Introduction

My name is Thakshana Yogeswaran and I am a media student at The Latymer School. My candidate number is 9179.

I am working in Group 3 with Gift Emesi (9044), Angela Chen (9025) and Monica Aghadiuno (9365)

In order to view my work please click on the 3 labels on the right named A2 Research and Planning, A2 Construction and A2 evaluation.

Group 3 - Music Video

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Sunday 1 November 2015

R+P Post 20: My Music Video Timeline

After producing the steal-o-matic we decided to create a basic timeline of the shots we wanted to use and work out which shot goes where before we draw out a detailed storyboard.

Here is a one minute extract of the timeline:

Benefits of producing a timeline:

  • It allows us to write down all our shots in the timings that we think are appropriate and see if our ideas flow properly.
  • We can identify any gaps in the song where we don't have any planned shot to put in.
  • It will help us create the storyboard a lot easier.
  • All our ideas are now in one place, in a logical order.

R+P Post 19: My Influences and Vision for the Project

After analysing the lyrics of our song, we decided to create a steal-o-matic. A steal-o-matic is a visual,moving image 'pitch' of our music video, it is essentially a moving mood board. 

Here is our stealo:

Steal-o-matic Break Down:



We would like to create some cool, abstract shots like these where we play around with editing and colour of the shots. This clip is from 'How Deep is your Love' by Calvin Harris and The Disciples. 






We would also like to include really fast-paced editing so the shots flash really quickly. Some people might say that the speed at which the shots change is quite trippy and daunting but I really like the effect it has where the audience is confused because they can't register the shots.






This spotlight shot that we saw in one of Neon Jungle's video really caught our eye because it's a good and effective way to start off the video and introduce all the girls in the band individually but there's still quite a mysterious edge to it.




We want to create something similar to this clip in the sense that we want to kind of use the guy actors in order to represent girl power. We had the idea to use them in the video and have them literally stand there and use them as 'props' essentially so they have no control over the girl band but the girls have complete control over them.




Creating the stealo was very beneficial for us because it meant that we could fully visualise what our video might look like and it's a representation of all our ideas combined. Up until now, we've been making notes and mindmaps on paper but having this as a visual reference of what we want to do is amazing. It also helps us portray our ideas to other people. Now, we can use this to create a timeline and our storyboard where we can pinpoint down our shots.

R+P Post 18: Analysis of my Track's Lyrics and Instrumentation

Once we had chosen the song, we had to come up with a visual concept for the song and think about the themes we would represent in the video. In order to do this, we decided to analyse the lyrics of the song to see if we could pick out key aspects or any repetition throughout the lyrics.

The picture below shows an extract of the lyrics which I have annotated, pointing out anything I thought was significant which we could later mould into a fully formed idea.

After analysing the lyrics, I realised that this was a really effective way to think of themes and ideas for our music video because breaking it down line by line meant we wouldn't miss any subtle hints that we may have missed by just listening to the song. It also allows us to pick up on key repetition throughout the song and we can focus the music video around that. We found that this particular song was centred around love and passion and the way we interpreted it, the female had more power over the male. 

We then decided that this was going to be the main concept for our music video aside from the obvious love and passion; female empowerment

R+P Post 17: My Chosen Track

After a lot of group meetings and discussions with our teachers, we have decided to choose the track 'Red Planet' by Little Mix.





Title: Red Planet

Artist: Little Mix ft. T-Boz
Year: 2012
Album: DNA 
Written By: T-Boz, Jon Levine and Autumn Rowe
Producer: Jon Levine
Label: Syco Records





The pros and cons are the same as the ones I discussed previously:


Since the song was copyrighted to Sony Music and Syco Records we had to seek permission to use the song so we decided to email them, asking for permission and explaining how we intend to use it as part of our A-level project:


R+P Post 16: My Band or Artist

As a group we decided that we want to create a girl band with 4 members because we feel like there's a gap in the market for a girl band as aside from Little Mix and Fifth Harmony, we don't really hear of any other famous girl bands right now.

Identity:

Name of band: D4MES
Members: 4 
Ages: 17-19
Ethnicity: All mixed


We want to create a girl band who are relatable to the audience and who can convey certain messages that the audience will actually listen to. In order to do this we decided to give each member of the band an individual, unique character trait that is associated to that person only. The table to your left showcases this.


In order to make them even more relatable, all four of them are best friends who grew up in the same neighbourhood. They sing whenever and wherever, even in the streets and they just love doing it. It's a common passion that they all share. They got signed to Soho Records because one of the talent managers saw them performing at a gig in North London and thought they were amazing.

Inspiration:

1. MO
MO are a British trio who formed in 2012 and are signed to Polydor Records. We love their street/urban style that they have. It looks cool, hip and still relevant at the same time. We want our own band to showcase this style. They also dance a lot in their music videos and their fun, easy an quirky style is also something we want our band to mimic.











2. Fifth Harmony 

Fifth Harmony literally emulate female power whether it's through their music videos or just their identity as a whole. We want our band's identity to be of a similar style and we want to portray a strong message of female empowerment, we can do anything that we set our minds to. We want to be able to inspire other women to be strong and brave. We want to play our part in advertising the message.



3. Neon Jungle 


Again, in terms of identity, Neon Jungle are an ethnically diverse group who work really well together. They're image is again quite street/urban but they can also pull off the classy look as shown by some of the pictures. We want our band to be quite ethnically diverse to break any racial stereotypes that may be prevalent in the music industry.



4. The Spice Girls 


This inspiration is also more for identity. Even though The Spice Girls were a five-piece band, each individual band member had a unique personality trait. There was the posh spice, the scary spice, the sporty spice, the baby spice and the ginger spice. This made the band a lot more relatable to the audience as they could choose the person who they had most in common with. Similarly, we want to have unique personality traits within our band as well.




R+P Post 15: My Record Label

We have decided to call our record label Soho Records.






About Soho Records:
  • We are a subsidiary of Universal Music Group (UMG) and are based predominantly in Soho, London and we sign new, fresh talent from Britain.
  • We aim to seek out new and talented musicians and turn them into artists who have a solid brand identity and we aim to mould them and help them become the best versions of themselves.
  • We cover mainly the pop, R&B and EDM genres right now but if we find talent that branches out from these genres then we are willing to work with them.
  • We create a friendly and relaxed atmosphere for out artist's to work in and essentially we are like one big family right now.
  • We are quite a small record label, only signing artists who we believe have what it takes to make it in the music industry.

R+P Post 14: My Target Audience

Our target audience is:

1. Skewed mainly towards females

We want our band to promote female empowerment. We want to influence women to be strong and proud of who they are, therefore, naturally our content will be aimed more towards the female gender. Right now, there are many strong female artists out there like Beyonce, Rihanna, Taylor Swift and so on who have huge fan bases who look up to them and inspire to be like them.

In a recent study released by Forbes where they investigated the most powerful musicians of 2014, six out of the ten were women, with Beyonce coming out on top and earning her career best of $115million in a year due to the 95 sell out shows of her world tour.










2. Fans of Pop and R&B

This is the main type of music that we wish to produce so it makes sense that fans of pop and R&B are our secondary target audience. Pop and R&B are two massive genres as I found out during my research into current trends in the music industry, therefore it shouldn't be too hard to build a fanbase around that as quite a lot of people do listen to those genres of music.






3. Skewed towards the younger generation

Although our band could appeal to all ages, I would say that our band would be more appealing to the younger audience as they can relate more to the band. They understand what we mean and our message would be clearer to them.