Copyright letter to Label

To the copyright holder We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project: What we see by Now is Everyone With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purposes and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board. The artist and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation material that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself. Yours sincerely Davina Thorne Hurtwood House School

Chosen cover track

As we are doing a real band, they will be performing a track of there own and not a cover track. The song is called "What we see". The song has no exact translatable meaning however the general feeling of the song is sober. The most common translation of the song is that as a child we don't really understand the world around us, but as we get older now we understand more about what we see. This a common theme in many young artists as the youth of today feel as if a lot is hidden from them. This makes it a good topic to sing about as it will appeal to the target audience.

Artist Profile

Artist Profile!
Here is some initial information on them...

Members:
Elliot Henson - Vocals + Keyboard
Joe Colley - Bass
Kris Bell - Guitar
Will Phipps - Drums

Genre:
Rock/Alternative

Hometown:
Farnham

They are a very new band and haven't quite worked out their image which makes this project exciting for us because we are going to have to work from scratch and create and promote this band for REAL instead of pretend.

Our Target Audience

The genre is indie rock and the Band is made up of quite young arists which commenly has younger target audience of around 14-18 and with this video as with the song we hope to satisfy this audience but also cultivate a broader audience of university students. The imagery promotes there local roots and also the subtle emotional themes of there song writing.

Our Record label

Now is everyone is currently unsigned, however they have aspirations to being singed to the recorded company 14th floor. Artist's who are currently signed to 14th floor include Biffy Clyro, The wombats, Marmaduke Duke, Sneaky Sound System and Joshua Radin.

Biffy Clyro are one of the bands which Now is everyone look up to and inspire to be like.

Institutional Context

The Band is called “Now Is Everyone”. They are a teenage group from Guilford.
The four band members are Elliot the lead singer, Will the drummer, Joe the bass guitar player and Chris the Guitarist.
Here is a link to an Eagle Radio pod-cast of “Now is everyone”. This along with some phone conversations is where I got the information about the band from.

http://www.964eagle.co.uk/podcasts/eagle-radio-live-sessions/9-8-10.mp3

Institutional context questions:
1. What is the history of the band you have used?
The Band “Now Is Everyone” was formed in 2006 when all the Band members met at school, there have been a few members that have joined and left since the beginning but the band now is set. They are an unsigned rock/ indie band, who all come from the Guildford area. There ages range from 17/18.
“Now Is Everyone” has been playing gigs in local Guildford venues such as “The Boiler room”, “The Winchester” and “The Railway”. They also performed at the Guildford music festival “Guilfest” this year on the Rock sound stage.
The Bands star image at the moment the highly popular but very unoriginal indie rock grunge/stylized look.
“Now Is Everyone” say that there group has been influenced by bands such as “Muse” and “Biffy Clyro”, this is because of there performance style and star image. They have also been influenced by another local band called “Enjoy Destroy”, who has a very similar genre to “Now Is Everyone”.

A record label that would be likely choice to sign “Now Is Everyone” is ‘14th floor Record’. This is because they have already signed “Biffy Clyro” and other bands that are of a similar genre to “Now Is Everyone”. So they would already be familiar to the type of audience who would in interested in “Now Is Everyone’s” music so would know how to successfully promote the band.
We are hoping that our video will be eye-catching enough to give “Now Is Everyone” a good possibility to be noticed and to stand out against the millions of other upcoming indie rock bands.

2. What genre of music does the band fit into?
“Now Is Everyone” fits into an indie rock genre of music. The current local competitors are “Enjoy Destroy” and “Play Dead sister”. We are hoping that by working with this group we can help give them more of an edge by getting them move slightly out of this genre and to try mixing in other genre elements.
The genre indie already has a very set and unoriginal image which is now commonly worn by lots people, even those who are not fans of this music genre. The only positive is this does give us a starting point from which to create a new star image, as we can take elements from this genre but add in other elements. This way the style would still be recognisable but make “Now Is Everyone” stand out.
This is a very saturated genre so to be a new upcoming band competing against hundreds of other bands the percentage of successful new bands is very low. Which is why to be successful “Now Is Everyone” has to bring something new, fresh and exciting to the table.


3. What record label is the band signed to?

“Now Is Everyone” are currently an unsigned, however there are interested in being sighed to the record label “14th floor records”. “14 floor records” are a reasonably big but are not a super large label such as EMI. Some of the acts signed to “14th floor records” are Joshua Reading, Biffy Clyro, Marmaduke Duke, and the Wombats.
This label seems right for “Now Is Everyone” as they have already signed artist like them. So would know how to best promote them. A good way for this label to promote the group so that get well know by people who are into that genre of music is by letting them be the opening act on someone else’s show in there music genre who is also signed to that label.

