Genre Research - Album Covers

Lily Allen - It's Not Me, It's You - The reason why we have chosen to upload this album cover as we hope to make some things similar on our cover. We hope to have her alone because again we want it to be linked with the lyrics, there are bits in the lyrics which use the word "scared", "alone" ect. Therefore we intend to make our album cover look slighlty similar to these covers.

Adele - Make You Feel My Love - The reason why we have chosen to upload this cover of Adele is because we hope our album cover will be similar to this in terms of having a picture of our singer alone to show she is alone and vulnerable which will be linked to the lyrics of our music video.

Posted by Mirza Rahman

Audience Research

Above is a short clip of our audience research. We went to our target audience and played them our song. From this we asked them to think about Location, Costume, Artist Image and Narrative. There was a lot of useful feedback that we gained. The main points were:

• Locations - Our audience thought that possible locations to shoot in would be a seaside, in someone's home. There was also another suggestion to shoot in an underground train station, the person that suggested this thought that this would give the video a grimy, down to earth feel.  
• Costume - Our audience thought that the artist should wear a maxi dress, have her hair down possibly wavy, accesorise with bangles and a long necklace, possibly wear cowboy styled boots.
• Artist Image - Our audience thought that our artist should be around the age of 21 and have a quirky 'Diana Vickers' look.
• Narrative - One idea for narrative was the artist going through a break up which is similar to our initial idea having listened to the lyrics - this is good as it means we are thinking along the same lines as our audience, this will make them more likely to consume our media text. Another idea was that the artist should be invisible and performing amongst the narrative. This links to the idea of voyeurism and makes it seem as though the artist is looking into other people's lives. If we go with this idea, we will need to have very good actors otherwise we may risk confusing our audience. 

Below are images of Diana Vickers:

 

Posted by Maria Grillo

Roles and responsibilities

Sonia: singer, also in charge of selecting the mise-en-scene, including colour, figure lighting, objects and settings.
Maria: director, editor (transitions , captions, using sound with images, editing so that meaning is apparent to viewer and other effects)
Mirza: cameraman (holding a shot steady,where appropriate, framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate, shooting material appropriate to the task set)

Everyone will make sure we use a variety of shot distances as appropriate, also we will all participate in the editing and the blogging.

Posted by Mirza

Target Audience

When creating our artist profile, we decided on our target audience.

• Age Range - Between the ages of 15-21. 
• Gender - Our target audience will predominantly be female as our artist's song lyrics are generally about love, affection something that males may find soppy. 
• Clothing - The things that are in fashion e.g. Denim shirt and vest top, skinny jeans, lace up boots. They would generally shops in places like West End and Westfield and in shops like Zara and H&M. 
• Music Tastes - Other artists they would like would be people like Lily Allen, Kate Nash, Adele, Amy Winehouse. 

In doing this, we are trying to better understand our audience in order to produce a music video that they are more likely to consume.

I put together a collage depicting our target audience:

Posted by Maria Grillo

Artist Profile - Sian Lewis

We discussed what we want our artist to be like. A profile of our artist can be found below:

Name: Sian Lewis
Stage Name: Elle Lefant
Age: 19
Status: Single
Location: She lives in Chiswick in West London with her flatmate and best friend Rachel.
Image: Quiet, humble. She is different with a sort of quirky "Diana Vickers' look.
Possible Costume: Faded denim shirt, leggings and lace up work boots.
History: She first recorded her songs on YouTube before being found by a small record label called Red Bedroom Records. She's always enjoyed singing but has had problems with her confidence ever since she got stage fright at a school talent show.
Fav quote: "I need to dream big because when it happens it's gonna happen real big"
Aspirations: She hopes to follow the likes of Adele and Lily Allen in the future.

'Runaways' marks her first single in the UK market.

Posted by Sonia Tedeku, Mirza Rahman and Maria Grillo

Wordle - Elle Lefant Runaways

This is a wordle of the lyrics to the song that we have chosen. We entered the lyrics to the song on the Wordle website and this generated the image above which allowed us to see the most occuring words in our song. From this we can see possible themes that we can base our narrative around. The most popular words in our song are SCARED, RUN and MAYBE. SCARED could represent the feelings of the artist in our music video. RUN could mean that in our video that the artist is constantly running away from something/someone and MAYBE could represent uncertainty in the artist's life.

This will be used as a stimulus for our brainstorm when we discuss narrative in our group meeting.

Posted by Maria Grillo

Meeting Log - Meeting 1

The meeting that took place was to discuss the things we had to do in developing our video. Our plans and ideas were:

To confirm locations

Decide on individual roles

Discuss our school timetables (for when to shoot)

Confirm profile image of our character
Discuss possible storylines for narrative

Outcome:
Scheduling Timetable-  We have planned to shoot our video on these days as we are all free at these times and days.Wednesdays 11am -1:15PM (We cannot go too far on this day as we would need to get back to college for our next lesson.). Saturdays 12pm-2pm, Mondays 3pm onwards. We need to exchange numbers so we can contact each other for any updates or problems in making these.

Locations- We discussed locations as to which would suite our narrative. The locations are Leigh-on sea, Liverpool street (pavement), London Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, Shadwell Basin. We need a bedroom as we will be shooting a 20 second narrative before the song starts to show a relationship breakup. We chose London Bridge because we wanted a setting which would make our character stand out and look odd with everything and everyone around them. This comes across as London Bridge is filled with Buissness poeple.  Leigh-on sea seems to have a nice pleasant scenary and a pebbled street. The scenary will be effective in showing isolation and reminiscing. As the locations have been confirmed, we will need to go on a location scouting trip. As location manager, I will ask Ms Pollard on how to get to Leigh-on-sea.

