Directors Of Our Genre And There Influences

Roman White-

Roman White is a music video director who has directed for many different artists including, Carrie Underwood, Josh Groban and Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift is an artist who is quite similar to Ellie Goulding in the pop/indie genre of music. 

His passion for or powerful visual storytelling has propelled him to direct music’s top artists. Furthermore, he is Winner of numerous awards including an MTV music video award and an academy of country music awards.
Artists and audiences agree he is one of the industries most talented and creative directors. He has a great vision in his work and memorable narratives which make him highly sought after.

Sophie Muller- 

Sophie Muller is a british music video director noted for her long term collaborations with Sophie Ellis-Baxter, Shakira, Blur and Ellie Goulding.She has directed over 100 music videos in the space of 30 years and she has won a grammy and an MTV music award for her work with Annie Lennox. As a women myself, i feel that this is very impressive and it surprised me at how successful she is, as I believed most directors who were extremely successful were male.
She is driven by creativity and the love fore making videos sos he never make compromises. Also, she has a very pronounced style and tatse that drives artists and companies into her work.
She directed Ellie Gouldings video Lights so we can use this video for inspiration, as Ellies style of music is very similar to the tone of Megans voice.
Muller states that she continues to create music videos as it is what she has a passion for and she wishes to be able to do them to a very high standard.

The History Of Indie Pop

Indie pop is a genre of alternative rock music which originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s. Indie pop differs from indie rock to the extent that it is more melodic, less abrasive, and relatively angst-free. 

The birth of Indie Pop can be traced back to the post punk explosion in london based independant record labels. The first weekly indie singles and album charts in 1980 and the adoption of such charts in the UK music press stimulated activity.

NME followed up C81 with C86. Similarly designed to reflect the new music scene of the time in the UK, it is now seen as the birth of indie pop in the UK . The UK music press was, in 1986, highly competitive, with four weekly papers documenting new bands and trends. In the mid to late '80s, indie pop was criticised for its associations with so-called "shambling" and underachievement.  The grouping of bands, often artificially, with an overarching label to heighten interest or sell copies, was commonplace. A link found between C86 and a genre was always misinterpretted by critics and the bands themselves. Of course back when bands were a lot more competitive in the Indie Pop scene many bands hated the sight of each other if they were seen as a threat.

Indie Pop is still a highly recognised genre with most bands having the Indie vibe but a Pop melody. Ellie Goulding is known as an Indie Pop artist and because we find Megans voice and melody similar to this it is quite fasinating to find out where it orientated from.

Audience- SAGEL

Socio-economic group-

Students who have an average family income and have a lot of friendships.

Age-

12-18

Gender-

Mainly females as we are using girls in our video and the artist is female. However, this is not to say that males will not be able to relate to our video.

Ethnicity-

Mainly white Caucasian as that is what ethnicity is being represented in our video.

Lifestyle-

Very family and friends orientated, they may have big ambitions for when they are older, maybe a part time job, our audience may be very loving towards friends, quite girly. 
We chose this audience group because even though we are aiming at mainly teenage girls the majority of girls that listen and watch music is huge so even though some people may see this as a niche market I believe it is quite a mass market due to the proportion of teenage girls being able to relate to music in todays industry.

This is what I would expect our audience to look like.

Digital Technology

While doing my reaserch into music video's Youtube was an essential website as it contains thousands of music videos from all over the world so there is a real variety that you can analyse.

Blogger is the website where I will be posting all about my reaserch and where our final music video will be published. Blogger is good because it is easy to use and easy to access.

In media at school we use Imacs. Imacs are not the easiest computers to use but have a lot of advanced technology on them. They have really good software to create music and to edit photos.

Within the Imacs there is Imovie and this is the software we will be using to edit our music video. It is a brilliant software and it allows you at add editing techniques like slow motion and the fading in and out of words. Also, it allows you to add additional sound like voice over. There is also final cut pro which a new advanced movie editing software and we will be using this when possible. Professionals tend to use this sort of technology

Our school has now purchased a professional camera which has much better quality than the smaller cameras do. However, we will not be able to take this out of school so we will use the smaller cameras as they are a lot easier to carry round with us. The make of the cameras is panasonic.

Decide Our Audience, Genre, Narrative And What Representations We Intend To Create

Audience- The audience I hope our viedo to be aimed at is teenagers as our video will show the strong friendship of 2 teenage girls. Therefore, girls in the age range of 12-18 will be able to relate more towards our video. An older audience wouldnt feel the same effect and emotion as a younger audience would feel.
Genre-  The genre of our music video is quite indie/pop. The song is quite sad and slow so it is more on the indie side, just like Ellie Gouldings music.
Narrative- We want our music video to tell a story and so we are inserting clips of flashbacks when there happier times, we fell that these clips in themselves will tell a story.
Representations-  In our video we hope to show you our audience the importance of friendship and how important it is to treasure that. Also, we want to portray happiness of memorys through a sad song so that our young audience know that they will always have someone there for them.

Do A Textual Analysis Using Media Terminology Of Three Existing Texts

Ellie Goulding- Your Song Textual Analysis- 

I chose the analyse Ellie Gouldings- Your Song, as she is an artist we are using as inspiration for our music video. This way we can see what conventions she uses in her video's.

