George Harrison

Norwegian Wood by The Beatles

Inspiration- The Beatles

One of my inspirations are The Beatles. The Beatles were an English rock band that formed in Liverpool in the 60's. The Beatles consisted of: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. They had a very successful career lasting for 10 years before they broke up and went solo. The Beatles were regarded as the most influential act of the rock era writing hundreds of songs and dominating the charts.

The reason The Beatles are a huge influence of mine is because of their experimentation and diversity of musical styles. Some of their styles were Indian, Pop, ballads, hard rock, psychedelic and classical. This experimentation led to unique music that had never been created before. Their Indian influences to me is the biggest reason for being inspired.

George Harrison was best known for being a singer-songwriter and guitarist of The Beatles. Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped scope popular music by incorporating classical Indian techniques into their songs. During the 60's George Harrison spent time in India being taught by Indian classical sitarist Ravi Shankar. Ravi Shankar gave George Harrison private sitar lessons which influenced the 'psychedelic' sound of the 60's. He became immersed in the culture and studied over there and introduced his teachings into the Beatles which helped shape a brand new sound to the band which had not been heard before.

This video below is of Ravi Shankar talking about George Harrison from The Beatles.

Risk Assessment- Woods

Risk Assessment- Studio

Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing

We have a Facebook and Instagram account which we can use to promote our music video. These platforms have a lot of followers so by posting our music video on them we can reach our music video. Our Instagram is full of band pictures so we can keep our fans up to date. This helps the fans to stay connected to the band and find out important information such as future gigs and updates in merchandise.

Social media accounts are a very good strategy for bands because it means bands can reach a large amount of people and can give them information all in one place. Having social media accounts means that fans can contact the band, find out gig information, updates on merch ext. Our Instagram account also has our Facebook account linked so the fans can check out our other social media accounts to make sure they don’t miss out on any information. Our Facebook page also has a good following. Just like the Instagram account, the Facebook page gives people information and updates regarding the band. The music video and big updates would be posted on the Facebook account because it has a larger audience. The behind the scenes pictures would be on Instagram as Instagram is purely picture based whereas Facebook has written posts as well and provides more functions. It is a good strategy to spread out the pictures over different social media platforms because the audience will check both social media platforms to make sure they don’t miss any content.

I have also created a website where fans can find out the latest about the band and can stay up-to-date on any news we have. This is also a place where fans can ask us any questions and listen to a sample of out music to get a taste for what sort of music we play as a band

http://nathanblows16.wixsite.com/cautiontheband

Intended Institution Analysis- YouTube

YouTube Logo

As we have established, my target audience is late teens. So the best place to start finding a institution that would show the music video is to look at what platforms late teens use to watch music videos. As a late teen myself, I thought about how I consumed music videos. I go on YouTube to watch music videos. I then asked all my friends at school how they consumed music. They all said that they watch their music videos on YouTube. They watched them on YouTube as it is easy to follow your favourite artists so you can watch all their videos in one place. I asked 23 people at school as primary research about how they watch music videos and all 23 agreed that YouTube was the main source for viewing music videos.

When researching about YouTube, I found out that "YouTube is hands down the most popular, user-friendly video-sharing tool available online." Users post their videos on Vevo channels. Followers of the artists "subscribe" to the artistes which mean that every time the artist uploads a music video, the viewer is sent a notification letting them know that a new video has been posted. Most artists have their own YouTube channel because it is a fast growing online video-sharing platform and therefore the artists can reach out to a large audience. 

Some of the biggest channels on YouTube are Vevo channels. This is a screenshot of the stats of the biggest Vevo channels on YouTube. As you can see, these channels have received billions of views on their YouTube videos. Justin Bieber, the biggest Vevo channel, is ranked 7th for the highest subscriber account in the whole of YouTube. 

As a result, I will post my video on YouTube as it has the largest potential reach to my intended target audience. Since its on YouTube and not TV. Anyone can watch the music video whenever they like at whatever time whereas on TV there would have to be a specific time where the audience can watch the music video.

Asking Permission

Automated Response from their Official Facebook Page

The Rolling Stones are a world famous band that are still touring to this day. I couldn't find their official email and even if I did, I most likely wouldn't receive a response back from them due to how busy they are. Regardless I still drafted an email I would have sent to the Rolling Stones to ask for their permission to use for my music video.

I did find their Official Facebook page, however it has an automated response programme which means I couldn't get a reply from them for permission. The picture on the right is the response I got back. 

The email I wrote is written below: 

To The Rolling Stones,

I am writing in regard using your song ‘Paint it Black’ as part of my A-Level Media project.

I am an A-level media student from Rayleigh in Essex. I am a massive Rolling Stones fan and I love all your music. I have been set the task to create a short music video on a song of our choice and demonstrate certain skills such as lip-synching. For my project I intend to use the song ‘paint it black’ and create my own performance/narrative over the song. I chose paint it black as I feel it is a very powerful and emotional song that will perfectly match the qualities of the narrative I am planning to produce. This song will be used purely for educational purposes as it is for part of my A-Level Media coursework that will be sent off to external examiners to mark.

I am writing to you to see if it would be possible to use this song as part of my music video as this music video is essential to pass my Media A-level. I would be most grateful if you would allow me to use the song for my music video as the song ‘paint it black’ is fitted to the music video narrative I plan to create. It would be greatly appreciated if you could reply to this email to let me know if I have permission to use the song ‘paint it black’ by The Rolling Stones.

Kind Regards,

Nathan Blows