Emailing record company

Today, as a group, we sent an e-mail out to the producer of ''Empty Gold' (Jim Eliot), to ensure that it was alright to use this song for our music video.

Even though we are using the songs for educational purposes only, we still feel that it would be right to ask for permission to avoid any issues relating to the copyright of the song.

Capitol Records

According to further research into our artist Halsey, one of her record companies are Capital Records, founded in 1942. It is an American record company and is based in various genres. The company have helped well known artists and groups, such as 'The Beatles', with the release of their many albums, starting with 'Meet The Beatles'.

Although Captiol Records is Halsey's record company I think that the majority of Indie artists do not have access to this help and therefore mainly distribute their songs through sites such as soundcloud. I also believe that the production of songs from the Indie genre are predominantly marketed through WOM (word of mouth) and social networking sites such as twitter and facebook.  

Treatment Pitch

Today we presented our pitch to the class which we think went quite well. Throughout each groups pitch we filled in post-it notes, asking questions or giving constructive criticism to each group. Here is the video of our prelim below and the second video is of our audience feedback.



Here's our analysis of the audience feedback:

Treatment Pitch Prezi

Mood board

Here is the mood board for our chosen song 'Empty Gold' by Halsey.

It shows our main themes of Little Red Riding Hood and other Fairy-tales. It also shows the setting which we hope is predominantly the forest. We want to use a black and white colour palette to overcome any lighting issues and to make our music video look more professional. Also another theme is the fear of getting old and inner conflict so we also want to try and represent this through the use of shadows. If possible one of the main shots we hope to capture is two souls colliding which we can symbolise through throwing two different coloured powdered paints together so that the audience can see these colours collide, similar to two souls.

Creating this mood board has been very useful as now we can clearly see a rough plan of the main concepts of our music video and hopefully execute this within the next few months!

Song Choice

Here is the actual song we chose. Within the next week we hope to plan for our treatment pitch and annotate the lyrics more so that we have a rough idea of what the video may look like.

Halsey- Empty Gold

I, I must confess
How hard I tried to breathe
Through the trees of loneliness.
And you, you must confess
How hard you need to see
Through the heart beating out my chest.

Feel like we've been falling down 
Like these autumn leaves.
But baby don't let winter come, 
Don't let our hearts freeze.

If the morning light don't steal our soul,
We will walk away from empty gold.

Dark as midnight sun,
Smoke as black as charcoal
Fills into our fragile lungs.
Cause when our demons come,
Dancing in the shadows, 
To a game that can't be won.

Feel like we've been falling down 
Like these autumn leaves.
But baby don't let Winter come, 
Don't let our hearts freeze.

If the morning light don't steal our soul,
We will walk away from empty gold.
If the morning light don't steal our soul,
We will walk away from empty gold.

We're the underdogs in this world alone
I'm a believer, got a fever running through my bones.
We're the alley cats and they can throw their stones
They can break our hearts, they won't take our souls.

We're the underdogs in this world alone
I'm a believer, got a fever running through my bones.
We're the alley cats and they can throw their stones
They can break our hearts, they won't take our souls.

If the morning light don't steal our soul,
We will walk away from empty gold.
If the morning light don't steal our soul,
We will walk away from empty gold.
We will walk away from empty gold.

Banks- Begging for Thread

So I got edges that scratch
And sometimes I don't got a filter
But I'm so tired of eating all of my misspoken words
I know my disposition gets confusing
My disproportionate reactions fuse with my eager state
That's why you wanna come out and play with me

Yeah
Why
Why
Why

Stooped down and out
You got me beggin for thread
To sew this hole up that you ripped in my head
Stupidly think you had it under control
Strapped down to something that you don't understand
Don't know what you were getting yourself into
You should have known
Secretly, I think you knew

I got some dirt on my shoes
My words can come out as a pistol
And I'm no good at aiming
But I can aim it at you

I know my actions, they may get confusing
But my unstable ways is my solution to even space
That's why you wanna come out and play with me, yeah

Stooped down and out
You got me beggin for thread
To sew this hole up that you ripped in my head
Stupidly think you had it under control
Strapped down to something that you don't understand
Don't know what you were getting yourself into
You should have known
Secretly, I think you knew
(Secretly I think you knew)

Hold it out, whoa
Try to hide it out but my tracks are better
Hold it out, whoa
Try to hide it out but my tracks are better

Hold it out, whoa
Try to hide it out but my tracks are better
Hold it out, whoa
Try to hide it out but my tracks are better

Stooped down and out
You got me beggin for thread
To sew this hole up that you ripped in my head
Stupidly think you had it under control
Strapped down to something that you don't understand
Don't know what you were getting yourself into
You should have known
Secretly, I think you knew
(Secretly I think you knew)

Begging for Thread

We are currently deciding whether or not to choose Begging for thread by Banks or Empty Gold by Halsey for our music video. We have made many annotations to the lyrics of these songs and think that there is a wide range of different shots/techniques that we could use to help create the final product. Here is an image of our annotations so far. The next two posts were be the original lyrics of the songs.

Codes and Conventions of Indie Pop music videos

Here is a prezi showing the codes and conventions of typical Indie pop music videos, along with examples either taken from the Indie Pop, Pop or Indie genres.

Indie Pop genre

Within the Indie genre we have decided to look for Indie Pop songs. This is because through our research we have found many songs that we enjoy that come under this genre. Also we thought that the songs in this to slow to create an interesting music video for.

An artist whose music we are considering is Halsey. This is because she is a part of this genre and we have found many songs of hers that we think would be a good choice. Also many of her songs do not yet have videos released meaning that we wont be tempted to watch the original video, always our ideas to be original and creative. Here are some her songs we liked below:

Artist research

Today we were looking at possible artists that we could research for our music videos. Tayla came up with an Indie pop artist called Halsey who is signed to Astralwerks and Capitol. She recently released her latest album Badlands this August, which was a great success. To some extent her music has a mass appeal due to the fact that she mainly produces Indie Pop and Electronica music.

However, some of her music has been labelled as alternative pop meaning it may be unusual to the music that is usually in the charts allowing her to appeal to audiences who appreciate underground music also. Due to her higher pitched voice and the fact that she is a young female we think that she could be a good artist to use for our music video as we will be able to easily find someone who looks like they would suit her voice. Here's one of her songs:

Ellie Goulding - Lights

I think that the title of this song really complements the video. Throughout the video there is constant use of different types of lighting making constant reference to the title 'Lights'. We could possibly incorporate main themes relating to the title of our songs, like this video. I also like the performance element of this song along with the lighting as it makes the video feel like a live show attracting the audience to watch it evenmore.

Gotye - Somebody I used to know

I really like this music video as I haven't seen anything like it before making it very original. I also like the constant use of triangular shapes as it creates a constant pattern throughout the music video. For our music video we could maybe consider the use of constant shapes or themes throughout, to make the video seem abstract but to also tie all of the footage together.