Genre.

Country.

Country music is a genre of American popular music that originated in Southern United States, in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1920s.
The origins of country music are the folk music of mostly white, working-class Americans, who blended popular songs, Irish and Celtic fiddle tunes, traditional ballads, and cowboy songs.
In 2009 country music was the most listened to rush hour radio genre during the evening commute, and second most popular in the morning commute in the United States.
Country music often consists of ballads and dance tunes with generally simple forms and harmonies accompanied by mostly string instruments such as banjos, electric and acoustic guitars, fiddles, and harmonicas.

Fiddlin' John Carson's "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" is often called the first country music record. The tune is undoubtedly the first country hit; its huge success proved the hillbilly recordings could be commercially profitable and paved the way for future recordings.
With the advent of radio and new recording technologies, country music became marketed in the early 1920s. Inexpensive 45 records and border radio helped spread hillbilly music far and wide in the '20s and '30s. It also gave rural performers the possibility to earn a living on their music, elusive though that often proved to be.


In the genre of country music there are many different sub-genres:

• Bluegrass

Though there is the occasional down-trodden, slow bluegrass tune, it can also be fun and exciting. The instrumentalists are usually soloists who pride themselves on their on stage energy.

• Cowboy Music

Cowboys were a part of the American culture that became increasingly popular in the 1930's when listeners where able to escape from reality with the ideal that the cowboy offered.

• Western Swing

The Western Swing is one of the first styles to mix indigenous white and black American music styles, featuring a 'big band' style shuffle.

• The Nashville Sound

The country music executives reconfigured the country genre as 'adult' aiming to reach a wider target audience. This new style then became known as the Nashville Sound, however the term was first used in a 1958 article in the Music Reporter and came into broader use in 1960 when it appeared in an article about Jim Reeves in Time Magazine.

• Country Rock

Country Rock came from the late 60's. Although Rock had come to terms with folk music years earlier, it meant that making a pure country influence was almost inevitable. The typical country-rock music was identifiable as a rock creation that used one element of standard country instrumentation.

• New Country

This phenomenon came from the rise of the previous country styles starting from the Urban Cowboy phenomenon of the 70's. In the 90's, Garth Brooks created the musical genre that overtook both the pop charts and the radio, which many artists followed and continue to the present day.

The House That Built Me.

I know they say you can't go home again.
I just had to come back one last time.
Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam.
But these hand prints on the front steps are mine.
Up those stairs, in that little back bedroom
Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar.
And I bet you didn't know, under that live oak
My favourite dog is buried in the yard.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me.

Mama cut out pictures of houses for years.
From 'Better Homes and Garden' magazines.
Plans were drawn, concrete poured,
And nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama's dream.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could just come in I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me.

You leave home, you move on and you do the best you can.
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am.

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could walk around I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that, built me.

My Pitch Idea.

For my pitch idea, I decided to create it on Prezi which I haven't used before, this was due to the fact that it is a new form of technology that I have learnt to use and the transitions between each topic is more exciting then a powerpoint presentation.

You can look at this by using this link: https://prezi.com/gzfiauuflqjz/pitch-idea/

Song Choices.

Once we had decided to do a music video we thought that most people would do a pop-song which is why we decided to try and stay away from them and stay unique and individual.  We looked at a range of different songs and narrowed our choices down to 4 songs (listed below) which we were going to choose our favourite to create a music video for.

Thanks For The Memories - Fall Out Boy

We thought that this would be a good song to choose as the lyrics suggest a narrative which lead to many different ideas, meaning we would be able to recreate a different storyline to others. Although the song is about looking back on a relationship, it doesn't follow the same conventions of a slow sad song and instead it is catchy and upbeat.

The song however is a pop song which would mean that we would be following the crowd and that our work would not stand out. The narrative we would have used when creating this music video would be one of a break down of a relationship which is a popular narrative. This song is also sang by a boy band which would mean that we would need more people to include and rely on.

