Further research into Allie Moss - coming to fame and fame base.

After thouroughly searching the internet I managed to find an interview with Allie Moss in the magazine; EDGE. The interviewed was conducted by Bill Mehlman focusing on how Moss came to be successful.
The article explains how Moss was able to find success on her own and not through the typical way of 'the hands of managers, producers, agents and lawyers'. Moss was able to "catch the publics collective ear" in order to gain her aknowledgement. This shows how Allie Moss was able to gain her own recognition and coe to fame without anyone else's help. Emphasising her fan population must be high.
The interview states that Moss's fans mainly follow her on Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Tumblr, iLike and Twitter. Suggesting that Moss's fan base is the younger generation using social networking sites. Furthermore, these sites can be accessed all around the world. Showing Allie Moss' wide success and that her fan base is not restricted. 
The article can be found here here .

Another interesting interview I found was on youtube. One particularly interesting aspect of the interview was the answer to the question; 'Did you have singing lessons?'

Moss answered, "Up until the age of two, i'd only had two lessons and they were both terrible experiences. I hated it, but mostly because the teachers taught classical or they wanted me to sing show tunes. Which I can appreciate as an art but thats not what I wanted to do. And I didn't understand how I could learn to sing the style I wanted to sing. I just sang from my heart."
This interview can be found here
I found this part interesting as it shows how Moss was able to gain her fans by singing from her 'heart'. And was not swayed by other more professional people to change what she wanted to do.
  

Analysis of past students work

A member of our group was able to find a pupil past work on the song we are using, 'Corner'. He further noticed our ideas were similar to theirs. Therefore, decided to analyse it in order to see what they done well and what they could have improved on in order to make sure ours is to the best standard possible. 





He discovered many positives but also negatives to the video and the filming:


Positives;

• Shows past memories which works well, you can tell it is different from the rest of the text as it is edited differently to the rest. Also, it makes the characters more realistic and the audience can attach with them more.
• Includes narrative which is a powerful idea and fits in with the song.
• Has parallel incidents which shows the effect of the accident and makes the audience sympathise with the female.
• Manage to maintain the audiences attention.
• Speed of the editing matches the tempo of the song throughout. The start of the song had close ups of the characters catching the audiences eye and maintaining their attention as they want to know who they are.

Negatives;

• Some parts of the music video are a little boring, not a lot takes place compared to the rest. We need to try to avoid this.
• A lot of these shots were long shots of the characters walking, this loses the audiences attention. Quick close ups could have been used in order to keep the audiences attention. We will consider this when filming our video.
• The shots before the car crash seemed to have been trying to create some sort of tension, this didn't fit into the video as the song didn't have an increase in tempo or similarities to an increase in tension. 

Research - focus group (Analysis)

After editing and completing our focus group, we have decided to analyse the results as a group in order to shown what we have learnt. This will help us further to include the information in our video. This is shwn below:

1. Do you like the song?
The group all had positive answers to this question, showing they liked the song. By knowing people like the sound of song we are using this will make us more confident with our video and that we will be able to create an effective video that people should be able to enjoy.

2. Describe the song in a few words:
The group gave many words to describe the song including, 'emotional', 'sad', 'happy', 'cute' and 'like a lullaby'.
'Emtional" suggests the involvement of an emotional experience.  Furthermore, both the words "sad" and "happy" were said in reference to the song,showing a contradiction. We agree with this as some parts of the song are "sad", whilst others are more "happy". Therefore, we shouldtry to include both "happy" and "sad" emotions. This will make our video more interesting as different emotions will be felt."cute" indicates a need for pleasing shots and cute props and surrounding/settings. "Cute" can be used to describe couples, we would like to try to involve this in our video. Finally, 'Like a lullaby' could also refer to cute and simple ideas. Lullabies are calming, we would like to include this factor also in our settings choosing beautifull surrounding.

3. What artist's style is the song similar to?
The group mentioned many similar artists, including Ellie Goulding, Damien Rice, Birdy, Tracy Chapman and Ingrid Michaelson. Some of these names have already apeared on our blogs, showing we are on the right track to creating a video the audience would want to watch. Below of Ellie Goulding 'Your song' which particularly inspired me:



4.Would you expect the digipak to have a photograph or an illustration?
They answered photograph, therefore we will include this when creating our digipak.

5. What kind of narrative would you expect for the music video?
We gained many similar answers to this questions that we have heard before, including a couple in love. also, one person suggested someone should die, which would portray emotion and fit into the mood of our song.
A second outcome is that the couple split up in the video. the group made this break up sound harsh and very emotional, creating a heart-breaking experience. we're not particularly keen on this idea as we feel it would ruin the emotion and vibe we would like to create of subtle and cute.
The third; a cute love story, leaving us with a vast amount of possibilities to include.

