Instuments Surrounding The Genre

Banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with, typically, four or five strings, which vibrate a membrane of plastic material or animal hide stretched over a circular frame. Simpler forms of the instrument were fashioned by enslaved Africans in Colonial America, the roots in which the genre developed from.






Acoustic Guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only acoustic methods to project the sound produced by its strings. This the instrument that is played by the main focus/lead singer of a folk band. Often many camera angles focus around the instrument.



Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It's high pitch has a contrasting effect to that other instruments. The violin is sometimes informally called a fiddle, regardless of the type of music played on it. The use of the violin creates a more sorrowful and dramatic effect.

Shooting Scheldule

During the half -term period, two full days days filming have been decided with the artist in principle. The Monday and tuesday we have agreed are going to be full days filming as the artist is not going to be performing on either of those days. It may be an idea to one of her gigs to collect some live footage.

Monday 25th November is a designated shooting day as to is the 26th November, the Tuesday of half-term.
At some point location shots will be taken during the week, likely to be the Saturday of the half-term.
If any other additional filming is required, the artist is likely to be willing to film, providing the weather is ok.

Shooting locations for "Down This Rabbit Hole"

The shooting for the music video will take place at the home of the artist. The artist lives on a farm in which the location of the farm, could correspond to the artists genre. The Farm has many acres to span, including a small game forest which can be used for shooting also. Field shots can ve filmed with ease as some the crops are still not reaped.
The weather will be a contributing factor to the shoot as either of the possible weather conditions will be neeeded for shhoting. Sunny as many shots can be produce some dazzling landscape shots. However this effect can be also be replecated with an over-cast day. The darker light could also create a sorrow like effect to work with the lyrics, which are somewhat mellow.

Analysis of location shots

When it came to selecting the locations it was chosen by the artist that she wanted to shoot on the farm she lives on. This came after some deliberation between ourselves. The farm, located in Little Melton, Norfolk is a sceneic area which with the right sort of weather on the day of shooting would possibly produce some dazzling shots. A nearby woods could also be useful when shooting as it to like the farm landscape would relate to the aspects of the folk genre.

Below are images of some of the areas the farm has to offer for shooting.

Possible Idea around Shooting

Seeing as the artist is local to the Norwich area, it would also be a good idea to intrioduce imagery capturing the cultural significance of the city.
Often asociated with the indie aspect music is that of city landscapes, however these could be used with countryside shots, to give the variation of the genre.


Seeing as the the song is fairly mellow, the autumn season would provide some decent weather shots and get the concept of nature and season involved. The colours of the foliage of leaves would create a sense of emotions. The aspect of nature would also tie in with the idea of nature, relating to the folk genre.

Background history To Mayenna Plastow-Smed

Mayenna Plastow-Smed is an indie-folk artist, local to the Norwich scene. Born to a Danish father and English mother, the artist began singing at the age of 8, now 17 she has begun songwriting hence the song "Down This Rabbit Hole". The recording artist has uploaded the majority of her music to the sharing website 'Youtube'. She has a channel on the site also, composing of her own material.
Her material is recording within her own home, using basic recording programmes. She is currently in the process of creating an E.P album to try and her promote her music.

Research into artist genre

Mayenna Plastow-Smed's music is focused souly on guitar based songs. She describs her genre as Indie Folk with certain aspects of pop.
Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s from singer/songwriters in the indie rock community showing heavy influences from folk music scenes of the 50's, 60's and early 70's. A few early artists included Lou Barlow, Beck and Elliott Smith.

Artists that she aspires to are the likes of "Ellie Goulding", "Mumford And Sons.", "KT Tunstall" and many other artists. Often with folk music, the acoustic guitar instrument is often a symbol of the genre. The majority of folk video's will feature a soul performance based on the artist. The Modern concept of adding additional voice overlays, sythesisers.

The roots of the genre was introduced through folk music from diffrent cultures. In which it is often thought that the genre originated with black settlers in America, bringing there cultur to the Americans. This concept of music was then adapted into many diffrent genres including Jazz and of course Folk. Which in later time has developed into a popular genre.

"Down This Rabbit Hole" - Mayenna Plastow-Smed

This is the song i'll be doing for my A2 production piece. The genre of the artist is indie-folk.
The lyric's are as follow's:

"You shone when all my light was gone
A colour burst on my grey canvas
Sent your warriors into my heart
And you conquered me with a tactful art."

"But shall you stay by my side
Awaken me to each morning's light?
I've given you my entirity
For you have won me over truly
With your charm and your might
And your eyes just like the night
You stole my heart away from the tower
Invaded my thoughts at every hour"

"Bashful smiles and adoring glances
A leap of faith, but I'll take my chances
Stomach in my shoes as I feel the drop
Down this rabbit hole, all lonliness forgot"

"But shall you stay by my side
Awaken me to each morning's light?
I've given you my entirity
For you have won me over truly
With your charm and your might
And your eyes just like the night
You stole my heart away from the tower
Invaded my thoughts at every hour"

"Yes you did"