Polydor is one of the major record labels having produced music videos for Ellie Goulding's, The 1975, The White Stripes, Lana Del Rey and many more. Emily's job of being a music video commissioner involves being the middle man between the record label and the directors and team filming the music video therefore she oversees the entire process of the making of the video. Her job also involves scouting for new talent, attending concerts and being sent showreels to view for potential music videos.
The first step to making a music video is choosing the track and budget for the video. Budgets can range from £1k to £150k, however, the average budget would be around £20-30k. Once this has been decided the next stage is to set the tone of the campaign, depending on what type of artist is involved in the music video process. This is incredibly important if the music video is in fact their first, premiering their music style and there onwards gathering a fan base perhaps from the viewing of the video.
The next step of the process involves compiling a brief to discuss with the artist themselves. The brief is the basic idea of the music video therefore able to vary from conceptual, narrative, animation, film influenced or performance. The type of brief chosen depends a lot on the time frame and deadline in which the music video has to be produced within. For example, if the video had to be completed within a week or so the brief would not centred around animation due to the time allowance of a longer post.
Any production company usually starts out by developing music video projects which can showcase a vast amount of creativity within a few minutes, being relatively short to film and produce, therefore building an expansive and possibly varying style of material in the company's repertoire.
An example of one of Polydor's works is Ellie Goulding's 'Burn' which was executed by the action director Mark Sharp. It was an in house production, meaning the production achieves more for the money that is injected into the project. We were able to view the video's treatment, being a heavily visual leaflet of the pitched music video idea, which involved do-able visual references collected from the web and films. If these visual influences are unrealistic in terms of being achieved this will result in an dissatisfied artist. The treatment involves an overview of the video idea, many visual influences as well as the detail of the 'middle 8 twist' being the ultimate climactic moment of the video, perhaps introducing a new strand of narrative or a conclusion to an already existing strand, or plainly a build up of narrative imagery. 'Burn' was shot in a military air base in Peterborough on one June day, where the shoot ended at 3am.
The music video incorporated a significant amount of beauty shots and close ups of the artist's glamour, makeup and clothing were prioritised and therefore maximised due to the fact that Ellie is a young female artist. However, in a band's music video such as The 1975's 'Sex' there was a certain focus on camera techniques such as crane, dolly, hand camera, gliding tracking shots in order to suit the flow and feel of the song. The video incorporated 16mm filming rather than purely digital looking shots. The framing of the band in the music video also links to their album cover artwork, being effective link making in order to remind the viewers of the album and therefore possibly leading to maximised purchases.
Emily recommend the idea of storyboarding ideas to clearly display the development of the video's narrative. Sometimes a mood fill is created instead or as well as the treatment on paper. The mood fill is ultimately a film version of the treatment, compiling inspiring film clips that the music video can draw on and interpret in an original way.
Emily ended up in her position within Polydor Records by completing a Fine Art degree, hoping to become a Music Photographer. She landed an internship at the Polydor label, firstly becoming an assistant and gradually working her way up to her present position as a music video commissioner. She admitted her job has it's many chaotic moments when certain shots need to be filmed due to a tight time scale on the shoot day.
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