Star Image Project!

Here is my star project, I have done mine on Ellie Goulding as she is featured in the same genre as Florence and the Machine.

Potentials!

Here were the three potential songs we were going use for the Video.

So here is the line-up...

Heavy Cross by Gossip

For... 

• Nice beat
• Quite quirky
• Have at least one decent idea already for it

Against...

• Gets boring after more than 5 plays
• Very long, very repetitive
•  No good ideas to think of it.

Idea... Boy and girl meet each other and he falls in love and follows her.

Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey

For... 

• Can do lots with it
• Very versatile
• Not too long
• Can be creative with shots and edits

Against...

• Very generic
• Can't think of any ideas for it at this moment
• Quite a sad song (lyrics)

Idea.... friends having fun?

Shake it Out by Florence and the Machine

For...

• Powerful build up
• Many ideas can be conjured
• Many good editing and shot ideas

Against...

• Very long song
• Haven't got a completely solid idea  

Idea...Fairy/Folk tale, for instance little red riding hood.

Reasons for Shake it out...

A much more interesting song than the other choices of songs. Its very powerful and has a high climax to the song. As the tempo of the song changes throughout, our group can incorporate many types of editing techniques such as slow motion, hyper speed, flicking between shots etc. which would make the video really interesting and contrasting.

  
My initial concept ideas for the video:

Locations: Possibly Woods or City.

Themes: Fairy Tale/ Folk Tale, Little red riding hood?

Shot Types: High angle shots, Wide shots, Long shots, Close-ups, Extreme close-ups, 360 shot.

Angle: A storyline, possibly links to lyrics. 

Lighting: Colour but quite dull though, cold hues colours, rather than warm hues.

THE LYRICS (ANNOTATIONS ON ROCK GENIUS LINK HERE)

"Shake It Out"

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around

Our love is pastured, such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues drawn
But it's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It's a fine romance but it's left me so undone
It's always darkest before the dawn

Oh whoa, oh whoa...

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat
'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me, yeah

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

The genre that we have chosen is indie rock/pop because its a genre that originated in the UK and the USA IN 1980s and is an extremely diverse genre, with sub-genres, and therefore many ideas can stem from it, also everyone in our group like this genre and therefore agreement is in place. Also, you can do so much from this genre, if we used just rock, R&B, Country or Pop for instance, we would limit our ideas to adhere to the forms and conventions of the genre. Where as indie rock/pop lets you be more creative and free with your ideas.


Florence and the Machine has been signed to Moshi Moshi, iAMSOUND, Island, Universal Republic and Republic record labels.

Moshi Moshi are a small London based label (independent) founded in 1998. The name was named after the Japanese phrase when answering the telephone which means 'hello'. It has signed artists such as Bloc party, Hotel Club De Paris, Florence and the machine, Disclosure and Kate Nash,  

iAMSOUND Records is a Los Angeles, California, USA-based independent label which was founded in 2006, as part of Worlds End, USA -(One of the largest talent management companies for producers . While the label want to promote indie music, with LA-based acts, its pre-eminent signings include English artists Florence and the Machine, Little Boots and Charli XCX.


Island Records is a record label that was founded in Jamaica. It was based in the UK for many years and is no owned by Universal Music Group. (Was originally independent now Major label) The label now operates as a division of The Island Def Jam Music Group in the USA (where it is now largely a rock-oriented label, much like when it started)and as a standalone label in the UK (a.k.a Island Records Group or Universal Island. Under Universal, in the us, Island became a mostly Pop/rock label, as their urban artists moved to Def Jam or Def Soul, a new Def jam imprint focusing on R&B. Island also set up its own Island Teens label, which had a massive success with signing Justin Bieber.



Universal Republic Records was a record label, owned by Universal Music Group and was founded in 2006.



Republic Records is a flagship record label of Universal Music Group, originally founded as Cheese Factory Records. After Motown Records was separated from Universal Motown Records that caused Republic records, until the label was re-activated after one year.
The label mainly focuses on mainstream and urban music from artists such as Kelly Rowland, Jessie J, Nelly, Drake, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, the late Amy Winehouse, The Weeknd etc as well as successful country artists such as Taylor Swift and Florida Georgia Line.

