Institution Research

What do record labels look for in new artists

Talent- to make it to the top you need to have unique feature as either a band or artist. Record labels will want you to be unique as there are loads of people who can sing but will they sell out venues? 

Product- if an artist has the best products they will more than likely be successful. Take DJ's for example, the better quality equipment and software they have, the greater success they are likely to have. However with talent and artists that are unique,some of them make the most out of what they have. An example of this is Seasick Steve who plays instruments he has made himself out of objects he has picked up in the street. Giving a unique aspect as well as making the most out of the product.

Placement- Different artists have different ways of selling their music. As the time has changed, so have the ways the music is distributed  gone are the days of vinyl records, even CD's are going down in sales. The modern way is for digital downloads through suites such as iTunes, Amazon, Google Music etc. As this is such a big, successful and growing market, the sensible thing would be to sell James Couleurs music online, with CD's produced. 

Promotion- Now that  social media is accessible on every phone and computer a LOT of people  are hooked with finding out when their favorite artist is releasing music or tour dates. This is not any different with James Couleur.  He has personal instagram, twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages. 

Transition- This is where you see the artists going from someone who is known but not a massive success and then something massive happens. This could either be a single that becomes really popular, a live performance that gets lots of views or a popular artist giving you backing.

James Couleurs Image Inspiration

In our video we plan to  show a journey where our main artist goes from being in a dark place in his life; to a happy, fun, exciting new part of his life. 
We plan to show this with two different visuals in our music video. Firstly we will have our artist in a dark place, therefore our costume choice for him is key. The other visual is the use of powder paint and the removal of layers to show the completion of his journey to a better time of his life.
As our artist is an Indie Rock artist they need to hold a very distintive look and one in which we need to get right in our music video for our video to look professional.

Here are some costume ideas and images we have taken inspiration from...

This is one of the images that have taken inspiration from. removing the sunglasses, I feel that this image would be great as it fits in with the dark and dull shots for our video, with the hat hiding his full identity. Then when the hat comes off this resembles a sense of release and freedom when you get the bright, colourful paint shots.

This is a slightly different image to the first, however I would class this as being a stereotypical indie look. If you look closely you can see the under the denim jacket the model is also wearing a hoodie with the hood up. Yet again this could be a perfect image when filming the dark and dull shots of the video.

This is a completely different image to the first two; we have taken inspiration here for use in the paint shots. Here you see more of the artist as he is wearing a vest, his identity isn't as covered up. This could therefore go on to give the impression that he is happy with his life now, using the colours from the paint to back this up. 

Time lapse Research

Equipment that is needed:
Tripod
Camera
Moving background

When filming a time lapse its important that you overshoot as much as possible. When everything is sped up in the time lapse you will find out that the footage you have filmed, is over in a matter of seconds. For our music video we are planning on having a time-lapse for about 10 seconds. Therefore we will need to ensure that we film for at least 1 hour minimum to give us enough footage.

Here is a time lapses that we could give us help and guidance to making our own.



This time-lapse above just shows how effective they can be when they are filmed well. Obviously we will not be able to find the beautiful scenery you see in this time-lapse, however the idea of the time changing going from night to day is one we are aiming for. Also the stationary object within the shot whilst the world moves arround them at speed what we are going for aswell. This will hopefull be acheived with people walking past as well as the sun setting in the timeplase sequence.

Website Inspiration

Similar artists and genres - Covers and Websites

 

This is the website for 'Jake Bugg', an indie rock solo artist born in Nottingham. At the top of the website it has headings with links to his videos, gigs, photos, tour dates and contacts. Also at the top  there is links to his twitter page, facebook page and then his you tube channel.

This is the website for Ben Howard, a solo artist. On his website he has a picture of himself and links to his newest album and single. He has no links to anywhere else on the website, just his homepage has the dates of his upcoming gigs. He only has one social media link and this is for twitter. At the bottom of his web page he has video of his new single.

 

This is the website of Ed Sheeran. On his website you can see the background a lime green and has black elements to it. The big X you see is actually the cover for his latest album he released. On this website he has links to his twitter and I tunes page.There is a link at the top where you can continue into the website which gives you more information on tour dates, latest videos and what he is actually doing.

Track Pitch

Here is the track pitch that we presented to the class about our ideas that we have for our three songs that we will eventually turn into our final project.

The feedback that we got from the class has lead us to the decision to go with Bastille's son 'These Streets' as we had the most ideas from this video and it sounded the most realistic good looking video that we would be able to create.

Digipak Research

We got inspiration for our artist James Couleur from a variety of different artists, Bastille is one of the bands we used fro inspiration as they are an indie rock band which is the same genre as our artist, however James Couleur is a Solo Artist so some of their ideas will not overlap with James Couleur.

