Poliça Representations

'Give You The Ghost' album cover

'Shulamith' album cover

Dark, night time photo of the band with a red tint

Cinema screen photo (mentioned in mind map)

Photo of the band for 'citypages' (mentioned in mind map)

Poliça

I think that using one of the songs off of this band's album would be a good choice for my music video. Poliça is in the indie/alternative genre so this would fit perfectly with my genre choice. The band is from Minneapolis in the USA and is comprised of:

• Singer - Channy Leaneagh
• Bassist - Chris Bierden
• Drummers - Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu

The band is signed to four independent music labels. 'Inertia' one of Australia's most well established indie music companies. 'Totally Gross National Product' an extremely small independent record company from Minneapolis, founded by drummer Drew Christopherson and the band's producer Ryan Olson. British independent record label 'Memphis Industries' and finally 'Mom + Pop Music', an independent label situated in New York. 

The album from this band in which I am mot interested in is 'Give You The Ghost' which was the band's first album, released in February of last year. The band are set to release a new album in Autumn called 'Shulamith', they have officially released one video for this album so far (see video).

Initially I don't think this band had a very wide fanbase, however -whilst still being relatively unknown- they have acheived a much larger fan base due to the fact that wildly popular band 'Bon Iver's' lead singer Justin Vernon told Rolling Stone magazine "They're the best band I've ever heard." Also, Poliça's official video for 'Lay Your Cards Out' premiered on Jay-Z's blog 'life+times' (http://lifeandtimes.com/lifetimes-video-premier-polica-lay-your-cards-out). This would've allowed the band to reach a wider audience of people that wouldn't necessarily have listened to this genre of music in the first place.  

Genre

I have decided to focus solely on music in the alternative/indie genre because I think the majority of music from this genre is left open to interpretation in terms of song meaning, whereas quite a lot of the music in the pop or rap genre has a very literal meaning. This means that using a song that has a 'read between the lines' meaning will force the viewer to use their imagination.

Further Research

I've found some more music videos on youtube for songs that I could possibly use:

I think this would be a good song to use because as a band the Gorillaz are more readily associated with their cartoon characters than who they are in real life. After watching this music video I can see the benefits of creating my music video for a song that doesn't contain any real people in the original. I wouldn't have to worry about my music video resembling the original, that's for sure! 

I think this would be a great song to use, it has a good head-bobbing beat and a catchy chorus. I have to admit I'm not so sure about the weird dancing snowflakes and Friday the 13th masks, so we can be certain that I wouldn't be copying anything from the video!

Thom Yorke (lead singer of Radiohead) decided to go off and do his own thing for a while and what can I say? The ending result is slowly becoming some of my favorite mix of songs. I particularly like this song because of the beat, I like the very ending of the video when a fast array of shots are thrown at us and even though the music isn't particularly fast or upbeat at that point, the shots still seem to fit perfectly with it. 

Research

During this morning's lesson I spent a while watching music videos. I like these particular music videos because they're quite arty and not what you would generally see in most other music videos. 

I first heard this song when I noticed it was the iTunes free download of the week. I listened to the sample and ended up downloading the song and now I can't stop listening to it! I love this video for the different shots that all seem to fit so perfectly together. I also really like the editing of the colours to make the video appear as though it was filmed in a different time. 

After reading one user's comment on this video I was able to see that the different dancers represent stages of the older woman's life. I liked this concept because it's as though the director of the video is trying to paint a picture of the woman's life. 

I liked this video because it's quite simple, no exotic locations have been used, just good lighting and a black studio. I was very impressed with the editing and the way it seemed to fit so perfectly with the music and dancing

Initially I heard an acoustic cover of this song by 'First Aid Kit', I thought the cover version was so beautiful I had to check out the original. I was shocked to see how incredibly different they were! At first I thought this song and video was a bit strange, but I have to say it has grow on me a great deal.