Steal-O-Matic

Our steal-o-matic is a compilation of all of our influences and inspirations. It is made up of a range of media texts which we feel best represent our idea. This includes music videos, television clips, youtube videos, images and gifs.

The main concepts we wanted to convey from our video were:

• Dancing; with our track being a dance track we feel that this is essential to the music video
• Partying; this is quite a key concept to the genre, along with dancing, however we are particularly focused on this due to its appeal to the 16-24 audience
• Friendship; this is often incredibly important to the young audience
• Playfulness; we want our video to seem fun and enjoyable for the audience
• Vivid imagination filled with colours; this goes along with the fun aspect, but also links in with the lyrics 'my head is a jungle'

Our steal-o-matic is not only intended as a visual reference for the concept but also for some more specific shots and effects we would like to use. Some of these include:

• Reverse shots
• Balloons coming into the camera as a transition
• Neon face paint close-ups
• People throwing powder paint
• Double exposure and overlaying of videos
• Pinata explosion

In order to create a consistency throughout our video we have decided to use one main reference; Alice in Wonderland. Some footage and images of this appears in our steal-o-matic. The key elements of Alice in Wonderland that we are going to incorporate include:

• Eating a cookie/cupcake which has weird effects
• Archived footage of the 1951 movie
• Shots in a forest
• Set design and props including a giant mushroom 

We have also used performance footage from music videos in order to present the intended representation of our artist:

• Female lead; shown through artists such as Katy B and Aluna Francis as well as female leads in television such as Effy and Cassie from Skins
• Two male DJs; shown through artists such as Disclosure and Paramore

As a whole, the steal-o-matic was supposed to convey both the visual identity and genre of our music video as well as the technical specifics such as shot types, editing and lighting. The steal-o-matic has proved incredibly useful in the planning stage as it has allowed us to collectively visualise our ideas together and see if they actually work. It has also enabled us to produce a media which we can show to our audience and evaluate how effective it would be when turned into our final music video.

Track Permission

In order to use the song for our music video production, we had to ask the record label for their permission to use the track so that we did not infringe any copyright due to their ownership of the song. On behalf of our group, Maisie sent an email to a member of Universal Music to kindly ask for their permission. 

Our email request

Their reply

We were granted permission to use the track as long as it was purely for educational purposes and following the set of guideline which they attached to the email. This meant that we could use the track for our music video.

The conditions we were given

Artist

Our artist will be a three piece dance group containing a female lead and two accompanying male DJs. We chose this setup as it isn't incredibly generic, however mixed groups are becoming increasingly popular and we want to stand out from the average artists in the charts. Some examples of these are AlunaGeorge and Clean Bandit. Having a mixed gender group also widens our audience appeal, and with audience at the heart of our music video, this is incredibly important.

With our audience being determined as females of 16-24 who are fans of the dance genre, we decided to create our female lead based around an understanding of this audience. Rather than taking the form of the generic sexualised female, we wanted to create a likable and aspirational figure for the audience. Therefore, we are going to focus on making her appear strong and confident yet normal and relatable. We have based our female around artists such as Keisza, Aluna Francis, Jess Glynne and Katy B.

Influential female artists

Our two male DJs are quite stereotypical of the genre, however in order to differ them from other male artists in the music industry we are going to present them as cool and friendly as opposed to overly egotistical like some recent popular male artists. We have based our male artists around artists such as Disclosure, Nero, Wilkinson and Flume.

Influential male artists

Track

My Head is A Jungle- Wanklemut & Emma Louise (MK Remix)
We're going to keep the track name the same as we feel this is important for the concept of our music video. This line is repeated throughout the song and so it is a crucial concept for the video.

The track is originally by Wankelmut & Emma Louies but we are using the MK Remix.
The song was originally called 'Jungle' by Emma Louise before Wankelmut remixed it.
Wankelmut is a German electronic music DJ and record producer based in Berlin. This song is only his second big song so he's fairly unknown and new to the industry. Emma Louise is an Australian singer-songwriter of the pop & indie genres.
MK (Marc Kinchen) is an American DJ & music producer who is fairly well known in dance music for his remixes.

