Week 4

I had a lot of information, and had decided on what music video I wanted to do. 

Adele - Someone like you.

This is not the music video, it is only the song.

Research on the artist. 

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins
Born	5 May 1988 (1988-05-05) (age 22)
Origin	Tottenham, London, England
Genres	Soul, Neo Soul, Blues
Occupations	Singer, songwriter
Years active	2006-present

Someone like you.

"Somone Like You" is a song by English singer-songwriter Adele from her second studio album 21. The song was written by Adele and Dan Wilson.The song has been positively received by music critics and peaked at #1 in the UK making it her first solo #1. It also peaked #9 in Ireland.
Although the single has peaked at Number 1 its not yet been confirmed as a single from the album so is still currently an album single. wikipedia

This song was much more bluesy, and had various characteristics of blues music in it but it was still soul based.

Because this song hasn't been released as a single I had no video to focus on, which was good as it allowed me to do what I want with it but to get an understanding of Adele, and what direction she was going in with this album, I analysed a video which was the first single brought out of the album, I chose to analyse this video as an artists first single is what makes people buy the album, and so it has to be good as it represents the album.



The music video I would look at is Adele - Rolling in the deep, which also talks about heartbreak, and love.

The music video was premiered on Channel 4 on 3 December 2010. The video begins at an abandoned house where Adele is sitting on a stool singing. During the video, the scenes shows thousands of glasses filled with water that vibrates to the beat of the drum, a mysterious person dancing in a room with white flour and dust, the drummer playing the drums behind the stairs, a group of plates thrown and breaking on the wall in front of the stairs, and, finally, a white model of a city, which is set on fire by fireworks at the end of the song.

I showed the video to fans of neo soul music and this is the feedback I got.

FEEDBACK

Week 3

When researching about neo-soul music videos I decided to narrow down common elements, and things which haven’t been done, so I can be clear on what conventions I plan to keep in my video and which conventions I am going to break.

Similar conventions.

Narrative 

• There wasn’t a clear or obvious drama plot, which related to the song. 
• A lot of objective treatment with the viewer, the audience is observing what is going on. 
• Narrative is short and kept short between clips of the artist.

Mise en Scene

• Realistic locations, e.g. house/apartment or just on the street.
• Representing the artist’s nationality, e.g. subway, and clear images which represent the country.
• Location didn't emphasis the artist’s status or financial state. They didn't single out their audience.
• Artists are often dressed casual; they don’t show of their flashy clothes etc. Showing them as humble.
• Instruments are often shown, either a band or a person just playing the guitar or piano as they sing.
• They had only a few main characters between 2-3 but had a lot of extras especially with external video shoots. (This varied between UK and American music videos.)

Lighting

• A lot of natural lighting, as a lot of the videos was shot outside. 
• If the videos were shot internally they often used artificial lighting.
• A lot of soft lighting.

Editing

• They used match cut, to keep the video going, with all the other conventions it seemed as if the videos were meant to be realistic, and so a match cut was a good editing technique to keep the continuity of the video going.
• Split screen was used a lot, to show various locations.
• There was very little videos which used a green screen, if so they would use it to put in a background to fit to the beat e.g. below the video "its my time" has a kaleidoscope background, which moves to the beat.
• A lot of the videos editing fits with the beat, the scene changes as the beat drops.
• They have a lot of cuts, but it is hardly noticeable as it fits well, and there is a lot of changes within the video. 
• I did find one continuous shot which lasted for about 30 seconds.

Camera Angles

• They used a lot of close up of the artist’s face, to see how they are feeling, to emphasis the feeling of the songs. Or a shot of a prop e.g. a ring or something which connotes to the song.
• There were a lot of two shots, especially when it came to showing the love interest. 
• A lot of tracking was used, to make the audience feel like they were there with the artist, in the video. 
• Process shots were used, e.g. the green screen example. And the use of smoke screens and black backgrounds these were often used for internal filming, with a band etc.
• A lot of videos used a surveying pan, to set the scene for the audience.

After this I researched what exactly a neo-soul audience would want from a music video.

(RESEARCH!!!!!!)

Week 2

Soul Music.

What is it all about?
Soul music has its roots in gospel music and rhythm and blues. The hard gospel vocal quartets of the 1940s and 1950s were big influences on major soul singers of the 1960s. The term "soul music" itself, to describe gospel-style music with secular lyrics, is first attested in 1961.
Ray Charles is often cited as inventing the soul genre with his string of hits starting with 1954's "I Got a Woman".




This type of soul is the first of its kind. Since then soul has been reformed and grouped with various other genre's to make completely new unique sounds.

There are many sub-genres of soul I will be focusing on Neo-soul.

The most recent soul music sounds more like this:

I realised the huge change in soul music. So I would have to decide what song I was going to do so I knew which type of soul I would be focusing on.

I choose to do more recent soul music, before choosing a song I researched soul artists.
Popular soul artists were Ledisi, India Arie, John Legend, Joss Stone, Adele, Jill Scott and Raheem DeVaughn.

I noticed that in the UK soul music wasn't very popular. In the USA they had more exposure to soul music and artists, whereas the most popular genre's in the UK are pop, jazz and classical.
If I was thinking about this as a way to get sales then I would have to either try to appeal to the UK audience or stick to the USA.
Differences in UK soul, and USA soul music videos.

UK









American










. There is an obvious difference between American neo-soul music videos and British neo-soul music videos.

The locations were not too different in America they often used locations which emphasised their nationality, e.g. in Joss Stone's videos she is seen singing in the subway and in Erykah Badu's video its clear the video is set in America around the 1920's because of the clothes and scenery. D'Angelo was located outside a Hotel Inn. The locations were bright and gave uplift to the song. From the British artists the locations were much dimmer and didn’t represent Britain, they used the same location throughout the whole video, Adele, was on that road, as Corrine Bailey Rae was in her house, they didn’t change locations once.

There costume however was very similar only one vide, dressed slightly glamorous the rest dressed casual, as to keep the video more realistic, maybe even to relate to the audience.

The American videos used a lot more editing and various camera shots, almost every 3 seconds a different camera shot was used, and if not they would circulate and follow the artist. In Erykah Badu's video for about 30 seconds the camera follows her movement, but doesn’t jump to another shot.

In general I would say that the American music videos looked a lot more professional and they were more interesting to watch, because of the change in locations, the various amount of people in the videos and the change in camera shots.

But this is what I thought was interesting in order to find out what was most appealing to a neo-soul audience

Week 1

Choosing a genre.
Various music genre's I could choose from.
Rock 'n' roll
Country
Jazz
Pop
Blues
Folk
Reggae
Soul
R&B
Rap
Hip-hop
There was more than one genre which I could relate to including, R&B, Hip-hop and Rap. I decided to focus on a different genre one which I wasnt so familiar with.

I chose jazz, soul and blues.

Jazz - Jazz is a musical tradition and style of music that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. wikipedia

Soul - Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues.^[1] According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying. wikipedia

Blues - Blues is a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. wikipedia

When I had looked into each genre more I had decided I wanted to focus on soul music, it seemed more interesting, it was close to RnB a music I love and when I watched soul music videos I though they were easy to interpret and add my own spin on it. Soul and RnB music were so similar trying to find a soly soul music chart was almost impossible.
The following are some recent soul music clips I found on youtube.


Marvin Gaye - What's Going On


Jill Scott - He Loves Me

Joss Stone - Fell Inlove With A Boy