Information on the artist

Information about Owl City:

Owl city is an American electronic project that began in 2007, this project is one of many projects which have been set up by Adam young. This project mainly began getting popularity during 2009 with their six time platinum single "fireflies", the song fireflies was released within an album called "Ocean eyes". One of the songs within this album was debuted within Tim Burton film Alice in wonderland and another in legends of the guardians.

Their most recent album was titled "ultraviolet and the mobile orchestra" instead of releasing all of the songs as an album in one go he would instead release a steady flow of EP's as singles, the most recent one of these was released in June of 2015 and is titled "unbelievable", an animated music video was created for this and the song itself was performed with another artist known as Hanson.


Owl city's music is often described as indietronica or synth-pop and it is said that it belongs under the electronic music genre, Young has stated that he is most inspired by disco and European electronic music when it comes to producing his own. He also incorporates some of his Christian faith into his music as he is a vocal Christian. 

Timeline

AS

Research

Genre

Cinematography filming exercise

Thriller conventions

Mise en scene

Sound exercise

Unknown

Rope

Psycho

Studio idents

Modern thriller openings

North by northwest

Film theorists

Birds

How to film a thriller

Styles of editing

Past student media coursework  

Titles (thriller exercise)

Planning

Welcome

The briefing

Introducing our group

First and second production meeting

Initial ideas

Costumes and props

Location

Storyboard

Risk assessment

Animatic

Shot list

Third production meeting

Shooting schedule

Treatment

Construction

Ident

First day of filming

Editing

Making a title sequence

Screening

First draft evaluation

Audience feedback

Preliminary task

Finished thriller opening

Evaluation

Q.1

Q.2

Q.3

Q.4

Q.5

Q.6

Q.7

Katy Perry-Case study

Katy Perry is an american singer and in her music videos she reflects relatable anxieties that young girls have in order to appeal to them. Her target audience are girls from the ages of 14 - 18 and Perry is like an older sister/friend to them. She is someone that young girls can admire and want to be as she appears sexy, but not in a threatening way.

In 2008, American singer Katy Perry found relative fame due to a number of songs recently released, one of which being "Hot n Cold". This song and music video was one of the first examples of her appealing to her target audience of young girls starting to face insecurities in themselves. The video shows a wedding gone wrong, and while this may be nerve-wrecking and scary to some people, Katy Perry puts herself in a position of dominance over the 'groom'. Her aggression and power over the groom shows to the young girls watching that a woman can always stand up and fight in hardship. She also attracts a male audience in her appearance, as her outfit is designed to be sexually appealing to men in some scenes yet sensible enough to not intimidate women.




On top of this, her songs also reflected her real life problems, including her marriage and divorce against Russel Brand. Songs such as 'Firework' were created in order inspire people to feel better about their personality and interest. She uses examples in her video such as people who like magic or that are gay. She presents them to feel self conscious in their individuality, and by the end they embrace who they are and are able to come out feeling better. This is a lesson that Katy wanted to share with her audience, as once again the 14-19 year olds watching may be feeling self conscious and by telling them that their quirks and interest aren't something to be ashamed of the audience can feel morally boosted and supported that otherwise they may not have had..


In the "Wide Awake" video Katy Perry is expressing her feelings after she broke up Russel Brand after a two year marriage. It starts off with a scene from a previous video that she had made during her relationship. The song 'California gurls' expressed how happy it was to be in love this is evident as she is on 'cloud nine'.

However 'Wide awake' was about self reflection because at this point in time she had got a divorce from Russel Brand. In the beginning of the music video she amplifies her lyrics 'i was in the dark' and her costumes and make up is very dark almost satanic. This represents the time in her life where she had lost herself and was in a dark place because of her failed marriage.  

The lyrics tell her story of how being married wasn't the best thing that had happened to her. "Falling from cloud nine, Crashing from the high...I picked up every piece, And landed on my feet, I'm wide awake" These lyrics show that she hasn't been herself through the marriage, but now that it's over she has seen clearly how she has changed. She also had some graphics in the video that referenced to her "Firework" video. This shows that she is a new person and she doesn't have to pretend to be someone else.

Case study 2-Emil Nava

Emil Nava

Emil Nava started off as a runner for film production companies such as Blink Productions. After working as a runner Emil graduated to Assistant Director where he would be able to manage video shoots. As a result of his success, he got signed to Academy, known as the biggest music video production company and then worked for Between the Eyes. He now works for Pulse and freelances OB Management. OB Management often work with Pulse Films, Rocket, Agile Films, Friends and Wonda. They describe themselves as "three straight up dudes who work out of Denmark Street London" with aims to nurture talent, work with production companies, work with record labels and match the right director to the right artists.

Emil's first budget music video was for the band Kid British and the song was called Our House.This music video had a budget of £20,000 and they filmed all of it in just one day. For the cast of the video they used local people this saved money, also the location of the film was in Manchester. The music video took around 2/3 days for editing this shows the very tight timescale some music videos have and the sort of budget some music video directors have to work with. This music video had 10 days of pre-production.   

The busiest for Emil has been that he has made 24 music videos in one year. When he staring shooting videos for independent labels, the budgets would be £5,000 to £10,000. His most expensive video to date has been for Jessie J and the budget was £160,000.


Jesse J - Wild was filmed by Nava and shows how his career has progressed from that of simplistic and rather low budget independent music video maker to a successful film maker of commercial artists such as Jesse J. When assessing this studio based video, the idea of the video seems to be to place emphasis on Jesse J with a pure white studio background which relates well to the content of the film in the sense that she is talking about her life and where she has ended up and how she has reached fame. Her iconic outfits and the purity of the studio represents the idea of fame and fortune and Nava has done a good job in directing the content of the video in the sense that he incorporates the supporting artists into the video to a great extent and allows the same message to be portrayed through these men.


Emil has taken a big step in the media industry by creating adverts which generally have a far higher budget and production value but allowed of less creative freedom. The advert that Emil directed was the L'Oreal ' Dare to be Different'. 


Emil's Top Tips include: 

Using Extreme Close Ups on faces wherever possible ; 
Do not shoot whole of video in medium shot/long shot. 
Similar to Sinead O'Connor- Nothing Compares to U and Godley & Creme - Cry

Case study 1- Jamie Thraves

Jamie Tharves made short films at university. One short film in particular that he made called 'Calling card' to get a 'foot in the door' with the video production company Factory Films. He experimented with short films at university to stimulate his career. Short films allow you to see where one strengths and weaknesses are. It also allows you to figure out what people like to see the most.. He began his music career by shooting 3 music videos where are relatively low budget videos of around £5000 each.

It all starts with the 'commissioner' from a record label sending a track to 5 - 10 directors. The directors then have to each submit a treatment. The treatment of the music video can be about anything, but the director has to make sure that their one is more unique and interesting so that it is chosen. The best treatment is chosen by the record label and is that director is commissioned to film the music video. All the work until this stage is unpaid. Only when the director is under a contract with the record label does he/she start earning an income.




Later on through his career he started to make more higher budget music videos such as Radiohead- Just which had a budget of £100,000. He was able to film this whole music video in three days. The video had what one would call a mini film as the storyline is about Radiohead performing in a flat somewhere, and on the pavement in front of the block of flats, there is a man who is laying there for no apparent reason.

Another well know music video that was made by Jamie Thraves that was well known is Coldplay 'The Scientist'. This music video had a budget of £200,000, again this was filmed in three days, This was an extraordinary video as everything had to play in reverse so Chris Martin had to learn to mouth everything in reverse whilst going in reverse.

Animatic

Here is the animatic for our music video.

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard for our music video.