Florence and the Machine's last album is called 'Ceremonials'

Fairy Tales (the making of the music videos) !

This is the behind the scenes videos for some music video's that contain a fairy tale/folk tale element to them. As well as some videos with the theme.

                    

Warning: The Katy Perry video is 20 mins long 

          

AlunaGeorge's video is very interesting! I actually quite love the video and Alunageorge! 

                           

Alice and wonderland theme from Gwen Stefani

            

The Jessie J video - Nobody's Perfect with and Alice and Wonderland theme!

The wonderful spice girls as fairies!

                 

For Alice in wonderland film!

Not the nicest sounding of songs but again- Alice themed !

                                     

Kelly Clarkson again with a fairy tail theme!

AND .... One of my favourites!!!!

             

I do really like Natalia Kills and her music videos very creative!

Florence and the machine!

We have changed our song and our idea!! I know its sounds crazy but we really didn't like the other ideas, they seemed to cheesy and uninteresting and I felt that the song was slightly boring, once listened to quite a lot. We had an idea where a boy was obsessed and followed a girl to her work place and then found out she had a boyfriend/girlfriend and then dropped one of his belongings and then he got followed by a crazy stalker also, However we really, really did NOT not like the idea. So we have changed to as I mentioned before, Folk tale/Fairy Tale. 

Here is our new song, although long, I think its a much more powerful and has more of and impact.

            

Florence and the Machine (also styled as Florence + the Machine) are an English indie rock band. The band consists of lead singer Florence Welch, Isabella "Machine" Summers, and a collaboration of other artists. The band's music has received much praise across the music media, before they gained mainstream success, especially from the BBC. The BBC is played a large part in the band's rise to fame by promoting Florence and the Machine as part of BBC introducing.

The band's debut album, called Lungs, was released on 6 July 2009, and held the number-two position for its first five week n the UK Albums Chart. On 17 January  2010, the album reached the top position, after being on the chart for twenty-eight consecutive weeks. As of October 2012. the album had been in the top 40 in the UK for 65 consecutive weeks, making it one of the best-selling albums of 2009 and 2010. The group's second studio album. Ceremonials, released in October 2011, debuted at number one in the UK and number 6 in the UK.




Florence and the Machine's sound has been described as a combination of various genres, including rock and soul. The album lungs won the MasterCard British Album award at the 2010 BRIT Awards. At the 53rd Grammy Awards, Florence and the Machine nominated for Best New Artist. Additionally, the band preformed at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, and the 2010 Nobel Prize Contest.

Isabella "Machine" Summers

The name Florence and the Machine is attributed to Florence Welch's teenage collaboration with Isabelle "machine" Summers. Welsh and Summers preformed originally as Florence Robert/Isa Machine =, however this was shortened to Florence and the Machine as they felt it was too cumbersome.

As well as Summers (Keyboards and backing vocals), the current band members include musicians Robert Ackyroys (guitar and backing vocals), Chris Hayden (drums, precussion and backing vocals), Mark Saunders (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Tom Monger (harp).

 

According to Welch, "The name Florence and the Machine started off as a private joke that got out of hand..."

In February 2011, Florence and the Machine were nominated for Best New Artist in the 53rd Grammy Awards.
Florence Welsh had been compared to other female singers such as Kate Bush, Siouxsie sioux, PJ Harvey and Björk. During an interview, Welch cited Grace Slick as her influence and "hero". Florence and the Machine's style has been described as "dark, robust and romantic". Their music is a mix of "classical soul and midnight-on-the-moors English art rock" Welch stated that her lyrics related to Renaissance artists "We're dealing with all of the same things they did- love and death, time and pain, heaven and hell."
The american recording artist Beyoncé Knowles cited Florence and the Machine as an influence for her 2011 album 4.

Video idea!

Although I have already posted several ideas, our groups hasn't found one we really like and want to back all the way, so I decided to research some other schools music video's to get some inspiration.

