Contacting The Band

I messaged the band using a contact form I found on the band 'Contact' page of their website to ask permission to use their song in my music video. I hope to get a reply so that I can say the song is used with permission in my coursework.

Audience Research

I will be researching the band The Heavy and their demographic and fans.

The Heavy are from Bath, England and their musical genre is considered indie rock, neo-soul, funk and blues. They were influenced by Prince and The Sonics. They currently have three released albums:

   Great Vengeance and Furious Fire             The House That Dirt Built                     The Glorious Dead

                        (2007)                                              (2009)                                                (2012)

My chosen song "Short Change Hero" is from their second album.

The band has a Facebook page. Liking it causes a list of siumilar artists to drop down. This gives an idea of the kind of music they make and whether or not someone would like them based on whether they like the similar artists. It also helps fans of The Heavy discover new similar music that they may like. Currently, they have 85,257 likes.

There is also a Twitter page that the band personally uses to update fans on gigs and other news. They also frequently use to to retweet what fans thought of songs, albums and concerts. Currently, they have 8,958 followers.

The Heavy's YouTube channel is used to upload their official music videos and some live footage from concerts. Currently, they have 8,525 subscribers.

Of these three social networking sites that The Heavy are present on, they have the highest number of fans on Facebook by a large amount. This tells me that the majority of their fanbase is present on Facebook and not so much on Twitter and YouTube. Online users that are present on Twitter and YouTube tend to be younger ages such as teenagers. All ages, including adults, have Facebook and so this tells me that the majority of The Heavy's audience are adults.

I also searched the band on Last.fm to see what results would come up for similar bands to The Heavy. This website is popularly used by music lovers to find bands that are similar to their favourites. The results I found when searching The Heavy helped me find bands that I could use to base my media products off. I am able to follow the conventions used by these similar bands to create a music video, website and digipak design that fits into this genre of music.

When buying their album 'The House That Dirt Built' on Amazon, a list of items that are often bought buy people who buy this album is also on the page. It also shows what else is frequently bought with the album, in this case it is The Heavy's other two albums. Other items The Heavy's fan's bought on Amazon include albums by other rock and blues artists.

The same thing can be found on the iTunes store, where users can see what other listeners of The Heavy have bought. The screenshot below shows that music rock and blues artists are often bought by this audience.

A video of The Heavy playing at a festival give a real life example of what their audience is like as we can see the crowd in the video. From this, it appears that the majority of their fans are adult males.

I have also recently been to a concert of The Heavy. Initially, I thought that the audience at the concert would be mainly males aged 25 - 40 and over due to their genre and musical sound being very reminiscent of older rock/soul music. However, at the concert I found that the audience consisted of a rather equal ratio of males and females of a range of ages, from around 18 - 50. This may be due to the genre of The Heavy appealing to younger audiences with their unique style or perhaps even through their well-known songs featured in television and video games. One song in particular, "Short Change Hero", is well-known for being used in the opening sequence of a video game (Borderlands 2) and I noticed that this was the song that received the most feedback from the audience at the concert (cheering and singing along). This could suggest that lots of the fans at the concert discovered the band through this, opening up a new audience of video game players (typically males aged 15 - 21).

Changed Video Plan

I have decided to no longer include a stop motion portion on my music video anymore. The main reason for this was due to time constraints. Despite liking my idea to use painted background and cut-out shapes to create a simple stop motion sequence for around 20-30 seconds of my video, I don't feel I have the time to do a thorough job of it while having filming to do as well. I realise that stop motion is a very lengthy process and each frame has to be created with care and editing them together is also rather time-consuming as it should give the illusion of a seamless flow through each frame.

My music video will now be entirely filmed, focusing on my main character 'The Hero'.

Similar Music Videos

In my music video, I plan on using an actor that is not portraying any member of the band, they are simply just the actor for the video. This is a music video convention that is often seen in music videos but is also seen as the more creative option. As it does not directly include the band, music video directors tend be more abstract in what they do with the video and what kind of actor and storyline they use. Some will play out a narrative that follows along with the lyrics of the song whereas others will go completely abstract and random.

I will also be using a child actor for my music video. This is another feature that is quite frequently seen in music videos, more and more so today. It creates an interesting juxtaposition between the child's innocence and youth and the mature lyrics or surroundings in the video.

The kinds of music videos that often take this approach in their music videos tend to be by indie or alternative bands. This genre are often the ones notorious for being very offbeat and straying from mainstream ways.

For my music video, the storyline and main character will have some relevance to the song, especially to the title of the song "Short Change Hero". I took a lot of inspiration to go down this abstract path from other existing music videos, such as:

La La La - Naughty Boy ft. Sam Smith

Titanium - David Guetta ft. Sia

Tighten Up - The Black Keys

Midnight City - M83

Holocene - Bon Iver

Blue Blood - Foals

Rationale

I have chosen to produce my music video idea for The Heavy's "Short Change Hero" because I like this song a lot and it has a very distinctive kind of sound, that being quite western and bluesy. I was able to come up with a plausible idea for a music video using a mixture of live action and stop motion animation and plan on casting my younger brother as the lead character.

