The E-mail from The COLOURS to me !!

Dear Chris,



On behalf of theCOLOURS, who we represent, I am writing to give our consent to the use of Minutes and Hours by the COLOURS as the basis of your Media Studies course and, in particular, the production of a music video.



We have suddenly had a series of such requests, so while we are encouraged that there is so much interest in the band’s material at present, we must insist that a copy of your final work is sent to us as soon as it is available and that no commercial use is made of your work without reference back to ourselves of course. We have even decided to award a prize for the best one





Having said that we wish you all the best with your project and look forward to seeing how you have interpreted the song. I have attached the song and the lyrics, which I hope is the version you’re familiar with. At present the COLOURS are recording in Leeds and there are a few interim versions in circulation.



Best wishes,



Andrew Parsons

The E-mails From me to The COLOURS

Hi,
My name is Chris Stephens. I am a 17 year old media studies student from London. Our final piece of coursework is to produce a music video. We found your band on Unsigned.com and loved the track Homesick Valentine. Therefore I would love permission to use this song for my final piece of coursework. Along with the music itself, a copy of the lyrics would be brilliant if you decide to let me use it!
Thank you very much
Chris Stephens.

Music has arrived at last!!

We hav finally got some music. The representative from the band "The COLOURS" replied to my e-mail last night giving us permission to use their music and to wish us good luck with out coursework.

Now We Are Talking!

We have our ideas and now we have people. As a group, me and Katie sat down with our little helpers/employees and spoke about who did what. we decided to allocate peoples roles on what their personality is. We then realised that we cannot MAKE somebody fun, so we scrapped roles and just asked them to come along. The filming part that we were going to do has been scrapped and we are now just going to ask people to do what they want. Hopefully this will work.

A few ideas

Me and katie have sat down today and tried to think of a few ideas. After listening to the song for quite a few times, not only is my ipod going mad with the song, but we have plans. The style of song is quite upbeat and therefore i think it is a great opportunity to use fun. This is a reason I love media studies. So now we have a few ideas for the initial song, we have tried recruiting people to become a part of our master class.

Music !!

We have been looking at some music on www.unsigned.com. We did this because we did some test shots. First of all Katie did some lip synching. After that I tried lip synching aswell and was suprisingly good at it. Finally we got a group friend Stacey Reading to try some lip synching aswell. Out of the three of us, I seemed to be the best lip syncher, but this was a problem because the lead singer in our song was a female, and obviously, I do not fit with a females voice being a man myself!! Therefore this was the reason we decided to look for some music on www.unsigned.com. We found a band called The 99's and listened to the music they produced. We were extremely interested in the song Oh Me Oh My. Therefore we e-mailed the band lead singer to try and get permission to use their music in our video.

Song Choice

We have been looking on www.unsigned.com to try and find some acts/songs that we think are relevant to our style. We have ruled out styles such as rap/hip hop and grunge as we already know that these will be almost impossible to lip-synch to. We have found two bands so far. One called The 99s and one called The COLOURS. Both have songs that we found perfect so we shall contact them in the near future. Therefore I have tried researching both groups and used sites such as facebook, myspace and youtube to try and understand some of their ideas behind their songs.

Today we looked at some examples of previous media coursework involving the music videos. We saw 2 really good examples which seemed to work extremely well with the musci.The lip-synching was done really well and the actor/actress suited the song brilliantly. We saw one good example, however there were some aspects which seemed to make the video a bit off-putting. For example, the lead singer had rather bad looking teeth and had a few tenage spots. These wer'nt a problem until they decided to do extreme close ups on his mouth.

Top 100 Music Videos

100:- Musical Youth "Pass the Ductie"
-one of the first video's to show black people
-showed black British people
-video was about drugs, but not directly
-not very dressed up
-teenagers, and under children are shown
-story line
-lots of dancing
-shown next to famous London landmarks

99:- ??

98:- "small town boy"
-tells a story and deals with homosexuality
-first openly gay band
-issues
-personal issues
-normal life
-about not being yourself
-follows the boy about
-no special effect

97:- corner shop
-colourful
-lots of dancing-happy girl
-teenager dancing
-thought it was to heavily advertised

96:- So Solid Crew "21 seconds"
-each member had 21 seconds to introduce themselves and a chance to sing
-lots of special effects where used

95:- The Cardigans
-driving down a road
-shows the elements of a pop video e.g singing
-lots of special effects used
-cars chasing
-use of humor in the video

94:- Bonnie Tyler
-used special effects

93:- "when we love" Rolling Stones
-document, drug, looking drugged

92:- Herbie Hancock "Rock it"
-black singer
-robots
-sexual references
-body parts

91:- The Specials (1981)
-car journey
-roits in english

90:- the pet shop boys "Go West"
-gay rights
-sung firstly by the village people
-special effects
-looks like robots
-done on computer
-"comersal art" use new technogly

89:- Smashing pumpkins
-creepy
-special effects

88:- Elton John
-playing piano
-someone else is playing elton john
-robert downy junior

87:- "cry"
-new video
-different to all the other ones
-show faces

86:- "can't touch this" Mc Hammer
-girls dancing around rapping

75:- Duran Duran "Rio"
-on a beach
-girls wearing hardly any clothes
-set on a beach
-shows videos have changed

74:- ??