I found the typical party one, however, if we take out the silly and pointless Harlem shake at the end, the video actually looks really good, in terms of shots and as a whole, simple but effective, in a way and goes with the genre of music:
                                             


So looking around, I came to a professional music video's one in particular that caught my eye was 'La la la' by Naughty Boy ft Sam Smith.


             

I was really interested but confused about the music video so I researched it, It gave connotations of the Wizard of OZ, I found on a blog by a boy called Kieran Hill, Information about the music video. It is a mix of an old Bolivian folk tale about a boy who is deaf however can hear the pain of people suffering and goes to help the, mixed with the Wizard of Oz to create the music video all the details are in his blog that I have linked in his name above. After finding this I thought, why don't our group do something like that as we were struggling with ideas. So I have been looking for some old folk tales/ Nursery Rhymes that we could possibly do a modernised not so obvious version of. So these are the ones I have found that we could possibly do:

• The Snow Queen
• Rapunzel
• Thumbelina 
• The little red hen
• Little red riding hood
• Jack and Jill
• The queen of hearts
• Rumplestilzkin
• WitchStep-daughter
• The Three Little Pigs

If my group likes the Ideas we can develop the storyline to incorporate it into a modern day version that may almost be unrecognisable unless told. 

From Research quite a lot of music videos like using Fairy Tales as a storyline, as discussed on this website Music videos that use fairy tales.  from Katy Perry's 'Wide Awake', AlunaGeorge also features fairy tales as well as Nicki Minaj's 'Va Va VOOM':

              

Snow white as well as robin hood being portrayed.

Snow white

Snow white and the prince

Evil in Snow White

              

Alice in wonderland

The Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland

The corridor of mirrors in Alice and Wonderland

Pans Labyrinth 

Prince Charming

                

Goldilocks and the three bears in AlunaGeorge's video

                                     

Rapunzel in AlunaGeorge's Video

Gossip - Heavy Cross!

Just a bit of info on the single...

Heavy Cross is a song by the American band Gossip. It was release on April 28th 2009 as the first single from the band's fourth album Music for men. It got triple gold in Germany selling over 450,000 copies and it is as of september 2010, the most successful internationally produced single of all times.  

Planning!

This is the amazing spider diagram that Hannah done!

The Idea!

The Idea follows along the lines of ...

•  Feet shots of a boy and girl walking towards each other (may I add both strangers to one another in the video) 
• They bump into each other and the girl is so beautiful the boy instantly falls in love. 
• After giving a flirtatious smile she walks off, and he pauses before deciding to follow her.
• Unaware the girl travel to her destination, knowingly/uknowingly (you decide) that the boy is now following her, desperately trying to catch up with her
• After a series of shots, transitions and effects the bridg in the song occurs and another one of our infamous time lapses may occur, however this time night to day, and this is where the lip sycing comes in, half of the group- Hannah and I believe all four should lip sync however the other half- Alicia and Leanne believe it will look odd as there is one singer. Me thinks we should have an open vote with the public to see which idea people like the best, as we are in a democracy. 
• Basically, in the end the boy thinks he has caught up to the girl, she turns around and... its not her but very similar, he looks across the road and sees the correct girl. 
• She smiles a bus drives past and she is gone!

Now I have just thought maybe we could go all deep and question whether the girl was a figment of the boys imagination or just say that he lost her in the crowd, maybe there may be three votes/questions we need to ask. I will propose it to the group when I see them and see what they think of my idea. Another thought is maybe the girl is a ghost who he once loved and she had died in that spot by a bus and that's why he follows her and she dissapears in that exact spot, maybe its not the first time he has followed the same looking girl think she was real, to find out its his mere imagination from grief, loneliness or mental health or maybe it was all a dream. Okay, maybe I'm running away with my thoughts a little, but the main thing I'm trying to say is that this simple can be made complex and genius by developing the idea and you an do a lot with this one song.

I do like these shots and this could tie in beautifully with the initial idea we have at the moment:

                                             

We have chosen Libby to be our beautiful model like girl, however we still have the problem of finding a boy! But we don't need to worry about that too much. The main thing is although she will be seen as a BEAUTIFUL girl (and I have put it in italics as beauty is within and people have different perceptions of beauty) we do not at all want to portray her in a overly sexualised way. Which is how MANY women are portrayed in the media. This video was shown to us in lesson last Wednesday and I think it has a strong message and highlights how we should not degrade women in such a way, and we will make sure we don't do that in our video!
               


