Music Video Pitch

Choosing the right song

Originally, we all settled with the song Crazy Dream by Tom Misch. However, we found the song was quite slow paced for what we were aiming to do with our concepts. We attempted to speed it up and see if this helped, but it still wasn't following our concept/theme. After spending quite a bit of time trying to work around it, we decided to start again and come up with a song and concept that works with it.

We proposed several songs but we did not feel passionate about any of them and we felt this was critical for ensuring a successful music video. Whilst looking in my music library, I found the song You & Me (Baauer remix) by Disclosure. This was perfect as it had the speed we were looking for as well as the perfect balance between lyrics and music. We immediately gravitated towards the song and decided this was going to be our choice.

After this, it was time to come up with our final concept and ideas for the music video. 

Meeting the team

Almost immediately after returning from the summer holidays, it was time to pick our groups for this term's coursework. As a class, we decided the best way to determine our groups would be to talk one on one with everyone in the class to try and see who had similar ideas/themes/concepts to ours. 

This turned out to be a very successful method as it was clear who was gravitating towards who. My group members turned out to be : 

Ben South

Dasha Koenig 

Haydon Downing 

The reason we specifically paired together as we all chose similar themed concepts. For example, we all wanted to focus on the aesthetics of the music video through the importance of lighting and artistic direction as well as have a fast paced club-like song. Ben, Dasha and Haydon liked my concept for Crazy Dream as well as the song itself. We decided to go with this song and see how we could potentially merge some of our ideas into mine. 

The Brief

The Brief

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 for the band;

a cover for its release as part of a digipak (CD/DVD package);

a magazine advertisement for the digipak (CD/DVD package).

2. Make sure your three initial ideas/treatments are uploaded.

  

3. For each of the initial ideas, carry out and illustrate your research into real artists of a similar type:

• Images
• Websites – artists, record companies, fansites, social network sites
• Music videos
• Soundcloud etc

Music and it's relevance today

During the summer, I visited a record shop in Notting Hill to try and answer different questions I had about the music industry. This is what I found. 

Music Video Idea No.3

Sweet Transvestite - Tim Curry 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR6wKRWFOoE

Tim Curry 

Tim Curry, 70, is an English actor, voice actor and singer. His rise to fame was a result from playing Dr Frank-N-Furter in the musical Rocky Horror Picture Show(where this chosen song is taken from). Curry's main focus was on acting, however he did have some success with his musical career. Curry released his first album in 1978 called Read My Lips. The album was a mix of covers and original songs performed in diverse genres. Curry released 3 albums in his career and went on several tours, however it is clear over his career so far that his main focus was not music. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Curry

There is an English website all about Tim Curry. The website is basic but holds all the latest news about Curry and promotes things like meet and greets and latest shows. The site is one of the first options you get when you type Tim Curry into Google making it helpful for any fans to know all about Curry at the click of a mouse. 
http://www.timcurry.co.uk/

Unfortunately, Curry has suffered from some major health implications that have forced him to become disabled. This has evidently caused him harm as it has restricted him to what he is able to do performance wise. 

My music video idea : 

For this song, I will be focusing on creating an image for a female solo artist. As I have chosen to do something a bit controversial, I needed to ensure that the name of the artist correlated with their image. After coming up with several options, I decided to go with Victor Victoria, taking inspiration from the film. 

I wanted to try something different with the song as I didn't want to take too much inspiration from the film. I decided to make the transvestite female instead of male which I felt worked as it was still upholding the meaning of the song. I want the traits of my artist to be similar to Lady Gaga's in the song You and I like the aggression and passion. However, physically, I want the artist to look similar to Victor Victoria by having slicked back hair and a clean cut suit. 

The music video will have no narrative, only a performance. There will be several different sets :

• The audience is not introduced to the artist immediately. They are teased with close ups of lips, painted nails, heels to give the impression it is a man dressed as a woman and then a spotlight reveals the female transvestite. The use of UV lights but just have the lips. 

• One set would be in the theatre where it would appear as a performance with a band. There will be a lot of red and a lot of spotlight use. Possible use of a theatre curtain or something similar.

• There will be a runway kind of set up with a heart shape made of bulbs at the back. 

• A lip throne like set will also be made for the artist to lie across with the rocky horror lips all over the walls.

• There will be lots of close ups like the lips in rocky horror.

• Several shots of the artist being engulfed by men's attention. 

• All the dancers are men with red lipstick to confuse the audience wearing the same outfit as the artist.

• The lyric 'anticipation' all the mens lips light up and they say it together.

