Institutions | Research

Sony Music Entertainment

The institution was founded in 1991, is the second largest music company in the world, and is part of the 'Big Three' (the other two being Universal Records and Warner Music Group). Some of the labels that are partnered with the company include Epic Records, Syco Music and Columbia Records. All these labels have signed successful artists like Calvin Harris, Michael Jackson, One Direction, and many more including Neon Jungle. Doug Morris is the Chief Executive Officer and Kevin Kelleher is the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. WE have chosen Sony Music as our institutional record label as it's quite well-known and also we thought it made sense due to Neon Jungle being signed to them as well.

Neon Jungle 'Louder' Video

This music video was directed by award winning director Colin Tilley. He has directed videos for music artists such as Chris Brown, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Jason Derulo, Cheryl Cole, and many more. Tilley has won several awards including a BET award in 2011. He was also nominated for another BET award for 'Director of the Year' in 2014.

Neon Jungle are signed to Sony Music, on one of their main labels RCA. If we were to create a girl group music video, it is most likely that Sony would sign a group similar to Neon Jungle. Other groups that are linked with Sony who have become world wide music artists are One Direction. This could cause Sony to be fairly interested in other music groups as they could help them gain recognition and profit.

Since famous director Colin Tilley directed Neon Jungles music video, he would also be happy to direct another groups music video as well. The girls are a UK girl band, which compliments that fact that he has worked with a variety of popular UK music artists. This means he would probably be happy to work with an upcoming girl group who needs a director for their video.

Neon Jungle | Planning

Neon jungle is a British girl group consisting of four female vocalists. Shereen Cutkelvin (middle left), Amira McCarthy (far left), Jess Plummer (far right), and Asami Zdrenka (middle right). Their music genres are based around electropop, dancepop and electronic dance music. They are best known for their second single 'Braveheart and have an albumn called 'Welcome to the Jungle.'

Shereen Cutkelvin

Born 2nd December 1996.
From Lanark, Scotland.
She is the youngest member in the band and is very shy but claims she has "been singing since she could walk and talk". Her father is her "musical idol" and is inspired by him. She loves motown and soulful music and enjoys listening to music artists such as Diana Ross and The Temptations. To start her off she uploaded covers of herself on YouTube, along with videos that include her family. She was then discovered and asked to audition to be part of the group. She got the call to confirm her place in the group while she was on her way back home to Scotland, and she also worked for Sony before actually joining the group.

Amira McCarthy

Born 2nd February 1996.
From London, England.
She has always known that performing is what she wants to do in her life. She took part in a singing competition at Westminster Academy, which was her school previously. This is when she realised that she wanted to pursue a career in music and not music or dance. She was scouted to be in the group in the location of Westfields Shopping Centre in London. She later auditioned for the group and made in as the final four.

Jess Plummer

Born 16th September 1992.

From London.

She is the oldest member of the band. She previously worked as an actress appearing on two episodes of the CBBC series 'Wizard vs Aliens'. Her musical idols are Mariah Carey, Rihanna and Jessie J. She was discovered throughout the groups current manager in Brick Lane from London. From there she was invited to the audition and made it through.

Asami Zdrenka

Born 15th September 1995.

From Japan, but moved to the UK at an early age.

She has always loved to sing, and as a child, when her father took her on holiday back to Japan, he would make her sing to her family. Her mother was a singer and her grandfather has released several albums in Japan. She was spotted online through YouTube videos of her singing, which caught the attention of the label.

Ideas | Planning

Once we chose the song 'Louder' by Neon Jungle as our song for the music video, we thought of some ideas we could use for our video. Some of the ideas we came up with were influenced by other music videos we had seen before.

Our rough ideas were:

• Drums
• Powder paints
• Speakers with a deep bass
• Dancer ribbons
• Smashing plates
• Walking down the street - experiment with different shots (e.g. front, back, side)
• Fans
• Flashing lights
• Close-ups
• Various locations for each member in the video then meet up for the chorus
• Popping balloons
• Mascara running down the face - we could show this through a close-up
• Quick cuts
• Sparklers
• Glow sticks
• Slow motion

Some of these ideas we found would be fairly easy to do and the props would be available to us (e.g. powder paint, glow sticks), but other ideas we found would be quite hard to do and the props would be hard to find. We discussed as a group what ideas we really wanted to do, what props we wanted and what locations we wanted to film in.

