PreproductionPlanning and research

Musical style and influences

FKA twigs has been described as "catchy pop" with "whispery vocals". It has been com-pared to the work of ‘Tricky’ as well as the ‘xx’ and ‘Massive Attack’.

The first singers who had an impact on FKA twigs were Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Marvin Gaye. When she started composing songs, she wanted to reproduce music she liked.

Describing her artistry, FKA twigs said: "I am not restricted by any musical genre. I like to experiment with sounds, generating emo-tions while putting my voice on certain at-mospheres. [...] Younger, I only listened to punk, Siouxsie and the Banshees [...] and then I found my own way of playing punk. I like industrial sounds and incorporating ev-eryday life's sounds like a car alarm." She has also said she wants to appeal to people who want something different.

The creative process of creating our music video

One of my group members approached me with a picture (shown below) and from that we used it as a stimuli to create our visual concept. Based on the picture she showed me I thought of a song that would be well suited to the image, which I thought looked like a “Geisha blowing bubbles”.

I thought ‘Water me’ by FKA twigs suited the stimuli because initially I interpreted the lyrics (shown below) as being about losing virginity, the 'fee' being her vir-ginity. She values her virginity as much as people value money. The man she talks about feels too pres-sured to be the one she loses her virginity to. 'It's too much in pounds', too much pressure. But if he 'waters her', like how you would water a plant so that it grows, she will grow as an individual, as a woman. And when he waters her (makes love to her), making love will be 'free', the pressure of losing her virginity

will be gone. Like a rite of passage. But still, he won't make love to her. And she's stuck with only herself to please.

When I looked at the comments underneath FKA twigs’ water me, there was comment (shown be-low) saying that she copied the electronic beat of an artist called Bjork. So I researched the artist and found a song by her called Hunter (also shown below). Both songs have a similar visual concept with only close ups of the artist’s head and vaguely similar electronic beats and that repetitive pul-sating sound effect in the background.

Bjork- Hunter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkFMXNPftvs

In this music video Bjork morphs back and forth into a techno bear, reflective of

her inner struggle; as she desires to break free, go somewhere new and explore, embodied by the bear which is obviously a hunter.

The video is made probably using a green screen and an editing technique that overlays the effect of a futuristic bear on her head.

This particular video is similar to FKA twigs’ Water me because of the simple close up shot and use of editing techniques to create a disjointed, avant-garde music video.

This section of FKA twigs music video also bears similarity to Nicki Minaj’s video for Pills and potions where she’s crying and the effect of the tears is metallic-like.

Bjork Homogenic al-bum digipak

Unboxing video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fEIvx4jD6c

FKA twigs EP2 album digipak