A2 Music Promo - Sam Slack: October 2009

Sunday, 25 October 2009

Copyright

When using a particular song for this coursework we have to get permission to be able use it. So I have found out Whitney Houston's record label and sent a letter to them as I could not find an email address. A copy of this is shown below:

To:
Whom it may concern
SonyBMG
9 Derry Street
London
W8 5HY

From:
Miss Samantha Slack
Biddulph High School
Conway Road
Knypersley
Biddulph
Stoke - on -Trent
ST

RE: Regarding permission to use a song

My name is Samantha Slack and I am currently studying Media Studies at Biddulph High School. I am now in my second year and for this piece of coursework I have to create a music video. I considered many songs but chose Saving All My Love For You by Whitney Houston and I am writing to ask permission for this. No money will be made, it is soley use for my project at school. If there are any problems with this please email me at slack1401ye@biddulph.staffs.sch.uk

Thank you

Yours sincerely,

Samantha Slack

I am yet to here a reply, but I hope to shortly.

Thursday, 22 October 2009

My Chosen Song

After thinking about the results I decided to have the following two as my final choices:

*I Will Be by Leona Lewis, and
*Saving All My Love For You by Whitney Houston

I chose those two as my final choices because they did come out on top in the survey and because I do have an actress it seemed more realistic to choose a female song, because the first 3 would preferably need a male actor for them to work. After I had these two as my choices I thought of which one would be best, the tempo of the song, a long with the meaning of the song and finally which I thought I would be most comfortable with.

In the end, I finally chose Saving All My Love For You by Whitney Houston. Main reasons for choosing this over I Will Be was because I feel as though I can interpret my own, personal feelings into that video and have more inspirational ideas, especially because I can see what they used in the original video. The tempo of the song is more slower and has more meaning so hopefully I can use more editing techniques to emphasize that. The people that answered my survey said that they think I should choose one I am more confident with and I feel this is the one.

From this point onwards, my main aim will be to plan out for my video. I will be doing this in various ways by analysing the lyrics in more detail and creating presentations on how I will be choosing particular locations, camera angles and mise en scene etc. Also I will need to be creating visual storyboards and animatics to help me see if I could make it any better or grabs more advanced ideas from my original ideas.

Survey

These are the results I have collected from the survey.

Friday, 16 October 2009

Short List Of Songs

The start of my coursework consisted of solely research and now I have completed the analysis of videos, album covers and posters it is the time for me to move on and decide on my song. I will have to plan very carefully and prepare various story boards that will help me to build up a final music video that will hopefully give me a good grade in this coursework. I have been analysing many videos because it has shown me the relationship between the video and the lyrics. I want to make my video relate to the lyrics as much as those, and by doing the research it has helped me to hopefully achieve that. As now I have to decide on my song, I thought it'd be best to choose from a short list. I had previously created a short list, but now I think that I had rushed into it too quickly and I did also say that I had chosen a song but I am now going to analyse each song choice very carefully and I will then come to a final decision. The short list are as follows:

1. Better On The Other Side - The Game ft. Chris Brown
This was originally the first song I planned on doing. I chose this because it was dedicated to a music legend and many people would love to get involved, which would then appeal to everyone. This song had lyrics that were so meaningful to Michael Jackson, You made the world dance, You made the music come to life. These gave me great ideas and the friend that was going to help me was a big fan of him so it would of been a great laugh. A down side of this song is that with it being such a great song I was worried it would be hard to think of many different ideas. One of the ideas we thought of was using a few clips from Michael Jackson's past. I was not sure if I could use them but I took them into consideration and I thought I will find out. Unfortunately, family matters occurred and I wasn't sure if I could carry on doing this song.

2. Alone In This Bed - Framing Hanley
This song is more of a slow than an upbeat rhythm, which is one of the main reason I took this into consideration. I had researched into this song and found a music video on YouTube that some one had created for it. This gave me great inspiration and I thought it would be as easy as we have the surroundings I thought we could use. The lyrics were simple but at the same time had great meaning and you could film many things relating to it. Although, this is not a popular song which is one of the reasons why I had my doubts about it because the actor I chose would have to learn the song, which would take even longer time and if they didn't end up liking the song then I would get a bit stuck.

3. Don't Give Up - Leon Jackson
This song is also a sad, slow song with, in my opinion, great meaning. I chose this song because I feel asthough I can interpret my feelings. I prefer to work with slow songs rather than hectic, upbeat ones. So this song would be perfect as I am a huge fan of Leon Jackson. One downfall of this song is that I may not have a male actor and I don't think I could make it work with a female. This song is relating to love and in my opinion I am quite good with love songs.

