Evaluation 1Section 1Â
Introduction The Genre of our music video is indie and the sub genre is indie pop. Conventions of indie music is being quite slow and featuring synthesized instruments such as drums and piano as well as guitar which can be Electric or Acoustic.Â
Narrative structure
The themes that the music video raises are relationships, Alcohol awareness and Drug awareness. This can be shown by the cinematography and the body language of the actors. The messages that are raised in the music video is; Not to drink alcohol or do drugs but if you do, drink them responsibly. We had to focus on presenting these issues as raising awareness and not glamourizing them. This is because of the actual audience that would watch the music video which would be a few years younger then what our target audience is. We have featured this in our video by showing the effects of what can happen if done excessively but we have only showed this briefly so as to not make that the focus of the music video.
Our video also challenges the ideology of authority by having the characters drinking ( some underage) and seeing them go against what society has deemed as the legal age to consume and buy alcohol.
Techniques
We decided to have our music video start as an equilibrium then descend to a disequilibrium and back to an equilibrium (Todorov). This can be shown by the main character being friendly and objective to the events, it then becomes a disequilibrium by the party going wrong and the main character still being subjective. This is then restored at the end when all the events are reversed and the narrative becomes equal as essentially nothing has happened.
Enigma is also evident in our music video as presented by the main character who remains hidden throughout. This was a narrative choice as the rest of our video is very open but we thought that we needed to have some part of the video to remain a mystery. We decided this as it would intrigue the audience and persuade them to watch the whole video to see if the main character is ever revealed.
Our narrative is a circular narrative which is shown by having the same shot and location at the beginning as there is at the end. This is also reinforced by our decision to have the shots reversed which completely undoes the events that happen therefore making it an equilibrium narrative. As well as the narrative being an equilibrium and circular the events happen in a chronological order which makes the narrative linear as everything is in order. Lastly, the narrative is multi stranded as we have all the small stories that join up whilst the main character remains objective to everything.
Our characters are also binary opposites (Levi Strauss) to each other as they have contrasting difference. Although some of the characters share the same attitude and behavior, Costume wise they are different such as wearing dresses and being very dressed up compared to the casual wear that other characters are displaying.
Our music video is a filmic type this is due to the small clips we have placed before the music starts which is the singer being introduced and the audience being allowed to view part of the main character's costume (Her shoes). This was stylistic decision that we made as the piece we wanted didn’t fit with our music but was something that allowed us to introduce 2 of the important characters, the singer and the main character. A music video that influenced our decision was Echosmith's 'Cool Kids' which features a similar beginning, in that it is before the music starts.
A recurring motif that we decided to relate back to is alcohol which is frequently shown within our music video through the pan shots of alcohol bottles and the red cups. This choice was made to reinforce the awareness of alcohol as well as the meaning of the song.
The distinctive visual signifier is the alcohol bottles as it is repeated frequently throughout the video in the form of panning shots and brief flashes of them to remind the audience what the message of the song is as well as to create a recurring motif.
Our initial idea for our narrative was to have separate stories in each room and follow around a main character who would be completely subjective to the following events. We chose to simplify this idea as it would have been too strenuous to complete and taken too much time which would have possibly affected the quality of our other clips. The stories we had planned to include were a couple arguing, people passed out and showing the effects of alcohol misuse as well as having a general party scene. The idea was to follow one sole character around and see their perspective of the events that happen whilst she is there. This was an idea that we ha din at the end of year 12 whilst completing some activities to prepare us for year 13 coursework.
First shot
One of the shots from the beginning of the filmic introduction
Last Shot The cool kids video begins with a filmic introduction which is similar to the beginning of our music video. The cool kids video changes the focus from a deep focus to a shallow focus which changes the audiences attention and makes the singer the focus of the shot
Strengths • Our narrative raises awareness of the issue of alcohol misuse
Weakness • The narrative of our story could be viewed as glamourising alcohol misuse • The narrative could also be interpreted as encouraging rebellion against dominant ideology of authority
Mise En Scene
The Mise en Scene conventions of an indie pop music video is an avoidance of props being used. This is because a vast majority of indie music videos want the audience's attention on the artist. We chose to follow this and have the audience's attention on the main character and the singer, this could be viewed as a demand of the record label(Goodwin). Another convention of indie pop videos is that they are very minimalist in their stylistic choices. We chose to partly follow this convention as we also wanted the audience's attention on the events that the party is revolved around but, we wanted the location and lighting to be simple and diegetic in most cases.
