Lesson From A Speaker From Polydor Records

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of being taught a lesson by two women who work at Polydor Records which is a subsidiary of of Universal. Their job title was video commissioner and they basically decided on the concepts of music videos from choosing from a wide range of ideas. They pick the concept by looking at various treatments and picking the ones which best suit the artist and the song. A fun fact we found out was that when it is a new artist and a new single, they prefer to have a performance element in the video just so that the audience can tell who the artist is. This is a useful tip as for our coursework we have to produce a video for a 'new artist' and it would be helpful if the audience knew what they looked like as a marketing campaign.

Firstly, we looked at the video for Goodness Gracious by Ellie Goulding. This video was shot over just one day and we were given the treatment and the end product i.e. the video looked very similar. This told us that we needed to be very precise about what we put in our a treatment and make sure it correlates between what we see in the video and what we see on paper. For example, here is some pictures from the treatment of Ellie's video:

And here is a final video that came from the treatment:

The video is very similar to the treatment and this made the job of the cinematographer and director a lot easier and enabled them to do a more concise job.

We also looked at another artist, La Roux, and her song Kiss And Don't Tell. The concept for this video involved the use of an adult chat line and hundreds of old fashioned phones. The treatment for this video used images a bit like this:

  









And here is the final video:

A cool thing that companies use nowadays is using interactive elements in their videos. In this video, the number that keeps getting shown on screen is a real number that you can call and there is a message recorded by La Roux. This is a good marketing technique because it makes the audience feel as if they are included in to the action of the video. This is especially good for new artists as it adds another dimension to the marketing campaign and allows the audience to see another side to the artist. 

Overall, talking to the people from Polydor was really helpful because it taught me what a treatment entailed and had to include. It also helped me establish some good ideas in how to portray a new artist in the best possible light. I'm looking forward to developing my idea for a music video with the rest of my group now that I have this knowledge.