Music Video Ideas

one theme we plan on using is the gothic/ nightmarish fary tale.
ideas we have had are things such as an alice in wonderland theme:
Master shot of someone dressed as a gothic style alice, walking through a hall in the style of the hearts. castle with a throne at the end and hearts cards falling from the celing.
shot of her walking through a corridor with people with rabbit, cat ears walking the other way (not being able to see their faces).
shots of alice siting under a tree/ rosebush singing (possibly looking towards the sky).
sitting at the end of deserted picnic table with cutlery, saucers and plates strewn everywere.

Analysis of an artist: James Blunt (early career)

since our artist is indie acoustic i chose to look at James Blunt as he was similar earlier in his career. the main area im going to look at is the look of his music videos.

like most songs of the genre the general tone is quite mellow and calm. there is a strong theme of love or being in a relationship, all of this is backed up by the low tones and gloomy lighting. you also see shots of the 2 lovers together and apart in what seems to be a similar room, one difference seems to be that when james is alone the room is dark, but when their together or when his lover is alone the room is light, this could symbolize that she is the light of his life. The narrative is also quite evident as their is clearly a story about heartbreak running throughout the entire video. the way it shows them together and then apart gives an impression of slowly slipping apart.

S.T.E.P

Style - How are you posting this? Picture form? Prezi form? All text? Hyperlink? Video Clip?

Topic - What have you found/done?

Exploration - Why is this important? What is the effect?

Production - How will this new information affect your production?

Ideal audience member

Ideal Audience Member - Indie Pop


Name: Laura Brown 
Gender: Female
Age: 19
Hair: Blonde/Brown 
        lose curls - middle parting/fringe
Makeup: Dark eyes, pale natural lips, light blusher
Clothing: Lose Dress, black leather jacket, Ankle boots, shoulder bag

Fashion: Reads magazines, follows trends
Celebrities: Alexa Chung is her main icon 

Interested: Indie music, friends, festivals (Mainstream), Music gigs, Independent bands 
Films: Trainspotting, Never let me go, Breakfast at Tiffany's 

Education: University, Art student 
Bands: Velvet Underground, Happy Mondays, The kooks, Cage the Elephant 

Internet: Facebook, Especially YouTube, Owns a Blackberry

Ideal audience member

Ideal Audience Member - Indie Pop


Name: Laura Brown 
Gender: Female
Age: 19
Hair: Blonde/Brown 
        lose curls - middle parting/fringe
Makeup: Dark eyes, pale natural lips, light blusher
Clothing: Lose Dress, black leather jacket, Ankle boots, shoulder bag

Fashion: Reads magazines, follows trends
Celebrities: Alexa Chung is her main icon 

Interested: Indie music, friends, festivals (Mainstream), Music gigs, Independent bands 
Films: Trainspotting, Never let me go, Breakfast at Tiffany's 

Education: University, Art student 
Bands: Velvet Underground, Happy Mondays, The kooks, Cage the Elephant 

Internet: Facebook, Especially YouTube, Owns a Blackberry

Our chosen song

This song is by an artist called Audrianna Cole, i am currently awaiting confirmation hat we can use this song but so far it looks like we can.

How camera work is used in videos

>>AWAITING PREZZI (ON ANOTHER BLOG)<<

Research and Understanding



"Coldplay are an English alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London.^[3] After forming Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish.^[4] Will Champion joined as a drummer, backing vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, completing the line-up. Manager Phil Harvey is often considered an unofficial fifth member.^[5] The band renamed themselves "Coldplay" in 1998,^[6] before recording and releasing three EPs; Safety in 1998, Brothers & Sisters as a single in 1999 and The Blue Room in the same year. The latter was their first release on a major label, after signing to Parlophone"- Wikapedia

Coldplay are arguably one of the most famouse alternative rock bands and the gained fame with their single "yellow"-

the music video is just him walking down an english beach with english weather and he dosnt look partiuarly impressive of star like, and it is quite easy for the audience to relate to him. they dont apear to have used any lighting and it looks quite gloomy and misserable, again this makes him seem fairly normal and down to earth. the clothes he is wearing look like the sort of thing that anyone could own (coat and jeans). The way the camera work is done makes it look like a home movie (handheld camera).

One of their most popular albums is "A Rush of Blood to The Head"

On the album cover they apear to be throwing away their instruments which could link to the title as they could be throwing their instruments away and blame it on "a rush of blood to the head". They are all wearing normal clothes which could like to them apearing as normal (a major part of alternate rock is D.I.Y. tracks).

One of their most popular music videos is Viva La Vida

the most noticable theme in this music video is the link to french revolution, the band apear to be on a painting that look quite old and torn and they all appear to bwe wearing a mix of napoleonic era military and civilian clothing. The colours have been edited so that the band look like a mix of pencil and paint (goes to pencil when in shadow) and in the background you can see one of the most well known revolutionary pictures of a woman holding the french revolutionary flag with a mix of civilians coming up behind her.

"Jonas Erik Altberg (born 22 December 1984 in Halmstad, Sweden), better known by his stage name Basshunter, is a Swedish singer-songwriter, record producer and DJ. He is best known for his number one hits "Boten Anna", "Dota", "Now You're Gone" and "All I Ever Wanted". Basshunter has so far released a total of three albums, two of which have been released in the UK, and a total of 14 singles. Recently, his latest U.K. single, "Saturday", was released in July 2010, and he also competed in hit reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother in January 2010. His song "Sverige" was also used as Sjölunden's International Day song in 2008."- Wikapedia

He 1st started producing music under the name of Basshunter in 2003 and brought out the album "The Bassmachine" in 2004 on his own website. In 2006 he brought ot his 1st big single "botten anna" while sighned with Warner Music. In 2007 he releaced a re-recording called "Now Your Gone" which had entirely re-writen lyrics to appeal to a foreighn audience.

