G324 - Music Video Brief

25 word brief of our music video:

Journey of memory through Polaroid pictures showing childhood, growing and change performance shots used to signify remembering. Rekindling old friendships through the use of pictures.

Why the song/ artist will work for us:

The artist will work for us as we can replicate and adapt there style into our videos. We are also both familiar with a lot of Frank Turners work and fans of his music so know what kind of conventions he uses in his videos. We chose the song because we felt there is already a clear narrative to it and we agree with the message it is getting across, which has not really been touched before as the initial  video is mostly performance so we have free rain to experiment and reflect the lyrics in a new way that has not yet been done but is still true to the artist.

Post by Samuel Skinner And Olivia Calver

G324 - Initial Ideas For Narrative

After listening to our chosen song "Polaroid Picture" a few times we started to brainstorm initial ideas for our music video, including possible locations, characters, storyline, target audience and shots that we have seen before which we could use. The mind map below highlights all of the initial ideas we came up with whilst the mood board indicates the sort of look we are aiming towards with our video.

Initial Ideas Mind Map:

Mind Map created by Olivia Calver with GoConqr

Initial Ideas Mood Board:

The mood board is of our initial ideas for the kind of imagery we expect to see in our music video. The imagery found either reflects shot ideas directly or classic folk conventions that we may use.

Mood board created by Sam Skinner 

The annotated lyrics are our initial ideas for each scene in draft form that we derived from the lyrics. We have annotated the lyrics with our initial ideas for a scene for each verse of the song. We have done this so we already have a rough plan for the narrative to make it faster and easier to produce the storyboard.

Post by Samuel Skinner And Olivia Calver

G324 - Considering and Choosing Song

The final decision that w had to make before starting to produce ideas for our music video was what song we would create the music video for. This was a relatively easy decision for us to make as we created a system to help us make our decision. This system required us to answer 3 questions for each song;

1. How much do you like the song?
2. How easily can you interpret a narrative and is this different from it's current music video?
3. Does it's current music video do the song justice, in your opinion?

We applied this to 5 of Frank Turner's songs before making our final decision.

Poetry of the Deed:


1. Sam and I both really like this song due to its fast beat and honest message. However, we both agreed that we feel like we could easily become bored of the song which would create issues when it came to spending lots of time with it.
2. Neither of us were able to come up with a strong narrative that would both suit this video and upstage it's current video due to the simplicity of the lyrics not leading themselves towards creating a narrative.
3. We believe that the current music video has been constructed really nicely and reflects the theme of the song extremely well. It helps to establish Turner's style and indicates the relaxed folk theme of the song.

The Way I Tend To Be:


1. Sam and I love this song due to it's popularity within the folk genre, its catchy lyrics and its simple melody. We both feel that we would be able to spend a lot of time working with the song without getting bored or irritated by it.
2. We both agreed, after listening to this song, that whilst we disliked the narrative that had been constructed for this song, that we found it difficult to come up with a different narrative. We liked the idea of purposefully reflecting the lyrics a lot within the video but couldn't decide on how we would be able to do this in a way that creates a strong narrative.
3. We believe that the music video that has already been created for this song does not do it justice as there is so much more that could potentially have been done with it. However, as we have no better ideas that we would be able to produce, this is something will have to accept.

Photosynthesis:


1. Neither Sam nor myself particularly like this song as we feel that it is too repetitive and would easily aggravate after listening to it more than twice within a short period of time. This would create many issues at every stage of the process.
2. Sam and I both felt that we would be able to create a narrative that focused on Turner growing up and by reflecting the experiences he mentions along the way such as his "angry adolescent years". This would be able to reflect the nature of the song accurately and could help to play on Turner's star image.
3. We agreed that the music video that has been created for this song does not do it justice in any way as we believe that whilst it reflects his most common style, the use of the school children was unnecessary and actually ended up taking away from what was being said within the song. Not only this, but it didn't have a strong enough connection with the lyrics and therefore seemed like the construction hadn't been fully thought out before the making of the video.

