Welcome to our pitch Meet Emma Stevens…

Background Information Emma Nadine Stevens (born 4 May 1986) is an English singer

songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, based in Guildford, United Kingdom. She achieved mainstream success with her single Riptide from her first full length album Enchanted, which was featured as itunes Single of the Week in October 2013 and achieved in excess of 150,000 downloads. She describes her music as "sparkly folk pop”

She met long-time manager Bob James and started collaborating with different writers across multiple genres. Work included writing and performing on Britains got talent finalist Andrew Muir's debut album for which she wrote the lyrics to Can't Say That It's Over in 2009. Soon after,

It was during songwriting sessions in Los Angeles she began to seriously consider a future solo career.

Other collaborations have included Sharon vaughn, Eric Shermehorn, Andy Goldmark, Wayne Rodriguez, Mimoza Blinsson, Adam Kagan, Will Simms, Russ Ballard and John Beck.

In 2011, she toured with British rock band The Kooks and Feeder regularly performing on stage in front of crowds of 20,000 people.

Solo Career decided that the first album would be released initially as a series of four

EPs. Placed together, the four pieces form the entire cover of the full album, Enchanted

In August 2012, Emma was picked up by the BBC Introducing series for new and unsigned artists and on 19 August 2012 she performed four songs live on air.

The first single, A Place Called You, was released on 28 October 2012 and received its first national airplay on BBC radio 2's Weekend Wogan show on 2 September 2012

In January 2013, Emma collaborated with English folk-rock singer-songwriter Passenger, which resulted in a song I'll Be Your Man

Recording work on the debut album was completed on 9 September 2013

After the album had been completed, rather than sign to a major label, Emma decided to self-release Enchanted and a deal with label services company Absolute Marketing and Distribution Ltd was signed.

Song Synopsis

‘Riptide' is a “sparkly folk pop” song written in 2013 by British singer/songwriter Emma Stevens.

From the opening lines, the listener is aware that the song is deeply personal - a reflection of the performer's feelings for the love of their life.

The song is upbeat and fast, it depict a woman feeling for her lover who makes her feel like the luckiest woman alive, at the same time she is shocked by her strong feeling for him, despite the fact that she knows she can’t fight the feeling, she is never the less preparing herself for the possibility that he might break her heart.

However she feels like she is in a very happy place at the moment and is finding it hard to believe, this hints at a turbulent past, perhaps a past relationship.

Riptide can be sung by a man or woman without having to change any original lyrics.

GenreThe genre of Emma’s music is pop with a hint of country. The song we have chosen – Riptide reflects this as from the outset we can infer the genre, this is from the use of the guitars and string instruments, and the catchy nature of the song categorises it as pop.The pop genre itself aims to appeal the general population and not smaller sub cultures there this is why we chose this particular genre of music so we can have a large target audience for our music video

Other female pop artists include:

Taylor SwiftKaty PerryAriana GrandeBeyonce Miley Cyrus

These are all pop artists who are similar to Emma in terms of their music and so this can aid us when we are creating our music video.

Songs that inspired us

Close ups are very common in POP videos due to their lyric content which is mainly about love, pain and suffering. It is also used to show there emotions. In these two songs the close ups shows a close up of Taylor Swift looking very happy, this is denoted by her slightly parted lips showing her teeth. The second picture show Blige looking stressed denoted by the hands by her head, her eyes closed and the black and white colour

LocationIt seems that the ambiance of Emma Stevens’ song

determines the location of her videos. For example, she has a slow, sad song called ‘Dreaming Trees’ which is set in a forest and also switches to a shot of Emma playing the guitar in a church as it links with the mood.

Due to the upbeat nature of her song ‘Riptide’, we would ideally like to film our video either on a beach or on a country road in a moving car and friends singing the song as if in a ‘road trip’ style.

She is also commonly in fields or forests, surrounded by nature which could be another possibility for our video. The image of Emma in this slide shows her holding a bunch of roses with a field type view in the background, so poses a big likelihood of us filming in an area similar to this picture.

Casting

The lead role for our music video will be young female lady between the ages of 17-21. this is because Emma herself is a female and so it is only fitting that a female will play the lead role.

As for the age of the lead, 17- 21 is a good age because they are not too young and not too old and so it appeals to the target audience who is young teenagers mainly female.

We will also have some extras in the background possibly dancing, again these will be relatively young and will be a mix of both female and male to cater for all audiences.

CostumesIn many of Emma Stevens’ other music videos, her

attire consists of girly, ‘pretty’ clothing. This means that it would be wise to wear skater dresses/skirts when making our video for the song ‘Riptide’.

She is often on the beach or by the sea when she is filming a video, so there is a lot of extras wearing shorts, bikini tops, etc in her videos.

She also wears very pale colours such as light pink, or baby blue or white so we have brainstormed to wear pastel colours when filming our video.

The above image illustrates why we would wear pale clothes, most probably skirts or dresses.

Camera Angles, Shots and Movements

In our music video we are going to incorporate many different camera angles and shots.

We will include many generic shots that are seen throughout music videos today such as close ups of artist, mid shots, close ups of instruments, pan shots, possibly shots with the dolly.

We could have shots of the artist on the beach, with the crashing waves behind them.

We could also have a shot at sunset with the back of the artists head with the camera moving round to capture the sunset and the silhouette of the artist.

Editing

Our editing will be done on Final cut pro

We will use cross cutting to show the protagonist in a number of locations i.e. the seaside.

These cuts will be edited to match the beat of the song where possible in order to make the visual relate to the music of the song - this was stated as a music video convention by Goodwin

Cross fade and other transitions may be used during editing to present a smooth form of transition from one scene to another or to link two shots together.