4. Who are the bands audience?
“Now Is Everyone” band members are aged between 17/18, there music however I think would appeal to a very large age rage between 16-30 years. The type of audience which stereotypically listens most to this type of music are males but I think that “Now Is Everyone” would also appeal to a secondary audience of females aged between 15-25.

The stereotypical lifestyle of a fan of this genre of music is most likely student/young adult. So studying, working, partying and spending lots of time with friends. They would most likely be also listening to indie, rock, punk rock, metal etc… They would also be likely to own an ipod, download films and music, have a TV and own a mobile phone.

5. What kind of visual image has the band created for themselves.
On there Myspace page they use an emblem for the band with is a drawing of a the top half of a naked lady with long hair wearing a gas mask with dear antlers pointing out of it. They have not made any music videos before the one our group is making for them, so we have no previous video style to try to stick to. Which is quite good for us as it gives us more freedom when creating this video. There music video is likely to only be showed on Youtube, facebook and myspace at the time being because they are a pretty unknown, unsigned band.

Initial Ideas

Dub step- Eastern jam (chase and status)- A clash video between Traditional Indian culture and modern western culture e.g. Bollywood dancing vs. B-boying, Taj Mahal vs. Big Ben, Sari’s vs. Hoddies. The Pop promo video would show clips of each culture being portrayed cut quickly in-between each other.

Emocore-The Kill (30 seconds to Mars) - Starts with an extreme wide-shot of a clean white mountain. Helicopters then fly to the top of the mountain and drop off heliskiers. The skiers are wearing big black hoodies with the hoods up. Each of the skiers has spray paints of different colours coming off the backs of there skies leaving a trail behind them. As they ski down they are doing tricks and jumps. Some jumps are put into slow motion so that you can see the paint in the air as they are flipping. The Band would appear in some shots in the middle of the peist with the skiers going down around them, also standing under jumps with the skiers coming over there heads. Skiers cross paths and do formations so the colours mix and cross over each other. End shot of an extreme wide shot of the mountain again this time covered in coloured pattern.

Drum and bass- watercolour (pendulum)- Band play from inside a white box of a room wearing white, the room turns slowly with the lead singer looking up to sing into the camera. Cuts between shots of that and shots of free runners, running around a town but with every step they take they leave a path of coloured footprints behind them, also when they trail their hands across something it leave a strip of colour, they do this across shop windows, fronts of peoples clothing, over cars and across peoples faces etc… Towards the end of the song paint begins to fall into the white box room covering the musicians, splashing off the drums and dripping down the guitar and microphone.

Rock/Alternative - What we see by "Now is everyone"- This is a real new upcoming band and so therefore will not be performing a cover but one of there own songs. They as yet do not have a set image so the video we are planning to do for them will be a starting point on there star image. Our idea is to use sections of stop motion with photographs and also with the band playing. We got some of inspiration from the videos below.

Our productuion group

Our production group is:

Davina Thorne
Francesca Dowle
Jo Harrison
Oscar Mitchell-Heggs

Conventions of album artwork

Indie Rock

Rock RnB female artists

Conventions of the video promo

A background to the music industy

The music industry is dominated by four trans-national corporations: Universal/AOL-Time, Warner, Sony/BMG, Warner Bros and EMI. These music corporations are know as the Majors (just like in the film industry they have "the big 6") Most majors also own, or licence, a few smaller subsidiary companies in order to reach different kinds of audiences in different kinds of genre. These genre's may be sub-genres of popular music styles or have a completely different niece audience. These companies are known as ‘Major-Independents’. There are also a lot of small companies with little or no financial connection to the majors at all. These companies often only have a small number of artists who they concentrate on, within specialised niches in the industry. These are known as ‘true independents’

Most of the record companies are organized into several key areas these are:

• Artists and Repertoire (A&R)
• Marketing/Artist Development
• Promotions
• Legal
• Financial

The most successful companies in the music industry also have a complex relationship with a large number of different types of media. Most of the music companies are part of a media conglomerate.

For an Artist to be succeful in the competitve music industy they must receive exposure via Radio, TV, Magisenes, News papers, Film and other forms of new New media. The coordinated simulatenous use of these media forms are known in the industry as a 'cross-Media marketing camagin'. The relationship is known as a 'symbiotic'

Advanced production portfolio 2010