Polaroid Picture:


1. Both Sam and I really like this song as the message behind it resonates well with us both and we feel like the lyrics are really catchy and stick in our minds. This is good as it should prevent us from becoming fed up with the song during the filming and editing process.
2. Upon listening to the song for the first time, Sam and I were able to picture a narrative far different from that of the current music video. Unintentionally, our inital ideas matched up with each others and we had many of the same concepts which we wanted to develop.
3. We believe that whilst the music video Frank Turner has created for the song is well made and includes some very interesting shots, it doesn't do the song justice. This is because we believe that it would have been incredibly easy as well as more interesting to create a narrative for such a powerful song, rather than by going down Turner's route and using mostly performance shots.

Vital Signs:


1. Whilst we both like this song, we agree that we prefer some of the other songs and therefore we would rather work with one of those when it comes to making our music video.
2. Sam and I were both able to come up with different narratives for this music video, however they were very different from one another. Whilst Sam was focusing on creating a narrative focused around how Frank welcomes death, I was focusing on creating a narrative that focused on the leading line of "This country is my canvas - I leave paint trails as I go." Sam felt that the video could follow Frank through the last day of his life which ends in his unexpected death due to the line "I'll be dead but never dying." I saw the video as potentially following this narrative however ensuring that as Turner moves through his last day, he leaves a paint trail behind him. With this being the case, the video could have been filmed in black and white whilst the paint trail could have been left in various bright colours so that at the end of the video, we could pull out until the camera looked as if it were looking down on the earth, allowing us to view the painted image he left behind. However, we would not have the budget to be able to pull this off effectively.
3. We both agreed that the narrative of the music video is effective yet does not suit the nature of the song. We felt that this was therefore a poorly executed decision and would have changed many things about the video. We also commented on how we thought the black and white filming could also have been used to a better effect.

After completing this exercise, we realised that the best combination of answers came from Polaroid Picture and therefore, this is the song that we have decided to create a music video for. We have many narrative ideas already and due to our love of the song are willing to listen to it repeatedly in order to produce the best results.

Posted by Olivia Calver

G324 - Considering and Choosing Artist

The next big decision that we had to make before creating our music video was which artist we would like to make a music video for. This was a much easier decision for us to make as neither of us knew many folk artists and therefore our choice was limited. To help us decide which artist we would make a music video for, we looked at their music videos and album artworks to help us to determine which artist's style we must wanted to both adapt and encompass within our own work.

Tracy Chapman

Album Artwork:
Tracy Chapman's album artwork has always appeared very basic, despite their complex construction. The majority of her album covers include images of herself, whilst others focus on elements integral to the album, such as the close up of a sunflower for her "New Beginning" album. This would be easy to reflect within our own work. However, we feel like this could potentially limit  what we could do with the digipak and magazine advert as we feel that our work should reflect the artist's own style.

Music Videos:
Prior to becoming signed to Atlantic Records, Tracy Chapman did not produce music videos for her singles. Instead, she relied upon people uploading footage of her live performances to YouTube. However, upon becoming signed, Tracy Chapman also began to create music videos. Arguably, the record company had a big influence on the videos created due to Chapman's evident change in style.


Tracy Chapman's videos now revolve around a clearly structured narrative which attempts to reflect the meaning behind the song. However, the narrative still remains simple in order to retain Chapman's primary image of a down-to-earth, passionate folk artist. We feel that whilst this style suits Tracy Chapman's image and music, much like the album artwork, we feel like this could be extremely restrictive as we would not like to distance ourselves from the artist's own style.

Frank Turner


Album Artwork:
Frank Turner's album artwork style has changed and developed vastly over time. He initially used basic graphics to promote albums such as Poetry of the Deed and England Keep My Bones before starting to incorporate photographs of himself within the artwork. His album artworks now tend to combine the two and his most recent album, Positive Songs for Negative People, was more focussed on photography and personality than graphics. This would be interesting for us to adopt and adapt as it gives us a lot of freedom when creating our digipak. We would be able to combine photographs of the artist with digitally designed graphics without deviating from Turner's style.

