PLANNING- Location and costume

DAY ONE

 

 Location

 The performance part of our filming will be set in Bicer. It is a 20 minute drive away from Bourne. Luckily, after two of us had passed our driving tests we were able to make our own way down to our location and put all of our equipment in the boots of our cars. This will give us a lot of freedom, as we won't have to rely on public transport, and only be able to take selected items due to the weight of instroments and other nessecary items.  

 The warehouse that we are using is rented out by Henry's dad. This allows us to be able to arrive and leave when ever is good for us, and have no particular time that we need to be finished by. By having this freedom, we are able to try out different things and have the luxury of time on our side.

 Inside the Warehouse

  This is the layout inside the warehouse at Bicer. The production will take place against the grey coloured brick wall at the front. Throughout the warehouse, packaging and boxes are piled high and so we need to ensure that we have arranged the selected wall to be clear so that our background is only one texture and the shots remain tightly set and effective to look at with no exteriors interfering in shots. There are toilets for both males and females and food available so we can have regular toilet stops when needed and lunch when when we are hungry.

Costume for this day

 Lead Singer

 Our lead singer will wear a white polo tshirt. This give the idea of him being a normal every day male character, which will help the audience to relate to his character as they will recognise him as a normal person who has fallen in love. White will also show us against the grey coloured background which we have chosen to use, and allows us to clearly see him on camera.

 

 Blue chino's give the lead singer a modern look, and add colour to the costume, blue and white go well together and give the actor that young immature look which the indie genre often includes within performances.

 

 White Nike high tops, not only go with the white polo t shirt, but they will also be easily recognised on the camera during any camera shots taken from the floor. They also stick to the fashionable style of the costume. Pop promo's have behind the scenes people working to organise costumes so they appeal to the band's target market. As our target market is indie pop, mostly aiming at student, we need our band members to look stylish, young and very on trend in order for them to inspire others.

 

 

 

  Entire bands outfits.

 Drummer, Lead Singer, Guitarist.

 

 

 DAY TWO

Location

 Day two will include the filming of the narrative side of our promo. It will take place at my house in Thurlby, a secluded village just off Bourne.

 



 

 There are many aspects within my house which we will be able to use to our advantage. For example, the stair case splits in the middle into two different directions. This will allow us to try out complicated camera shots as we have the luck of having many different levels which we will be able to use throughout the house due to these stairs.

 

 

 

 We will also be able to control the lighting in a much easier way, due to having each light switch on a dimmer in the rooms of my house. This will allow us to intensify the light if we need to, or reduce the lighting if it appears too bright on camera.

 We also have many different mirrors throughout the house, due to my dad liking the different patterns which they can all come in. The mirror in our bathroom has a light on each side of the mirror, which will give additional light to the ceiling lights, allowing us to create two different effects. We are interested in looking into "The Unknown" and getting shots of mirrors and windows and other parallel objects which are seen as supertiscious.

 We will have to film between 10 o'clock and 4 o'clock in the day time, in order to use the daylight to our advantage and avoid further complications of lighting.

 Costumes

 

Characters

Girl and a Boy (lead singer)

 

 

Monochrome colours to be worn by the female character, in order to not stand out against the lead singer. He should be noticed over her, due to him being seen as a ghost like character.

 

 Casual black skinny jeans for the girl, in order to look like everyday wear of the teenage years.

 

 

 Bright green polo t shirt, sticks to the idea of remaining current and modern to the target market of students, and allows the lead singer to stand out when shots of the boy and the girl appear. Bright colours demand the audience's attention and allow to notice him even when partially hidden in a shot.

 

 Grey chino's or plain denim jeans should be worn during this day, however it is unlikely that a shot below a mid shot will be taken of the male, unless new ideas occur on the day due to him being more of a background figure in the narrative than a foreground figure.

 



Existing Indie Pop Video's

 The Script- Hall of Fame

Released in 2012.

 This is a mid shot/two shot of characters of equal importance. The script, like our selected band are known for being an indie band. The location which they have chosen to film in looks like an abandonned warehouse, this has a clear similarity to our third pitch idea by keeping the location simple but urban. Danny (lead singer from The Script) is wearing black skinny jeans and a casual lightly checked shirt. This is what we should base our costume on as simple is often very effective. Although The Script have chosen to wear monochrome tone clothing, we have decided to wear coloured clothing. We will do this to make the band stand out against the dull coloured brick wall which will be our background. 