6. Other information
all the participants of our focus group were aged.17 and including three female and one male participant. From the answers we have gained and additional reseach, we can see that Allie Moss' music is particularly targeted at a female audience. Therefore, we will take this into consideration when creating our video in order to make it effective.

Research - focus group

In order to gain experience and an understanding of what the audience expect from our music video by listening to the sond, we held a focud group. We created a video of the answers in order to analyse them. This will help us when creating our actual music video. This is shown below:

Research - moodboard

In order to gain ideas for our music video, we have decided to create a mood board. We are all doing separate mood boards in order to create different visual inspiration and perhaps spark some more ideas. The mood boards will benefit us as we can refer back to them throughout the filming process in order to create the right effect and include the mise-en-scene we would like to.
My mood board is shown below:

Image one, three and eleven:
These three images are all examples of the types of settings we would like to involve in our video also the colours we would like to involve. These images form simplistic yet beautiful scenery’s, they are very interesting and would be similar to the ideas we would like to include.

Image two and five: 

Both these images represent the mood we would like to include in our music video. They both represent love. These images are also similar to image four, seven and ten.

Image four, seven and ten:

Each of these images also represents the emotions we want to portray in our video. We hope to make the emotions as believable as possible and to look as comfortable as possible. This will create a better effect in our video and make it overall more emotional for the viewer. We believe we will be able to do this as we are using close friends who should feel comfortable enough around each other to express their emotions in front of the camera.

Image six and eleven:

These images both represent the types of props we would like to use in our video. We'd like to portray a vintage feel and have cute simple props. The colours used are very pleasing and not harsh on the eye, the type of colours, props and image we would like to show in our video.

Image eight and nine:

These images are an example of backlighting, the light shown through the girls hair is a particular image we would like to include in our video as it looks very effective. Furthermore, this type of lighting makes the images look more effective and dramatic. Therefore, catching the audience’s eye and keeping them interested. The natural light makes the setting look naturally beautiful, which we hope to include.

Image twelve:

The image of the gravestone represents the twist of our music video; our song portrays sad elements which we also would like to include. Perhaps a death or severe loss would be effective in showing the emotional loss.  

Greatest music videos

60 - "Sweet dreams" by Eurythmics 1983

59 - "Knowing me, knowing you" by Abba 1977

58 - "Close to me" by The Cure 1985

57 - "I would do anything for love" by Meat loaf 1993





This video is effective and unique as it tells a story, a classic story of beauty and the beast. The video was very expensive to make and was extremely over the top. The video breaks the record for the most dry ice used!
56 - "Without me" by Eminem 2002

55 - "Praise you" Fatboy slim 1999

54 - "Around the world" by Daft punk 1997

53 - "Club Tropicana" by Wham 1983

52 - "Teardrop" by Massive attack

51 - "Walk this way" by Run DMC and Aerosmith 1956

50 - "You can call me Al" by Paul Simon 1986



Chevie Chase, comedian and actor, is hired to sing the song. Strange as the song is sad but he portrays it as a children's song, very upbeat and very witty.
49 - "Virtual insanity" by Jamiroquai 1996

48 - "Hurt" by Johhny Cash 2003

47 - "Firestarter" by The prodigy 1996


Extremely controversial! The video was only showed once in top of the pops, until people complained as it invloved beating women. It suggested the singers were in need of mental health. In the end man turned out to be a women, strange. 

46 - "Prince charming" by Adam and the ants 1981

45 - "Crazy" by Aerosmith 1994

Background information on Allie Moss

Allie Moss is the singer of our song 'Corner'. She is not only a singer, but a vocal and guitarist coach. She originally comes from New Jersey, America. Allie Moss' latest debut album 'late bloomer' was released in 2011. She has performed on the BT tower and on Bt adverts. She has also played her own UK tour held in July and August performing in many cities including London and Liverpool. Allie Moss not only writes and plays guitar in her owns songs, but also stars as the lead guitarist for her singer friend Ingrid Michaelson, they performed beside one another in Michaelson's 2010 European tour. 


Below is a live video of Moss performing at the BT tower:



Allie Moss is well know, but is best known in the United Kingdom for her song 'Corner', the song we have chosen to make our music video to, which featured in an advertisement for BT's Infinity broadband service. This consequently meant the song peaked at number 70 in the UK Chart.

Copyright issues

The reason we needed to use music websites such as unsigned.com and newgrounds.com was in order to refrain from copyrighting music, which is illegal. We would not be able to use a copyrighted song unless we have permission. This is why it's better to seek unsigned music as it would be a lot easier and quicker to gain permission than by someone famous who will be busy and we more than likely will not get a reply.