Intertextuality

I have been looking at how similar artists to our chosen artist have brought in other texts in their own music video. I first looked at James Blunt and his song "You're Beautiful". He brings in the text of in his video doing the "Japanese tradition of removing one's shoes and contents of clothing prior to jumping from a great height". This is used in order to visibly symbolise that he would rather kill himself than not be with a certain girl.

James Morrison's song "Broken Strings" uses intertextuality in a couple of interesting ways. The music video references two films  ("Paris, Texas" and the reversed explosion is inspired by the film "Insignificance").

On Bruno Mars' music video of his song "Just the Way You Are", he uses a strong intertextual link of having the actress Nathalie Kelley listening to "Just the Way You Are" on her Walkman as Bruno walks in, Bruno stops the tape player, removes the cassette tape and begins singing his song. He brings in the walkman to get the viewer's attention and to show something they are familiar with.

In James Blunt's music video of his song "1973". It shows a modern day James walking around in what appears to be the year he is singing about.

This gives an effect for viewers that lived during that time as it is very familiar for them and they can reminisce while watching the modern day music video.

This gives a great effect for fans that did live in 1973, but not so much for viewers that did not. Perhaps, he is capitalising on the fact that is fans are of an older generation. The video was shot in the Universal Backlots in Los Angeles. This could have good repercussions for people that know the areas in and around Los Angeles.

Our chosen song (with lyrics)

Ideal Audience member

• Her name is Lauren and she is 21 years old. She is currently studying English Literature at the University of York. She is staying in a flat with her best friends. She walks to class and on the way listens to her iPod , she likes to listen to audiobooks on the way.
• She likes to buy music but not very often. She instead prefers to watch artists on YouTube and discover new songs by independent artists. She is a fan of Indie but does like the mainstream Pop sound. She likes to listen to Oasis , The Feeling, James Blunt , Bob Dylan and Adele. She has a few albums but not many. 

• She does not go to many local gigs but she has been to a few festivals, she particularly likes Glastonbury because it features a range of music that she likes.

• She likes to play the piano and took lessons when she was a child. She never really appreciated it then but she does now.

• She uses the Internet for a variety of reasons. She regularly goes on YouTube to watch tutorial videos of popular piano instrumentals. She also likes to record herself doing cover versions of songs that she listens to such as "Just The Way You Are" or "Someone Like You". 

• She also is a regular Facebook user , she likes to chat with her friends regularly and she likes to post her videos on her wall. She also has a Twitter account but does not tweet, she prefers to follow her favourite celebrities such as Gary Barlow or James Blunt. She used to have a MySpace account and frequently listened to music on there from artists profiles. 
• She does not read many newspapers but likes reading gossip magazines such as Hello!

• Lauren likes to go to the cinema but does not go often due to money constraints, she normally likes to see romantic/relationship films but does enjoy the occasional comedy.
• She likes to watch X Factor, Glee, Friends, Desperate Housewives.

• She does not have a car preferring to ride her bicycle as she cares about the environment. 

• She has a boyfriend that she has been dating for 2 years.
• She likes to wear colourful dresses and tops when she goes out but opts for a more formal but still casual look for classes.

Audience Research- Youtube

To try and get a better understanding of our audience I thought that looking at YouTube statistics was a good place to start .

The first video I look at was the official video of Nick Gardner's Out Of The Clouds song. Looking at the map for where the music is popular , it is clear that the video is most popular in Britain. The video is also gaining popularity in the Americas particularly the U.S.A In terms of of the audience, we can see that the video is more popular with Females aged 13-24. But there is also a strong audience with Males aged 35-44. This shows that Nick has a wide diverse audience of both genders ranging from teenagers to adults. We can also see from the referrals that the video has been watched the most on a mobile device such as a tablet or phone. This is an example of technological convergence and it shows that his audience are tech savvy.


The second video I looked at was Adele's "Set Fire To The Rain". The map shows that this video is hugely popular worldwide which shows how diverse her audience is in terms of culture. America, Europe and Oceania are where she is most popular. Looking at the audience statistics, we can see again that the video is most popular with Females aged 13-24. Also we see that it is popular with Males aged 45-54. Again this shows we will have to target our music mainly at Teenage and Adult women whilst also hitting the male audience above 30. Looking at the referrals we can see that most people searched for the video via YouTube, but also we see there are a lot of views from Facebook. This shows that social networking will be a key factor in trying to target our audience.






