Lyrical Inspiration

To stem some initial ideas for the video we thought it would be a good idea to analyse some of the main lyrics in detail. We basically whacked our song on replay and brainstormed whatever came to mind when listening to the lyrics. The brainstorm was scanned into the computer so we could upload it to our blogs and show all of the early planning stages:

Song Lyrics

The Shout Out Louds - Show Me Something New:

You and I
Have a hard thing to describe
You have so much to live for
While I am just dying to stay alive

You and I
Have something you shouldn't try
You have an eye for fashion, darlin'
I'm sitting in my room and letting the days go by

So much to live for

You’ve seen things
I've only read in books
I been stuck here for days
While you get younger and younger

So much to live for

Radio daylight, radio dark
Radio daylight, radio dark
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new

Radio day light, radio dark
Radio darkness and radio silent
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new

So much to live for

Radio daylight, radio dark
Radio daylight, radio dark
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new
Show me something new

Show me something new
Show me something new
Shoe me something new.

Filip Wilén.. ;)

The Shout Out Louds are actually a Swedish band, so I found the contact details of their UK representatives - Weekender Records - and sent them this email:

On 23 Sep 2010, at 11:35, Eleanor BROWN wrote
Dear Weekender Records UK,

My name is Ellie Brown and I am an A level student at Saffron Walden County High Sixth Form. For my Media Studies coursework my group members and I have the task of designing and producing an amateur music video. I am writing to request permission to use a song by the ‘Shout Out Louds’ as the stimulus for the project. The songs we are deciding between are; ‘Show Me Something New’ and ‘Fall Hard’. The ideas and material will be completely our own, but we would love to be able to use either of these songs as the base of our project. The video will not be used for promotional or financial benefit, it is only for our A level coursework and will be shown only to the examiners and possibly other media students within the sixth form.

Thankyou for your time, I look forward to hearing from you.

Ellie Brown

Amazingly I received a reply within about 10 minutes:

Ellie,

Many thanks for your message and good luck with your project. A wise choice of music!

Sadly Weekender Records has closed down in the UK but I have forwarded your request to Shout Out Louds manager Filip in Sweden. Hopefully he will respond directly to you. Otherwise you can e-mail him yourself at: Filip Wilén

Best wishes,
Justin
(former Chairman Weekender Records

SO.. Filip then got back to us with a somewhat reserved response.. which I'm going to blame on the language barrier...

Re: The 'Shout Out Louds'
Filip Wilén [filip@budfox.se]
To: Eleanor BROWN


thats ok


--------------------------------------------------

Filip Wilén | Managing Director
Bud Fox Management
Saturnusgatan 13
224 57 Lund, Sweden
Ph. +46 46 13 81 20 Mob. +46 705 34 35 10
filip@budfox.se

..However brief, it's still a YES so we can now begin planning our video!

Asking for permission...

This year, we have been told that the exam board are cracking down on the use of copyrighted music and for a brief while we thought we were going to have to source music some other way.. basically meaning making it ourselves, which - let's face it -would have been disastrous.

BUT luckily we are still able to continue as originally planned - using music belonging to an existing band/company, as long as we make particular effort to contact the band/company requesting permission to use their song. Obviously if they say no then we will have to compromise on the song choice. I am currently scouring the Shout Out Loud's websites for email addresses of the right people to ask about this..

SONG CHOSEN

We have listened to our favourite songs by the bands about three million times over, waiting for inspiration to strike, and finally decided to use a song by 'The Shout Out Louds' called 'Show me Something New'. The song is hard to label with a specific genre/theme, but the most appropriate I could come up with was 'Happy'.. Not overly creative I know, but the song to us seems extremely cheerful and positive, and we think it is about the beauty in this world, and what amazing things you can enjoy if you open your eyes.. Which turned out to be fairly challenging to sum up in one single word.

We thought the song was really encouraging of ideas for the video; it is named 'Show me something new' which to me threw open loads of doors to interesting, quirky ideas. Essentially it gives us the opportunity to create and show 'something new'.

Potential song choices

Today we began research into which song will be the stimulus for our video. We researched Indie/Alternative rock bands through the process of suggesting bands we each knew to be in this genre, and also searched on the internet for stereotypically 'Indie' bands, to see if we found something we liked that hadn't been heard by any of us before.

Here is our final shortlist of bands;
- One Night Only
- The Shout Out Louds
- The Kooks (MAYBE.. they're more than a little bit annoying)
- Vampire Weekend

Genre Pondering

In regard to choosing our song, there is pretty much an infinite amount on offer we could choose from, therefore we needed to decide on a genre and style of music we wanted to generally focus on, as not to waste endless lessons trawling through all the music ever made in the world, ever.. and to be able to establish a target audience to which we would ensure to keep in mind when making any decisions and developing ideas for the video.
We came to a mutual decision to go with the Indie/Alternative Rock genre, because firstly this is music that we all enjoy listening to, therefore have a fairly strong understanding of what audiences of this music enjoy in terms of music videos and styles, and practically we believe that this genre of music tends to have the best and most interesting lyrical opportunities for ideas to stem from - due to the themes of the songs often being more 'alternative' and interesting, as opposed to cliche narratives seen regularly in genres like Pop.