4. I Will Be - Leona Lewis
This song would be perfect considering I have a female actress. It is slow and the lyrics can relate to many things that I could do. This song is also connecting a man and a woman so I think it would be fair easier to do because my imagination works best with those scenario's. A downside to this song is that it is some times quick speed and I have listened through it and imagined it would be harder than my next short listed song.

5. Saving All My Love For You - Whitney Houston
This song is one of my all time favourites, which is why it was part of my short list. It is slow through out the song and does not last for longer than 4 minutes. I think that is a huge bonus because then I get time to focus on more important parts of the video. Once again it is another love song so I think I will be able to do okay on this. My friend that would be helping also has a good imagination when it comes to love scenario's so im hoping to have some ideas off her. A down side to this is that it is fairly repetative so I need to think of a few more ideas so it won't get boring.

Questionnaire

This is a questionnaire I created that I thought would help me choose my final song. It gave me an idea of how the audience would like the video to be without having to focus on one particular song. So from this I can pick out the main results and see which fitted in to the songs most. As we can see the main results are they would prefer it to be about a man and a woman and also the video does have to relate to the song, this will help a lot when filming my video because I know I will have to have extra meaning behind my chosen ideas.

Miley Cyrus Poster

Miley Cyrus also plays Hannah Montana, therefore her target audience is for younger people than myself. We can see this expressed in the poster because the poster consists of all bright colours. There are pictures of her in the background faded a little out and also on an angle. This shows randomness and also the background consists of dots which are teenage things. We can clearly see that this poster is created to attract her target audience rather than relating to her albums or video. Although we do see in her 'The Climb' video that she often gets rotated on the camera, just like on this poster.

The close up picture shows her closing her eyes which can represent she may be imagining what the concert would be like and those pictures around her could represent the poses she would be pulling. The colours are very bright which represents her songs because most of her songs are all upbeat rather than slow ones. Also her genre is based around pop.

Demi Lavato Poster

This poster is very simple, it consists of the artist Demi Lavato holding a guitar with speakers behind and the title, which is her name. This can connect with her albums and video because she looks like a normal woman and lyrics in her debut song La La Land say 'I'm not a super model & I still eat McDonalds'. This shows she is just any normal person because you wouldn't normally see a girl playing guitar. The background is dark which can tell us the tour would be a surprise or a mystery because we have not heard a lot of her songs so she would be performing some of her new ones.

The title is red which contrasts against the dark background and the letters are not in a straight line which can tell us she is random and also we see a bit of smoke to the left of the poster. This shows us that her and her music must be quite good.

Beyonce Poster

This poster shows beyonce as a very elegant woman. This relates to her albums because in her covers she always looks elegant. The dress she is wearing is very sparkly and that connects with the disco ball she is holding. This can represent that she is the star of the show and her tour will be amazing. We see that beyonce is revealing a bit of her leg, this could tell us that she may have a surprise and shock some people at the tour.

The colours are very eye catching because the dark background can represent that show will be a mystery and then we see the bright lights in the foreground that attract the audience to look at the poster so they will then know when the tour dates are. Also we see the sign 'CHIVAS MUSIC', which is almost like the word Diva; and that is what Beyonce is.

Avenged Sevenfold Poster

This poster is of Avenged Sevenfold, who is a rock band. We can see this by the poster because of what they are wearing. They are wearing mainly black outfits and they have tattoos showing. Those show that they are not the normal type of men that are all clean and tidy. The background is a mixture between a stone wall and redness. The red is connected with their title and it can represent that they are a rock band because it goes with the black. We can see pictures of heads and random faces floating in the air, this can show that they are very random and their music varies.

We see a picture of the band in a long shot so we can see all their body, although their feet are covered by the background. This shows they are a laid back group and that connects with the videos because we see them jumping around singing and not acting a particular part through out their video's. The background can represent some sort of fire which can suggest that they are on fire and at the top of their game.

Thursday, 15 October 2009

Michael Jackson Poster

Now I have completed analysing album covers and videos I want to look at posters to see what relation they have to the artist, cover, video or even the lyrics. When looking at this poster we can see that the picture is of Michael Jackson when he is at his best so this could interpret that this tour will be one of his best. Also with the title being 'This Is It' that can also link in with making the audience think this could be the best tour. The picture is not a full picture of the king of pop so this may insinuate that there is a little surprise.

The font is constant through out and the background is red which is a popular colour that Michael Jackson used. It relates to his cover because he is wearing the hat he normally wears and also the clothes are similar, so when we look at this we instantly know its him. This is a good idea to use to promote an artists products etc. It gets seen more easily and if it relates to the covers then it will make it even better.

Evanescence Lyric Analysis

This is an analysis of the lyrics to Evanescence Call Me When Your Sober. It shows why the lyrics are important. This is because they tell a story and it relates to the video, which is shown below, because we can clearly see she is relating to one man that is in the video.