73:- Bass Jaxx
-surreal, not like reality
-normal life but with singing

72:- Rorbort Palmer
-singing to the camera
-with girl in background

71:- Bjork "All is full of love"
-robots
-technology is used a lot
-building Bjork as a robot

70:- The Police "Every breath I take"

69:- Frakie goes to hollywood "Two Trys"
-trying to flight
-high class men fighting

68:- Madonna "Ray of light"
-shows streets of America
-everything is fast

67:- Beastie Boys
-fast paste
-car chase

66:- Bob Dilan
-documentary
-lyrics are on sheets of paper
-out of time
-badly shot

65:- The Aplex twins "Window Licker"
-lots of swearing
-isn't the man doing it, someone who look like him
-girls turn into him

64- Bjork
-strange
-super natural

63- George Michael 'Outside'
-in a toilet
-dressed as a police man
-disco in a toilet
-used filming from the air

62- Blur
-unnatural
-old days
-colourful

61- The Prodogy 'Firestarter'
-point of views
-shot in one night
-shown as a man, does "ladish" things
-seen in the eyes of a woman in the end

60- Eurythmics "Sweet Dreams"
-dressed like a man, but had all her make-up done
-has a cow in the video

59- Abba "Knowing me knowing you"
-playing on gossip

58- The Cure "Close to me"
-everything is pushing together
-filmed in a cupboard
-uses other props to make it look like they are making the sound

57- Meat Loaf "Anything for love"
-set in a forest
-dark lighting
-parts are bright colours with the girl is in
-like beauty and the beast

55- Fat Boy Slim "Praise you"
-done using hidden cameras
-people dancing, bad dancing on purpose
-gets stopped half way thought

54- Daft Punk "Around the world"
-dancing skeletons

53- Wham! "Club Tropicana"
-set in a holiday place
-having fun

52- Massive attack "teardrop"
-unborn baby sings

50- Paul Simon "You can call me Al"
-singing to the camera
-comedy

48- Johnny Cash "Hurt"
-showed he was ill
-last video
-cover version
-long back in time
-very moving

46- Adam and the Ants
-fairy tale
-big costumes and make up
-made like Cinderella
-special dance made up

45- Aerosmith "Crazy" 1994
-set in a shop, and some of the band performance

44- "Can't get you out of my head"
-different world
-future world?
-lots of different over the top clothing
-sexy

42- Bjork "oh so quiet"
-set in car garage
-like a music video
-lots of dancing

41- Spice Girls
-lots of running
-girls having fun
-shows girls personality

40- "Get your freak on"
-tribal

39- Pulp "common people"
-old fashion disco
-colourful
-un-natural at points

38- Fat Boy Slim "Weapon and choice"
-dancing
-flying

37- Guns 'n' Roses "November rain"
-wedding
-death

35- Sinead O'Connor "Nothing compairs to you"
-crys
-gives a real performance
-close ups makes you look her eyes
-powerful

33- U2 "Sweetest Thing"
-boyzone in it
-showing emotions
-don't sing

31- "Stan"
-dark
-having

30- "Buddy Holly"

29- "Gay Bar"

25- Maddness "Baggy trousers"
-shows normal life
-children playing

24- Radio head "No Surprises"
-video and song complements each other
-close ups
-lyrics are on screen
-shown like a text
-water at bottom of screen

23- Britney Spears "Hot me baby one more time"
-dresses as a school girl
-set in a school

22-Justin Timeberlake "Cry me a river"
-stalking a old girlfirend

21- Queen "Want to break free"
-done in drag

20- Gorillaz
-cartoons

19- Madonna "Material girl"
-artist complements the video
-dressed like Marylin Monro

18- "Crazy in love"
-special lighting

17- Blur "Coffee and TV"
-dancing milk
-milk cartoon expressions pull videos alone

16- Outcast "Hey Ya"
-old style setting
-screaming fans

15- REM "Everybady hurts"
-stuck in traffic

14- "Dirty"
-set in a boxing ring
-not a lot of clothing
-lots of men

13- "Scream" Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson
-filmed on spaceship
-most expensive video made
-black and white
-bouncing off the walls

12- Cold Play "The Sciencist" 2002
-walking backwards, but singing forwards

10- Nirvana "Smells like teen sprit"
-smoky
-dark
-dancing and jumping around

9- Madonna "Vogue"
-rich looking woman, dress up
-dance off
-old style hollywood glamour

8- The Nerve "Bitter Sweet Sympothy
-walking down street
-set in London

7- Michael Jackson "Billie Jean"
-set in a ruff area
-pavement lights up
-dancing around

6- Robbie Williams "Rock DJ"
-girls dancing around him
-taken his clothes off
-takes his skin off

5- Madonna "Like a Pray"
-controversial video
-religious
-black Jesus
-Gospel choir

4- Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody" 1975
-close ups of the faces
-fire
-playing live
-wear make up
-special effects used

3- "Take on me"
-cartoon
-adds value to the song
-mix between reaity and fairy tale

2- Sledgehammer
-special effects
-background changes
-lots of props

1- Michael Jackson "Thriller" 1983
-like a movie
-walking down the street singing
-dance
-wolfs

I'm Back

After the summer holidays, me and my partner Katie have decided to write on our blogs. During summer, Katie's cousin, Charlie Arnold allowed us to use his band's music for our music video. This was great news as it allowed us to proceed with some of the planning and research.