Do I? - Luke Bryan

We thought that this song was a good choice because it was a different type of song that most people usually choose. The song is slightly country which means that it isn't a very popular song in the UK and we wouldn't risk copying another student's work from previous years. We thought by choosing a different genre to the usual pop videos, we would stand out from the rest of our year group.

In the end, we decided not to go for this song because the lyrics made it slightly harder to create a different interpretation that was suitable. This is due to the sexual nature of the song although disguised so that young children may not understand. This song is also, however different to pop songs, a song about love and a break down of a relationship.

Temporary Home - Carrie Underwood

This song is not about a relationship in the normal sense as it is about finding a place to be for the moment. Temporary Home is about the relationship of a child and their temporary parents who try to help them along their way. We found that the lyrics gave us a good idea for a narrative which would be rather easy to recreate.

We didn't choose this song because we thought that the use of characters and location would be hard to show within the UK. The characters that we would have used would be predominantly adults which created a limitation as not many adults have the time to do something like this or would be willing to help.

The House That Built Me - Miranda Lambert

When we first heard the song, we felt that it was a big part of everyone's life and that they would understand the difficulties of moving out and moving on. Although, I have not yet moved out from underneath my parent's roof, I understand the pain of moving away from everything and everyone you have ever known. The song isn't about a relationship with a person but about the bond you feel is broken when you move away from the house that you grew up in. This song is also country which we felt was better than an ordinary pop song as many people follow the same nature and structure when creating their videos. We gave this song a lot of thought and before even making our choice we had thousands of ideas about what we could do and how we could show our thoughts through a series of visual images. We chose this song because we can both relate to it, and people in our age group are getting ready to move away to university or just moving out from the family home.

Song Lyrics.

During the lesson, we analysed the song 'How to Save a Life' and annotated it with what we would do if we were creating the music video. We thought that the lyrics suggested a female would be singing about her depressed partner saying how she had lost him. We then compared this to the original music video.

Timeline Of Music Video.

Garth Brooks - Friends In Low Places

The song is a country genre by Garth Brooks and is a narrative and performance video. The structure of the verses are quite long resulting in lines of 13, 12 and 11 where the chorus' is short and snappy at only 7 lines long. In the video which is just under 4 minutes long, there are only 21 cuts and 3 fades. This is unusual in a music video but this may be different as it is a slow country song and not a fast, upbeat pop song.

When looking at the camera angles and shots within this music video, I noticed that there is a variety of long shots including mid long shots and extreme long shots. When trying to look for close-up's in this music I only managed to find one which was of the girl that the song to, or is about.

In this video there is a repeated sequence as he starts off in a blue light with the background people dancing in the darkness, this is slightly repeated later as he is stood alone in a black background. The surrounding scenes are also kind of repeated as Garth Brooks is walking around the scene whilst singing and there are people around him dancing with who he interacts with. The scenes are slightly different however as they included two different sets of people showing class differences. The location of the two places also shows this as the first location has an elegant glow with a blue light and tables with white tablecloths covering them. The second location is shown in a dark lighting with a bar in the middle of the room with no tables and posters on all walls. However there is only actually one location which is the stage but it is portrayed as two locations with a change of scenery and people.

The costumes of the people in this part of the music video is very elegant. The women are wearing long graceful dresses, where the men wear suits. The colours of their clothing is mainly black or a royal blue, with the small exception of a women who was wearing red.

The costumes in this scenes are all very bright and colourful including red, yellow, green and blue. The men are mainly wearing jeans and a coloured top where the women are still in dresses but these are rather a lot shorter then in the latter.

In this scene is Garth Brooks' one and only costume which is a stripy blue shirt, black jeans, black boots and a cowboy hat. This could show that he is meant to fit in with both the elegant blue scene and the brightly coloured bar scene. Although, due to his footwear and his hat, it is obvious that he doesn't really know how to fit in with the people at the black tie affair. Garth Brooks also stands out in this scene as although he is wearing black and blue like the rest of the people, he is not wearing a suit as the majority of the men are.