Most likely one of his most famouse music videos is Now Your Gone:


The video over all seems to revlove around club culture, e.g. going out to clubs every night, women in revealing clotheng etc (it could be argued that this video is aimed towards younger men more than any other group because of this). there dose seem to be a story lineto the video (if you see 2 other music videos by basshunter then they all follow one story) and its about a man and a women who are presumably in a relationship but going through relationship problems. You see one of his friend ask him to come to a Basshunter gig which makes the audience relate to as they could be in that situation.


the reason i chose to look at one of his live concerts is because they are quite simmilar to his videos. And the fact he is a DJ also make the fact he dose concerts interesting. But even at concerts there are still close links to the club genre in the dancing girls, lasers, lights and alot of interaction with the audience.

"Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972),^[1] better known by his stage name Eminem or his alter ego Slim Shady, is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. Eminem's popularity brought his group project, D12, to mainstream recognition. As well as being a member of D12, Eminem is also one half of the Detroit hip hop duo Bad Meets Evil, with Royce da 5'9". Eminem is one of the best-selling artists in the world. He has been listed and ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time by many magazines including the Rolling Stone magazine which has ranked him 82nd on its list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.^[2] The same magazine has declared him The King of Hip Hop.^[3] Including his work with D12 and Bad Meets Evil, Eminem has achieved ten number one albums on the Billboard 200. He has also sold more than 33 million track downloads and 39.6 million albums in the United States alone."- Wikapedia



This was one of his earlier videos and at the time he had a reputation in his videos for being weird, odd and funny. In this particular video you see him take the mickey out of loads of different icons: Batman, marvel, Ossama Bin Laden, Elvis Presley, Buddism, chat shows. the list goes on. The video looks more like a TV show- it apeard in the album "the eminem show". his earlier videos appealed to more of a younger audience as they were the sort  they were the sort of things kids liked.



this video is alot later on and its completely different to "without me" as its alot more seriouse in the lyrics and the video. the video is also done in a strange way, its like he is fighting his alter ego-Slim Shady who is more concerned with his carrer than his family. It even seems to have an apology from Eminem himself to his fans "And to the fans, I’ll never let you down again, I’m back
I promise to never go back on that promise, in fact
Let’s be honest, that last Relapse CD was “ehhhh”
Perhaps I ran them accents into the ground
Relax, I ain’t going back to that now" he seems to be saying he wont go back to how he was (obcessed with fame) there are also alot of sub messages and at the end he seems to keep on mentoining his daughter (who he suposedly hasnt benn doing his fatherly duty to. This song was also a main song in the album "Recovery" which could symbolise Eminem coming back and moving away from Slim Shady.

finding a song

I have contacted several artists that our group found on the internet and i have had responce from one of them (we just need to decide which of her songs we want to use).

AS coursework essay

One of the main objectives with our AS coursework was to create a sense of darkness and hostility and we did this by editing the lighting and contrast in our clips once we had uploaded them, as for the sound we added fairly dark and intimidating music that built up towards the end. For the clothing we chose to have a man with fairly plain clothing and we had a group of youths dressed in hoodies and tracksuits with the hoods up to create a feeling of hostility and malice. For the camera work we used lots of sweeping and tracking shots to follow the man through the village. We tried to blend the shots together but due to technical issues we were unable to do it all the way through so we had to make do (but the end result was good enough).

Things we could have done better were that it wasnt realistic (we should have coriographed the assasult more) and we should have included more things like more abusive language and dialogue at the begining could have developed the characters more.

Like any other thriller the audience wanted suspence in our opening which i thing we delivered with the long build up to the assault. We also wanted to get across the general story without giving everything away which  i am confident we did well.  

Conventions of Drum and Bass

"Drum and bass (/ˈdrʌm ənd ˈbeɪs/ drum-ənd-bayss) (also written as drum 'n' bass and commonly abbreviated to D&B or DnB) is a type of electronic music which emerged in the mid 1990s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats (typically between 160–180 bpm, occasional variation is noted in older compositions), with heavy bass and sub-bass lines. Drum and bass began as an offshoot of the United Kingdom rave scene of the very early 1990s. Over the first decade of its existence, the incorporation of elements from various musical genres led to many permutations in its overall style." - Wikapedia

Drum and bass is one of the most common forms of music found at clubs and raves alike because its heavy beat, which makes it easy to dance to. Drum and Bass, also known as D&B is usualy fast paced with an adverage of 170 BPM and can go as high as 190 and less commonly as low as 140 BPM. Mixing points usualy begin or end with a drop (the point at which there is a change of track or rythm).

Music videos for D&B are usualy centered around clubs (as that was were the music was desighned to be played) and usualy show the DJ at the Decks infront of a completely full dance floor. D&B music videos make extensive used of strobe lighting, lasers and complex arrays of coloured lights.

The camera work is usually low, wide angle shots of the dance floor with close-ups of the DJ and dancers. The clubs are usually set in famous club areas such as Ibiza, and the most of the time the videos are shot at actual clubs during a peak times. The low angle shots are not used to make people seem weak as in other genres, but mainly to show the amount of people (although in some videos the DJ is shown in high angel shots but weather this is to give the perspective from the dance floor, or to make the DJ seem in control isn’t clear). The messages from D&B are usually about being lively and free (when teenagers go on their 1^st holiday with friends its usually to a club area) and you could say that there is a message about bonding (chatting up the opposite sex). The people seen in the videos are usually quite young (late teens to mid 20’s) and are portrayed as outgoing (the general stereotypical partygoer).