a very ironic suggestion to “pick out a white dress,” though this could be intentional to keep up her image of virginity. This has the potential to be a very ironic representation of a girl’s infatuation with a guy, which leads to an unfortunate marriage of necessity. Also it is perhaps a satire of how people always seem to believe that their own romances are worthy of Romeo and Juliet (which we all know does not end that well) and are always blinded by their position within their own relationships. At the end the song returns to present day where she goes and talks to the guy for the first time, showing the audience that this could be the beginning of the fantasy she has just imagined in her head. The Shakespearean references could be used to over dramatize the narrative, and as we all know they die in the end, instead of living happily ever after. However the ‘scarlet letter’ reference could also show her desirability but that she is off limits as seen in the video at the grand ball.
This is the foundation of Swift’s lyric–that any ‘love story’ is rife with complications, peaks and valleys, extreme joy and unbearable heartache. And by comparing the song’s characters to Shakespeare’s, she’s simply alluding to the idea that all love stories are fundamentally the same, regardless of their origin or outcome. There is a relationship between lyrics, visual and the music. There is also lots of close ups of the artist as she is the main character in the video. The institution of a music video would be the record label, company as they have the main role of making the music video promoting the artist to their audience and fan base. The video helps market the artist and wants to create the most profit, as videos can cost an extortionate amount of money. “Love Story” was first released as the debut single off Swift’s second album, Fearless, in 2008. In an article for Billboard, Swift described “Love Story” as “a love that you’ve got to hide because for whatever reason it wouldn’t go over well. I spun it in the direction of Romeo and Juliet; our parents are fighting. I relate to it more as a love that you cannot really elaborate on — a love that maybe society wouldn’t accept or maybe your friends wouldn’t accept.”

The language used in the video is modern day love lyrics except for the use of ‘Scarlet Letter’ in the lyrics, the narrator alludes to Romeo and Juliet and The Scarlet Letter to describe a lover whom her father will not let her see. In the end, however, the father reconciles and the lover proposes to the female narrator. The proposal is accompanied by a key change.

The camera is constantly moving to show that the narrative is always moving on to something new. It keeps the audience entertained with a quicker paceas the audience become more excited of how the characters relationships evolve throughout the video. The camera angles change as they like to show different perspectives of the narative. They use closeups of Taylor and the Boys faces, to see their emotion by making it vey intimate to eachother and for the audience to be involved with that intimacy. There are also tracking and establishing shots of places and people. And this is a birdseye view of the dancing to make vary the shots to make them more interesting and enjoyable for the audience. The music directly correlates at time with the footage. As the song progresses the editing gets quicker as the shots cut from her on the balcony, to a close up of them holding hands, to the forest back to the balcony.

Here Taylor is in the forest as she has seceretly come to find Romeo. The camera likes to zoom into the action and focus in on Taylors facial expressions. It brings in the songs lyrics ‘we’d be dead if they knew’ showing how they cant be seen together so the mise-en-scene of the forest, night time and the lantern emphasises the secret love they share.
A white horse is shown in the video obviously the one the man rode to see her on, the use of an animal shows the gentleness and romantic nature of the video. The shots are repetative but put into different orders. When she is on the balcony she engages with the audience by looking directly into the camera as if she is telling you this stoy of her love personally just to you.
This shot is just after she has seen him running to her balcony, she smiles and then there is a typical dramatic almost slow motion running scene, where they run to eachother and have a full on romantic kiss scene.
I like this image as it shows the secretness of their relationship and that the audience is involved in this secret. It uses iconogaphy of being quiet by putting a finger to his lips. So that nobody hear them, and setting their meeting in the dead of night shows the exciting and typical routine of secret meetings. This single part of the video links eveything together by showing the fairytale she dreams of and the love she has for him.

This is the final shot, where she comes back to reality, where in her fantasy she thinks he asks her to marry her, to her real life where this guy actually comes up to talk to her instead, the scene then goes to a black out as the music fades.

Initial Ideas =]

Staight away we wanted to do something that had a good beat, and a popular song which we could use to potray a prominant issue. At first we looked at songs by Beyonce as we liked her use of black and white videos, where they always have a meaning to them, such as ‘if i were a boy’ as this shows the story of a woman playing out the life of her husband, something that most women can relate to. This interested us about using a prominant issue. We then looked at more dance pop music, looking at Lady Gaga videos, which are very interesting and fun, yet still hide another meaning. We really wanted to use the song ‘Paparazzi’ as although she had already made a vey intrigueing video, we thought of a good basis of the video. We thought about incoporating the actual media of womens issues, such as weight, dressing up people as maniquines, to portay the issues surrounding women in the media, we thought this would be really effective as it would relate to the paparazzi, as in the song lyrics, as the girls would at like dolls, with just their mouths moving. We thought this would make an interesting video.

However, due to not be able to really use anyone famous we were looking on the copyright free music sight ‘Jamendo’ but we were unsuccessful in finding something that we really liked. Now we are looking at ‘Ellie Goulding’ to find a song that hasn’t been released or had a video made for it yet. As this would be an easier solution for us. But we are going to keep looking until we find something that will really work for us.