Music Videos:
Frank Tuner's music videos are greatly varied. Some are entirely performance based, others are entirely narrative based, many of them combine the two whilst a few of his less popular songs have been given videos with neither which rather focus on Turner's touring life and the production of the song. This gives us a huge scope for our own video as there is no restriction on video content. Instead, the style of the videos is what makes them evident Turner's. We feel that this style would be easy to adopt which would allow us to successfully create a music video reflective of Frank Turner's own creations.



Mumford & Sons

Album Artwork:
Mumford and Sons' album artwork has always been extremely simplistic. Even their artwork for Babel, with it's busy background has a very basic notion behind it. This reflects their music style and helps to portray their personality. Despite easy to replicate or adapt slightly in our own work, we feel like this style is not interesting enough for us. Despite enjoying their music, we feel that it is important to choose an artist that would enable us to push ourselves in all aspects of the coursework. This includes the creation for our digipak and magazine advert. With such basic concepts in their artwork, we believe that we could not fully showcase our own skills if we were to choose to focus on Mumford & Sons.

Music Videos:
Mumford & Sons's music videos are either built around a strong narrative or entirely performance based. Some of their videos attempt to combine the two, such as the Hopeless Wanderer video below, however these always end up much less successful than their other videos. This would mean that if we were to construct a video reflective of their style, we would have to decide on whether we would rather create an entirely performance based video or a completely narrative based video. We feel that this would open up quite a few possibilities in terms of our music video but would prevent us from being able to intertwine performance with narrative whilst still remaining true to Mumford & Son's style.



Decision:
After completing this research into different artists, we have decided to create a music video for Frank Turner. This is because we feel we would easily be able to both adopt and adapt his style to great effect and feel that we have the most freedom in terms of our ancillary task.

Posted by Olivia Calver

G324 - Music Video Findings

We have learnt that in music videos certain codes and conventions are important and repeated across the board. The following theories are used in music video to build a strong narrative and a video that connects with the audience.

Goodwin came up with a theory that music videos all contain at least one or all of seven conventions in them.
The Seven conventions are:

1. All videos demonstrate certain genre characteristics. for example male boy bands and female singers all use dance routines, rappers will throw loads of gang signs.


2. There is always a relationship between lyrics and visual. it will either illustrate or contradict the words.


3. there is a relationship between the music and the visuals. This could be how its edited or the movement in the piece in time to the music or cut to the beat.


4. The demands of the record label that need for lots of close ups of the artist in order to promote them.

5. The artist may develop modifies or iconography that recut across their work. It has a repetitive visual style.

6. There are frequently reference to the notion of looking. There will be TV screens or video cameras. or References to looking at a female body for pleasure.




7. There are intertextual references mostly film but also other music videos or in some cases popular culture.

We have also learnt about Todorov and how a narrative will typically have five stages:
Equilibrium, where every thing is at peace and nothing is wrong.
Distribution where a problem or challenge arises.
Realisation, this is when the protagonist realise the problem and everything is in chaos.
Restoration where the protagonist tackle the problem and try to restore the chaos.
And then equilibrium again where the problem is solved and every thing returns to normal.

We have also learnt about Vladimir Propp who developed a character theory for studying media texts and productions, which indicates that there were 7 broad character types, which could be applied to other media's:

1. The villain (struggles against the hero)
2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)
3. The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)
4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)
5. The false hero (perceived as good character in beginning but emerges as evil)
6. The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)
7. The hero AKA victim/seeker/paladin/winner, reacts to the donor, weds the princess.

This will help us make our music video as from study them we can make sure to include as many theories as possible in our own this in turn should help to make our video best it can be.