In this music video, there is lip syncing all the way through as he is always in the shot with his microphone. You may not see him lip syncing the entire video as some of the shots are long shots which means you can see him standing and dancing but cannot necessarily see his face. The ending of the video is a mid close up of Garth Brooks singing the last few words with a person either side of him swaying along to the beat. This then fades into a long shot which is still zooming out showing him and his friends standing together swaying to the last few beats of the music once the singing has finished.

Existing Songs.

I had to analyse existing songs to gain an idea of how they are created and how they portrayed their narratives. This was somewhat useful as it give me an insight of how to create the integrated storyline with the performance scenes. Although, I decided to use the lyrics as a guide rather than the existing music videos.

Girls Aloud - Something New

Within the music video there are many quick cuts including close-ups of the artists faces and long shots of them in different outfits. The girls only had two changes of outfits, one where they matched in bright orange dresses and another which were all different to suit them and they didn't necessarily  match. In some of the scenes, the lyrics appear on the screen where one of the band members who are in black and white. This is a main recurrence which is the same as the shot with the girls in their matching orange outfits, the two different types of shot creates a contrast as one is bright and stands out where the other is in black and white. This video is mainly a performance as it doesn't tell a story and has the artists singing and dancing, both fast paced and in slow motion at points. As it doesn't have a narrative, the video isn't in a linear order.

This video was helpful as to helping me with my music video as it showed me what I could do if I were to choose to do a performance video, which would be easier if I were to do a group as the artist. However, as my artist is just one person it is more difficult to do a performance as I would have to have more costume changes and a wide variety of shots, although it would be easier to do repeated sequences.

Film Trailer or Music Video?

Working with Kimberley Dalton: daltonkimberley.blogspot.co.uk

Originally we had chose to create a film trailer as we worried about the record company saying no to us using their artists products and being under the threat of copyright.

However, we recently learnt that the letter doesn't have to be sent off but we need to write one as evidence of thinking about the record company. This meant that although we already had a few ideas for a film trailer, we changed our minds. We thought that because a music video is a different type of media, it would better show our variety in skills.

Although there are pros and cons of both projects which we had to consider as we may encounter them as problems whilst creating our work.

Film Trailer.

Pros:

• We are using the same skills as we developed though our AS coursework in the previous year. This would make the work easier for us as we know what to do and how to navigate final cut to what we would need to add to a film trailer. However, doing this we wouldn't be able to show our progress into the next year.
• We have a better idea of what is expected from us in our completed work. As we have already created the starting two minutes of a film and got our grades back from that we are able to use that knowledge of what we did last year to improve our work this year.

Cons.

• It would be difficult to gather enough people willing to help us complete this project, and even if were able to find enough people it would be near impossible to get everyone together at the times we needed them.
• We would have to create a storyline for the entire film which we had troubles with last year and then we would have to chose which parts are important or dramatic and should be used within the film trailer.
• The traditional film trailer doesn't follow the storyline in chronological order meaning that once we had filmed everything that we needed we would have to figure out how to jumble the storyline and clips correctly to look like a real film trailer.

Music Video.

Pros:

• There would be less people involved and filming clips in different locations and at different times would help as we can figure out when the people we need are free and work on a schedule.
• We are able to use an existing song which would help as we wouldn't have to spend the time creating a song or asking people to help us out with writing a song.
• A music video uses a narrative storyline which we would be able to analyse and portray how we feel that it should be shown.

Cons.

• Choosing a song that can be used with a narrative could be difficult although if we can't find it then we may be able to change the view into artistic or performance which would still qualify as sufficient work to gain the marks and grades.
• Lip syncing is the only other problem that we could think of as it is difficult to match the artists words without actually singing the song. As the artist would have projected their voice when recording we thought that it would be easier to sing the song when filming, which would also help when it comes to editing. We can also take out the unwanted audio once we have finished editing so it doesn't ruin the effect of the song.