Choosing a song for our music video

The four songs we evaluated;

  

The first song we evaluated is ‘Take it or Leave it’ by The Montagues and Capulets, a local band from Norwich; although we do not know them personally we would be able to get in touch with them. The song is four minutes and 16 seconds long which ultimately is slightly too long for a music video as this would be much more footage that would need to be filmed and the audience may lose interest by this point, by this I mean that we would need to hold an audience interest for a lot longer than intended. The optimum length of a song that we are looking out for is from 2 minutes and 30 seconds to 3 minutes.

Whilst listening to the song we felt there was something missing, the song did not seem to entice us or seem at all catchy. Perhaps this was because of the similar pace throughout the entirety of the song, ‘Take it or leave it’ does not have clear sections like chorus or a bridge. These seem to blur into one another making them unnoticeable to the listener. This ultimately leaves the song creating a weak impression as it does not have that familiar catchy feel to it. Going back to the slow pace of the song, this is a particularly weak prospect as to be able to create a good edit we need a song that uses pace effectively. There needs to be a distinct rise and fall, which this song does not have, therefore there cannot be different speeds to the edit which would ultimately create a more successful edit.

Personally, I do not like this song very much which creates a problem, the lyrics to me do not feel inspiring to make a music video because of this I have found it difficult to think of ideas to shoot. Overall, we agreed that due to mostly the slow pace and uninspiring this was the right song for us.

Next, we looked at ‘Choose’ by Finn Doherty, a local solo artist that I know personally from high school. This song features on Finn’s latest release, his EP album; ‘Heritage and parenting’. This song starts with a very clear beat and a crescendo, these are strong points for a possible music video to be made. Quickly there is beat introduced by a sound of strong drums and guitars this continues throughout the entirety of the song. Another clear strong point of Finn Doherty’s ‘Choose’ is the definitive sections, compared to The Montagues and Capulets ‘Take it or leave it’, ‘Choose’ has a much clear structure to the song. For example, the chorus in ‘choose’ compared to ‘Take it or leave it’ is much more coherent. ‘Choose’ has strong dynamics created by the different instruments used like drums, guitar and piano at the beginning.

The lyrics of ‘choose’ have already started to create ideas of possible narratives for a music video, the narrative could become more intense in time with the crescendo of the song which I feel would be a very effective technique to have a successful music video. Overall ‘choose’ could be a possible contender for a music video.

Thirdly, we evaluated ‘Process’, another song from Finn Doherty’s Heritage and Parenting album, like his song ‘Choose’ this song also begins with a strong rhythm created by the beat of a piano, guitar and drums. Although this song does not feature a crescendo like ‘Choose’ the fast pace works in its favor as ‘Choose’ is slower compared to ‘Process’. The fast pace the climax to the chorus and the chorus. This would allow us to change pace in the edit, which in turn would give us a more successful video. This is because keeping the same pace throughout the whole entire video would be considered boring and would not show case our skills particularly well. Personally, these lyrics spark more ideas for a potential music video than ‘Choose’ because I believe ‘Process’ to be about a romantic relationship which is easier to create a narrative for. I feel that ‘Process’ is a stronger contender than ‘Choose’, this is down to the pace of the song, dynamics and the lyrics.

Finally, the last song we evaluated was ‘Text Me’ by The Visitors. It is just under four minutes long which immediately causes a concern as this song would require a lot of footage to be shot. This song begins with a soft guitar instrumental, this is does not create a strong beat, it is also has quite a slow pace. Compared to Finn Doherty’s this song seems softer and gentler because of the lack of a beat, this pivots us more towards ‘process’ as a good beat is a strong selling point. However, the pace does increase towards the end of the song as more instruments become introduced like drums, which does strengthen the beat, the pace only seems to change once unlike ‘Process’ which weakens the song as we are looking for several pace changes so that the edit can also change pace to. Personally, as I do not like this song because alternative rock is not my own music taste, the lyrics do not ignite any ideas for a potential music ideas.

We choose Finn Doherty’s ‘Process’ as the song for our music video, this song came out as the top contender while evaluating the suitability for all four songs. Using this diagram

, we could compare of the songs accurately. As shown ‘Process’ out as the four songs hit the suitability points that were looking for most, therefore I feel that it is a sensible and the best choice for our music video.