Early Planning & Research: Inspirational/influential artists and music videos

As mentioned in the previous 'early research & planning' post, as a group, Jess W, Charley and I have decided to do a pop/rock style girlband. We have looked at many different bands, listened to many of the songs and watched their videos, and these are a few which we could look to for inspiration.



4ever - The Veronicas
When we were discussing different song choices and what bands it could be good to cover, The Veronicas were a band that we all had thought of straight away. An iconic sister act, The Veronicas are rocky and edgy yet a little bit sexy too, a look we may decide to do.
This video for 4ever is simple yet quite effective: the two main girls get almost 90% screen time (with the band and the crowd getting the other 10%) and are just shot singing the lyrics straight into the camera, but watching this just makes you want to dance along in the crowd. The main close ups and mid close ups show the girls clearly just singing the lyrics, but we get a lot of information about their artist identity. Firstly we can see that they are sisters, as they look very similar, but we can tell that they have two different identities as one is blonde and the other has black hair. This contrasts to their previous music and videos where they both had black hair and looked identical.
The styling in this video is rocky with a touch of glamour with the black leather jackets, leopard print cardigans, black lace tops, black shorts and then sparkly chunky necklaces. Their make up also reflects this glam rock look with the dark black thick eyeliner and eyeshadow and bright red lips, making the girls stand out from all the people in the crowd. This is a look we think could work really well for our band, so looking at The Veronicas for inspiration for styling could be key.



Secret - The Pierces
Similar to The Veronicas in that they are a sister double act too, The Pierces are another band we could look at for inspiration. The Pierces are actually under the genre of folk rock so are much softer than The Veronicas, with the majority of their songs being slow. This video for Secret is split into performance and narrative, giving a few more layers than 4ever. The narrative for this video goes along with the lyrics; to keep a secret from getting out, the best way is to kill the person you told. The song even has a middle eight where it is just speech allowing the band to act it out, with the 'Hello Catherine' and 'Yes Allison.'
If comparing the two videos above, it looks as though Secret is made on a much smaller budget with simple settings and props. This can reflect on our project as our budget will not be huge either, showing us that you can still make a great video with narrative and performance aspects with a simple idea.
There are also shots of just performance in this video where the two girls are dancing synchronised during the choruses infront of a blank white screen, which is again simple but effective, showing artist identity. We see the connection the two girls have by dancing together, showing their sisterly relationship (despite the fact that the rest of the video shows one killing the other.) This use of plain performance with a few dance moves could be good to look at for inspiration as we may want to have a few dance motifs in our video too. The strong make up around the eyes during these shots could also give us inspiration for our video too, and we can decided to do crazy make up to create an identity for our new band.