We chose to use this track as it has fun elements, for example the fast paced beat. However, it also has a deeper meaning. We felt that we could amplify the meaning of the song through a fun video with a sense of escapism. This allows for the crossover between the seriousness of its meaning, and the fun feeling of the music and beat.
Looking at Goodwin's theory, we have chosen to create an amplified relationship between the lyrics and visuals. The music and visuals, however, are going to be more illustrative, with cuts to the beat and fast paced editing with use of fun dancing and movement within the shots.

Record Label

We have decided to call our record label Technicity Records. This is due to the electronic feel of the word as this is symbiotic with the dance genre that the record label will be involved in. It is also catchy and memorable.

Technicity Records will be owned by Umbrella company Universal. This is similar to the record label Positiva which is one of the biggest dance music labels in the UK. Positiva is owned by EMI and holds artists such as Avicii and David Guetta.


Other record labels we researched included XL Recordings. They are an independent record British record label, part of the Beggars Group. They hold artists such as The Prodigy and M.I.A. This record label began as a dance music label but has now branched out into various different genres. This is part of the reason we didn't want to create an independent label like this as they would be far more likely to need to cater for a number of genres in order to remain successful, whereas a record label owned by a larger group can be specified to purely dance music. This gives the artist more chance for a successful release.

Audience

Our primary audience is 16-24 year old females.
We have adapted our idea in order to cater to this audience by using a strong female lead who is not overly sexualised and can be seen as an aspirational figure to the audience.

Our secondary audience is 16-24 year old males.
We will appeal to them not only through the attractive female lead, but the two male DJs who will accompany her to make our band.
In order to appeal to both the primary and secondary audiences, we are going to include cross-references with a nostalgic and popular culture overarching theme, which we are yet to decide on but are currently considering Alice in Wonderland.

Our tertiary audience is dance fans of any age and gender.
We will appeal to them as not only is a dance song, we are going to have lots of dancing throughout the video.
The costuming and style will also be based around a sort of 'festival' look, which is incredibly popular amongst fans of this music. We want to emphasise the fast paced nature of the song by amplifying it with visuals of dancing that the audience will enjoy.

We have looked into Blumler and Katz' theory about media texts according to audience uses and gratifications. We are intending to make a video that provides the audience with 'diversion', thus providing entertainment and escapism while also using themes which are relateable. Relatability is a key concept when considering the uses and gratifications of audiences.

First Week's Production Meetings

In our first production meeting we sat round a table and brainstormed ideas, feeding in from each others' research and initial ideas. This enabled us to put our ideas together and create something we would all be interested in. Our first idea from this session was to film a group of friends in a natural environment, in and around London. We were very keen on this idea and stayed with it until the next production meeting in which we looked at the logistics of filming so much exterior footage in November, and we soon decided that filming in the studio would be of great advantage to us and the video would definitely look better if it was predominantly interior. This took us back to the beginning of our planning.

We then sat around a computer and looked at all the research on our blogs, as well as researching new videos that were similar to all of our ideas. We thought about our audience and researched what sort of things they would like, and eventually came up with our current idea which is to be filmed almost entirely in the studio at school. It basically consists of a group of friends discovering interesting worlds and playing around with the things they find. We wrote down our ideas from this meeting and took them away, each researching for potential tracks, posting these on our individual blogs:

In the next production meeting we decided on the genre and each fed in the potential tracks we had found. Eventually after going through a lot of tracks, we decided on one that a couple of us had really liked initially, before the group planning processes had even taken place. We then went on to listen to the song and link this to our video, tailoring it to the track. We now had a much better idea of what our video was to be. 

In the following meeting, we decided on our four key decision; audience, track, record label and artist.

In order to decide on our artist, we researched into similar artists as well as potential names for our artist:

This gave us a much better idea of artist image and identity, however we still found producing an artist name incredibly difficult. As we wanted to focus on the music video itself for the time being, we decided to settle with the working title of 'Lucid' and. as seen above, made a list of things to do in the proceeding meetings.