Another similar Band are The Killers. The Killers are a very famous, popular and well known Indie Rock band; who have been successful over the years. The Killers have evolved and changed as the years have gone on. Whith this comes different albums made and therefore different digipaks have been created. Here are some of their digipacks...

As you can see the two Digipaks are very different, the second digipak focuses more on the the band as performers and as a band while the first one takes more of a conceptional theme to it.

We have planned to use lots of colour and powder paint in our Music Video. Along with this and our music genre that we are planning to use being Indie Rock Coldplay matched this perfectly down. Their album Mylo Xyloto is filled and covered with vibrant colours. Here is Coldplays Mylo Xyloto digipak:

As you can see the title of the album is right in the middle of the Digipack and the rest is filled with colour. This is in complete contrast to the other digipacks that Coldplay usually produce. A unique twist to this album is in the graffiti words you can see in the background of the album cover; Some of the graffiti if you look closely links into the lyrics in their songs. An example of this is in the top right hand corner of the album.You can see the words 'Everytear Waterfall' this links into the song on the album "Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall'.



This is the back of Coldplay's Digipak from the album Mylo Xyloto. As you can see the back of the Digipak is full of colour and graffiti. We hope to take inspiration from this for James Couleur's album, not only from the range of colours used but also to concurrent theme that runs throughout.

Here is the CD for Coldplays album Mylo Xyloto. Yet again the colourful print gives us great inspiration for our video which we will be reflecting on in our digipak aswell.

History Of Music Videos

The way that music videos are created - distributed, consumed, and the content they contain has drastically changed from the early examples in the early 1900's to the near porn examples the teenage population consumes in the current time.

The early example of a music video was by Bessie Smith with her song St. Louis Blues which was released on the 1st of June 1929. However wasn't shown in theaters until 1932. It was a slow paced video with footage of a orchestra. it was later turned into a 16 minute film as well. this is a very rare occurrence today for a song to be made into a movie. Could you imagine a feature length version of Miley Cyrus's wrecking ball?!

Tony Bennett's Stranger In Paradise was released in 1956. The music video for this was filmed in Hyde Park in London and was shown on TV stations across the UK and US. This medium of distribution was so successful that it paved the way for the creation of TV stations such as MTV and Top Of the Pops. Bennett claimed this was the first example of music videos being broadcast in this way.

The next noteworthy music video was by the Beatles in 1964. A Hard Days Night was hugely influential and has inspired many contemporary artists and the style of this video is still used today.

The Beatles later released Penny Lane in 1967. This was the first time an artist used codes and conventions in their music videos such as dramatic lighting, tilted camera angles and rhythmic editing. This video has lead the way for complex and dramatic music videos that we are used to today.

In 1970 The Jackson Five released I Want You Back. This lead the for dramatic change in the music video industry and lead to "Cross Cutting" from stage to story line. This was revolutionized by the invention and development of the 'Chroma-Key" technique.

Queens Bohemian Rhapsody was released in 1980 and paved the way for a new era of music video. With the introduction of Top Of The Pops which promoted their music and thus created a competition between artists for the first time.

MTV was launched in 1981 and the first video aired was Video killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. This led the way froward for high budget, large production music videos. More editing techniques were developed such as 'Over Laying'.  MTV was responsible for the success of artists like Madonna as it played a central role in their marketing.

1982 saw the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller music video. This video was pioneering in the fact that it had a plot and almost was like a mini movie. It was shown in cinemas globally to a massive release and was hugely successful.

1985 A'Ha released Take On Me. This was the first music video to use a animated / live - action combination. This editing technique is called 'Rotoscoping' and took 16 weeks to complete. This was a prime example of how the main source of promotion used to be the videos type as appose to its content.

1997 Smack my bitch up was released by the prodigy. this music video was hugely controversial  as it is a first person video that we watch do stereotypical male occurrences, such as go out drinking, taking drugs, touching women. it is then revealed at the end of the video that is it a woman who did all of these things, including a very graphic representation of  lesbian sex. which was hugely controversial in the 1990's which consequently led to the video being banned from broadcast.

 Lady Gaga exploded into the music industry in 2008 with her debut album Fame. Audience's responded to her with a love hate attitude. Lady Gaga's image was something unseen by the music industry, making her name for extravagant entrances - in eggs- and wearing unusual statement clothing items, notably her famous meat dress. She then became the self appointed vigilante for gay rights, regularly attending various gay pride events across the globe.

Goodwin's theory

Narrative


Andrew Goodwin says that Music videos can fall into Three different categories. The video above is an example of a Music Video That fits into the Narrative category. This means that the music video follows or tells a story. Walks Off the Earth's video 'Gang Of Rythum' shows a story line about the band escaping from a prison using sounds that match the video - such as the breaking of rocks as a beat - to aid in the story telling.

