Artist research

It is important to research into artists who are similar to our chosen genre as this could influence the decisions we make when making our music video. It could tell us who we would need as our target audience and who the song will appeal to, so this will have an impact on the visuals and shots that we use as we need to make it match the audience for the song and genre. To do this we must research into audience figures such as views on YouTube, chart toppers and downloads.

Youtube Views

We picked 4 singer songwriters and looked on YouTube for their most popular music videos, looking at the number of views and what was contained in the visuals.

The first artist was Passenger with his music video of 'Let Her Go'. This video is all performance, and it includes very simple shots of him sitting on a stall, singing the song itself. This video has 91,111,214 views.

The second was Bruno Mars with the music video for 'The Lazy Song'. This is Mars' most viewed music video, with 415,329,596 views on YouTube. This video contains Mars' dancing in a room with five other people in gorilla masks. This video has an element of comedy, as well as a sense of originality to make it memorable.

The third was 'Cats In The Middle' by Harry Chapin. As this is a lot older than songs by Bruno Mars and Passenger, the video is a lot more simple as the technology wasn't up top the standards it is today. The video is a live performance, as it would've been difficult to make a music video like nowadays, with a proper storyline in it. This video has 1,120,873 views.

The fourth song was 'You've Got A Friend' by James Taylor. Like Harry Chapin, Taylor is a lot older than Mars and Passenger, therefore his video is also very simple. Again, like Chapin, his video is a live performance, due to the fact that technology was limited.

Charlie Mower and Dan Andrew