The script

The script has marketed themselves well with their own website, style, sound and appearance. There website is very good in the style of their new album 'Science & faith'. The style of their new album has many images in a similar effect to sepia, a little like coldplay did with 'viva la vida' with the video like it was an old painting. Coldplay are the nearest i can find to the style of the script. Their website is very easy to use and you can listen to their new song and watch the video free on the site. What is also useful is the site has infomation on when the band is next performing, releasing a new album, info on the actual band and links to sites where you can buy tickets to see them. What I like most about the site is the continous theme of the new album and the simple approach they've used in the creation of thir new album. You can even register on the website to sign up for a newsletter and much more like first to know about performances and discounts on purchases.

Our chosen song

We liked the idea of Alex Day's song but we don't think it was a strong enough song, we wanted the music to obviously stand out. So because the song was too weak we thought it might get lost in the visuals. Which lead us to search for a new song, we searched through different songs and found a great song by 'The Script'. The Script has an interesting alternative rock sound that is not in following of current artists. They are an Irish band currently based in London after signing to 'Sony Label Group imprint Phonogenic'. The band released their debut album in August 2008. their music has featured in video games and in popular teen programmes such as '90210' and 'Waterloo road'. This has made them extremely successful and on the 9th November The Script received an award at the World Music Awards for 'Best Selling Irish Act' of 2008. They have released a new album, which was released in Ireland on 10th September 2010. We really like their song 'For the first time' and are going to use this. To have permission to use their song and not break the rules of copyright, I sent the band a message on their Twitter page. Here is a copy of what i sent:

I am writing to ask permission for the use of your new song ‘For the first time’. As we are making a music video for our A-level media coursework and have found the perfect song to fit our ideas. We are big fans of your music and would like to be able to use it.

Contact from Elliott Gallimore and Joe Robertson from The Priory School

Eminem

Eminem has targeted his audience perfectly with his sound, image and everything about him. Eminem gained popularity rapidly in 1999 with his debut album, The Slim Shady. To many he is the best rapper ever with many number 1s to his name and grammy awards. What made his name was more his lyrics than anything with his lyrics talking of the real world and past experiences that many people could relate to. This attracted many followers because his lyrics were so strong. His hard life as a child mainly to do with his relationship with his father. His image is that what many would call a 'chav', a popular culture coming into the current world today. The big baggy tracksuits and flat caps are becoming increasingly popular. B-boys and DJs represent the life of lower class people and links many to his words.

Eminem has marketed himself extremely successfully. He has starred in a film called 8 mile. The film is based on Eminem's life, he grew up in a poor Detroit neighborhood and followed his dream of rap stardom. The movie got very good reviews as Eminem turned out to be a surprisingly good actor. Since then it has snow balled and his songs have been used in many films and in promotional videos. A recent example is the new call of duty game, which his song has been used to help promote the game. It is a song from his new album 'recovery' , the song is called 'wont back down'.

Florence and the Machine

Florence and the machine are really hitting it big with the public currently, and the way they do this is by perfectly aiming at their target audience. Florence and the machine's sound has been described as a combination of various genres, including rock and soul. The band are trying to aim for the teens with many different ways of getting thepublics attention. Every way the band presents themselves is important to attracting an audience going don to the way they dress. Firstly what attracts more of the female teen is the style of clothes worn. The main singer has put herself in the current fashion with the long dresses covered in flowers. Looking very much like a 'topshop girl' which does attract that audience. BBC played a large part in Florence and the Machine's rise to the top of the charts with the band's debut album 'Lungs' was released on 6th July 2009, and held the 2nd position for its first five weeks in the UK album chart.

There are main conventions for promotional websites for musicians/bands/artists. Basic parts or sections to a website that a user can interact with and use. Florence and the machine has images of the artists that you can download. A video of her music is also placed onto the opening page to promote her music and give a taster of her music. Many websites have promotional boxes for other websites, promoting their products on the artists website. The colours and and images have an old fashion feel to it. Breaking the norm for music these days, producing a different style of music in the actual sound but also the visual presentaion. The colours are quite dark which goes against the style of her music and usual presentation of what i would describe as a hippy look. But the the websites theme goes with her new album with the idea of Lungs with an actual lung that breathes. This really works well as it connects to her album and her music. What doesn't work about this website is that it aims to produce the best looking website, this takes up internet memory usage. So those using an old computer it would take a long time to load or might not be able to support the websites usage.

