Today we got the chance to meet recording artist and composer Georgia Fields. She is a long-term collaborator of Rohan’s, having composed music for his documentaries and having been the artist behind several (after much debate the pair decided it was nine) of his music videos. Rohan has showed us a few of them, and this one has a really cool look:
Georgia came in today because it was time for us to present our pitches for our group music videos to the class. Rohan decided it would be a good idea for us to get some feedback from an actual recording artist, who understands what it is like to perform in a music video and so could provide feedback from that perspective, as well as being a fresh set of eyes to examine our concepts.
It was a really good idea. Georgia gave some great, practical advice (I can believe that she’s just become a mum!), such as, “where is the nearest toilet?” And, “if it’s a new song will they know the lyrics perfectly?” Her points were really valuable, and it was kind of her to come in. We’re really lucky to have her coming in again next Thursday to do a live set, which we’ll be using to practice shooting music live. Unforunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to come in next week, which is a shame not just because I’ll miss out on the technical learning but also because I’ll miss out on seeing Georgia live!
It was also great to be able to see what the other groups are doing. It sounds like we’ve got some great clips coming up (Rohan even joked that he was worried Georgia would fire him in place of us!).
We started with group ‘Hawaii 5-0’ (in honour of them being the only five-person group), whose song ‘Ten Different Names’ by the band Pockets had a groovy Wild West cowboy sort of feel. The band’s artwork for the song was each of their heads in silhouette inside one another (if that makes sense), and the group was using that design as a template for incorporating some awesome designs that they’d created from food dyes and paints.
Group two was Elle and Jac, who confused us all into thinking they had extremely good contacts with their powerpoint title ‘Fortunes – Justin Beiber’ (Fortunes was the artist). Like us, they’re going for a narrative – that of the artist planning a party. But to avoid the trap of cliched teen party scenes, they’re ending with the plot twist that there is actually no-one at the party.
The third group played a hardcore rock song aptly titled ‘Anxious’, and are matching the song’s ominous sound with some witches dancing in a forrest, but are mixing it up with some cool projection work in the studio.
Finally,our fourth group was also using projectors, projecting images onto their artist to portray the inner emotional turmoil described in the song. Their clever interpration of the lyrics into visual metaphors should be fun to watch, along with their scenes graphically added to the artist’s sunglasses.