AR: Responding to our track

Foxes - Night Owls Early Birds (2014)

–1.  What is the genre of the track?  How can you tell?

Foxes conforms to the pop genre, she would also be considered a contributor to the music sub-genres electronic and synthpop. Her British nationality also comes through in her music as she has similarities to other solo female British pop artists such as Lily Allen, Marina and the Diamonds and Paloma Faith. The song is from the album Glorious which got to number 5 in the UK's album charts, this popularity is a characteristic of the pop genre as it is for a much wider, more vast audience than indie music. The use of a synthesizer in the song positions it as a synthpop track, a criticism of this type of music is that it is known to make music seem emotionless and lack musicianship.       

–2.  Do you think this track represents a high or lo fi video?  Why?

This track would definitely have a high fi video as traditional for the pop genre. Big budget, good quality videos are always present in the pop world as the video is seen as an extremely important tool for promoting the artist both for commercial purposes as well as art and soft porn. Within pop it is often viewed that the artist's appearance is as important as their voice, it is a very superficial side of the music industry. A good quality music video allows for the audience to repeatedly watch the content increasing its popularity and success.
 

–3.  What videos would be comparable? Publish and label some interesting stills from the same genre.

We can take inspiration from the videos of other female, solo, British pop singers such as Paloma Faith and Charli XCX as well as Foxes' already existing music videos to understand the style needed. These are comparable examples as they all conform to the same upbeat, high fi, pop look we are aiming to imitate with our track. These are all examples of an amplified relationship between lyrics and visuals as there is a vague connection between the two. There are not obvious narratives instead the images are more arty with conceptual meanings. These stills all have bright colours with some kind of illustration or art included e.g. paint, writing overlay, graffiti.  

       

–4.  Give an outline of a treatment
 

We want to create an amplified piece with maybe a narrative fuzz, so just an idea of a character in a situation e.g. 'Do the walk of shame in your best dress'. Mostly a conceptual piece with props such as paint and masks e.g animal masks 'owls', 'birds'. We would also like to include a performance aspect with someone lip syncing to the lyrics, imitating the artist. The lyrics have given us the idea of two parallel lines of action, one being a 'night owl' the other an 'early bird' and we can illustrate in our video what those two situations entail.  

–5.  Identify suitable locations for filming particular sequences of the music
 

The start could be one character waking up in bed (early bird), the other walking on the street very early in the morning in the same dress they wore the night before (night owl/walk of shame in your best dress) I have an idea of filming in a wooded area (e.g Wilderness Woods) with masks of mythical/woodland animals because of the lyrics 'curse' and 'underneath the ground'. This could be the setting for when the two parallel lines of action are brought together. There could be one location for the actor playing the artist which could be in the middle of a big empty field.
  

–6.  Consider grain of voice.  What characters would you use? 
 

We purposely chose an artist with this particular grain of voice as it is one of a young British women so it would not be so unrealistic to access an actor who could lip-sync from whom this voice would suit. They would have to be female, aged from 17-25. Most characters in the video will be female to emphasize the feminist nature of female-pop-power, also there is little need for male presence as men do not come into the song especially.

–7.  What pro-filmic and post-production special affects would be suitable?

I like the idea of using slow motion at times where the track slows down in the build to the drop of the chorus as this will create a relationship between the sound and visuals that has a very professional look like the high fi videos we are taking inspiration from. Another creative technique we should experiment with is adapting colour; adding hues, and saturating the colour gives a cinematic, pop, emotive look that we want to achieve. Enhancing light or other effects like textured overlays mean we can be conceptual even in editing.  

–8. Who else would you need to 'employ' to help you with this production?
 

We will be filming, editing arranging set and props but we will need to 'employ' some actors and maybe some help with carrying heavy equipment such as a track and dolly to the locations we choose to film in.