Props
We had very few props involved in our music video as we felt that this was a distraction and was unnecessary to include. The props that were mainly featured in our music video were the vibrant red cups, the alcohol bottles and the balloons that were featured in the living room shot. The alcohol bottles and red cups follow the generic conventions of an indie pop music video as they are similar to what is seen in modern mainstream music videos. Although our music video is mostly influenced by indie pop/ indie music videos we were influenced to use the red cups by Miley Cyrus' music video 'We Cant Stop Video' which, although conveys the opposite message to our music video, it has a similar theme running throughout it of alcohol use. Many music videos feature alcohol bottles such as (). Although the use of balloons isn't generic in indie music videos we chose to feature them in our initial ideas as it helped to create the atmosphere. Due to the shot not being a good enough standard we left it out and replaced it. Even though the balloons helped to set the atmosphere and had connotations of celebrations, it felt childish and wouldn’t have related to our target audience of 16-25 year old's.
The Mise en Scene reflects the focus of the party which was the Americanisation of it. We used the red cups to reinforce this as they are stereotypically seen in American music videos and not British. When we started planning our music video we had the initial ideas of using the red cups as a symbol for the party and revolved the rest of our ides around this, even though red cups are not used massively in British music videos, unless ironically, they are a known symbol for parties.
Location The location we have used doesn’t necessarily conform to the indie pop genre as a lot of indie music videos are shot outside or in a nightclub. Examples of this are Lana del ray, Tove lo, On the other hand, the location does conform to the genre as it could be seen as the correct environment but the wring atmosphere. An example of this is Seafret-Oceans which features A game of thrones star (Maisie Williams) and is primarily set in a random house. Costume
In our music video we chose to have each of the characters in different costumes that would reflect the stereotypes owe had chosen to depict. Our costumes don’t feature any specific colour symbolism but they reflect the characters personality. The primary example of this is the main character who wears a fur coat, high heels and a black dress which shows how she was expecting a big perhaps formal party but is surprised by what she is met with. In the video there could be some colour symbolism that is interpreted by the frequent use of Black, this could foreshadow what will happen in the video as well as the tone of the video which starts off lighthearted but descends into darkness and then back to being lighthearted. This reflects our equilibrium-disequilibrium-equilibrium narrative as it reflects the events that happen. The tone change can be seen by the reversal of the shots but also by the climactic part of the video which is the character passed out and dropping the wine bottle which symbolises how she has fallen victim to alcohol misuse. The costumes that each of the character's are wearing aren't typical of the indie genre as although they are black ad white they are too outgoing and dressed up for the indie genre which feature black jeans an jackets, minimalist clothing.
Costumes ď ľ
In our music video we chose to have each of the characters in different costumes that would reflect the stereotypes owe had chosen to depict. Our costumes don’t feature any specific colour symbolism but they reflect the characters personality. The primary example of this is the main character who wears a fur coat, high heels and a black dress which shows how she was expecting a big perhaps formal party but is surprised by what she is met with. In the video there could be some colour symbolism that is interpreted by the frequent use of Black, this could foreshadow what will happen in the video as well as the tone of the video which starts off lighthearted but descends into darkness and then back to being lighthearted. This reflects our equilibrium-disequilibrium-equilibrium narrative as it reflects the events that happen. The tone change can be seen by the reversal of the shots but also by the climactic part of the video which is the character passed out and dropping the wine bottle which symbolises how she has fallen victim to alcohol misuse. The costumes that each of the character's are wearing aren't typical of the indie genre as although they are black ad white they are too outgoing and dressed up for the indie genre which feature black jeans an jackets, minimalist clothing.
Singers outfit
Characters
Our initial idea for the characters included having different stereotypes that were based off of films we had seen, Especially American teen ones. A film that influenced this was The Breakfast Club which features 5 stereotypical stereotypes of High school teenagers. These are; The jock, The popular, The rebel, The goth/mute and the normal one/ nerd type. Although we didn’t stick to these stereotypes, this film influenced us to base our music video around the idea of stereotyped groups. Some of the stereotypes that are featured are there because they are a well known stereotype that has been forced onto teenagers by their peers or films such as The Breakfast Club which are world wide known films.
Our characters appearance are all fairly neat with a few discrepancies which fits with the character they play. We chose to have this as it fits with the Indie genre due to the main characters looking neat and well kempt while surrounding characters can look messy or just not as polished. This also fits with our party as through the night people tend to not stay as well kempt as when first arrived, this could be down to dancing or the drink.
