One Republic Research

OneRepublic is an American rock band from Colorado Springs, Colorado. They formed in 2002, by Ryan Tedder and Zach Filkins, the band achieved massive success on MySpace, becoming the most prominent unsigned act on the website then. They signed onto Mosley Music Group in 2006, and released their debut album, 'Dreaming Out Loud' in 2007 which started their career.

OneRepublic made radio history when with their first single, "Apologize", received the largest amount of airplay in history with 10,331 plays in one week, the record only being broken again by "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis, a song which Ryan Tedder also co-wrote. The remix version, featured on Timbaland's album Shock Value was a smash hit internationally, reaching number-one in sixteen countries and gaining 10 million downloads (the largest number of digital downloads for any song to date) subsequently earning them a Grammy Award nomination

OneRepublic's varied style of music has been described by Ryan Tedder: "We're no respecter of genre. If its a good song or a good artist whether rock, pop, indie or hip hop, they've probably influenced us on some level...nothing's new under the sun, we're a sum of a bunch of parts." They cite The Beatles and U2 as heavier influences on their music. OneRepublic has expressed a desire to move listeners onstage the way U2 does.

The current members at present date are:
- Ryan Tedder – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, keyboard, bass guitar, tambourine, African drum (2002–present)
-Zach Filkins – lead guitar, viola, acoustic guitar, backing vocals (2002–present)
-Drew Brown – rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboard, glockenspiel, bass guitar, piano, tambourine, backing vocals (2002–present)
- Eddie Fisher – drums, percussion (2005–present)
- Brent Kutzle – bass guitar, cello, acoustic guitar, keyboard, piano, lead guitar, backing vocals (2007–present)

When working live though, the band have well known additional live members, being the following:
- David McGlohon - acoustic guitar, tambourine, backing vocals (2008–present)
- Andy Prickett - lead guitar, backing vocals (2010)

Looking Into our Song

The song "Secrets" is the second single released from OneRepublic's second studio album Waking Up. The song is Genre calssed as Pop rock, Cello rock and Alternative Rock. The song was releashed in september 2009 and writen by the lead singer of OneRepublic, Ryan Tedder.

The song was released first as a single in Germany and Austria owing to its presence on the soundtrack of Til Schweiger's new film Zweiohrküken. The movie is the sequel to the film Keinohrhasen, for which One Republic's song "Apologize", from the album 'Dreaming Out Loud', was the film soundtrack. The song rocketed up the German and Austrian airplay charts, and eventually the song was released in the United States iTunes Store on November 3, 2009 The song was due for a UK release on April 5 but was pushed to June 1.

The song was prominently used and featured in the soundtrack of the 2010 film The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and was also used to launch the "Big Pony" fragrance line for Ralph Lauren. An instrumental version of "Secrets" also featured prominently in the Facetime portion of Apple's iPhone 4 video introduction in 2010. The song has been heavily utilized in network promotional advertising for various series and several other film trailers in the United States.

Target Audience

The ideas of a music video is to promote the band and earnt hem more money, so me and my group felt that a performance video would be the better choice for establishing iconography and focusing on the roles of each band member. Another reason for choosing this style of music video is because of the fact it is a common feature used in this genre of music videostherefore it makes sense to follow the conventions.

I began to research into my targetted audience which would clearly be anyone involvedwith the alternative rock genre or the fanbase already created by OneRepublic. TO make the video fitting to the targetted audience i will need to look into the interest and hobbies that relate to the genre and fan base.

The target audience most likely to consume our video would be the Young Alts 'tribe'. Tribe icons include Green Day and Kurt Cobain, fitting to the genre we have chosen.

UK tribes states that:

'Young Alts are after something different, but beyond that, they’re not exactly decided. They’ll read about or listen to a huge variety of bands and try Skater, Emo and even Urban fashions. They also love a lot of mainstream fashion and music.

After looking into these facts about our targeted audience i realise that it would of been best to go with hosting our video on NME TV but sadly it was closed on the 5 January 2012. So the next best thing would be for us to have it aired on 'Kerrang! TV'. This channel has also aired similar bands to my groups chosen band, most noticeably; Green Day, Paramore and You Me At Six.

When looking in the styles of clothing of which our band members should wear, my group concluded that after looking into other bands such as green day (picture to the right) we notice that they wore coloured ties, normal black shirts, belt and black jeans/trousers. with their clothing accessorised by badges and ripped sleeves. The hair of the band is wacky and styled to the genre of grunge of which their past music had been.

So, after looking into what the audience expected our band to look like i came to the conclusion that our band should wear shirts and ties along with black trousers, but we wanted our own kind of uniform as 'GreenDay' had. So my group suggested have white shirts instead with only the singer in a black one. This way helping him be the main focus. We also noticed how each one of 'GreenDay' had a change of style, such as a hat, full suit, no ties and then ties, so we chose to utilize this idea and present our band members in the same way. Only difference we want form 'GreenDay' it so make our band members look less rough since our Mise En Scene will be a church we wished to keep them clean and neat.

