Diary Entry #13: Location Scouting

When listening to the song The Worst of Them by Issues we imagined the band performance to be in a derelict warehouse. We decided to stick with this idea as we thought it wouldn't be too difficult to find one around the area we live in. However, this has proved to be quite hard. Our ideal location would be a crumbling abandoned warehouse which in the day would look effective but we would put an effect on the shots to darken the area to make it look more 'rock like.' We had an idea like some of these:

However, as the only places in Weston that are derelict enough to look like what we want is Birnbeck Pier which is far too dangerous, I think we may have to change the location of the band performance. We still want it in an old, derelict place but I don't think we'll be able to use a warehouse if we can't find anything. As asked some people on Facebook if they were able to suggest anything for the music video:

Birnbeck Pier




Brean Down Fort




We also started up a Facebook chat to stay in contact with each other and tell each other about the plans that we have about the music video:

Diary Entry #12: Animatics

We decided to do an animatics in Final Cut Pro to match the storyboard with the way we want the music video to see if the timing works:

Diary Entry #11: Storyboard

Storyboard

Diary Entry #10: Shot List

Shot List

[Before music starts]

1) Mid shot of both

2) Two close ups of each person shouting

3) Establishing shot of bed

[00:02-00:08]

4) Close up of singer

5) Long shot of band

6) Close up of guitar

7) Mid shot of drummer

8) Long shot of band

[00:08-00:25]

9) Establishing shot of bed

10) Mid shot of man turning over

11) Establishing shot showing girls gone

12) Another mid shot from other side of bed

13) Mid shot from other side of bed watching girl out of bathroom

14) Close up of male shouting

15) Mid shot of girl shouting and snatching phone

16) Long shot of girl going out of house

[00:26-00:56]

17) Mid shot of guy with head in hands

18) Close up of look of regret

19) Long shot of band

20) Close up of singer

21) Mixture of long and mid shots of him looking around room

22) Close up of guitar

23) Close up of expression after finding underwear

24) Mid shot of singer

[00:56-01:20]

25) Mid shot of male drinking

26) Close up of drink

27) Close up of him drinking

28) Mid shot of drummer

29) Long shot of band

30) Long shot of girl through door

31) Mid shot of guy looking towards door and getting up

32) Mid shot of confrontation

33) Establishing shot of couple

34) Close up of girl shouting

35) Mid shot of grab of arm and struggle

36) Long shot of band

37) Close up of singer

38) Long shot guitar

39) Establishing shot of guy turning in sleep

[01:20-01:51]

40) Close up of singer

41) Long shot of hitting

42) Close up of hitting

43) Establishing shot of guy leaving house

44) Mid shot of guy in bar

45) Close up of guy drinking and thinking

46) Establishing shot of band

47) Close up of drummer

48) Mid shot of guy entering house

49) Long shot of guy entering house

[01:51-02:13]

50) Close up of girl crying pan

51) Mid shot of guy being apologetic

52) Mid shot of girl admitting cheating

53) Close up of guys face reaction

54) Long shot of guy storming into the bedroom

55) Over the shoulder shot of girl going back to the bedroom

56) Over the shoulder of conversation of understanding

[02:13-02:24]

57) Long shot of band playing

58) Close up of singer

59) Close up of guy shouting (slow motion)

60) Mid shot of shaking

61) Long shot drummer

62) Close up of girl crying and being shook

[02:24-02:29]

63) Close up of singer

[02:29-03:13]

64) Mid shot of girl struggling to get away

65) Long shot of girl falling and hitting head

66) Close up of girls head bleeding

67) Close up of worry on guys face

68) Long shot of room and guy checking to see if girls ok

69) Close up of checking to see if she is breathing

70) Mid shot of guy worrying and looking for a phone

71) Close up of guy grabbing phone and calling 999

72) Close up of worrying face

73) Mid shot of guy sitting down

74) Close up of guy turning head

75) Eye line match to him looking at a photo

[03:13-03:37]

76) Out of focus long shot of guy standing up

77) Mid shot of guy putting head in hands

78) Long shot of band walking away

79) Close up of singer letting go of mic

80) Establishing shot of dream becoming reality in the bed

81) Close up of the guy looking in distress back in reality

Diary Entry #9: Props, Costume, Action!

This is a rough list of the things we're going to require to make our music video. The shots will be more specific when the storyboard is drawn. 