The different character's behavior is also typical of the indie genre, for example, the majority of the time the singer is focused and behaved, looking straight into the camera but she has her moments when she challenges this and dis-conforms to the behavior she should display to the audience. This is because the song has a slightly glamourised sound to it which is introduced in the modulation and through the melody being synthesised which is the reason for her appearance of a leather jacket and messy hair. Her attention at times diverts from the audience such as when she is on her phone which could make the audience fell unimportant and disinterested in the music video due to her attitude.
We decided not to give our characters names as this would have complicated things and defeated the purpose of having the stereotypes . Instead of having names, the characters are known as their stereotypes as this reinforces them to the audience but because there is no dialogue in our music video it may not be obvious to them, leaving them guessing.
The character types are; Main character (Protagonist)
Singer
Mean girls (Group)
Preppy character
Couple
Causal characters
Extras
Lighting
In our video we used a variety of lighting techniques to ensure that our lighting was correct for each shot. Although we didn’t have professional lights as they are expensive we made do with house lights and at times the torches on our phones, when outside.
In some of our shots we used diegetic lighting as this was inevitable as that was the only lighting available to us at the time. An example of this is the last shot in the hall way where the lights can be seen. Although the lighting had slightly yellow undertones, because of the lightbulbs, this made it possible to see each of the characters and props clearly whilst not being too yellow on camera. The use of diegetic lighting was inevitable as we couldn’t avoid catching our source of lighting on camera at times. But then in other shots we managed to avoid it making the lighting non diegetic.
For the majority of our shots we used non diegetic lighting as we didn’t need lights to be shown in all of our shots or it helped to create extra lighting for certain shots such as our outside ones at the beginning. The outside shots that we filmed for the beginning and end of our music video had to use non diegetic lighting in them as there was a lack of diegetic lighting available at that time. The form of non diegetic lighting that we used was in a form of phone torches, even though these didn’t produce masses amount of lighting, they helped produce enough to contribute to the lighting we already had to make the shots visible on camera.
The lighting that we used for the singer shots could be classed as chiaroscuro lighting due to the dark shadows that are produced by the non diegetic lighting used in the singer shots. The form of non diegetic lighting used was a bedroom lamp which meant that it was easy to direct where the key lighting should be placed. This means that the key lighting could be placed where the focus of the shot is such as on the singer in the singer shots.
Camera work
For our music video we used as many cinematography techniques we could.
The main shot that we referred to in our music video is PoV shots. This is because our whole idea is based around following one character and seeing their version of events. We conducted our PoV shots by using a GoPro camera and having it on the actor's head which allowed us to see exactly what they see, it also allows for a true perspective to be seen by the audience. The PoV shots helped to reinforce our initial ideas of seeing one characters main perspective of the whole party whilst she remains completely objective to the scenes that were in front of her.
We used a few over the shoulder shots to introduce variety which included using a handheld camera. Although there was potential for the shots to be shaky we managed to work this out and makeshift a tripod from books. The over the shoulder shots have a similar purpose as the PoV shots do, which is to enable the audience to see the environment but not directly from the main characters point of view. This could be seen as the audience being positioned as another character and seeing the events through a different persons perspective.
We also used the 180 degree rule for our scene in the bathtub as even though there is no dialogue, the characters were set up to look like a conversation and made small talk to each other. The characters were having a conversation but the topic they were talking about isn't revealed as the speech is muted throughout the whole music video. The 180 degree rule was created to ensure that film makers didn’t switch positioning when filming a conversation which would make it look slightly odd. The 180 degree rule authorizes the audience to see one side of the conversation from one perspective shot
We used tracking shots to lengthen the environment in the scene. An example if this is at the very beginning of the music video after the music starts when we are showcasing the main characters shoes/feet. We decided to use tracking shots as it created a smooth transition when moving the camera meaning that there was less possibility for shakiness in our camera work.
The majority of our shots are at eye level, we decided to make this choice because it allows for the audience to see the whole character and also makes them feel as though they are equal to the character. It portrays the character as being confident but not overpowering as it is only at eye level and not a low angle shot. By having an shot placed at eye level it presents connotations of neutral positioning of the audience, meaning that the audience don’t feel overpowered or bored by the positioning that they are in.
