Basement Jaxx - Where's your head at

"Where's your head at" is a song by British electronic dance music duo Basement Jaxx. It was released as a single from their second album, Rooty, in 2001. The song was recorded in early 2001 and is based around samples from Gary Numan's songs "M.E." and "This Wreckage". The song peaked at number 39 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, the band's only charting single on a non-dance music chart in the United States.

Greatest Music Videos: 80-71

80. Radiohead: Just
79. New Order: True Faith
78. Godley and Creme: Cry
77. MC Hammer: U Cant Touch This
76. The Beatles: Strawberry Fields
75. Duran Duran: Rio
74. Wu-Tang Clan: Gravel Pit
73. Basement Jaxx: Where's Your Head At?
72. Robert Palmer: Addicted to Love
71. Bjork: All Is Full of Love

Jamie Thraves: Case Study

Jamie Thraves is a british film writer & director born in 1969. Although now he is soley doing films he did start off as a music video director, for this reason I have decided to find out about him and see the type of things he does in his own work and maybe try and incorprate it into my own.

At university Thraves made short films and used an award winning film he made as a 'calling card' to get a 'foot in the door'  with the video production company 'Factory Films'. He began his music video career by shooting 3 very low budget videos costing around £5000 each. Obviously these videos went very well because he was the chosen director of possibly the biggest british bands of our time, Radiohead and Coldplay. These two videos combined cost £300,000 and made in 3 days each. This is a massive sum of money and a lot of time to put into a music video nowadays, as currently the average cost and time of making one is £20,000 and 2 days.

As I have said before Thraves only wanted to make music videos to get into the film business, this has been very successful as since then he has shot 3 features; The Low Down, The Cry of the Owl and Treacle Jr. Although mainly a film director Thraves does still enjoy making the occasional music video, for example in 2010 he directed Dizzee Rascals 'Dirtee Disco'. Overall Jamie Thraves has made 20 music videos (4 of which being last year) & 10 films, all of these being since 1991.

In an interview with Thraves he's tips for making a good music video was to: use the lyrics but not too literally, and to go with the emotion of the lyrics. As he is a great, British music director I will be taking these on board and try and use this in the one I am currently working on.

Finding Music - Unsigned .com

To get a song for our music video we need to find an unsigned artist, to get these we are going to look on 'unsigned.com' we're hoping that we find an upbeat song which we can mess around in  with the music video as we are not looking to do a completely serious video.

Here is what the 'unsigned.com' homepage looks like:

Unsigned.com is owned by First Beat Media Inc., an online entertainment media company that is "committed to being the best source of information to discover unsigned artists".

Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime Analysis

"Once in a Lifetime" is a song by New Wave band Talking Heads, released as the first single from their fourth studio album Remain in Light. The song was written by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, and produced by Eno. It received critical acclaim, and was named one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century by National Public Radio.

Greatest Music Videos: 90-81

90: The Pet Shop Boys: Go West
89. Smashing Pumpkins: Tonight Tonight
88. Elton John: I Want Love
87. Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime
86. The Streets: Fit But Dont You Know It
85. Sid Vicious: My Way
84. The Boomtown Rats: I Dont Like Mondays
83. Shakespeare's Sister: Stay
82. 50 Cent: In Da Club
81. Ultravox: Vienna

Brimful of Asher Analysis

Greatest Music Videos: 100-91

100. Musical Youth: Pass the Dutchie
99. Supergrass: Pumping on Your Stereo
"Pumping on Your Stereo" is a song by Supergrass, released as their first single from their self-titled third album, Supergrass (1999). The single reached #11 in the UK Singles Chart. Though the title of the song is "Pumping on Your Stereo," the band thought it funny to actually sing the word "humping" in place of "pumping," and this is how it is thus heard on the recording. In live performances, the band has sung "pumping" instead.

98. Bronski Beat: Smalltown Boy
97. Cornershop: Brimful of Asher
96. So Solid Crew: 21 Seconds
95. The Cardigans: My Favourite Game
94. Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart
93. The Rolling Stones: We Love You
92. Herbie Hancock: Rockit
91. The Specials: Ghost Town

100 Greatest Music Videos

I am just about to start watching the '100 Greatest Music Videos' which was shown on E4. I am going to watch this for quite a  few reasons. One major reason is to give me some ideas for my own video and possibly steal some of them - if it worked for them it is more than likely to work for us. Also I would like to know in general how music videos are set out whether its in the form of a story or random clips put together. A third reason is just through curiosity as to which artist has got the number 1 spot and whether I recognise some of the videos myself. I look forward to watching all of the music videos and will of course be posting them on my blog describing some of the techniques used and what I liked about them all.

Editing Our Preliminary Task

The way we are going to edit our music video is completely different from how we did our thrillers. Instead  of cutting in the clips we wanted and doing it from there, we put all 3 of the clips we shot on final cut express at once - beneath eachother - then used a tool which allows you to fade out one clip so the second clip (or clip beneath it) plays instead.

I think the preliminary task on the whole went very badly, mainly because it was a completely new concept for us. The first part that I thought went badly was the singers in it, although the female singer did quite well and moved about naturally the male singer (me) was very stiff as I was forced to take one for the team and be in it just so it could be completed. Although the lip syncing for both of us was very good the movement and chemistry between was lacking. We have all noticed the same problem so we think it would be best if we wasn't in our final music video together.

As the editing was also completely different from usual we were all very much outside of our comfort zone because we had to use new tools that we had never used before, because of this the editing part of our video wasn't up to scratch either. However we have learnt from this and hope our final video is much better than this and becomes a success.

Preliminary Task Finished Video!

Here is our finished video for 'Dont Go Breaking My Heart' we hafd a lot of fun filming it and we hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did.