To experiment how I would attempt to convey this artist through things like social media, I attempted to create a website. As the idea was relatively original, I had some trouble trying to create a basic website that conveyed the artist's image. I ensured I remembered that the artist was a female but was conveying herself as a man. This was what I created : 

I chose to contrast the name 'Victor Victoria' by using different fonts as I wanted to highlight to the audience that there is almost two parts to the artist. I decided to use a suit for the main image as I wanted to mainly convey the masculinity, however, I edited a red bowtie on top of the black one to again juxtapose and give the impression of a dual act. 

As well as the website, I created a digipak to further experiment how I would portray this artist. This is what I came up with : 

As I experimented with the masculinity in the website, I wanted to try something more feminine. I used the Rocky Horror Picture Show lips as it linked in well with the video, song and image. The contrast in fonts again illustrate a contrast in character. I chose to name the album masquerade as it furthers this. One thing I would like to try and do is add something slightly masculine to the image, like how I did with the website. 

Music Video Idea No.2

2 On - Tinashe (feat. Schoolboy Q) (TOKiMONSTA Remix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us8KgPkg8f0

Tinashe 

Tinashe, 23, is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, actress and former model. Tinashe mainly creates music under the genre of Alternative R&B, Pop and R&B. Tinashe has done well in her 9 years so far of active participation in the music industry. Originally part of a band called The Stunners, she went solo in 2011 and released her first original song and video. So far, Tinashe has released many singles with featuring artists like Schoolboy Q, Chance The Rapper, and Chris Brown. 

Tinashe has both a Wikipedia page and a website where you can find out more about her music and her career : 
http://www.tinashenow.com/home/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinashe
Through the website we can see Tinashe is involved with social medias like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Vevo, Youtube, Soundcloud, Spotify and iTunes. The use of social media has helped Tinashe massively to accumulate her fame. Personally, I found Tinashe through Soundcloud and Youtube which furthers the success of this. 

In 2016, Tinashe featured on a Snakehips song called All My Friends which has furthered her success in the music business. The song was an international hit securing fame for both Snakehips and Tinashe. As a result of this, I preempt Tinashe will be seen a lot more in the top charts in the upcoming years. 

My music video idea : 

For this particular song, I want to focus on creating the image of a two part group, like Die Antwoord, however the video will mainly be focused on the female singer as opposed to the rapper. For the time being, I will refer to the duo as Ink. 

I want the image of the female artist to be similar to a mix between Rihanna and Aluna George. The traits from these artists that I want to show in mine would be maintaining sex appeal, confidence and sassiness. 

I want the image of the rapper to be a mix between Kanye West and Will Smith. I want the slightly aggressive traits from Kanye to appear through my artist however I also want the groovy confidence traits like we see in Will Smith. 

The music video will have no narrative, only performance. There will be several sets: 

• A jungle like set with the female singer and two (facially unseen) african drummers behind her on each side. The atmosphere of this set will be enhanced through different coloured cloud lighting. The shots will steer in and out of close ups and medium shots. The lighting will change depending on the speed of the music. 

• Another set will be for the dancing section of the video. It will be a light wall so the audience is unable to see the dancers - just their silhouettes. 

• There will then be a corridor set where the duo will perform together. This will be lit up with strong light beams. (potentially experiment with UV lights)

• Then there will be several hanging beams/strings of light that the female artist will sing through. The dancers might also be seen here. 

• I thought it might also be fun to experiment with using projectors to create surreal lighting on the artist's face against a black wall.

• I also want an army themed set for a particular part in the song where the drums are played in a march like manner. 

The video idea fits in with the the song for a number of different ideas. The sex appeal and confidence of the female artist correlates with the lyrics of the song. The sets and performance spaces that I have come up with are similar to others that are in this same genre of music. 

I decided to make a website homepage for my duo to try and determine how I would want to convey them to the audience and what techniques I would use.  I felt it was important to always remember the genre of music the artist belongs to as well as their image. 

I used this photo of Aluna George as I felt it the image itself conveyed a lot of the traits I wanted in my artist, like sass and confidence. I chose to filter the photo pink because when I envision the music video, I see a lot of vibrant lights throughout and felt that featuring this in the homepage would be an emphasis on their look. I felt that the having the artist's name in bold made it stand out, which is something to bare in mind when creating a website as it's purpose is to promote the artist. 

Following on from this, I also made a digipak. This was to further ensure I was establishing the correct image for my duo. 

I tried to maintain the same image of the artist however just try something slightly different. I had the duo's name in bold and purple to uphold the vibrancy of the duo as well as make the name stand out in order to promote the artist. I had the title of the album in basic white writing to contrast to the name of the artist so that it naturally stood out to the audience.