Prop/make-up List

• Band instruments (guitar, drums, microphone etc.)
• Mobile phone
• Bed
• Alcohol
• Fake cigarrettes
• Paper
• Underwear (for the male to find for the storyline)
• Black make-up (eyeliner/mascara etc) for female

Costume List

• Dark/black clothing
• Band shirts
• Casual clothing/everyday
• Pyjamas

UPDATE: when we filmed the band and the narrative these are shots of the band and characters and what they were wearing:

(BAND)

(NARRATIVE)

Diary Entry #8: Finding the Actors

The band
When it came to deciding who was going to be in our music video we already had some people in mind. Someone I know asked if their band could be the band to do the live performance in the music video. Here are some of the tweets:

Morgan's band is called This Ship is Ours who define themselves as a metalcore band with musical influences of bands that are of a similar genre to Issues. As Morgan's band and Issues are in roughly the same genre category, their appearance are likely to be consistent with the way that we want the band portrayed in the music video. Here is an example of the type of music that This Ship Is Ours make:

The image of the band is also essential. We want the band to look like a typical rock/metal band to attract the correct types of audiences to the music video. Most rock bands wear other bands shirts, sometimes shirts that influence that bands music, skinny jeans and converse. This Ship Is Ours fit into this category naturally, so when it comes to costume and props, there won't be any need to wear anything fancy or to spend money of certain clothes. This is the typical way that we want the band portrayed in the music video:

 

The actors

Also, the two people in the music video who are going to be the characters in the narrative is Jess' sister and her boyfriend. Jess' sister is doing performing arts at University so this will be the best opportunity for us as we'll have people who can actually act in the music video, making it look real and not like an amateur music video. We want it too look as real as possible.

Diary Entry #7: Moodboard

Diary Entry #6: Narrative Structure

[Before music starts]

Slowed motion arguing between the male and female in the relationship in their house, no sound or voices, dark lighting, evening time – they then go to bed and fall asleep, male turns away from female in sleep.

[00:02-00:08]

Shot of the band in the warehouse, dark lighting, multiple shots e.g. close ups, master shots, close ups of instruments.

[00:08-00:25]

Shot of male and female in bed, effect of slipping into a dream state. In the dream he wakes up and the female is gone from the bed. He checks her phone and there’s a message from an unknown number. Female comes back in from the bathroom and he yells at her about the unknown number. She starts yelling back at him and snatches the phone from him, storming out of the room. Camera follows her out of the house’s front door and storm down the street.

[00:26-00:56]

Male sits with his head in his hands and looks at where the female was standing, with a look of regret on his face.  He remembers the text message and starts tearing up the bedroom, looking for signs that she’s cheating on him. He finds underwear under the bed and breaks down on the bed again. – Meanwhile there are multiple shots of the band performing the song whilst this is happening

[00:56-01:20]

Male then takes alcohol and starts drinking and smoking while waiting for the female to come home after work. She walks through the door and completely ignores him. He confronts her, trying to apologize for the accusations earlier but she shouts back at him and he gets angry again. He grabs her by the arm and she struggles to pull away from him – multiple shots of the band performing the song and shot of male turning in his sleep

[01:20-01:51]

He hits her and storms out of the house. The camera follows him to a bar where he starts drinking again. A long time passes until he comes back and he enters the house again – multiple shots of the band performing the song again

[01:51-02:13]

She is crying and is apologetic and he breaks down and says he’s sorry for hitting her. She admits that she’s been cheating on him and he enters tries to contain his anger as he storms back to the bedroom. She follows him, trying to explain how sorry she is.  At first he’s upset and tries to understand why she did it.

[02:13-02:24]

He yells at her again and starts becoming violent again. He grabs her and shakes her, demanding to know why she’s cheating on him. She’s crying and struggling away from him. Multiple shots of the band singing the song in the warehouse

[02:24-02:29]

Close up of the lead singer of the band singing the song

[02:29-03:13]

She tries to pull away and he ends up hitting her and she hits her head on the lamp. There’s a small amount of blood on her head. He realizes what he’s done and tries to see if she’s okay. She’s not breathing and he struggles for the phone and a camera shot shows him dial 999. Lots of close ups of his face in a panicking state. He sits on the edge of the bed and stares at the photo of the two of them where it looks like they’re in a happy relationship.

