2. Background Information
Emma Nadine Stevens (born 4 May 1986) is an English singer songwriter and
multi-instrumentalist, based in Guildford, United Kingdom. She achieved
mainstream success with her single Riptide from her first full length album
Enchanted, which was featured as itunes Single of the Week in October 2013
and achieved in excess of 150,000 downloads. She describes her music as
"sparkly folk pop”
She met long-time manager Bob James and started collaborating with
different writers across multiple genres. Work included writing and
performing on Britains got talent finalist Andrew Muir's debut album for which
she wrote the lyrics to Can't Say That It's Over in 2009. Soon after,
It was during songwriting sessions in Los Angeles she began to seriously
consider a future solo career.
Other collaborations have included Sharon vaughn, Eric Shermehorn, Andy
Goldmark, Wayne Rodriguez, Mimoza Blinsson, Adam Kagan, Will Simms, Russ
Ballard and John Beck.
In 2011, she toured with British rock band The Kooks and Feeder regularly
performing on stage in front of crowds of 20,000 people.
3. Solo Career
decided that the first album would be released initially as a series of four EPs.
Placed together, the four pieces form the entire cover of the full album,
Enchanted
In August 2012, Emma was picked up by the BBC Introducing series for new and
unsigned artists and on 19 August 2012 she performed four songs live on air.
The first single, A Place Called You, was released on 28 October 2012 and received
its first national airplay on BBC radio 2's Weekend Wogan show on 2 September
2012
In January 2013, Emma collaborated with English folk-rock singer-songwriter
Passenger, which resulted in a song I'll Be Your Man
Recording work on the debut album was completed on 9 September 2013
After the album had been completed, rather than sign to a major label, Emma
decided to self-release Enchanted and a deal with label services company
Absolute Marketing and Distribution Ltd was signed.
4. Song Synopsis
‘Riptide' is a “sparkly folk pop” song written in 2013 by British singer/songwriter
Emma Stevens.
From the opening lines, the listener is aware that the song is deeply personal - a
reflection of the performer's feelings for the love of their life.
The song is upbeat and fast, it depict a woman feeling for her lover who makes
her feel like the luckiest woman alive, at the same time she is shocked by her
strong feeling for him, despite the fact that she knows she can’t fight the feeling,
she is never the less preparing herself for the possibility that he might break her
heart.
However she feels like she is in a very happy place at the moment and is finding it
hard to believe, this hints at a turbulent past, perhaps a past relationship.
Riptide can be sung by a man or woman without having to change any original
lyrics.
5. Genre The genre of Emma’s music is
pop with a hint of country.
Other female pop artists
include:
The song we have chosen –
Riptide reflects this as from the
outset we can infer the genre,
this is from the use of the guitars
and string instruments, and the
catchy nature of the song
categorises it as pop.
The pop genre itself aims to
appeal the general population
and not smaller sub cultures
there this is why we chose this
particular genre of music so we
can have a large target audience
for our music video
Taylor Swift
Katy Perry
Ariana Grande
Beyonce
Miley Cyrus
These are all pop artists
who are similar to Emma in
terms of their music and so
this can aid us when we
are creating our music
video.
6. Songs that inspired us
Close ups are very common in POP videos
due to their lyric content which is mainly
about love, pain and suffering. It is also
used to show there emotions. In these two
songs the close ups shows a close up of
Taylor Swift looking very happy, this is
denoted by her slightly parted lips
showing her teeth. The second picture
show Blige looking stressed denoted by
the hands by her head, her eyes closed
and the black and white colour
7. Location
It seems that the ambiance of Emma Stevens’ song
determines the location of her videos. For example, she has
a slow, sad song called ‘Dreaming Trees’ which is set in a
forest and also switches to a shot of Emma playing the
guitar in a church as it links with the mood.
Due to the upbeat nature of her song ‘Riptide’, we would
ideally like to film our video either on a beach or on a
country road in a moving car and friends singing the song as
if in a ‘road trip’ style.
She is also commonly in fields or forests, surrounded by
nature which could be another possibility for our video. The
image of Emma in this slide shows her holding a bunch of
roses with a field type view in the background, so poses a
big likelihood of us filming in an area similar to this picture.
8. Casting
The lead role for our music video will be young female lady
between the ages of 17-21. this is because Emma herself is a
female and so it is only fitting that a female will play the
lead role.
As for the age of the lead, 17- 21 is a good age because they
are not too young and not too old and so it appeals to the
target audience who is young teenagers mainly female.
We will also have some extras in the background possibly
dancing, again these will be relatively young and will be a
mix of both female and male to cater for all audiences.
9. Costumes
In many of Emma Stevens’ other music videos, her
attire consists of girly, ‘pretty’ clothing. This means that
it would be wise to wear skater dresses/skirts when
making our video for the song ‘Riptide’.
She is often on the beach or by the sea when she is
filming a video, so there is a lot of extras wearing
shorts, bikini tops, etc in her videos.
She also wears very pale colours such as light pink, or
baby blue or white so we have brainstormed to wear
pastel colours when filming our video.
The above image illustrates why we would wear pale
clothes, most probably skirts or dresses.
10. Camera Angles, Shots and Movements
In our music video we are going to incorporate many
different camera angles and shots.
We will include many generic shots that are seen
throughout music videos today such as close ups of
artist, mid shots, close ups of instruments, pan shots,
possibly shots with the dolly.
We could have shots of the artist on the beach, with the
crashing waves behind them.
We could also have a shot at sunset with the back of the
artists head with the camera moving round to capture
the sunset and the silhouette of the artist.
11. Editing
Our editing will be done on Final cut pro
We will use cross cutting to show the protagonist in a
number of locations i.e. the seaside.
These cuts will be edited to match the beat of the song
where possible in order to make the visual relate to the
music of the song - this was stated as a music video
convention by Goodwin
Cross fade and other transitions may be used during
editing to present a smooth form of transition from one
scene to another or to link two shots together.