Composition
We used rule of thirds in our music video to make sure that the focus of the shot was in the middle of the frame. An example of this is in the beginning of the music video after the music has started, we display the main characters shoes as well as the singers and use a tracking shot to follow their movements in the hallway of the house. Unfortunately, one of the shots that we refer back to at the beginning breaks the rule of thirds as the focus of the shot is a silver light stand, unfortunately this couldn’t be avoided as the shot is of the main characters feet leaving the frame so the focus of the frame would have been the corner of the hallway just without the silver light stand.
As part of the composition we demonstrated the use of the 180 degree rule in the bathroom scene when the two characters are having a makeshift conversation. I have chosen to talk about the 180 degree within my camerawork slide as it is down to our camerawork that we kept to it. Although, it could also be seen as our editing being the reason for our use of the 180 degree rule as we chose not to put in an opposing camera angle that would break the 180 degree rule.
In our music video we also chose to use shallow focus within a select few of our shots that are featured. An example of this is the fairy light shots in which we changed the focus from being deep focus and then descending it to hold a shallow focus, making the fairy lights closest to the camera the most prominent item with in the shot. This makes the audience hold their focus on the fairy lights as they are prominent and are also the only thing in the shot.
Editing ď ľ
For our music video we at first struggled to transition from one shot to the other till we had played with some of the transition effects. This resulted in us discovering the additive dissolve which we have used frequently in our video. The additive dissolve ended up having a positive effect on our video as it actually contributed to us conforming to the conventions of the indie genre. The additive dissolve adds an 'Instagram' type effect onto the end of shots and helps to mesh them together, making the transitions smoother and seem like they are natural. The negative thing about the use of additive dissolve in our video is that it could start to look unnatural or repetitive as we have used them frequently to make the transitions look more polished.
ď ľ
Our video originally used some fade in/out such as when the mean girls group and the singer are taking the photos, we originally had placed a fade out to smooth the transition to the next shot. This also worked well as it reinforces to the audience that the singer and mean girls group have taken the picture.
ď ľ
At the beginning of our video we have used shot reverse shot to display the singer and main characters shoes. The audience could view us showing them the shoes as portraying what type of character each of them are. By using shot reverse shot it allows for consistency in the beginning of our video and a recurring motif to start the video with.
Representation
Within our music video we have mainly represented Gender, age, unstable relationships, rebellion and social drinking. Overall, we chose to represent social groups in our video through their choice of actions and behaviour towards each other.
Gender is represented in our music video as being in opposition towards each other whilst still being in the same clique. This can be shown in the kitchen scene in which the females are on one side of the room and the males the other. This shows how their is a literal opposition between the two genders involved as it displays them similar to how a fight would start. The two genders involved are sometimes shown as isolated from each-other which can be reinforced by the kitchen shots. As well as this, they are shown as being rebellious due to the inference of underage drinking for most of them (it was water). This is reinforced by the pan and long shots of them displaying the consequences of drinking too much and getting in trouble with each-other due to excessive drinking and blurry perceptions of events. These two factors create a perception of teenage social groups that is negative and not entirely true but blurred to help push the plot along.
All of the representations in the music video are simplistic, this is because we had complications whilst planning to film the video as well as slight problems executing the idea due to people dropping out of helping us at last minute, leaving us with a small amount of choice in actors. This forced us to simplify our stereotypes we had initially planned for due to the small amount of actors.
Our film implies that teens can form into social groups when in a social environment such as a party. This could be seen as a defensive mechanism towards other people they don't know. Our film shows that teens can be seen to be 'cliquey' and separate into their social groups. This could also be reinforced by the kitchen scene as well as the hallway scene in which the girls are taking a picture. The audience could view this as the girls isolating themselves form the rest of the party.
Our representations of youths are not tokenism, we picked the actors that are involved because they were available at the time and could attend all filming days. Admittedly, this did shorten the choice of people to chose from therefore there isn't an equal representation of everyone, ie. we have more females than males throughout the whole video.
The representations that we do include emphasise the otherness of the group which we chose to represent through the main character being isolated and objective throughout the whole video. This shows how the social group that she belongs to are the other group and not in with crowd.
The representations of social groups in our music video reinforce modern day interpretations of social groups and how they are viewed by peers and adults. The representations could also be viewed as contemporary due to them being realistic and influenced by modern day films such as Mean Girls and The Breakfast Club.
The audience could also view the representations as regressive as the representations may be true in films in modern day real life they are inaccurate and holding people to standard that is lesser than them.