 This shot in the song, is an extreme long shot. This most effective thing in this picture is the lighting. In order to make out music promo look effective, we need to think about lighting clearly to make the best out of our shots. Lighting will allow us to set a mood, intense lighting will give a sterile, uncomfortable feeling to the video and dull lighting will give an eerie feel making the song appear dark. The mood which we create throughout the song will be vital to the way the audience inerpret the lyrics from our visuals. This shot also shows the use of German Expressionism. The monochrome shot, with the red petals shown makes the colour stand out against the dull background. This colouring effect makes the audience notice the flowers, which may symbolise the love and appreciation the girl has for dance. In our video, we will try to use monochrome background's and put a key element of a shot into colour, making it stand out more and become much clearer that it is important to the audience.

 Like The Script, before appearing on camera it is important to make the nessecary preperations. Whilst being filmed, it is known that a person's complexion will turn very white. Appropriate make-up should be worn in order to improve the finishing image. In our narrative, we are thinking of showing the lead singer as someone who isn't there anymore, a ghost of the girl's memories. In order to show this ghostly figure we are thinking of also putting black make-up around Kingston's (lead singer) eyes. This will indicate to the audience that he is not a normal being during the narrative performance.

  This is how we want our lead singer to look during the filming of our narrative. It gives the impression of him being a figue which is seen as haunting. This works with the idea of the character haunting the female. The audience may interpret this haunting as a metaphor, the memories of the pair haunting her mind, or his physical self coming back to haunt her. We wanted to keep these two idea's open without a conclusion, to allow the audience to make up their own minds up about what it could mean, in order to gain an emotional connection to the characters and video.

 Scouting For Girls

 She's So Lovely

 Arctic Monkeys

 Brian Storm

PITCHES/FEEDBACK AND INSPIRTATION

When we first thought about what to include in a music video, we wanted to still create a dramatic effect. Idea 1 was seen as too similar to our foundation production last year, when we made a thriller opening. We would also find picking a location hard, due to the privacy act's in public places and not allowing video camera's to record people without permission before hand. This would be another challenge we would need to over comne in order to make our music promo as good and believable as it could possibly be.

 After discussion with the group, it also became apparent that we were focusing our ideas for music promos completely on our market being students. Although this is true, we do not want the video to have an immature feel to it due to the serious nature of the song. As well as this, it would also be hard to successfully film a "stalking scene" keeping the actors in the right frame of mind without laughing, and shot organisation to make this look believable would also be a big challenge and take time to plan.

 This idea also has the issue of obeying the laws of privacy in public places. Permission from the owners of the pub and the people in the pub for leisure, will both be needed before filming. This takes time and could easily be stopped and not allowed because somebody inside doesn't want to appear on camera.

 The song "Never Ever Getting Back Together" by Taylor Swift has given our media group inspiration. The way she has shown the performance of  the band, through the narrative has influenced us to do something completely different. By performing within a narrative, it would be something people will appreciate due to how challenging it will be, however the clip would have to be done in one take. This would be extremely challenging to fit everything into place and have it looking professional at the end.

 After the group fed back to us, we think that filming late at night would be very challenging for us due to issues with lighting. It could also be very cold that day, making us unable to wear the appropriate costume for our genre of music promo, rain and fog outside could also distort our footage. This has made us realise that it would be too big a risk to rely completely on the weather.

 This was the best pitch we had made throughout the lesson. People could relate to the video due to the narrative being set in a familiar location (house) and a warehouse would give the urban feel to the promo, which is a typical convention of what we want to make our video look as professional as possible.

 RESEARCH

 Our indie pop target market, is a niche market. It includes mostly people aged 16-24. It appeals to both genders but in order to make a band stand out, they have to be liked by a large proportion of students. When looking into a market we need to think about:

• Lifestyle - records for our chosen genre will be sold mostly on a student disposable income.
• Education
• Attitudes
• Knowledge
• Expectations
• Latest fashion/trends
• Social backround

 We need to show our band as current/up to date/on trend. They need to inspire the average student and show themselves to be that something different in the world of music.

 Our main influential band is "The Script", they like to keep costume choise simple by usually dressing grungey in dark colours. In this photo, they have kept to the very dark colour theme and stuck to only one colour to be worn by all 3 members. They are also a typical 3 piece band, which is what we want to turn our band into when making the video. They possess the original indie vibe through posture and stance in this photo and have been hugely successful as a band. Putting your hands in your jean pockets is a typical indie convention, this will influence us to use this typical stance when creating the digipak for our band "4 Kicks."