Narrative- We have decided that our music video will be narrative based as listening to the song it would be appropiate to show a couple splitting up.

Roles allocated- We also discussed roles within the group.

Posted by Sonia Tedeku

Our song - Runaways by Elle Lefant

After a long search we found a copyright free song that we all love. The song is called 'Runaways' and is by an artist called Elle Lefant.

Elle Lefant - Runaways Lyrics

I’m scared

And some what unprepared

You think the stars will align in their own time but

I don’t care

Give me a reason to satisfy your dreams I’ll change the seasons

Winter has lasted too long

We got it

Maybe I’m scared of being alone

But baby I’ve got to hold my own

‘Cause maybe love’s not what I expected

Got to run run run to the nearest exit

I think our time is just really long

Timing is everything don’t you know?

And I’m scared

So scared

I don’t think we can work it out

I’m scared

We got nothing to talk about

So scared

Go on you can scream and shout

I’m scared

I don’t think we can work it out

Maybe I’m scared of being alone

But baby I’ve got to hold my own

‘Cause maybe love’s not what I expected

Got to run run run to the nearest exit

Maybe I’m scared

(Maybe I’m scared)

Maybe I’m scared

(I’m scared)

Maybe I’m scared

(I’m scared)

Maybe I’m scared

Gotta run run run

Gotta run run run

Gotta run run run

Gotta run run run

Maybe I’m scared of being alone

But baby I’ve got to hold my own

‘Cause maybe love’s not what I expected

Got to run run run to the nearest exit

Maybe I’m scared of being alone

But baby I’ve got to hold my own

‘Cause maybe you’re not what I expected

Got to run run run to the nearest exit

I’ve been dreaming of a broken heart

Since the day we met

I’ve been dreaming of a broken heart

And I can’t forget


Posted by Maria Grillo

Timetables

Sonia's timetable

Mirza's Timetable

Maria's Timetable

As we will be filming during the school term, it is essential that we all know when we have free lessons so that we can all make a time for when to go out to film. We also need to consider how far we will be going as we will need to be back in time for our next lessons.

As we now know each individuals timetables we have decided to film on Mondays after school Wednesdays and we will use our saturdays to go to far away locations like Leigh-on-sea.

Genre Research - The Tings Tings - That's Not My Name

The genre of the music video from The Ting Tings "that's not my name' is in the genre indie pop. The Ting Tings are a group of artists consisting of a the lead singer which is the woman Katie White and a drummer Jules de Martino. This is usually expected in this genre as groups have their own assigned instrument. The video conforms to the genre Indie Pop because of the catchy beat and upbeat song. However it also subverts to other indie pop music videos because it is set in a studio where they move around and sing whereas in other music videos there may be a narrative. The music video looks as though they are performing on stage at a concert as they concentrate on the performance aspect of the song by singing and playing instruments.  Also lights are used effectively at the start of the video which creates a big impact and reinforces the idea that they are performing to an audience as this would be present if it was at a concert. They effectively make good use of color and lighting in their music video. The clothes they wear are bright colored clothing like neon colors. This makes their music video even more effective because their in a studio where the background is white so it stands out more. Also    Voyeurism is not used at all throughout the music video, because of this we get an image construction of the band as we get close up and long shots of each individual. From this we establish what they their style is like.

As this song has an upbeat and catchy rhythm it would be difficult to compare our ideas with the way they created their music video as we would like to include a narrative and voyeurism in our music video.

Posted by Sonia Tedeku

Genre Research - Adele - Make You Feel My Love

This video uses voyeurism. This is shown at the beginning and end of the video as it begins with a shot from outside of the artist's window, it's as though the audience is invited into her world. Her apartment window is central to the frame and shows that although she is surrounded by so many different windows she is still alone. This makes the audience feel almost sorry for her. When in the apartment, the camera is handheld which also adds to the notion of looking. The lack of lighting in the video gives it mysterious quality and makes the audience want to know more as although there is narrative in the video, the audience can only assume what is going on as the artist doesn't give much away. Although the audience is 'invited' into her world, she doesn't look at the camera once throughout the video and therefore doesn't acknowledge the fact that she has an audience. This suggests that she is still holding things back and not giving up all of herself.

We hope to use the notion of voyeurism in our video as this seems to be a common convention of videos of the indie pop genre.
Posted by Maria Grillo

Genre Research - Lily Allen - The Fear

In this music video the director uses the notion of voyeurism. We see this in the beginning approximately in the first 15 seconds as the camera is outside the singers caravan window. It is a view which seems as though somebody is looking through directly at her. The actual video itself seems to have a fairytale theme to it in the sense that the singer starts off in a caravan in the middle of an empty field and as the song progresses, we see her in a big mansion with lots of butlers, dresses and presents. The singer seems to represent the girls in the fairytales, the ones who start off poor but in the end they get everything they wanted. Also, the video reflects the lyrics. When she starts off in the caravan, she says that she wants 'to be rich and have lots of money' and then when the scene changes to her in the mansion she says she doesn't know "whats right or real" this is shown through the dancing butlers and this kind of reflects the confusion in her mind. Also the song is very conversational as majority of the time in the video she is speaking to the camera. In  our music video of runaway we hope to have the singer singing directly to the camera as though they are having a conversation.

Posted by Mirza Rahman on 07/10/2010

Introducing the Brilliant Minds Behind Tick-Tock Ent.

From left to right: Maria, Sonia and Mirza.