[03:13-03:37]

out of focus shot of him standing up and putting his head in his hands.  The band walk away from their instruments. The camera blurs back from the dream into reality and back to the couple lying in bed together. The scene at the beginning starts again, like déjà vu and the end is a close up of the male looking distressed.

Diary Entry #5: Target Audience

Jess and I are aiming our music video at teenagers who like rock music. Over the years this has become a much wider target audience than what it used to be as more people are starting to like rock music/metal.

Diary Entry #4: Feedback

Today we presented our treatment and research to the rest of the class to see what ideas they had when we played the song and what they imagined when listening to the song. We had to play a part of the song to the class and take down notes of the ideas that they came up with and would expect to see in a music video of that song. We then had to tell the class what we had originally planned for the music video. When we made the class listen to our song the ideas and images that they imagined were exactly the same as what we thought they would be and what we wanted in our music video. Some of these elements included:

• performance based shots of a band
  
  
  
  
  
  
• a form of narrative to support band performance
• a narrative based on a relationship between a male and female
• the relationship expanding to represent fights and arguments in the relationship

• dark lighting to continue with the conventions of a rock music video
• a live performance of the band singing the song in a dimly lit room

Most of these were what Jess and I had imagined would be in our music video, as usually the conventions of the rock music genre includes these things - it wouldn't really represent rock if there wasn't much of a live performance and dark lighting. Fortunately we don't have to change much about our original treatment because a lot of people imagined the music video like we just but we just added some more elements into the music video like the fact that the male character is having a nightmare to represent the relation to the lyrics of 'dying in a nightmare'.

An example of the type of music video that we are intending to create is something along the lines of Bring Me the Horizon's 'Sadness Will Never End':

Diary Entry #3: Treatment

Today Jess and I started planning the treatment for our music video ready to present to the rest of the media class on Friday. The treatment is the planning and ideas that we need to be able to make our music video and sell it to a company if we were going to do the actual thing. We definitely decided to do a song from the rock genre and we finally decided to produce a music video using the song The Worst of Them by Issues:

We requested permission from the band for the use of the song in the music video:

We created a mind map of all the elements that we felt we needed to make the music video successful including mise-en-scene, locations and lyrics that we could use to relate to certain actions in our music video.

We also decided to annotate the lyrics to fit what we wanted in our music video so we had a clear-ish idea of the storyline of the music video. We also tried to reference the conventions of the rock genre to be able to target our music video to the correct audience.

 

Applying Theory to the Treatment

Audience

Andrew Goodwin

Thought beats - the editing of the song is going to be edited in time with the music so the audience watching are able to 'see the song' in their heads.

Narrative and performance - Goodwin says we tend to make up what we think about music video but in ours it's very clear what is going on. He also says that narrative and performance should work together in a music video, and although our narrative and performance aren't linked in the music video they are still linked through the editing. We choose to use ellipsis in our music video and the shots of the band will allow the audience to follow the story instead of having a jump cut between the two narrative shots.

Star Image - there are shots of the star image but they aren't the main focus of the music video - it is more focussed on the narrative element than looking at the band.

Relation of visuals to the song - the song is relating to a nightmare so we decided that we should have the narrative in a dream state. Some of the lyrics relate to the music video, like the alcohol and smoking relates to some of the lyrics in the music video.

Carol Vernallis 

Transitions are only relevant in our music video when the male character is travelling from the real world to his dream state. As this is a rock genre music video, there won't be that many transitions or effects because this applies more to a pop music video. However, Vernallis says that editing is more frequent in music video than film because it can be fitted in time with the rhythm of the song. This will be good in our music video because the audience will get a visual idea in their head of the music, supporting Goodwin's theory. Jump cuts will also be used in the music video due to a time limit of the music video and we will use shots of the band to represent the skips in time.

Stuart Hall

Our music video is pretty straight forward so I think that the audience would understand it which would be dominant reading where the read the media the way that the producer intended them to. Referring back to my previous work that I wrote about encoding and decoding,

"Whenever a music video is produced and made, it automatically falls under the process of encoding because it had already been put into a format that is ready to be received by an audience.