 TYPICAL INDIE-POP LOCATIONS

URBAN

 Due to the Indie genre being the first to record and produce their musisc by themselves, the locations which their video's are set in are urban. They show that the band doesn't base their music on expensive video's and other pleasing aesthetics which would cost lots of money, but make it more about the song.

 

 

 AUDIENCE RESEARCH
 Questionnaire

 When forming our questionnaire, it was important that we left the questions open to people, and didn't ask anything which could be classed as misleading. This would make people answer with the things we wanted to hear, rather than their true feelings, thus, making our results unreliable and dishonest.

  Out of all the people which we interviewed, 50% of them said that indie music was their prefered style. This results has worked to our advantage, as we thought the most popular style of music for our own age group would be indie, thus reflecting our preference to look into the Indie genre.

Over all, this quesiton lead to us recieving very mixed feedback. Each individual segment all have a large percentage of people saying they would expect to see the above things within an indie genre video. By having no definitive winning answer, as a group we will decide the best things to put into our video as our data was inconclusive.

 By sticking to the urban conventions of an indie genre video, the use of gritty colours have been voted the most likely to appear within the video. As a group, we have decided that using these colours would not only be most conventional, but would also

 Many people said that the typical indie promo would take place in a live gig, where the audience is stood there watching the band. A complication with this, would be that in order to film our music promo, we need to have two days off school. The audience would need to be shown as our target market (students aged 16-24) it would be extremely hard to get a large amount of students off of timetable to miss their sixth form lessons.

 The majority of people thought that within the music promo, it was very important to clearly show individual instruments in order to allow the audience to make a connection with the band and admire their skills as artists. Instruments also make the music promo look much more realistic, as though they are actually performing throughout, rather than having visuals attached to an audio track.

 Indie music promo's often centre their outfits around the modern fashion. Today's fashion shows indie artists to wear either skinny fit jeans, or chino's. These two types of trousers will allow the audience to recognise the band as current up to date fashion idols.

  Many of the people we asked were most interested in "The Script" this beat all of the other bands by at least 20%, showing us that this band is hugely successful and would help us to develop a  very successful promotional package by using them as inspiration.

Music Video Theorists

 

 

 

 PAMELA ROBERTSON

• This theory is known as the 'Madonna Studies'.
• This theory was influenced by the 'Queer Theory', and the work produced from Focault Madonna is seen to be emphasising on Feminist critiques, particularly one in particular eing Judith Butler.
• One quote Paula Robertson stood by was:

"Is Madonna a glamorized fuck doll or the queen of parodic critique?"

 

Roland Barthes

He stated there was an enigma code. This is when you hold back sufficent infromation frow the viewer being the audience in hope that it will enable them to ask questions and to hopefully consider their own explinations of what could have happened before finding it out.

 

He stated there was also an action code. This is when the producers attain interest and tension from the audiences persepective when they are not aware of what will happen next.

 

Andrew Goodwin

 He believes that 6 main features make up a successful music video.

 A relationship between lyrics and visuals should be shown. The visual could completely contradict what the song is trying to say, but as long as a type of realtionship can reach the audience, the music video should remain successful.

 There should also be a relationship between the visuals and the music itself. Not only taking lyrics into consideration, but the tempo of the song should also be backed up through visuals.

 A considerable amount of close-up's of the lead singer should occur through the music video. This allows us to connect with the singer and concentrate closely on what they're trying to say.

 Genre's of music are often very diverse and complex to explain within music, the video should show this through iconography.

 When females are used in video's, it is effective to show them through voyeurisms, as it shows a female being a "part of a whole" which is often shown as the male in the video.

 Many references of intertextuality will occur within music videos to give the audience different ideas and meanings behind their video.


He believes that this can be achieved:

Through beats, hearing the sound

Technical aspects of music videos i.e. editing pace etc

Narrative and performance

The "star image"

Relation of visuals to song and/or lyrics

  Steve Archer

 A strong relationship between performance and narrative needs to occur.
 The video should flick between the two.

 A choreographed dance may occur throughout the video, to show the band/artist can perform to a high standard, it needs to be aesthetically pleasing in order to attract their audience and impress.

 Band members should be shown for similar amounts of time throughout the video so that each individual is seen, not just the lead singer.