Firstly, in Ellie Gouldings video, a camera shot that is used a lot is a close up shot. On more than one occasion there is a close up shot of Ellie's hands while playing the piano, and this could connote that  the piano plays a vital part in the song and video as it is the heart of the soft melody. Also, in this video, there are a couple of high angle shots of Ellie's feet which could connote that she feels in this video that he belongs where she is. In, mise-en-scene, the lighting in this video is mainly natural, but in some of the clips it appears that they have used a filter to change the colour of the lighting. Therefore, some of the lighting is high and some is low key lighting. This would then create a variety of emotions in the audience. Also, to show that Ellie is a genuine artist,  in this video her outfits are very casual which shows that this video is not made up and it is more believable, therefore it will effect the audience more. Lastly, for mise-en-scene, a prop that is used in this video is the piano. The piano is shown in a couple of close up shots and they have done this because it is very important to the melody of the song. Firstly for editing, a lot of slow motion was used and on the clips that it was used on, it could demonstrate that them clips are memories which wanted to be held onto for longer hence why they were in slow motion. Furthermore this creates more emotion in the audience. Next, the use of deep and shallow focus in this video, is used to move from the background to Ellie and so this video wants you to not just look at her but to analyse the actual background as it is a very beautiful location. For, sound, the key of the music is quite sad so I would class it as a minor key of music. This gives the audience more emotion.

Research Methods

There are 4 different research methods-

Firstly, there is primary research and this is when marketers conduct research to collect original data for there own needs. Primary data can be collected by doing questionnaires or interviews.

Next, is secondary and this is when people collect data that already exists. You can get this data from past experiments or even on the internet.

Quantitative data is displaying in a numerical form and it can be measured. Multiple choice questionaires are a good way to collect this type of data because the answers can be measured and even put into a graph.

Lastly, qualitative data unlike quantitative data can not be measured. A good way to collect this type of data is a focus group because it can be taken by observation of a researcher.

Primary research would be useful if we wanted to gather new information about music videos but, the research we are most likely to use is secondary as it is information that already exists and we are using the internet a lot to get this information. The research method we are least likely to use is quantitative data as it is in numerical form and we will not be needing to measure our research.

Branding Of Your Text

The artist we have chosen  is quite unknown and she does not really have much branding. The artist we are comparing her too, is Ellie Goulding. We find that megan is quite similar to her.

Brand Essence- Ellie is very unique and quirky and we find that megan related a lot to Ellie. Having a brand is essential and because Megan is an up and coming artist its crucial she has a branding.

Bran Slogan- Ellie dosnt have a signiture logo however her song titles and albums have distinct features on them.

Brand Personality- Ellie is branded mainly as cute and original, marketers describe her as having these two main traits.

Brand Values- Eliie stands for values like honest and good. some artists values can change but Ellies dosnt seem too.

Brand Appearance- Ellie and Megan both look and sound honest and sincere.

Brand Heritage- Ellie has been in the music business for about 4 years now whereas Megan is just starting to write her cd. Ellie is well known in comparison to Megan who only family and friends really support.

Emotional Benefits- Both artists have a soothing voice which would pull at the audiences hearts with the right song.

Day In The Life of Amber- Short Film

The is the short film we created for our preliminary task.

What Am I Going To Choose For My Main Task?

For my main task after researching both short films and music videos, we have decided as a group to do a music video and we have decided to choose the song Treasure Time by Megan Linnell. This song has not got a video for it at the moment and so we think that we can come up with some new fresh ideas for a video.

What I Have Learnt About...

Scripting- When my group decided to create our short film we decided to create a storyboard instead of a script because it is much simpler than a script as you then have to include all speech and directions.
Storyboading- I learnt that when doing a story board that each picture does not need to be fully detailed and to give you some guidelines you can write stage directions or speech underneath each picture.
Locations- When making our short film, we were quite limited with locations but we used locations that we think was quite unique and it made our film seem more realistic.
Talent- Many people are quite camera shy and they were not a lot of volunteers so amber one the people in our group was in the film aswell as Mr Swain and Mrs Fearnley who acted as the parents in our short film. It takes many takes the get the actor/actress in the right position and to get the right angle of the shot.
Organisation- Its very important to be organised especially when you have to share cameras. Its better to have a rota so groups dont argue over cameras and equipment. Some days we couldnt use cameras and so we had to find something else to do while waiting etc, editing.
Teamwork- I found that our group worked well together and we communicated well aswell.
Editing- I had never really done any editing before this project and so it was intresting having to do that. Its definatly not as easy as it looks and it can take time to get it perfect but you do have to think about it carefully and be patient.

Andrew Goodwin's Music Video Analysis

Andrew Goodwin writing in 'Dancing in the Distraction Factory' (Routledge 1992) describes the different characteristics of music video's-

1- Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics- stage performance or dance routine will define whether it is for a boy or girl band.
2- There is a relationship between the lyrics and visuals- There are 3 types- Illustrative- acting out literally. Amplifying- exagerrating the meaning. Contradicting- going against the meaning.
3- There is a relationship between visuals and music- Either illustrative, amplifying or contradicting.
4- The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work.
5- There are frequent references to the notion of looking (screens within screens, telescopes, etc) and particularly voyeuristic/erotic treatment of the female body. Depends on gender.
6- There is often intertextual reference- to films, tv programmes etc.