Tom Heath - Solo Acoustic Musician Client Work

As soon as my group got given our client, we instantly looked him up on YouTube to see if he has posted any content. To listen to his genre of music and how he conducts his videos. This is what we found:

There are many more videos of Tom Heath found on his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwDtiwRgPHRoMEG752PHf2w

The few videos I have picked out show his current style of his music and how he creates the video content for his channel. We can clearly see that he is an acoustic musician who is from Medway and likes to keep his videos easy and simple. There is no clear edited content in his videos as it just looks like the camera is on the tripod filming him sing. He uses a professional standard microphone and guitar to create his music and the video camera just films the visuals.

The beginning always has his name in big 'Tom Heath' and the name of the song in big after the motion graphic of his name has left the frame. His older videos do not tend to have many different shots in as it is just on a tripod with him singing but, as he has grown as a music artist, he has started to switch his videos up with having plenty of close ups from his face to his guitar to a middle shot of both. It makes the video more professional and visually stunning which is obviously the look he was going for. If a record label was looking to sign Tom up, they would definitely be impressed by the professional audio and microphone used with the visually stunning shots that makes the video interesting to watch.

Looking more in depth into the videos, the first video shown, 'The Restless Kind' by Tom Heath starts with a close up of Tom's face. This shows who the artist is and his clothing style which also says something about his music genre. The relation between his clothing and music genre, suggests that he is a chilled and a laid back artist who is going to create maybe pop, acoustic music rather than something more upbeat like rap. The fact that he also has a guitar which we can see in the thumbnail, tells us the type of person he is. That he typically does not come across as a 'troublemaker' type of person.

The first video shown, called 'The Restless Kind' starts off by Tom giving a friendly introduction by saying hi guys, it's Tom Heath and stating the name of the song. It gives the video a little starter before really getting into it. The video then goes blurry and a little motion graphic logo pops on the screen with the title; 'go out of tune' which is the channel that has posted his music video. The camera is then handheld and pedestal'd from a middle shot of Tom's face, to a fairly close up of his guitar. The shot then becomes more in focus. I really like the camera movements and techniques to start the video off as I believe it looks creative, original to the channel and makes Tom look very professional so people would want to listen. Tom starts playing the guitar intro while the motion graphics of his name and the name of the song is being displayed over him. The camera then starts off by panning around him as the guitar goes quick and he begins to sing. The camera goes blurry as he hits the high notes which I think also is a nice effect. The camera is handheld throughout the hold video to give it a little movement. The majority of the video is a middle shot of Tom's face singing, it then cuts to his guitar and hands to his face again. The camera also glides over and changes its focus onto another man who is playing the drum and another instrument for the backing music of the main artist. I have noticed that the video contains a lot of smooth movements from backing artist to the main artist. The focus points change as the foreground becomes busy with the guitar to then busy in the background of the instrumentalist.

The editing is simple and straight to the point for the music video to look professional. I think if there was too much motion graphics or visual effects, it would take the attention away from the main artist.

The second video is published by Tom Heath. It is called; 'Heading West' which is a slightly older video. The video starts off with a middle shot of Tom's face with his name in the top right hand corner. It stays there for a few seconds before being swiped away for the title of the song to appear. The video is roughy the same as the one I analysed previously in terms of camera movements and shots, however, the background is slightly different. The background is a little blurred but although the location is different, it is still the same in terms of a normal studio room with lighting. Not much has changed even though it is a older video, the shots and movements are still similar.

The third video shown above is called 'Hide and Seek' by Tom Heath. The first impression of this video is of Tom being very at home with his music. The thumbnail tells us this by how his equipment is professional looking while he is sat in his home environment. It tells us that maybe he is very close to his music because it is in his room or home and that he spends a lot of time and energy on it due to having a lot of expensive equipment. These first impressions are very important due to a potential client or audience seeing the thumbnail before anything else. He obviously wants to look professional and at home with his music or the thumbnail would not look the way it does.

I researched that Tom Heath actually comes under the music genre of folk. To build upon this, I am looking in the folk music industry to see what folk music is like and how Tom may fit into this category. I will also identify how he stands out as an artist.

The video shown above is an ultimate playlist of mashed up indie-folk music. Listening to this music, it is fairly slow with a calm beat. There is no sudden drop or fast beat to it as its aim is to not be catchy but more calming and chilled. I believe Tom fits into the category of folk music due to it being very slow and chilled. Tom's music is original by the way the songs always escalate at the end. His songs don't escalate to the point where they are country music or a pop song, but it does escalate to a higher pitched tone where you can jam along to it. This is how his music differs from the rest of the folk music out there. His music is catchy and it does have an element of tune and bass to it. However, the heart of the song is chilled and slow as is folk music therefore it does come under this category in the music industry.