Decoding in music video will be the audience receiving and evaluating the music video. The audiences will interpret the encoded message in different ways, some will receive it as intended and some will interpret a different meaning to the way the producers intended the meaning to be. This can be perceived as a problem however as the product can be perceived in the wrong way and the true meaning of the video can be lost. This can cause issues when it comes to reviewing the videos success."

this shows that dominant reading isn't just a basic, straight-forward and boring music video but it is successful as the true meaning of the music video won't be lost by the audience trying to pick at it and understand what's going on if it's a confusing music video.

Genre

Steve Neale

Neale says that pleasure is derived from 'genre requiring repitition and difference'; there would be no pleasure without difference. Our music video will have the continuous repetition of the band performing numerous times in the warehouse. Neale says audience like the stretching of genre conventions but  as recently so many people have been doing this it seems logical to go back to keeping the conventions normal as this is less likely to apply.

Michel Maffesoli

The urban tribe which fits our music video the best is probably the alternative section of the urban tribes (uktribes.com) According to Maffesoli, urban tribes are micro groups of people who share common interests in urban areas. The members of these groups tend to have similar world views, dress styles and behavioural patterns. As all these elements are similar to the conventions of rock I think that the alternative urban tribe is the best fit for the music video.

Narrative

Todorov

The equilibrium of the music video is at the beginning when the couple are fine, the disruption of the equilibrium is where the male finds his girlfriend's phone with an unknown number on it, the recognition of the disruption is where they argue and he hits her and she falls on the floor (seemingly dead). An attempt to repair the damage is where he tries to revive her and help her and the equilibrium is where he wakes up from the dream and all is fine. However, for difference we decided to end it on another disruption of the equilibrium of him finding the text message that he found in the beginning of his dream.

Cameron

In the music video, anachronics will be used because the male is in a dream state in the music video, it isn't shot in reality and as these scenes are usually repeated, we decided to repeat it when the male woke up from his dream. None of the others will be used because we didn't want to make the music video too confusing for the audience.

Applying Laura Mulvey's Theory

Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball

Mind-map

When this music video was released it sparked up a lot of controversy about Miley's previous career as Hannah Montana to the teen that was considered 'going off the rails'. People asked what happened to Miley, going from a sweet, innocent teenager on a Disney show into a controversial pop star who decided to invent 'twerking'. This is a perfect example of Laura Mulvey's theory as the way that people look at Miley. 

This has proved to have a mixed reaction as some men see Miley as 'sexy' and 'attractive' but some have actually compared her to a picture of raw chicken legs. Most men find sexualised women very attractive however some people have said that she's not very attractive. Here are some examples of comments on the YouTube video that support this idea:

On the other hand, a lot of men have been accusing Miley of acting and dressing like a 'slut' and doing the music video to become attention seeking however a lot of Miley fans have been denying that she's done it for publicity, arguing that it represented how she was 'stripped away' by her ex-fiancée which showed what she was really like. Females seem to be the ones that are defending her along with long time Miley Cyrus fans (Smilers) and here are some more comments on the music video on YouTube of that:

However females also tend to abuse Miley on the video and call her names and bully her about the music video being just and excuse to take her clothes off. Miley said this about the music video:

"I think the video is much more, if people get past the point that I'm naked and you actually look at me you can tell that I actually look more broken than even the song sounds. The song is a pop ballad. It's one of these songs that everyone is going to relate to, everyone has felt that feeling at one point. If people can take their minds out of the obvious and go into their imagination a little bit and see kind of what the video really means and the way it's so vulnerable and actually if you look in my eyes I look more sad than my voice sounds on the record it was a lot harder to do the video than it was to record the songs. It was much more of an emotional experience."

Laura Mulvey says the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Miley is wearing next to nothing (and nothing at all in some cases) which allows the attention to be attracted to both males and females.

Representation: Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

The concept of gaze is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. For feminists it can be thought of in 3 ways: 

• How men look at women
• How women look at themselves
• How women look at other women

Laura Mulvey coined the term ‘Male Gaze’ in 1975. She believes that in film audiences have to ‘view’ characters from the perspective of a heterosexual male. The camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Relegates women to the status of objects. The female viewer must experience the narrative secondarily, by identification with the male. Some theorists also have noted the sexualizing of the female body even in situations where female sexiness has nothing to do with the product being advertised. Some women enjoy being ‘looked’ at e.g. beauty pageants. The gaze can also be directed toward members of the same gender for several reasons, not all of which are sexual, such as in comparison of body image or in clothing.