Miley Cyrus's - Wrecking ball has many of these degrading feature, and some people argue that there are deep messages hidden behind them, however I believe you can find deep messages behind anything, from walking the dog, to drinking some water, but that should not be an excuse to conform to the stereotypes in such a way. And our group will Definitely not be swinging naked on a ball or licking a hammer any time soon in our music video's so don't worry about that.

                               
Beautiful song- Just an inappropriate video. It seems like I have a personal vendetta against Miss Cyrus as this is her second Music Video I slated. But its not the songs that are the problem, they are catchy and have a nice tune, but its the degrading and outrageous video's that are causing me stress 
and I don't know why. The change she has undergone in such a short time has caused me shock and I 
prefer the old Miley's personality but the new Miley's songs! Oh well its life!

Back to the topic in hand, I think its the same for the boy in our music video, we don't want him to adhere to the stereotypes of an overtly handsome boy, with perfect features, expensive clothes, a womaniser and have the perfect body. Our main focus is to show the determination and effect love can have on us and how we will go to very extreme and long lengths to be with someone who we do have a crush on and love. Again I'm going very philosophical but these are just some ideas and thoughts I have thought of on the spot and I'm hoping to see more inspiring video's !

Change of plan!

Well although I have been posting about Kate Nash's 'Foundations'. We have COMPLETELY changed our idea. Its been very hard to find a good song that we all really liked and wanted and envisioned to do. From Katy Perry 'Roar', Aqua's 'Barbie girl' to Lana del Rey's 'Summertime Sadness'. However, none of these songs quite fit what we wanted and we couldn't come up with any ideas that could go with these ideas.

We did come up with this song:

                          

And we thought to put a really cheesy video with us acting as men and back up singers also and make it all parody like and comical. However, personally I thought it make come off as too cheesy and cliché and therefore may make the video look amateur and people may laugh at us and not with us, and I wanted to avoid that situation. We had a think about it and decided the song was not for us as the finished product may come out not how we pictured and then there was the task of finding a new song!                                                                                                                                    
                                                            

We thought long and hard and we were given suggestions such as 'Punching in a dream' by the Naked and The Famous. Which I do really like, However we could not think of any really good ideas to go with the song. And as out opening film was very serious we want to have a happy, fun but not cliché music video and this song was not it unfortunately.


                                           

I found a video called animal fighting championships which is a music video for the song 'The Underdog' by Wallpaper, Which shows people who dress up as animals and have a fake fun championship, where they throw confetti and colours on each other, to get an ultimate winner and I thought Emeli Sande's 'Wonderwall' would go really with a video such as the one in the Animal Fighting Championships. The only problem was it was hard to think of an idea that stems from that and is not too similar to that of the video. So we had to think of another song. However, What I really love about the video is the slow motion shots they used and the way they filmed and edited the video, and our group can take some ideas from that and use it in our music video.

We also considered Lana Del Rey's 'Summertime Sadness' but it would be hard to make a video with a good storyline that goes with the song, without replicating the video!!! Another was 'Girlfriend' by Avril Lavinge, the problem with that is that it is such a well known song that we had all already seen the video and therefore our ideas were based on that of the video. Also, the song is very literal and would prove difficult to not do what the lyrics say so we had to scratch that off the list.

After listening to:

• Beyonce
• Christina Aguliera 
• Avril lavinge
• Katy perry
• Whitney Huston
• Aretha Franklin
• Celeste Buckingham
• The Spice Girls
• Miley Cyrus
• The Saturdays
• Ellie goulding
• Emeli Sande
• and even One Direction

We found... Nothing! Until we saw the catwalk advert and on it, a very catchy and Unique song by the name of 'Heavy Cross' by Gossip and then the ideas came to our heads.


     

Because our idea, as always, is very complex I will dedicate a WHOLE post towards it.