Here You can see a rough drawing of what me and my group was planning on what our band will look like:

Secrets - Video and Lyrics Ideas and Analysis

Here are the lyrics to my chosen song of which i plan to do a lyrical mood board/brain storm with my group.


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Lyrics | One Republic lyrics - Secrets lyrics

Audience and Magazine Research

I started to research into magazines and their advertisments so i could get a more developed understanding of what our advert would be like if it was realistically going through to print.

Kerrang is a weekly magazine with a total circulation of 43,033. It mainly concentrates on rock, alternative rock and metal genres and features a range of reviews of many different bands

Although this magazine does hold my chosen genre choice, it doesn't seem to be wide enough to audience of which I wish to meet. It does have a small variety of sections of which would most likely feature the band i choose, such as:

• Feed Back
• News
• Live reviews
• Features of Bands
• New albums
• Gig Guide

The New Albums section which would be perfect for our advertisment to be placed for our digipak. Also the Gig Guide is a section at the end of the magazine which is devoted to promoting tours and gigs, this would most likely seciton to have toward my genre since alternative rock is mostly known for their gigs and tours.

In the magazine I have chosen, Kerrang, There are 63 Pages inside. 20 Pages of the magazine (12.6% of the magazine) is advertisement for products. Below shows the products being normally categorized into groups:

• New music albums or song
• Concerts and tours
• Competion
• Fashion
• Kerrang Radio and subscription Page

The other pages consist of tour and gig tickets, new album, top song charts at the moment, and advertisements. Some advertorials weren’t that clear, which might cause confusion to whether it is an article or advertisement.

So with this all in mind, i beleive this magazine would be perfect for an advertisement of a digipak to be held within my coursework.

Camera Shots that I liked for Cello

So you see the camera work and editing are so key to music video that they most likely wouldn't even exist without them, when looking into my song i have identified the instruments (as mentioned here in my post).

So, when looking into how the instrument, The Cello, is represented through shots and angles i found out about that a band called 'Murder By Death', who is a cello rock group (which our song has been known to be) seem to be a excellent example of how to portray our own cello.

The picture to the left is a lovely image of a middle shot cello with its bow, all mostly in full screen. Its a nice close up when the Cello was playing by it self within the video. I like this shot because it establishes the instrument being used and shows off the user's ability.

With the picture on the right i wanted to know how the cello was presented when it's playing in a group or when another instrument had became more interesting for the viewer to watch. So with this picture you see the medium shot of the lead acoustic guitarist with the Cello besides it. She sitting down due to how cellos are played so hence why she is placed as such. The picture helped me to noticed how the cello is always shot from the front view, no sides are used or anything to justify the musician, other than the close up shots used on her later on.

This next shot on the left is a beautiful shot of an extreme close up on the strings and bow of the cello, which would be nice to incorporate into my own video. As you can see it enhances the audiences knowledge on the musicians abilities to play their instrument. This is a nice concept of how I'd like my own shots represent my cello.


The next two shots are taken after one another, with maybe a 5 second gap. But here you can see her in a normal framed shot which gives you a nice over-view on the musician and her instrument, with the second shot you have the long stretch out with the bow, taking up the whole screen with her arm's length which is a nice dramatic way of playing the cello and would again go well with my song choice due to its dramatic nature.

Underneath are some images put together by 'The Piano Guys' it shows longer shots, and different types of angles that we could use when filming a cello. i personally prefer, the middle shot due to how it presents the cello in the spot light and can clearly see the cellist in action.

Music Video Editing Research

When i was looking at sites and digging into the internet for some music video editing tips and what's what, i came across about.com: Need, Know, Accomplish. And although this site was not focused on editing it had a great article piece.

"Your footage might be great, but it'll only become a great video through editing. To do a good job you'll need patience, time and more patience. You'll need to decide the 'feel' and pace of the video. Will it be made up of long sweeping shots, or quick sharp edits? Do you want to follow the mood of the song and edit to the music or do you want the video to contrast with the track?"

- From A. Flegenheimer. (Link to Source)


I chose to include this quote due to how it helps to present the understanding about the effort that goes into editing a music video. So straight away i can explain how important editing is to a music video and how not fully thinking about it would jeopardize the whole project.

Another part of this site which was very interesting on my behalf was here! It helped to show how i could try shooting my video to help editing for at the end of the day, if the footage is rubbish then the whole project will look amateurish.

My favorite two quotes from the upper-said-link, are these:

Don't Be Over Ambitious: A simple idea well executed is often more effective than a complex idea done badly.

And Ignore All I've Said: The most interesting videos are made when the rules of convention are bent, buckled and broken, so keep experimenting and above all else, make something interesting.

Reason for this is because of its simplicity and understanding of great depth into the music industry. And with these tips i can my self understanding the way in which i should go about thinking when I'm doing my own editing on my music video.