Music Video Research

I've teamed up with Beth Money in order to create a music video after a sort of "speed-pitching" session, where we had a few minutes to exchange ideas with different members of the class before switching, in order to get an idea of what other people were interested in working on, and also whose ideas would fit my own. I was hoping to look into the Indie genre, but wanted something quirky and certainly non-mainstream, as it would be a fun genre to explore artistically. Beth similarly wanted something quirky and interesting, though something more towards the folk end of the Indie genre. I liked her idea of possibly making a darker video - I had previously been thinking about something relatively bright/comic, and she was interested in the sort of video techniques I wanted to explore - the use of split screen and colour filters for example. Now, settled on folk music, we have began to explore what already exists in the range of music videos for this genre. Of those we researched, we particularly liked:

Bon Iver - The Wolves

Mumford and Sons - Winter Winds

Stornoway - I Saw You Blink

Each video contains aspects that we'd really like to explore in our own videos and has given us some idea of the general characteristics of a folk music video:

• A considerable amount of scenic shots
• Rural settings - fields, country roads, woodlands etc.
• Attention to costume - a mixture of indie and outdoor clothing, sometimes vintage style - skinny jeans and waistcoats are mixed with suits, body warmers, duffel coats and gloves
• Scenic/natural exploration

We then found this artist:

David Gibb - The English Retreat

We really liked the style and character of the songs and, indeed, the quirky nature of his videos which incorporate many of the common themes we've noted - rural settings, indie/vintage clothing etc. We explored him more on his Myspace page and discovered that he was unsigned and so would be much more likely to allow his music to be used and be much easier to contact. We went through the list of his music on his page and had initially chosen the song "Apple In My Teeth" to make into a video due to the lack of one already existing, which meant we would be in no way influenced by any existing material. However, after initial planning, wanting to go along a comedic narrative, we decided that we'd rather go back and re-explore our desire to pursue darker themes, something that this song lacked. We didn't want to abandon Gibb as an artist. We went back over his music and found "This Young Boy", and this is now the song we are convinced we will use for our video. It does, however, have an existing music video:

However, having looked briefly at this video, we know that our own ideas are developing in a completely different direction to this, so there should be no danger of accidental copying.