The third video I looked at was James Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover". The popularity map shows that the video is most popular in North America and West Europe. This shows that his audience are very local and not as spread out as other artists. Looking at the audience views we can see again that the video is most watched by Females aged 13 to 24 and Males aged 30 and above. We can also see from the referrals that the video was most referred from YouTube.






The final video I looked at was Bruno Mars' song "Just The Way You Are". Looking at the map we can see the video is popular worldwide particularly the Americas , Europe and Oceania. Looking at the audience views again we see that he is most popular with Females aged 13-24. But this time he is also popular with male teenagers aged 13-17. Looking at the referrals we can see most of his viewers have come from searching his name on YouTube or by watching his other videos. We can also see that 11 million people came from Facebook which shows that his audience use Facebook on a regular basis.

In conclusion, we can see clearly that our audience will mainly be Females aged 13-24. We also need to use YouTube and Facebook when promoting our digipack and music video as this is where most of the viewers have come from.

Music Video- Initial thoughts and explorations

As our song is called "Out of the Clouds", I can really picture the use of a smoke machine in our music video. This, to me sounds like a good idea as it is a visual representation of the name of thew song as the smoke machine would produce what looks like clouds. However, I spoke to my teacher about it, and she said that it would not be a good idea as it would appear to be cheesy. She then directed me to look at music videos that use smoke machines so that I can see for myself that it would be a bad idea to use a smoke machine. The use of the smoke machine is very cheesy at the end of the song and this prompted me to think that it may be too cliché and cheesy for us to use a smoke machine in our video.

Audience Research- Interviews

Who would be your favourite singer songwriter? (examples include James Blunt, James Morrisson and Bob Dylan)
-Bob Dylan
What would you expect to see in an Indie/Pop music video?
-The band
What is your favourite music video(in this particular genre) and why?
-Bob Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues - clever music video
What would you expect an Indie/Pop artist to wear?
-Trousers (no shorts)
How would you expect an Indie/Pop artist to act in the video?
-Emotional

Chosen Song and profile of our artist

Nick Gardner is a singer-songwriter who is gaining popularity for his videos on YouTube. He started out covering songs by people like Bruno Mars, Daniel Merriweather and Adele which has gained over 250,000 views , before he released his first single "Where I Go" in 2009. He is popular because of his covers that he has done and has made a name of himself by performing well known songs.

Nick released his second single "Out Of The Clouds" in September 2010 which was the 60th Most Viewed Video for Musicians on YouTube. This is is the song that we have chosen to do for our digipack and music video. We will create an image for our artist and make a narrative for the video based on the lyrics. We chose the song because (in our opinion) it sounds good and would be a good song to make a music video for.

Here are the lyrics for our chosen song:-

[Verse 1]
Take this book from me and trace over my lines
Dark the view of the ghost on the road and cover my eyes
Heed advice that you got - stop - walk slow and keep to the sides
Keep all that in your head, use it well and see it it applies.

[Chorus]
But it hurts when it hurts and without you it's worse,
I can bring my head much further from out the clouds.
But it hurts when it hurts and without you it's worse,
I can bring my head much further from out the clouds.

[Verse 2]
Light that smoke with a flame and the sailor will die
And the tides they'll roll back and the ocean waters'll dry
There's a fear of the beast and the fear that it'll get worse
But it won't get worse, I know, it won't get worse.

[Chorus]
But it hurts when it hurts and without you it's worse,
I can bring my head much further from out the clouds.
But it hurts when it hurts and without you it's worse,
I can bring my head much further from out the clouds.


[Middle 8]
And I can see you kneeling on the floor and I can hear you testify
And this bitter pill I swallow makes it so damn hard for me to even try.
And I can see you kneeling on the floor and I can hear you testify
And this bitter pill I swallow makes it so damn hard for me to even try.

[Chorus]

I said wait, that's not me, just stay and you'll see,
I can bring my head much further from out of the clouds.