 Close up's on instruments are important to

 

John Stewart

• Says that the music video which is being made must include the aesthetics that could be used on a TV commercial.
• Should also include large amount of close ups of the artist/band. Front lighting should be used in order to focus on and clearly show the stars face.
• Visual references should come from a range of sources, mainly from cinema, fashion and art.
• The video should allow more access to the performer than a stage performance could do.
• The mise-en-scene should be used to show an inspirational lifestyle which the audience would want.

Paul  Willis

Paul Willis (Sociologist) did a study of 12 working class boys from a comprehensive school in a comprehensive school in the midlands.

Willis states that the vast majority of young people involved with particular genre's of music such as pop are from working class backgrounds. Therefore, knowing this he states that these pupils have an inability to process and articulate the meanings represented in a verbal manner i.e. discussing it.

Willis states that the rise in popular music culture is an way of expression for working class youths, who are inable to express themselves in other forms.

He states that popular music could be classed as a new form of media literacy and learning for groups that are traditionally seperated and marginalized.

Sigmund Frued

Known for his work within Psychology, most theories proposed during a time of sexual repression. His theories on sexual relations and the way in which people look into sexual things is often seen as over reaching, however this theory can be added to music promos when reviewing certain objects.

He refers to the notion that pleasure may be attained by visualising sexual objects, in the case of when the object not aware they are being watched. This technique is used vastly in particular genres of music videos and is refered to as Voyeurism.

Laura Mulvey

 

Feminist theorist who states that in sterotypical main stream Hollywood films, that women are gazed upon by males and  judged on the sexual presense they display, rather than their inside beauty.

• This theory see's all females from a stereotypical males perspective as "disposable pleasures" rather than any other real relevannce to society.
• The gaze of the camera is always shown from the males perspective.
• This theory can also be shown in things such as television and perfume ads.
• However, this theory is a dated theory due to theory linking back to artists such as Madonna, whereas there are other female individuals to date e.g. Rihanna

Video and band types

• Narrative is almost always subordinate to peformance.
• The songs chosen rarely focus upon and tell complete narratives (however videos may, but actual song lyrics do not)
• Music videos tend to move away from classic/realistic narratives.
• The audience consume and read music videos in a more laid back approach.
• Music videos need to have installed in them repeatability of certain aspects.

There are two types of bands

Organic/Authentic. This is when the band are unconstructed, they write, play and record all of their own music

Manufactured/Synthetic. This is when the band are represented by another company and only perform the song. Someone else will have wrote it, a company will record/edit their vocals and they are told to look/dress a certain way, they are a constructed band.



PROMOS CAN BE SHOWN IN A VARIETY OF WAYS

1) Performance
 This is when the band is performing within the video. This is a way to promote the band, giving the audience a taste of what it would be like to see the band live. Band members should be very passionate within the song during this filming as it is to potentially maximise ticket sales and increase profits. A convincing performance will make audiences pay lots of money to see them live.

2) Narrative
 This is the storyline within the video. It usually relates to the lyrics in some way. The meaning of the narrative is often very literal i.e. if a song describes a break up, the couple will be shown breaking up. Other aspects of narrative are not so literal, they can mean what ever the audience interprets them to be. This gives a wide range of options to bands using narrative in a music promo, however it is vital the audience gain that emotional connection with them in order to watch the promo to the end. There should be pace change throughout the narrative in order to keep the audience entertained.

3) Amplification
This is when a promo can be interpreted in a large range of ways. Natural or artificial devices may be used to send a signal to the audience. This allows the audience to dig deeper into the song and find a meaning that they wouldn't of thought of without reviewing different aspects of the promo. A regular user of amplification is Coldplay, they graps their audiences by trying the un-ordinary

4) Disjuncture
 This is when the promo has  nothing to do with the lyrics. Many people get confused by the aspect of an unrelated promo and so try to create some kind of meaning in order to explain it. However, artists often use it for that very purpose. They want to be different and have features which could potentially be ground breaking, making their audiences discuss the video, advertising them through word of mouth. The type of bands to do this, are those who aren't able to be catergorized into one single label.

5) Illustration
 Usually used by self-made bands as it is the cheapest type of promo to successfully pull off. Low funding is needed as it is a very literal interpretation of the lyrics. Due to it being so literal, audiences often lose interest in these promos as nothing out of the ordinary happens and no challenges of deconstruction are given.

6) Intertexuality
 This is when two different texts come together in some way. They may have manipulated one text to mean something else, or one text may completely copy the other. Intertexuality is used in three different ways. Homeage- the highest form of flattery from where one copies another. Pastiche- where one makes a comment upon another through their own, and parody, this is where a new piece is taking the mic out of another.


7) Exhibitionism

This is when independant female representatives of the older generation created controversy, due to different debates i.e. gender, social and political.

 These artists were seen as sexually provocative and used their assests to produce an enrapturing promo.

 

 

Representation of Masculinity

 Within media, the male gaze theory has explained how women are percieved, however it is less likely to be analyitical of the way men are shown.
 There are two main theories which explain why this is

THEORY ONE

This is associated with the polarisation of masulinity with femininity. If a man isn't shown to be completely masculine, then they are automatically seen as feminine. Stereotypically, a feminine man, described as "camp" is assumed to be homosexual.
 Lady Gaga shows a man to be feminine in her video "Alejandro" through both clothing and movement. The dancers will automatically be assumed as gay just through their exterior motives.

 

 Knowing this, many glam rock bands such as "Slade" purposefully wear clothing overly feminine. By doing this, it cancels out the idea of femininity and homosexuality and brings back the idea of the band being masculine by having purpose images in a video.

 

The most popular image to represent masculinity would be the Phallic Symbol. This is a large, usually long object which symbolises manhood by refering to power via the metaphoric size of a penis. Madonna is greatly known to use this in her videos to show power and dominance within the pop industry, however it is now common in boy bands.

 

 

 Take that give a clear indication of power through a Phallic Symbol, the microphone stand and the use of buildings. These long and tall objects represent the male genitals and suggest dominance within the gender in order look superior.

THEORY TWO

Age- this is seen to be a deciding factor of masculinity, when a male is young they look inexperienced, innocent and vulnerable. When a male is shown to be masculine, they need to appear dominant, confident and powerful. Older men, after having much more life experience and confident within themself, are much more likely to be percieved as masculine than a younger male. This is also down to the facial shape, with age the jaw line is more dominant to the face, the ability to grow facial hair etc all help to make a man appear masculine.
 

 

 

 Another part to this theory, is that a male on his own, is much more masculine that a boyband/group of men. This is down to the idea of one man having power over the rest, survival of the fittest, however when in a band where all the memebers sing, they are all shown as equal, thus, making them appear less masculine. When a male vocalist is singing solo, an emotional connection is allowed to be made with the audience. Much more eye contact can be made with the camera, and the focus is purely on the male rather than scattered throughout a band. This allows females to look up to the male and become sexually attracted or interested in him, thus selling more records.  

 

 

 

 

Robbie Williams appears much more masculine when appearing on his own, than when in a group of other men. When in a group, the members of the group look equal to each other, and the singer usually gets the same amount of shots as the other band members.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Out of the three videos, the most masculine I would say to be Robbie Williams’ “Rock DJ”.  I have chosen this one due to the idea of the women circling him, showing him they want his body. The fact of him peeling his skin off and throwing it to the group of women could represent the fact they want “meat.” It could also mean that they want him badly to be their own, reflecting his power over women. Although no phallic symbols were used, the audience’s imagination suggests his penis is out but blacked out whilst the girls “admire” it. 

3 Indie Pop Band's/Artists

Florence And The Machine

Florence's album, 'Lungs', was award winning and one of the best albums of 2009 and 2010. It stayed in the UK Top 40 for sixty-five weeks! The second album, "Ceremonials" became their second successive No. 1. Although Florence and the machine fits the genre we are looking into, we wanted to chose a boy group as they are the most common

The Script

Danny- vocals, Mark- guitar, Glen- drums

 Known for having gritty contemporary narratives.

In August 2008"The Man Who Can't Be Moved" and "Break Even" were the two stand out tracks on their first album. The album became number one in both Ireland and the UK.Their second album, Science and Faith, released in September 2010,includes the stand out song "For The First Time". The album was number one in Ireland and the UK. Their third album was released in the UK on 10th September 2012, hitting the charts at number 2 in the first release week.

Scouting For Girls

 

Three piece English boy band. They originated from London, and the band consists of the lead singer, who also plays guitar and piano, a bass guitarist and a percussionist.

OUR CHOSEN GENRE

INDIE

Hybrid, indie-POP.

It was originated in the early1980's as a genre of alternative rock. It has a much more medlodic tone. It came around due to the C86 tape. This allowed artists to record their own music without having to go through a professional record label. The word "Indie" is designed to show a self-recorded band. We find this genre to be more inspirational due to them making their own music, rather than just performing a song produced by someone else.