Concept


Concept is very different from a narrative music video. There is no story to follow and often large parts of the video will contain stylized movements or graphics. In this video the song is the same as the narrative video however it is recreated only using sounds they can make with a car. The only camera movement here is simply a pan arround the car.
Performace



An example of a performance Video is Beyonce's single - Single ladies. This is a very famous music video, with no narrative to it it is only Three girls, dancing and Beyonce singing. This contrasts vastly to the other two videos where performance is seen but isnt such a strong theme in the video.

Star Profile

Music Video Analysis

This video begins with two 'twinks' wearing only swimwear speaking in the sterytipically homosexual 'camp' mannor. talking about issues such as the size of their 'butt looking big in this' thus introducing the main theme of the song about the size and shape of the male beheind. At the start they also compare themselfs to 'rappers girlfreinds' and wish that 'the kardasians could donate a few inches to me' - relating to buttox size. this over-sexulization of men in this video is aimed at the LGBT community which is unusal for a music video, however this one was made by a gay vlogger on a shoe string budget.

The video then goes on to approch the issue of 'stuffing' and telling people to 'stop stuffing' promoting the body empowerment image, encouraging people to be proud of what they have, in this case an ass. The video also touches on the gay dating app 'Grindr' and its over use by the LGBT community. The video then goes on to the three male actors 'twerking' over a mini cooper again oversexulising the male body.

The finial chours verse is peformed in a swimming pool with the 3 males diving in very short swimwear before a shot of the swimwear floating in the water with no occupants, insuinating that sexual tomfoolery is at hand.

Music Videos

Male Gaze and Strong Dominant Female


Here is Robbie Williams Music Video 'candy' which follows this contorlling female casuing events to happen around her but never effect her. The power in this video is also shown when the female walks over the men.
Homosexual


This Music video contains 3 stertipical homosexuals seen in tight clothing / little clothing created for the homosexual market. The video is a bit toungue in cheek and gives off the impression that is wasnt created to be taken serioursly.

Female Gaze / Voyeurism

this hugly successful music video sees a girl lusting after a male - watching him from a window with out him noticing to begun with, licking her lips as he takes off his shirt.


Exhibitionism


Single ladies by Beyonce is a simple music video, three women in very short high skirts and high heels dancing provocatively to the camera, with many leg lifts and bottom shots.

Audience Questions

How do you consume music?
Every morning my alarm turn on heart essex and i wake up to whatever music they play. This is then followed by the radio in the car on the way to sixth form. Im not too picky on my pusic choices, as long as it has a fast beat, uplifting tones and easy on the ears i will probaly listen to it - in a desperaite attempt to wake up before i have to walk out of the car.

Who with?

Whoever im in the car with on the way in, If there is music playing at parties then the people there, however most of the time i listen to music through head phones when travelling on buses / trains etc.

How?

Car Radio, alarm clock, Spotify / youtube, Phone storage.

Why?

• To Wake Up
• To help pass the time on journeys.

Banana Phone

In groups we filmed the shots used in the video and we then had to edit them individually. This is  my version:

This was the first time we have had to fit something to music and really focus on whats happening and ensuring that it links and matches the action. We were given some specific shots to get. These were:
To film a person sitting down in front of a camera and match them through the monitor, Using a cloning effect to create the same person multiple times in the same shot, to experiment with depth of field, some of this worked well however when we tried blurring the background the banana had to be so close to the lens to make it work that it wasn't effective.

Working with my group I think we worked effectively together and have produced a good series of shots together.

The purpose of completing this task was not only to gear us up for our final task but also to gauge how well we work in a group. 

What Music Means To Me

Dry the river - No rest

In class today we were played this song but not shown the video and had to listen to the music and then say what we would do for a music video, below are my opinions and also the classes opinions. Here are the results:

Relationships
-Wedding
-Photos of them single
-reverse time line leading to divorse

Old Pesent
Searching for gold
Chased by roman soliders
Chased by guards
All for love

Singer walking away from camera on dry road in spanish village
Goes to beach
Flashbacks to relationship
Girl eneters and lays next to them

Slow paced man on his own singing

Urban london pavements
Close up on man singing walking slowly whilst everythig else moves quickly around him
Walks past window
Sees ex in window with new lover
Bangs on window singing but cannot hear

Man walking through maze / throns - reveling band.
Band singing live in performance / journey

Man walking - body parts fall off slowly until there is nothing but ash left
Everyone around him dosent notice

Man close up of face sky beheind
Band playing in air in slowmotion
Camera turns around man
Woman floats past in air

Balck and white image of vocalist
Back ground with woman down isle / turns to colour / woman turns around and runs away
hes left alone.

Man walking though house looking at old photo
Starts breaking stuff

Shots from different situations of people in different stages in a relationship ends with break up.