Post By Samuel Skinner

G324 - Chosen Genre Mind Map - Folk

Mind Map created by Olivia and Sam with GoConqr

By creating this mind map, we were able to consider the most prominent conventions that are used in Folk music videos. This will help us when it comes to making our own music video as we will be able to refer back to the mind map to ensure that our music video incorporates these conventions, and therefore fits the genre of the music.

Posted by Sam Skinner and Olivia Calver

G324 - Target Audience Questionnaire and Analysis

In order to determine our target audience, we created a questionnaire to allow us to gather information about who would be most likely to watch a folk music video. This will allow us to target an audience who actually would like a folk music video and will help is to decide what key aspects they would like to see within the video. The photograph below shows the questions that we asked.



After having given out questionnaires to a small range of people, we collected the results and analysed them in order to determine our target audience. The following photos show some of the best questionnaire responses we received.

One of our main overall findings was that it became obvious that a lot of people seem confuse folk music with country music. This will create issues for us overall as some of the questionnaires had to be discounted from the statistics. However, we still have a few good questionnaires that give us an idea of what we need to include in our video and what the audience expect.

Question 1: Gender
When questioning people we could potentially choose to be our potential audience, we ensured that we asked an equal number of males and females to see whether differing genders would create contrasting ideas and preferences. This is not as evident in our results as we thought it would be, meaning that we can target both genders with our music video.

Question 2: Age
90% of the people we questioned were between 16 and 19 years old. This makes it seem like it would be most sensible to target an age range similar to this as we are now aware of what this particular age group are expecting to see within a music video, whereas we still wouldn't know about the expectations of older adults.

Question 3: Religion
Within our extremely selective sample, we received a wide variety of answers about their religion including Hindu, Christian and Agnostic. Due to this, we have decided to ensure that our video is suitable for all religions and remains good natured and non-conforming so to prevent offending any particular individuals.

Question 4: Do they listen to folk?
Only 50% of people from within our sample said that they listened to folk music. This was interesting as it meant that many of the other answers that we would receive would be uninformed and would simply be stemming from the individual's personal ideals, rather than as a reflection of what they have already seen.

Question 5: Do they enjoy folk?
Of the 50% of people who listened to folk music, 100% of them said that they enjoyed the music and each person gave a very different reason behind this. We found this interesting as it brought to our attention the diversity of the genre. Some of the reasons we were given included "Live folk is very warming and enjoyable", "I love the chords" and "It's very lyric based - I'm all about that".

Question 6: Favourite folk artist?
Again, from the people who said that they listened to folk, we received a wide variety of answers to who their favourite artists were. Some of these included Frank Turner, Mountain Goats, Jake Bugg and Bon Iver. This will help us when it comes to making our music video as we can use this information to determine some aspects of what they would expect from a folk music video that they may not have specified due to the music videos made by these artists.

Question 7: Where do you find new folk music?
The most popular answer to this question was through YouTube which was the answer we were expecting as it is the most popular music and video streaming website. However, some other examples of music software were also mentioned, including Spotify and Soundcloud. This indicates the importance of the music video as it appears to be more successful in helping to distribute the video than merely the music alone. Interestingly, 2 of the people asked also mentioned that they find out about new folk music through magazines. This ties in well with our ancillary task and has caused us to fully understand the importance of the magazine advertisement in conjunction with the music video.

Question 8: Where do you watch folk music videos?
The majority of our target audience listen to folk music through YouTube. This is reflective of where they find new folk music which shows that people stick to what they know and therefore when creating our music video we must remain aware that the highest chance of having our video seen would be by having it available on the YouTube platform.

Question 9: Common folk album cover conventions
The responses to this question were extremely vast and this will become extremely helpful when it comes to creating our digipak and magazine advertisement. Some of the ideas presented were guitars, images of the artist, bright colours, country landscapes and a vintage style. These are aspects which have already been brought to our attention upon researching the genre and therefore it has been reassuring to see that this is what is expected from a potential audience. We shall therefore employ most, if not all, of these aspects within our digipak.

