Company Research

I have researched into several companies that are responsible for creating and distributing music and music videos.

I am starting with the company which distributed Michael Jackson's "Bad". The song and it's video were funded and produced by Epic Records. this is a fairly long standing company, being founded in 1953 and being based in the city of New York USA. this particular piece cost the company $2,000,000.

Michael Jackson was not an unusual person for this record label to sign, the majority of artists signed by this label today are pop singers.








The next company that I am looking at is Island Records who produced Pulp's hit "common People"

This company was formed in 1959 with it's main branch in Jamaica. now, they have expanded to many locations across the USA including Los Angeles and New York. Unlike epic, this record label does not have a very established genre, instead it contracts artists from various different genres.







The third company that I am looking at is Domino which produced the song "when the Sun Goes Down" by the Arctic Monkeys, another Alt Rock band. Domino is a much younger company than the other two that I have researched above being only 21 years old it was founded back in 1993. the main two genres of this company are indie rock and pop. It also specialises in British music as it was founded and remains in London, England. this company achieved both it's first UK #1 album and UK #1 single 9 years ago, one of which was brought to them by the Arctic Monkeys with their single "I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor"






My next company is Nonesuch Records which produced songs for The Black Keys, songs such as "Gold on the Ceiling" in 2012. Nonesuch Records is a fairly longstanding company having been founded in 1964 by Jac Holzman. Nonesuch produces a wide range of musical Genres from Classical to Alt Rock. The company was founded in the USA and to this day remains centered in New York City.

Analysis of Music Videos

I have spent time Analysing three different music videos that I consider relevant inspirations for my own which is soon to be created.

The first video that I am analysing is "Ashes to Ashes" by David Bowie. this video opens up with an establishing shot of Bowie sitting alone in some sort of alien land, this immediately establishes the idea that he is isolated and lonely which is a theme that continues throughout the video.




The video maintains a slow pace of editing, they accomplish this; one by letting shots run longer than in many music videos, and two by using fade transitions opposed to strait cuts this also played into the dream like theme of the piece. another way that they transitioned between scenes was with the interesting idea of characters holding photographs which would then be zoomed to in order to reach the next scene.





The action of the video switches between these shots of  a weird and wonderful world and scenes of Bowie sitting alone in what looks like some sort of mental institution. this gives us the story of the video, being of a man who has been declared insane being lost in a world of his own imagination. This piece also has themes of loneliness as the man is seen entirely alone in the asylum scenes, and is only surrounded by people in his scenes of imagination, leading us to believe that he longs for company.




The next music video that I have looked at is from Britpop band Oasis, the song is called Wonderwall. This is one of their most famous songs and the music video won an award and is considered one of the most influential in the genre. The first thing that yo uwill notice about the video is that it is almost entirely in greyscale. This colour scheme does two things, first it sets a definite tone for the video, secondly is that it highlights certain objects such as the instruments as they retain their colour. Overall this creates a striking and memorable look for the video.

This colour scheme can be seen to the left here. As you can see, the guitar on the left here is highlighted in blue to make it stand out against the bland background. The action of the piece is mainly just the band performing in a warehouse as well as some more interesting shots of Noel rotating around the screen as shown above. In this shot Noel does a full rotation whilst singing the song. We also have quite a few close up shots of Noel whilst he's singing some of the more powerful lyrics. The editing maintains quite a slow pace throughout the video to keep in line with the music and with the genre.

The third music video that I am analysing here today is "Back for Good" by insanely popular pop/Britpop band Take That. The first shot of this video is of a stormy car park which slowly pans up as the group drives in. this instantly sets the tone of the video. The story is the tragedy of a man being left by his loved one and now he just wants them "Back for good".

Much like Oasis' video, they use greyscale to aid the feel of the piece. Also like Oasis' though, a large amount of the video is simply spent focused on the performance of the band, and in particular on close up shots of Gary singing: as seen on the left. As I have said previously, this helps us really relate to the main singer and to see and feel the emotion that they are trying to get across. One interesting thing about the performance of this video is that all of the band members are seen playing joyfully except for Gary  who does not join in, this could be representative of how he is feeling within the story of the song, in that he is not able to be happy with this loss that he is gone through.

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