Sarah Russell

After discovering we were unable to use a signed artist or band, we decided to search on Myspace for an artist corresponding to the results we collected from our questionnaire. We narrowed it down to two possible choices of music to use.
The first was a band called Lights and Sounds, we all liked their song “Don’t Leave” as it had a good beat and was quite similar to the music that was currently in the charts. The second option was a singer called Sarah Russell, we all preferred her song as it was closer to the sort of music we had in mind for using for our video and her music was part of the Indie/Folk genre that was most popular according to our questionnaire.
We decided to use Sarah Russell’s music, here is a link to her Myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/sarahrussellmusicuk

She lists some of the artists who she believes have had an influence on her, so we looked at some of the videos they have created and took some inspiration from them.

Research - The Questionnaire

We produced a questionnaire which asked questions such as:

1. Which sex are you? Please circle

Male Female

2. How old are you? Please circle

13-15 16-18 19-22 23+

3. What is your favourite genre of music? Please circle two answers

Pop Hip-hop Indie Folk Rap Rock R&B Metal ClubJazz

4. How important is it to you that the artist can be seen singing the lyrics of the song in the music video? Please circle

Very Partially Irrelevant

5. Why watch music videos? Circle two answers

To see the artist themselves The storyline Consolation (e.g lovevideos if you’re going through a break up) Visual effects To listen to the music

6. How important is it to you that the lyrics are reflected in the music video (storyline)? Please circle one

Very Quite important Irrelevant

We sent our questionnaire to 20 people ranging from ages 13 - 23+.
The majority of people that participated in our questionnaire were aged 16-18 and preferred Indie/Folk music.A large proportion of participants believed it was only partially important for the artist to be seen singing the lyrics to the song and often watched music videos to watch the storyline and listen to the music, deciding it was quite important for the lyrics to be reflected in the music video.

After gathering this information, we decided to produce a music video for a song that was part of the indie/folk genre.

According to Wikipedia; 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 50's, 60's and early 70's, early artist included Beck and Elliot Smith. This genre had been steadily growing in popularity with bands such as Bon Iver, and is characterised by a large number of up-and-coming bands who have been influenced by traditional and contemporary folk music, classic country and indie rock.

We searched on MySpace for unsigned artists within this genre and found Sarah Russell, who was our favourite of the bands and singers. We contacted her manager to ask permission to use her song ‘Finally Found’ and with his permission we went on to plan our storyboard for the video.

Starting our Coursework

At the start of Year 13, we were given a list of options that we could choose from for our media coursework. My group (Hannah, Leah and Myself) narrowed down our choices to which we thought would be the most successful and decided to do a music video.

We chose this option because we all felt we could relate to a music video the most; as we all listen to music every day and often watch the videos that accompany the songs.

I found the making of a music video very different to my coursework last year, as I was working on something with a completely different concept; this being a short thriller lasting five minutes. Whereas the music video turned out to be a lot more challenging despite being shorter in length.

We decided to produce a music video aimed at teenage girls of similar ages to ourselves (16 – 19), as we felt we would be able to contribute some of our own personal ideas and feelings about the song, hopefully making the video more relevant to our target audience.