Question 10: Common folk music video conventions
The most common convention that was mentioned within our results was the inclusion of guitars. This is unsurprising due to their dominance within the genre. It is uncommon for a folk song to have been written without a guitar. However, this makes it very clear that we should include clips of our artist playing guitar within our music video to reflect this.

Question 11: Artist Prevalence
The majority of the people we asked said that they would expect and like to see the artist present within the video. We believe that this is because folk music videos tend to have much lower budgets than most other music videos and therefore it isn't possibly to hire actors for the videos. Not only this, but it allows the videos to appear more personal and down-to-earth which is reflective of the tone of the genre. We shall therefore mirror this within our video in order to allow for a better reflection of the genre.

Question 12: Most important aspect
40% of people questioned said that they believed the narrative to be the most important aspect of the video whilst a further 30% believe that the most important aspect of the video is in fact the music itself. This has made us aware that the narrative of the video needs to be extremely strong in order to allow our music video to be the best that it can be for the song. In order to do this, we must ensure that people understand the planned narrative throughout the entire process of our creating the music video.

Question 13: Purchasing CD's of Vinyls
Out of the 10 people questioned, only 2 people said that they would buy an album and even in this instance, they both said that they would only buy the album if they knew that the music on the album was of a high quality and would be worth the money. This can be put down to the rising prices of both digital downloads and physical copies of albums. This information has allowed us to understand that whilst a beautifully designed digipak may catch the audiences attention, it is unlikely to be enough on it's own to make someone buy the album. This is a stereotypical response that we aim to dissipate, by creating a digipak so aesthetically pleasing and true to the music that an audience member would consider buying the album before hearing the music.

Question 14: Downloads
Three people stated that they had folk music downloaded onto an electronic device, including one who had 16 different albums on their phone. One other person stated that they didn't like to listen to music on their phone but instead owned physical copies of folk albums. The remainder of the people replied by saying that they do not and it can only be assumed that this means that their sole method of accessing the music is through platforms such as YouTube. This has allowed us to understand even further the importance of the music video as it appears that this is the most common way that people access and view folk music videos.

From this, we have decided to target our music video at both males and females in order to allow us to gain a wider potential audience. However, we will also target our video at young adults between the ages of 15 and 21 to ensure that the video is suitable for the age range which are most familiar with the genre. We plan to ensure that our video is suitable for all religions and remains good natured and non-conforming so as to prevent it from offending any particular individuals. Some of the people we asked said that they expected to see guitars, images of the artist, bright colours, country landscapes and a vintage style present in the digipak and therefore to ensure a connection between the products, these images shall also be included within the video. In order to establish a better reflection of the genre we plan on ensuring that the artist is prevalent throughout the video and creating a strong narrative that the audience can easily follow.

Posted by Sam Skinner and Olivia Calver

G324 - Folk Music Videos Comparison

There are lots of different ways the folk genre are represented and there are many sub-genres of it. There is mainstream folk music, like George Ezra's work, which is sometimes mixed in with a little pop too. There is also stereotypical folk, like Laura Marling's work, and even though they are the same genre they are very different to how they are approached and are represented.

George Ezra

George Ezra - Blame It on Me focuses on the artist a lot and due to his label has quite a few close ups, with the narrative based directly around him to try and build up a star image for Ezra in order to get his face known to sell his music.


Laura Marling

Sophia

Although with some of Laura's music videos they feature her like Sophia  . Short Movie consist of an animation that moves and reacts in time with the music as well very loosely reflecting the lyrics to the song.






Post By Samuel Skinner

G324 - Research Into Chosen Genre

The officail deffenition of folk music is

music that originates in traditional popular culture or that is written in such a style. Folk music is typically of unknown authorship and is transmitted orally from generation to generation, however moredern days the second part is less true.