Our final ideas for the music video were:

• Throwing powder paint & glitter
• This would be shown in slow motion through the editing
• We can purchase these items off of the internet
• Popping balloons with powder paint in them
• This would also be shown in slow motion through the editing
• Also the balloons and the powder paint can be purchased
• Starting on a stage
• We would lip sync the song here
• We could use the stage in our school one day after school
• Different locations (e.g. woods, the street, a field, etc.)
• We would also lip sync here and we can use extra footage here as well
• Also we can find a wood near any of our houses to use

In the video we discussed having a cut transition between two different scenes, as well as showing contrasting colours in some of the shots. This idea was influenced by Demi Lovato's music video for 'Heart Attack'.
In the video she shows the contrasting colours of black and white and the editing is quick paced. It looks like she filmed in several locations as the transition between two different scenes show different backgrounds. We want to interpret that editing into our video to show the difference between the people in it and the locations we are going to use.

We also discussed the dramatic eye-catching colours that we wanted in our music video. This can be done through the powder paint that we will be purchasing and we can edit the colours when editing the footage. This idea was influenced by Foxes' music video for 'Let Go For Tonight'.
In the video there are many different colours being presented through the paint that they use and the food that they throw to create a mess. We wanted to create a colourful 'mess' in our music video, but no through food, so as an alternative we have chosen to use powder paint. The inspiration of the contrast of colours was influenced through this music video as well due to the bright colours contrasting with the white at the beginning of the video. This is something we want to think about doing in our music video to make the colours interesting and different.

When discussing what else we could do with the powder paint that we will be purchasing we thought we could put some in balloons and pop them to create a smoke of colour. This was influenced by One Direction's 'Steal My Girl' music video.
In the video Liam, who is part of the band, breaks balloon type figures with a hammer and powder paint breaks out of them. We wanted to do something similar with balloons as we liked the effect the powder paint gave off when seeing it on the video.

We then discussed exaggerating neon colours in the video with a black and white contrast in other shots. This idea was influenced by Shift K3Y's music video for 'Touch'.
In the music video they use bright neon colours to show a quick pace of the song. They also have quick cut editing to speed up the pace as well. This is something that we want to interpret into our music video to make the video entertaining and quick paced. Also the video uses a lot of close-ups which is something we wanted to add to our video as well.

Song Choice | Planning

When discussing, as a group, what song we wanted to do our music video too we decided that we should stick to the pop genre.
The songs that we started off with were:

• Ugly Heart - GRL
• Louder - Neon Jungle
• Human - Christina Perri
• Photograph - Ed Sheeran
• One Way or Another - One Direction
• Really Don't Care - Demi Lovato
• Story of my Life - One Direction

We watched each of the songs music videos and agreed that we should pick a song with a female lead. The reason for this was because we wanted the main character in our video to be female, so it made sense to have a song by female artists. When listening to the songs and watching the videos, we all had some ideas but we still weren't sure what song we wanted to do. We agreed that we should narrow the songs list down to three so we could focus on just thinking about those three songs.

The songs we placed in our top three were:

• Ugly Heart - GRL
• Louder - Neon Jungle
• Human - Christina Perri

We listened to the songs individually again and wrote down some ideas that we had as a group for each song. We didn't really have many ideas for 'Ugly Heart', so we decided we shouldn't do that song for our music video. We gathered some ideas for 'Human' and 'Louder' and discussed the possibilities of doing each song. We all agreed that we wanted to do an up tempo song as we felt we could experiment with props, different shots and the pace of the editing. We had some good ideas for 'Human' but we knew it was a slow song, so we decided that 'Louder' by Neon Jungle would be the song.

We listened to the song and recorded some ideas down for the music video while also deciding whether we wanted to do a narrative video or a performance video. The song doesn't really have much of a story line so we felt it would be quite difficult to add a narrative plot to the video. Some of wanted to do a narrative, and the rest wanted to do a performance. We discussed the pros and cons of both narrative and performance and decided on sticking with a performance type video. We chose this because it would have been difficult to create a storyline since the song doesn't have a clear plot, and also we knew we could experiment with different shots and effects while editing the footage to make the video stand out and eye-catching.

The video is set in a warehouse type building with dark low key lighting to exaggerate the emotions that are being portrayed in the video. Many close-ups are used to highlight the four individuals, as well as mid shots to show them all together as a group. A mix of colours have been used in the video to add some interest and colour to the video. The video is very powerful due to the close-up shots, the panning shots and the smoke used in the video. We weren't sure we wanted our video to be powerful, we mainly wanted it to be eye-catching and entertaining. Quick cut editing has been used in the video to increase the pace, and this is something we want to add to do with our editing in our music video. Also slow motion effects have been used to emphasise the emotions, which is something we were all interested in as a group. While watching the videos we all had some good ideas come to our heads and we are all very happy with our choice of song.