Getting a Niche

What most artists try to do is create a niche that will make them stand out different to the rest. Much like Lily Allen, whos musical tastes evolved from glam rock to a new alternative style of music. However since her new style was created many have tried to copy her style. A contract was signed with the label Regal recordings, as the views on her MySpace account rose to tens of thousands. Kate Nash is an example of this but has been seen to be copying her style and has become less succesful. However at the start of her carrier she was not instantly famous as bands like coldplay were exciting the public with their own new style.

What coldplay managed to do, which many artists do find difficult, was to create a sound that nearly every age loved. Coldplay's early material was compared to acts such as Radiohead, They achieved worldwide fame with the release of the single 'Yellow' and quickly became loved around the world.

Music videos

There are different types of music video that all intend to visually capture the audience. There are narrative based videos that tell the audience a story. Then there are performance based videos that concentrate mainly on the artists as the perform. Concept based videos which can just be random.


An example of a performance based music video is this song by the Foo fighters, My hero. The Foo fighters do alot of performance based videos as do most bands under the rock music genre. This video is about a man saving people out of a burning buildingm and within the building the band are in the house playing their song as if theyre not there, invisible. The whole video is a hand held shot with no cutting to different angles as if we, as the audience, were him saving people. Clever editting was used also to put the singers face on the tv screen as he's actually singing.

An example of a narrative based video is this song by Plan B, She said. Its a great example of a narrative video as it has a story to the video that links to the lyrics. The lyrics that link he says he's in court, in a box infront of a judge which in the video he really is. The video is of him being in court for a crime he didnt comit. He eventually get taken down for it in the end.

Alex Day

Alex day is a young artist trying to get his music out there to the public. He has created his own website for the public to listen to his music free and download it off iTunes if they saw fit. He has finished his album and is available for purchase now on iTunes. He has an interesting sound that drew us into his music, his song 'The world is mine' was a starting option for us and we really liked the song. So we emailed him asking for permition to use his track in our music video. We got a reply back an hour later saying we could use his song and we had a song available for our use if we wanted.
http://www.alexdaymusic.com/

Here is how we contacted the artist:

On 20 Jul 2010, at 18:09, Elliott Gallimore wrote:

Hi Alex, my name is Elliott Gallimore, I'm currently studying my A-levels and have been set the task to create a music video over the summer using the song of my choice and would like to ask permission to use your song 'Candy Floss'. In the interest of copyright i thought it important to ask authorisation from yourself. Thankyou very much for your time, Elliott Gallimore

Reply from Alex:

Sure, help yourself! :D

xOn 22 Jul 2010, at 14:55, Elliott Gallimore wrote:

Hi again Alex, sorry about this but I was wondering whether instead of Candy Floss as the song that I make a music video for could I perhaps use 'The World is Mine (I don't know anything), thanks very much for your help :D

Reply from Alex:

All my songs are available for whatever people want, so yeah, go ahead :D x

Finding our artist

Our task is to create a music video for a song of our choice and explore the creation of a meaningful video. We began by searching for unsigned artists as their music is free to use in whatever the public wants as the song is not owned by a company selling music to the public. We found sites like http://www.theunsignedguide.com/ which show cases peoples music to the public and is a great way for bands to get their music out there for the record labels to see. We found many interesting bands but not in the stye we were looking for and unfortunately there was a lack of any interesting music, a lot of it we found dull. Many artists get their music out by youtube, which is a great site for free videos of basically anything, This is how we stumbled across our first artist option, Alex Day. He is a recently signed small artist who has many home videos of him singing and showing off his music. He is young and jumped out at us with a song that we thought is different in his own style but comfortbale for knew listeners to be drawn in.