Beginning of Media Coursework

At the beginning of Year 13, we were given a list of options that we could choose for our media coursework. Our group (myself, Leah and Vickie) had already narrowed down the choice to the options we thought would be the most successful. In the end we decided to go with a music video. We chose this because it was the one we could all relate to the most, we listen to music almost everyday and watch most of the music videos also.
This was a lot different to the work I did last year as I was in a different group and we were producing something that was more dark and a different concept. Last year we produced a thriller movie lasting 5 minutes.
We set out to produce a music video aimed at teenagers like ourselves as we thought that we would be able to use some of our own ideas and feelings to contibute to making the video relevant.
We produced a questionnaire which asked questions such as:

-Age
-Gender
-Favourite genre of music
-Why people watch music videos
-How important it was for the storyline was reflected in the lyrics
-How important it was for the artist to be seen singing the lyrics

Our questionnaires were sent out to 20 people from ages 15-18
The majority were ages 16-18.
The majority prefered indie and folk music.
The majority believed it was partially relevant for the artist to be seen singing the lyrics.
The majority watched music videos for the storyline and to listen to the music.
The majority believed it was quite important for the lyrics to be reflected in the music video.

From this, we decided to produce a music video that was placed in the indie/folk genre.
Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s from singer/songwriters in the indie rock community showing heavy influences from folk music scenes of the 50s, 60s and early 70s. A few early artists included Beck, Elliott Smith and Lou Barlow. This genre had been steadily growing in popularity with bands such as Bon Iver. Indie folk is characterized by a large number of up-and-coming bands who pull influence from traditional and cvontemporary folk music, classic country and indie rock. Many indie folk bands are quite large and their songs tend to be thick on complicated instrumentation, lyricism, and multi voiced harmonies.

We searched on MySpace for artists in the genre and came accross an artist Sarah Russell. We contacted her manager and asked if it would be OK to use this song, he came back and said yes. So we went ahead and planned our storyboard.