Ellie Carey, a 20 year old singer/songwriter from Peckham, London began writing at the age of 15 and started performing when she was 18 after studying musical theatre.
The younger of two, Ellie grew up in a musical family with her father being a previous performer and her mother a piano teacher. The singer has previously said, “If it weren’t for my family I would never have had the opportunity that I have been given. My family and my fans are my biggest inspiration when writing and performing.”
Ellie’s songs often represent true events in her life and this can be heard through her lyrics. Her debut single ‘Jamie, Please Come Home’ is an example of where this can be heard through her honest lyrics and expressive voice.
Her biggest musical influences growing up were Kate Bush and The Smiths and in 2009, during one of her early performances in London, she was spotted by an editor from ‘Q’ magazine who compared her to the likes of ‘Florence + the Machine’ and ‘Kate Nash’ due to her quirky soulful voice.
In 2010, a year after being spotted, she signed to the label Island Records under the name ‘Ellie and the Innocence’. The singer refers to her fans as “the Innocence” as they are important to her; this also reflects the young age in which she started her musical career.
Her debut album is set to be released early next year.
Final Synopsis of Music Video:
What is the overall idea for your music video?
The younger of two, Ellie grew up in a musical family with her father being a previous performer and her mother a piano teacher. The singer has previously said, “If it weren’t for my family I would never have had the opportunity that I have been given. My family and my fans are my biggest inspiration when writing and performing.”
Ellie’s songs often represent true events in her life and this can be heard through her lyrics. Her debut single ‘Jamie, Please Come Home’ is an example of where this can be heard through her honest lyrics and expressive voice.
Her biggest musical influences growing up were Kate Bush and The Smiths and in 2009, during one of her early performances in London, she was spotted by an editor from ‘Q’ magazine who compared her to the likes of ‘Florence + the Machine’ and ‘Kate Nash’ due to her quirky soulful voice.
In 2010, a year after being spotted, she signed to the label Island Records under the name ‘Ellie and the Innocence’. The singer refers to her fans as “the Innocence” as they are important to her; this also reflects the young age in which she started her musical career.
Her debut album is set to be released early next year.
Final Synopsis of Music Video:
What is the overall idea for your music video?
From the lyrics, the overall storyline of the song is that the artist’s love interest, Jamie, has left her and she misses him. To show how she feels we are planning to use close-up shots of props such as photographs of her and Jamie, portraying the past relationship and emphasise how much she misses him. The artist’s costume will most likely consist of a playsuit with a leather jacket, creating an unusual but fashionable style to the artist. There will be two main settings used throughout the video; these will be a bedroom and a street as we think these are two settings that will relate to the lyrics of the song.
The video will begin with the audience seeing photographs of the artist with her love interest. The artist then sings the first verse whilst sitting from her bed. As the chorus plays, the video cuts from the artist singing to the props disappearing around the room. Throughout the second verse there will be flashbacks used showing the artist and her love interest together, surrounded by friends, showing when they were happy. In the last verse, the artist leaves her bedroom and goes out onto the street, where her and her love interest once walked hand in hand. She believes she sees him again and she taps the person on the shoulder. This is not her love interest.
The generic devices that we are planning on using are:
As a group we decided to use point of view shots in order to create a connection between the audience and the artist, allowing them to like the artist better. The mid-shots will be used throughout our video as we want this type of shot to show the audience the type of person the artist is as well as allowing them to see the artist as well as her surroundings. Close-up shots will be used in order for us to highlight certain objects or people, clearly making the audience focus on that object or person.
We are planning to use a zoom out at the very end of the video in order to show the audience the artist isolation since her love interest left her. As a group we decided it would be best to use the pan camera movement throughout the video in order to show a variety of props to the audience, such as a pan movement at the start of the video showing the audience a group of photographs in a line highlighting how happy our artist and love interest were at that time. Finally, we decided it would be best for us to use straight cuts throughout the video in order to create verisimilitude for the audience.
What generic devices are you using?
The generic devices that we are planning on using are:
· Point-of-view shots
· Mid-shots
· Close-ups
· Zoom Out
· Pan
· Straight Cuts
As a group we decided to use point of view shots in order to create a connection between the audience and the artist, allowing them to like the artist better. The mid-shots will be used throughout our video as we want this type of shot to show the audience the type of person the artist is as well as allowing them to see the artist as well as her surroundings. Close-up shots will be used in order for us to highlight certain objects or people, clearly making the audience focus on that object or person.
We are planning to use a zoom out at the very end of the video in order to show the audience the artist isolation since her love interest left her. As a group we decided it would be best to use the pan camera movement throughout the video in order to show a variety of props to the audience, such as a pan movement at the start of the video showing the audience a group of photographs in a line highlighting how happy our artist and love interest were at that time. Finally, we decided it would be best for us to use straight cuts throughout the video in order to create verisimilitude for the audience.
How will you conform/challenge convention?
As a group we are planning to conform to the music industry’s genre conventions as Dennis McQuail, a well known theorist, states “the genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers.” This means that we are hoping to conform to doing the necessary things in order to reach a mass medium as one of our main objectives is to make money.
What narrative devices are you going to deploy in your music video?
Firth (1988) stated that music videos can be characterised by 3 broad typologies:
· Performance (to convey a sense of the in-concert experience)
· Narrative (linear, love stories most popular)
· Conceptual (metaphors to create a mood, offer multiple meanings)
As a group, we have chosen to use a performance and narrative style to our music video. By showing the artist singing in the video, and therefore performing, we will be able to allow the audience to relate to the artist and lyrics easily as they will feel part of the song. The use of a narrative in our music video will also allow us to make the video memorable because if the story of a video is interesting it often makes the song more popular. It is thought that this use of narrative in a music video is also most popular with a female audience, which links to our target audience of young females.
Are you going to challenge/conform to narrative convention?
As a group we decided that we will choose to challenge the conventional narrative structure of Todorov’s theory. This theory states that there are 5 stages to a media narrative:
1. Equilibrium
2. Disruption
3. Recognition of Disruption
4. Attempt to Restore Equilibrium
5. Reinstatement of Equilibrium
This structure will not be applied to our music video, as the story behind the song lyrics is about the artist’s love interest leaving her and this will mean that the video will not be able to begin with an equilibrium.
We have also chosen that our music video will have an open-ended narrative, as we feel this will keep interest between the audience and what is happening in the video, as well as making sense with the story behind the lyrics.
How are you going to appeal to the audience?
We will use Mise-en-scene to appeal to the audience as they will be able to relate to the artist and her surroundings such as a bedroom, relationships and personal photographs. We have looked carefully at out questionnaire to make sure the video has a wide appeal to the target audience by making sure we use things such as point of view shots and eye contact as it was clear that the audience relate to the artist through these devices and will meet their needs as a consumer, just as the Uses and Gratification theory suggests.
How will you engage with the audience?
The use of shots we plan to use will help the audience have a connection with the artist along with narrative linear as the audience will get to see the emotions of the artist through the story and acting. We will use all the information we gathered from our earlier questionnaire to make sure we are giving the audience what they want along with what we want our artist to be like to engage the audience into wanting to see more from our artist and to relate to her.
Could your music video be criticised in anyway?
Our music could be seen as heavily audience seeking, however the artist we have created has an everyday person feel to her and her music, meaning she will already be relatable to a wider audience with or without the use of techniques we plan on using. We feel that this video and song are very suitable for the audience of today.
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