Research & Planning - Artists

Searching for an artist to feature our video on was a deceptively tricky task. Before searching for a band/song, we decided on some specification features which we wanted to include in order to set this to be successful from the start. These are some of the aspects we were keen to find;

[Paramore Band Photo]

• Preferably a female member to appeal to wider audiences. This member could be a guitarist or singer, and would add a different slant on the bands representation. Bands such as Paramore utilise this difference and base a certain amount of popularity to it.
• High recording quality is an important aspect to look out for when shooting a music video, although the visual quality may be high, it will be severely let down by poor audio quality. This specification may make our search more difficult but will definitely result in a more professional and satisfying finish.
• Catchy song, preferably not acoustic. Although acoustic songs can be a popular genre, indie acoustic songs are often slow, depressing and from viewing previous project outcomes, can lead to a boring video. The sort of song we will look for will contain driving guitar lines and drum beats, keeping it relatively high in tempo capturing the audience and maintaining their interest in both song and story. We will also look to use a song that contains deep, almost grungy parts to allow for a ranging story line and thus interesting video.
• Really we would like to use the original band members to uphold a realistic performance, although we understand that if this isn't possible, actors can be used. If we do have to use actors, we will cast people as closely to be band members appearances as possible, showing respect towards the band.

To begin with, we looked into a band my media partner knew called "Junk". They were relatively local and despite not containing a female member, they did have relatively high recording quality. Unfortunately we had to rule them out after a discussion over location. Although they were quite local, they were too far for easy filming, and yet too close to resort to actors.

Next we looked into the possibility of using my own band, previously called "1st Born" but currently referred to as "The Guys" for ease. We soon decided not to follow this up as our recording quality was not great, as well as the fact I would have had to be featured in all performance elements.

After I began searching the internet for unsigned bands, since we had little luck with our connections. From this I found a band called "Voletta", they again had no female members but did have extremely high recording quality and seemed near perfect for our project. The vocals were slightly generic but the guitars and drums were catchy and sounded very good. Sadly, we got no reply from our e-mail to them and so had to rule them out as a possibility as our featured band.

[Scarlet Pills Band Photo]

Finally I came across a band called Scarlet Pills (previously known as Geneva). This band had mediocre recording quality, but did have a female singer. Upon e-mailing them I received a reply informing me of their name change, and directing me to some of their more recent work. This recent work was extremely impressive as the recording quality had gone up hugely, and the singers voice had blossomed into something even better. After talking to them we decided they were perfect for our project as they ticked almost all boxes. Sadly they were based in St. Petersburg and so obviously using them in the video was out of the question, instead we must use actors, this major distance though made the actor use justifiable. Following is the e-mail conversation me and Nick (bassist from Scarlet Pills) had when talking about using them and their work in our project, as well as the link for the song we chose to use; "Headlights". As can be seen, they were eager to participate in this project, and learn more about it.

[E-mail between me and Nick]

[E-mail between Nick and Teacher]