I am taking lots of inspiration from the title of the song "Short Change Hero". It has given me the idea to use a wannabe 'hero' as the main character. I also want to have a running theme of the hero using 'short change' (pennies such as 10p coins) to try and help others with, like leaving pennies dotted around or handing them out. The word 'short' in the title also gives me the image of the hero being short, which has inspired my to cast my younger brother who is 12 years old as the hero. I want to use lonely looking landscapes for my settings to reflect the style of western movies that use lonely desert scenes. I want to use locations in my local area, such as countryside lanes, woods, fields and a lake.

Treatment

My idea for my music video is to star a young boy as the "Short Change Hero", having him dressed in western-style cowboy clothing walking around a desolate town that he feels like he must be the hero of.
I plan on using live action film and a little bit of stop motion animation for my music video.

Shot Inspiration
For my live action sequences, I plan on following the conventions of a western movie due to the style of the song. The conventions include the use of guns, horses, typical western outfits (such as stetsons, jeans, boots, card games, vast deserted landscapes, loneliness and some sort of confrontation or fight.
I want to take these conventions and interpret them into a style of my own. As I will be using a younger male actor as my lead role, I will edit his surroundings to fit with his age yet still tie in with the western theme. For example, one idea I have it to use shots of the lead in his western outfit alone in an empty kids park, inspired by the common film convention of filming cowboys alone in the desert or in a derelict town.

These screenshots are from the famous western movie 'The Good, The Bad & The Ugly'.

I also want to use the same melancholy tone of using a child exploring alone, similar to the style used in Naughty Boy's music video for "La La La".

For my stop motion pieces, I plan to use a similar style to Mykonos by Fleet Foxes. It uses pieces of simple shapes made of paper/card and moves them around to create characters and locations using stop motion. Creating this would be a very lengthy process (depending on how long the piece of stop motion I need is) but would look very impressive and different.

I want to use hand-painted backgrounds to my stop motion animation. A good example of this is the music video of the song "Aquarium" by BAYY.

Locations and Settings
I plan on using existing locations in my local area. I want to use my local park, woods and lake and the streets and alleyways in my local town.

Colour pallet
The colour pallet I plan on using is going to consist mainly of orange and brown tones to give a warm look similar to a western movie set in a desert. However I may also use some colder tones to highlight the main character's loneliness which will also juxtapose against the warm tones.

Brief overview of narrative
The narrative will consist of the story of a young cowboy who takes it upon himself to become the town's hero in anyway he can, be it big or small.

Costume & Props

The costumes I want to use will be just one for my main character in the style of a cowboy from a western movie. To create this costume, I will use blue jeans, a brown belt, a plaid shirt and a costume stetson.

Changed Initial Ideas

After choosing to use 'Fader' by Temper Trap as my song, I have decided to change it as I struggled to come up with a do-able idea for the music video. I thought of some ideas however they did not fit with the style of the song 'Fader'. I have therefore changed my chosen song to the song I chose as a back-up: "Short Change Hero" by The Heavy.

This song is very rhythmic, melancholy and western-styled, giving me a clear theme to help me come up with ideas for my music video.

The song:

Annotated Lyrics

I annotated the lyrics to the song I am going to use in my music video. I noted some ideas for my music video's narrative. For my initial music video idea, I annotated the lyrics of Fader by Temper Trap:

My other initial idea I annotated the lyrics of Short Change Hero by The Heavy:

Initial Plans

I plan to create a music video for a song that is within the genre of indie rock. I have chosen this because it is a genre I am very familiar with, it being a personal favourite of mine and I feel I will be able to do a better job with a song I like.

My initial plan was to create a music video for Paramore's "Still Into You" and already had ideas for shots, props and costumes. However, I came to realise that my ideas were very closely based off of the actual music video for this song. So I have decided to completely change is and go for a song that I like but have not seen the official music video for.

Below is a list I made of possible songs for my music video:

As you can see from the blue asterixs, I chose "Fader" by The Temper Trap and "Short Change Hero" by The Heavy as my top two favourites. I decided to go with the song "Fader" by Temper Trap and see if I can come up with some good ideas to go with the song for my music video. This song is very upbeat, catchy and at a pace that would be entirely possible and quite fun to edit in time with. The song is heard-of without it being overplayed. Most importantly, I have not seen the music video to this song and plan to keep it that way so that my ideas will be fresh and entirely my own creation.

However, I plan on using "Short Change Hero" as my backup incase I wish to change my song.

The song: