I'm an A2 Media Studies student also studying Textiles and Photography. I am really passionate about Media Studies as I enjoy being creative and imaginative.
Laura Mulvey's 'Male Gaze Theory' describes when, in film, the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. this is achieved through the sexualisation of women, for example, close-ups of body parts take away women's identities and presents them as sexual objects.
Here is an informative SlideShare that I found that describes the theory in detail:
The Male Gaze Theory can be seen in many music videos, for example, Arctic Monkey's 'Do I Wanna Know?' and Nicki Minaj's 'Annaconda'. This shows that the sexualisation of women is an issue across genres, from indie to pop.
Above is an extract from 'Do I Wanna Know?' that shows the camera starting at a close-up of a woman's bum before zooming out to expose the rest of her body, with her face being the last part to be shown. This implies that a woman's face, or 'identity' is less important than her body - the close-ups of her individual body parts draw more attention to these areas.
Above is an extract from 'Anaconda'. The overtly sexual movements of the artist and performers, combined with sexual lyrics and revealing clothing, has reduced these women to sexual objects - their body parts are emphasised for the enjoyment of a heterosexual male audience.
Despite the Male Gaze being apparent in 'Do I Wanna Know?', an indie song, the sexualisation of women is less common within the indie genre as these music videos usually contain a serious narrative. As our music video is from the indie genre, it would not be relevant to include revealing costumes or close-ups of body parts. Our music video also contains the theme of female empowerment, with the protagonist being presented as being both reckless yet sophisticated, an uncommon representation of women in the media, sexualising the character may contradict this idea.
Richard Dyer's 'Star Theory' suggests that a 'star is an image, not a real person, that is constructed out of a range of materials' by the media, for example, advertising, film and magazines. As the star is 'fictional', they are not limited to the music industry and may introduce trends to their audience. The 'star image' is likened to a brand, the star is created in order to generate a profit. For this reason, many stars branch out into the fashion industry, releasing clothing lines or make-up ranges.
A 'star image' is created through recurring themes within their products, such as a particular fashion style, images, fonts and logos. These motifs make the star more recognisable, memorable and successful.
Here is a helpful SlideShare that I found that describes Dyer's theory:
It is important to think about creating a 'star image' within our music video in order to make it more memorable and, therefore, more successful. We have already taken steps to create a 'star image', for example, our storyboard contains many close-up shots that emphasise the artist, making them more memorable. We have also chosen to include 'grunge' locations and costumes, this could be a recurring trend for our artist.
Today we filmed our animatic storyboard. We decided to enlarge each shot so that they could be easily seen on camera and then placed them on individual steps of a staircase. We wanted to film on a staircase as this relates to the idea of spirals and hypnotism, linking to our song 'Hypnotic', it also made it easy to film fluidly from one shot to the next as we held the camera whilst walking up the stairs.
We played our song out loud whilst filming so that we could get the timing correct. As I filmed the shots, the rest of the group directed me when to move as they looked at the original storyboard. The first take was too shaky and didn't focus correctly so I tried harder to hold the camera still on the second take, this turned out well. We still need to edit the footage, so hopefully we will be able to upload the final animatic storyboard soon.
This task was extremely beneficial as it allowed us to see whether our storyboard suited our song and whether our proposed timings worked well. It also showed that filming without a tripod is harder than we thought, we will have to keep this in mind when it comes to filming our final music video should we choose to include handheld shots.
Today we started to think about what our band name could be, as well as possible ideas for our track list. We used a word generator to provide us with starting points on which to build our ideas, I feel that this was a very useful tool to use as we found it quite difficult to think of interesting words ourselves. We were looking for particularly striking words as we want our band name to be unique. We took note of words that we liked which also sparked our imaginations and allowed us to think more creatively, we began to combine different words to create song titles. I feel that we have plenty of interesting words that could be used for song titles, however, we haven't decided on a band name yet.
Word generator
We also had to think about what we could rename our chosen song, 'Hypnotic'. It proved to be quite difficult to think of an original name as 'hypnotic' is such a prominent phrase in the song and an ideal title. A word that stood out to us when using the word generator was 'evection', which means irregularity in the moon's motion caused by perturbations of the sun and planets, perturbations meaning deviation of a system from its regular or normal state caused by an outside influence. We thought that this was quite fitting as the character in our music video is 'deviating' from her regular life, her overwhelming love causing 'irregular' behaviour as she tries to escape. We also liked the idea of having an oxymoron within the title, for example, 'Blanc Noir', meaning 'white black' in French. I feel that this represents the character's inner conflicts, her mediocre life and her desire to escape, her calm side and crazed side. I feel that this juxtaposition helps to create confusion, emphasising this theme within our music video.
I thought that it would be beneficial to research existing band/artist names that may provide inspiration for our own name. I specifically looked at indie artists as we are hoping to create an indie music video.
Feist:
Feist's name has been taken from her real name, 'Leslie Feist'. I think that this could work well with the surnames of our group members, Field, Nash, Kaprata and Huckett. I think that 'Field' or 'Nash' would work best as they are one syllable and easy to remember.
Marina and The Diamonds:
This artist has used a variation of her real name for her stage name. Born 'Marina Diamandis', 'diamandis' meaning 'diamond' in Greek. I like the structure of this name, 'X and the Y' sounding more interesting than a regular name.
Halsey:
Many artists take inspiration from their real names when creating stage name. 'Halsey' is an anagram of her birth name 'Ashley'. This is a simple, easily recreatable concept, however, our group's names do not provide very interesting anagrams. For example, 'Elle' becomes 'Lele', 'Jane' become 'Naje' and 'Emily' becomes 'Miley', a name already taken by artist Miley Cyrus.
Lorde:
Lorde has created a completely unique stage name for herself, completely deviating from her real name, 'Ella'. I like the idea of having a one worded, unrelated band name as I think that we could come up with interesting, attention grabbing words.
The xx:
I like the simplicity of this name as well as the use of the word 'The' as this draws attention.
I really liked the effect of soft focus lights in Jamie xx's 'Loud Places'. The lighting helps to create a calm atmosphere that is also reinforced by the slow paced editing and slightly slow-motion shots. 'Loud Places' has shown me how mise-en-scene, such as lighting, can be combined with interesting editing and camerawork in order to achieve a desired atmosphere, in this case, calmness, in our video this would be 'confusion'.
The out of focus lights also help to create a dream-like atmosphere, further adding to the peaceful atmosphere. We could use this technique in our music video as we want to portray a character that feels 'hypnotised', the soft focus lights would help to create ideas of a distorted reality.
Diegetic sound is sound whose source is visible on screen or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film. This is quite rare in music videos as their purpose is to provide visuals to compliment a song, the focus is on the song, not additional sound. However, we have chosen to include diegetic sound at the end of our music video after the song finishes. Below are examples of existing music videos that contain diegetic sound:
Devlin feat. Ed Sheeran - All Along the Watchtower:
This music video contains both an into and outro where there is an absence of music. Diegetic sound can be heard throughout, with the song seemingly being a secondary element. The blend of music and diegetic sound has enhanced the narrative and helped to create the tense and dramatic atmosphere. I especially like the outro as the music fades, the quiet diegetic sound contrasting the hectic, loud video, this is an idea that we want to incorporate into our music video. We want the calm sounds at the end of the video to contrast the disorientated, crazed character seen throughout.
Arctic Monkeys - Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?:
This music video, again, has both an intro and outro that help to set the scene and make the narrative clearer. Diegetic sound can be heard throughout, such as voices and cars, both of which help to capture the atmosphere of the location. Interestingly, there is a brief pause in the middle of the music video where the song stops. I found this intriguing as it suddenly takes the viewer out of the song, the abruptness mirroring the artist's current mood. Whilst I like this pause, I don't think that it would work well within our music video as we want to build the tension and confusion throughout for the fast paced climactic end, a pause would only dissipate any tension.
I was intrigued by the use of diegetic sound within Gabrielle Aplin's 'Please Don't Say You Love Me'. The start and end of the music video do not feature the song, instead the audience can hear the diegetic sound. This helps to set the scene at the beginning of the video and helps to make the narrative clearer as the audience is able to focus more on the events that take place instead of the song.
Our finished storyboard includes a section after the song ends where the protagonist will be seen exiting the maze and diegetic sound will be heard. I really like this idea as it think diegetic sound adds an element of realism to a music video, this could enhance our narrative as the sudden shift from the song to diegetic sound could symbolise the character crashing back to reality, out of her 'hypnotised' state. After watching 'Please Don't Say You Love Me', I think that it may also be interesting to add diegetic sound at the start of the music video before the song begins to play.
We finally finished storyboarding today. We continued our process of listening to our song and drawing shots that we wanted to occur at different points. As our music video contains quite a lot of locations, for example, Camden, Brick Lane, studio shots, a spiral staircase and a maze, we needed a way to tie all of this together, instead of the locations appearing randomly and not contributing to an overall story or idea. Towards the end of the song the pace increases as the song becomes more dramatic, we want to increase the pace of our shots to match this, flashing quickly to all of the previous locations in order to bring the video 'full circle'.
We also decided to change the plot twist of our narrative, instead of revealing the character to be a professional, smartly dressed office worker at the end of the video, we wanted to imply this more subtly. Still following the same idea of her lost, reckless and unhinged personality that is seen throughout the video being juxtaposed with her 'real', calm and composed self, we wanted the final few shots to suddenly slow in pace as the song fades out, with the final shot being the character emerging from the maze looking more composed than her previous crazed self. We want this shot to continue as the song finishes, with the diegetic sounds of birdsong and wildlife fading in. We hope that this will help to contrast her two personalities, as well as the previous gritty, urban locations.
Upon finishing our storyboard and reorganising the Post-it notes into an order that fitted the song, we drew each shot up neatly on the official A3 storyboard, taking note of timings, camera movements, sound and angles. These specific details will help us get the exact shots that we envision whilst filming, making the filming process easier and faster as we will have clear direction.
As a group we decided that we like the idea of filming in a maze, I feel that this would be a great location as it is very symbolic of our character's disorientated mental state and her desire to escape. I think that a bird's-eye shot of the maze would look very effective and would help to present ideas of hypnotism through its circular shape and repetitive, winding paths. We also wanted to include a more rural, natural location to contrast the urban locations that we hope to film in, such as Brick Lane and Camden.
We had the idea for our final shot to be our protagonist emerging from the maze in more sophisticated clothing, juxtaposing her previous outfits, this reveal would be symbolic of her finally escaping and feeling free, her clear-mindedness being shown through her costume as she abandons her former, reckless self. Below are photographs of the Capel Manor Maze, a nearby location that would be easily accessible:
Following our lip synching practise we needed to decide which member of the group would star in our music video. Before making this decision, we asked our peers their opinions, taking this into account we decided that I would be in the video. The majority of those asked said that I was well suited to the song and could lip synch realistically, an opinion that our group agreed with. Now that our protagonist has been chosen, we will be able to start making key decisions, for example, costume and make-up choices, this will allow us to begin filming soon.
A still shot of me lip synching from our practise video
Whilst my group was storyboarding, we started to think about potential locations and costumes. Music videos of the indie genre (like ours) usually have a smaller budget, leading to limited locations and, usually, limited costume changes. However, indie music videos also place a lot of emphasis on mise-en-scene. I have looked at existing indie music videos to gain an understanding of the typical amount of costumes that are worn, hopefully providing some inspiration for our own product.
Aurora - Runaway:
This video conforms to indie conventions as it only contains about four different costumes. I particularly liked the costume choices in 'Runaway' as they are all of the same colour palette, this colour palette is also seen in the locations. This motif adds fluidity between locations and makes the video more visually-appealing. The colour palette of our music video is a very important element, we have chosen to use contrasting locations with contrasting colour schemes, such as day time locations and dark, night locations. We also wanted some of our costumes to contrast the locations that they appear in, for example, we have planned to use a white costume in our vibrant, graffiti-covered Brick Lane location. I feel that having a contrasting colour palette will help to convey our music video's theme of confusion and disorientation, the idea of 'contrast' also reflecting our protagonist's contrasting personalities - reckless yet sophisticated.
Halsey - Hurricane:
The costumes in Halsey's 'Hurricane' are plentiful, however this is due to the inclusion of numerous characters, each only limited to one costume. The lack of costume changes helps to make the video more realistic, focusing on the narrative. The exclusion of costume changes is also fitting for the short time-span of the narrative, again, making it more realistic. The costumes and other mise-en-scene are extremely important in grounding the narrative of the video in the past - the characters are styled in typical 90s fashion. This is particularly inspirational as we want to include 'grunge' inspired costumes and locations, a style that was popular in the 1990s.
Meg Myers - Monster:
Meg Myers' music video for 'Monster' in extremely simple - it contains only one costume and one location. This allows the audience to focus on the song and the artist's emotional performance.
After looking at these music videos, it is clear that indie music videos limit their costumes, however, include thoughtful and relevant costumes and locations to the style of song and video, for example, the slower paced 'Monster' uses one costume compared to the faster paced 'Runaway' that includes three. A recurring theme within these music videos seems to be the idea of having a new costume per location, the maximum amount being three or four. We plan to include about four locations in our music video, meaning that we would need about four different costumes - this number conforms to the indie conventions. I think that this is a suitable number as we don't want to make our music video to complicated and extravagant, we want to make the narrative the focus.
As we were storyboarding our music video, we started to think about what costumes could be worn in the different locations. We have decided to use quite urban locations, for example, Camden. We want to use fashionable costumes, specifically from the 'grunge' trend as this would help to reflect the reckless behaviour of the protagonist in our video.
I decided to research possible outfits on social media sites 'Instagram' and 'Pinterest' as these usually offer good quality images and creative ideas. I looked into the 'grunge' trend to see what clothing would work within our music video. I noticed some key trends that would be easy for us to incorporate, such as ripped jeans, over-sized denim jackets and a dark colour palette. Below are screenshots of my research from the two sites:
We also
had a specific idea for our costume for our proposed Brick Lane location. Due to the vibrant graffiti that we hope to capture, we need an outfit that will make the performer stand out. We thought that the best option would be a white outfit. We got inspiration from two of our lyrics, 'wearing you vintage t-shirt' and 'white threads of my laces'. We thought that we could create a link between these lyrics to our visuals, in this case, costumes, making our music video conform to Goodwin's music video theory. Below is a compilation of images that I found that we could use for inspiration when trying to find a suitable outfit. To adhere to the grunge theme, we could use an over-sized t-shirt dress and pair it with chunky black shoes.
We started storyboarding our music video today, below is a vlog where I explain the process:
Last year, our storyboard wasn't particularly detailed, this made it harder for us to follow and we ended up changing various aspects as it wasn't planned out thoroughly. I think that this year we will need to spend more time storyboarding so that way we have a clear plan of what shots we need when we go out to shoot, this will make filming easier and less time consuming. As we are creating a music video, there will need to be a lot more camera movement to match the energetic atmosphere of the song, this is something that we hadn't thought about or storyboarded last year. Below are some photographs of the group storyboarding:
We decided to get some audience feedback on our lip synching practise video. I think that this was beneficial in order to gain an unbiased opinion on our lip synching and editing abilities.
Editing our lip synching video proved to be more difficult than we thought, it was quite hard to synch the audio with the video in a realistic way. Making even the slightest change to part of the video shifted everything else, meaning that we had to continuosly re-edit sections. I think that when it comes to editing our final music video, we should edit the clips beginning at the start of the song and work our way through, by doing this, we will be able to perfect the lip synching of each shot without having an effect on the clips ahead.
We have practised lip synching to our song 'Hypnotic' so that we can learn more about filming for a music video as well as allowing us to practise editing. We decided to play the song out loud whilst lip synching so that we would be singing in time, I think that this made it easier to film and made it look more realistic. We filmed each of us separately so that we can see who suits the song best, allowing us to choose who will star in the music video.
In order to avoid copyright violations, we had to contact the producer of our song choice 'Hypnotic' to ask permission to use it for our music video. Unable to find the contact information of the producer, Ryan Ogren, we emailed his management.
The reply from management stated that we had to contact Ogren's publisher instead. We sent another email and are awaiting a response.
