Possible song ideas

Before I begin my research which will hopefully help me plan my video, I think that it may be best that I first of all think of some ides for a song to accompany the text. After podndering the matter for several weeks, I have come up with several ideas of tracks I could use including....

1. Stop crying your heart out-Leona Lewis

2. Set fire to the rain-Adele

3. Cosmic love-Florence and the Machine

4. Vida la Vida-Clodplay

5. Clocks-Coldplay

6. Someone like you-Adele

7. Footprints in the sand -Leona Lewis

8. Dog Days are over-Florence and the Machine

All of the above songs have very meaningful lyrics, and I believe that it would be acheiveable to think of three different narratives to follow any one of the tracks and create meaning. Over the coming weeks, I shall research videos similar to the one I currently think I would like to produce, work out the practicalities of shooting narratives to coincide with each song, and eventually decide on a track. 

Initial short pitch

For this years coursework, I would like to make a music video, as well as a cover and magazine advertisement to accompany it. As earlier discussed, I am not yet sure of the genre, but the narrative will be strong, detailed, and may include more than one to convey the meaning of the song. I plan to use local locations and setting, obviously shooting ‘on location’ because of the resources open to me. I expect that public places such as parks, fields, and beaches will be used, aswell as some more private shots. In addition, I intend to use shots of the artist ‘singing’ to the track, which I have found to be a typical convention from my own experiences. Because of the type of track, I think that my music video will have quite a sad, lonely tone, and so the winter months seem a perfect opportunity to shoots the scenes. Hopefully snow, rain and other seasonal elements will help contribute to the atmosphere of it. Costume, props and make-up will all have to be taken into consideration as well once I have a better idea of what exactly my project will entail.

Although this video (James Blunt-Beautiful) is very different to the video that  I would like to produce for several reasons, I think that it is a very good example of how the weather (in this case snow) can be used to create a 'cold' tone and aptmosphere, and in this case seems very effective. 

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of my video will be finding people willing to participate in it. Should certain family members and friends be willing to take part, some ideas of characters portrayed in the narrative include:

• A young child (boy/girl)
• A teenage couple
• An older man

...but these are likely to change as I research more into the specific characteritics of music videos, and the practicality of shooting this video involving volounteres who fit the characteristics of these ideals which i expect to evolve.

Breif and immediate proposal

The brief I have chosen is as follows..

“A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video together with two of the following three options; a website homepage, a cover for its release as part of a digipak, a magazine advertisement for the digipak”

At this moment in time, I am not sure exactly what type of genre I would like to make a music video for.  However, I would like the track I chose to be slow and meaningful, allowing a strong narrative to be portrayed throughout it, aswell as a deeper meaning which the audience may take inspiration from. In order to complete this as sucsessfully, i will have to research thoroughly the music industry, as well as the key conventions of music videos and their accompanying print features of this sort in order to make my new music video and package as real as possible. At this moment, i do have a breif idea of what i would like to do, however I am aware that this is likely to change over the coming weeks, particularly when i look into how acheiveable it is and perhaps gain inspiration from other existing texts. 

Reflection of AS courswork

At AS level, I created a film opening of the disaster genre for my coursework. I very much enjoyed this project, which allowed me to incorporate both the skills I gained at GCSE, as well as new ones I gathered in preparation for my project into a piece of work which hopefully is representative and typical of an opening sequence of this sort. After the production of this video, I got feedback from volounteres, which made me realise how many areas could have been improved, but unfortunately it was too late to make any drastic changes. Therefore, I hope that this year, I will beable to get feedback on my project before submitting it as a final piece, allowing the best possible outcome, as an audiences response is often essential in determining how sucsesful a piece of work has been.

In addition, I would like to build upon what I learnt last year, and use the mistakes I made regarding certain aspects of the planning, to improve the quality of my work this time. The majority of such mistakes were outlined on my evaluation, may have effected my over all marks, and i would therefore like to try to correct these this year.