A lot of people get country and folk music confused this is because they do have some shared charchteristist such as comon instruments used this is why it is common to see/hear country folk crossovers however folk is written to tell a story that can be shared through song while country is typicly written to be fun, enertaining and to dance along to.

Characteristics to tradititainal folk:

• It was transmitted through an oral tradition. Before the 20th century, ordinary farm workers and factory workers were usually illiterate. They acquired songs by memorizing them. Primarily, this was not mediated by books, recorded or transmitted media. Singers may extend their repertoire using broadsheets, song books or CDs, but these secondary enhancements are of the same character as the primary songs experienced in the flesh.

• The music was often related to national culture. It was culturally particular; from a particular region or culture. In the context of an immigrant group, folk music acquires an extra dimension for social cohesion. It is particularly conspicuous in immigrant societies, where Greek Australians, Somali Americans, Punjabi Canadians and others strive to emphasize their differences from the mainstream. They learn songs and dances that originate in the countries their grandparents came from.

• They commemorate historical and personal events. On certain days of the year, such as Easter, May Day and Christmas, particular songs celebrate the yearly cycle. Weddings, birthdays and funerals may also be noted with songs, dances and special costumes. Religious festivals often have a folk music component. Choral music at these events brings children and non-professional singers to participate in a public arena, giving an emotional bonding that is unrelated to the aesthetic qualities of the music.

• The songs have been performed, by custom, over a long period of time, usually several generations.

As a side-effect, the following characteristics are sometimes present:

• There is no copyright on the songs. Hundreds of folk songs from the 19th century have known authors but have continued in oral tradition to the point where they are considered traditional for purposes of music publishing. This has become much less frequent since the 1940s. Today, almost every folk song that is recorded is credited with an arranger.

• Fusion of cultures: Because cultures interact and change over time, traditional songs evolving over time may incorporate and reflect influences from disparate cultures. The relevant factors may include instrumentation, tunings, voicings, phrasing, subject matter, and even production methods.

Morden folk
Since the 20th centery folk has become more a style of music than a song passed on and on, and now has artist and albums who sing and release folk music to buy and listen too. with famous folk singers such as Frank turner, Tracy chapman and Laura Marling - Short Movie has been voted top folk album of 2015 with Rhiannon Giddens number 2 and Jessica Pratt number 3.




















Post By Samuel Skinner

G324 - Considering and Choosing Genre

The first decision that we had to make before creating our music video was which genre of music we would target. This was a difficult decision for us to make as we both listen to completely different styles of music. To help us decide which genre of music we would make a music video for, we considered conventions of multiple genres before comparing these with each other.

We decided that we wanted to be able to have a simple narrative which would enable us to focus on showcasing our skills with camera work and editing. This prevented us from making a rap video as the majority of rap videos we have seen before have complex narratives which intertwine with one another. In addition, the narrative of rap videos are usually focused on sex, drugs and violence which are not themes that interest us in any way.

We also knew that we would have very limited resources and equipment for shooting the video due to low budget. This took away our option of creating a pop video as we felt that we would not be able to produce a realistic pop video without having lots of props and locations as well as extensive use of lighting and SFX.

We decided against making a rock music video due to Sam's utter dislike for rock music. I accepted that forcing him to make a video for a music genre he doesn't like was unfair due to the amount of time and effort we would be having to spend in creating the video. Not only this, but due to his dislike of the genre, Sam doesn't know much about it and this would have made the entire process much slower.

Finally, we decided against making an indie video due to indie music usually being quite slow. This would make it hard for us to cut the video on beat and limits our opportunities in terms of camera, narrative and editing. Therefore, it became clear that making an indie video would be far too easy for what we aimed to achieve.

Due to it's low budget production, simple narratives, and combination of both slow and fast beats, folk music appeared to be our best option. In addition, we both like folk music and therefore this will make the process more enjoyable for us both.

Posted by Olivia Calver

G324 - Names and Candidate Numbers

Olivia Calver: 9126
Samuel Skinner: 9262