Inspirations

Florence and the Machine is one of our main inspirations. She is all about nature, when people think about her or ask them what characteristics they would say that best defines Florence is the natural, floral romantic personality that she has. She portrays this image by the way that she dresses, her songs, her music videos, props and locations.
We wanted to use elements of nature in our music video, in the costumes, props and locations too so Florence is a perfect inspiration that we could study to successful execute our intended goal.

Leona Lewis is also a big inspiration to us. She also has a very natural presence when she is on camera and she has a powerful singing voice. In most of her music videos she uses the outdoors, animals and real life narratives that make her music videos and songs more understandable to the audience.
We wanted to use certain aspects that she uses such as narrative as we want our audience to relate to it not to wonder what love could be like but to actually know what it's like to experience it. She also uses close up/mid length shots in her music videos which we thought looked brilliant so we decided to use the same method.

Institution

ISLAND RECORDS

Our chosen institution to record our music video with is Island Records. They're a record label owned by Universal Music Group whom deal with artist's singles, albums and DVDS.

The reason for this is because they are a rock/indie orientated label whom record with similar artists to Lana Del Rey. For example...

• Florence and the Machine
• Annie Lennox
• Cranberries
• Ladyhawke
• Erik Hassle
• Bombay Bicycle Club

All of these Artist's come under the genre of Indie/Alternative which is the same sort of genre of Lana Del Rey's songs and in the case of 'Video Games'. Not only is it perfect for our genre but it is also Worldwide which therefore brought many benefits to our attention when were in the choosing process of our institution. They are also very successful with their artists which is obvious when you look at the other artists that are under their institution. For example...

• Bob Marley
• Amy Winehouse
• Akon
• Devlin
• James Morrison
• Jessie J
• Kelly Rowland and many, many more big named artists in the charts today which is why they are perfect for getting a new artist and making them Nationwide.

Influences

Ellie Goulding - Your Song

A video in which influenced us on choosing an occurring them throughout our music video was 'Your Song' a cover by Ellie Goulding. It displays natural images of nature through parks portraying tree's and hills overlooking nice views; something we considered using in our music video. We also liked the styling of Ellie's outfits. They are very 'old school' and fit in well with the retro theme we would like to use in our music video. Her style is also a lot like Lana Del Rays which is an element we would like to keep in our music video. The genre of her music is also a lot like Video Games as it ties in with the Indie genre that we are using in our music video. 

We also liked the idea of some of the shots being purposefully handheld so it looks more natural and less set up to be a music video which is definitely something we are going to use in our music video along with close ups of her singing the lyrics and flashbacks of real footage that conveys with what she is singing about.                                                        

Codes and Conventions of Genre

Video Games was the first single released from Lana Del Rey's debut album Born To Die. The song falls into two genres; the first being Indie Pop and the second being Baroque Pop.

Indie Pop is a type of alternative rock music which originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s. The genre was popularised by the leading alternative group of the mid-80s, The Smiths. Indie pop generally differs from Indie Rock, it being more melodic and mostly free from angst and aggresion.

Baroque Pop is another Pop sub-genre which emerged in the 1960s as a fusion of pop, rock and classical music. Popular groups producing Baroque Pop music at this time included The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys.

Risk Assessment

The places where we are using to film are; a park, a garden, a bedroom, church and south weald park.

The park has little streams, steep hills, bridges and also rabbit holes. Before we began filming I had to check where Sophie would be acting that there wasn't any rabbit holes in case her foot got caught and injured herself, there were no rabbit holes where we filmed and every new spot were we filmed we both checked to see if there were any glass or sharp objects on the floor as there is a scene were Sophie is laying down. We decided not to film near the streams as the earth around it looked un-steady and we didn't want to risk falling down or damaging our equipment. Lastly, we made sure the steep hills weren't muddy so we could get up without falling and injuring ourselves.

The garden had a dip around the grass line to the soil so we made sure that when Sophie was acting, she wasn't near the edge in case she lost her footing and fell. There wasn't any other risks that were present in the garden so it was a very easy location to film in.

The bedroom didn't have any foreseeable risks however, we made sure that Sophie was sat on the bed not too close to the edge in case she fell or slipped down the side of the bed.

The Church had an uneven pavement, however we didn't use an actor whilst filming but we made sure we watched were we walked in case we tripped up the pavement.

South Weald had a few hills that we needed to climb, one of the hills was covered with stones so we had to take extra care when moving the equipment, furthermore Sophie needed to be wearing heels for the shot that we wanted so we brought a change in shoes so she could walk to the location safely. The stair bridge was quite steep so we had to make sure there were no stones on the stairs whilst Sophie was walking up them. Additionally, she had to lean at the top of the bridge so we made sure she wasn't to close to the edge in case she fell off. We were going to do a shot of her walking down the stairs however, we wanted her to wear heels and we deemed this shot as too dangerous as the stairs were too steep so we decided it was too much of a risk to allow her to walk down them. Whilst walking to the shoot we made sure there was no rabbit holes or hidden tree roots that could result in one of us falling over.

Permission E-mail

Here is the e-mail that we sent to Lana Del Rey's record label, we asked for their permission to use the track for our media production.

Who is our demographic?

Our demographic is young adults but, the song has an 'old school' feel to it which could draw in middle-aged/elderly people that like the nostalgia of the song. The 'retro' feel of songs are coming back into style especially in the indie genre. Many teenagers listen to the pop/indie music which the song 'Video Games' by Lana Del Rey shares the same genre. She is a relatively new artist, but already she has a big young adult following. The song will reach our target audience because it is a new kind of melody that established artists fail to cover. Young people like to discover new things, so therefore our demographic is young adults.