Costume #1

For our music video we will need to show the characters travelling between locations (dimensions) and we decided that costume would be one the easiest ways of communicating this. We can make use of mise en scene through dramatic changes in costume as the connotations of costumes will illustrate the development of the characters throughout the course of the music video. For the start of the music video we want our cast to be in normal clothing, every day casual wear. This is because they haven't taken the drug yet so life is going as usual. 

For the main singer we decided that she should be dressed quite dark in a leather jacket and dark jeans. We wanted her to wear this to subvert sexuality as our front woman doesn't play with the male viewer gaze. This costume works as it isn't girly, but still stylish and feminine. It also fits in with the colour scheme of the beginning of the music video because it is supposed to be dark and mysterious. We also wanted to choose an outfit appropriate for winter as we will be filming during winter, meaning cold weather. We also want the beginning of the music video to be set in winter and cold conditions. We have kept the theme of black running throughout the entire outfit because we wanted to have a contrast from the beginning of the music video, to the middle and end, after the drug trip. We chose to have the main girl wear a beanie and converse. This is because it adds to the almost 'Tomboy' look whilst also still being in style and feminized in fashion. It makes a statement that she is not one to play with her sexuality. Examples of other pop stars who do this would be Hayley Williams of Paramore and Jenna McDougall of Tonight Alive.



In keeping with this style of winter clothing for the two male band members accompanying her in the music video, we chose to have a similar colour pallet. For this first member we thought he should be very well dressed. A long grey coat and black jeans still fight with the incognito, dark and ominous colours of the lead singer but also signify a masculine presence. We decided that he could wear brown shoes as it stylizes with the rest of the outfit and matches the smart wear. Although he has more colour variation than the lead singer the outfit is still understated and perfect for the beginning of the music video. As we wanted each outfit to represent something about the character we thought that this character could be the more sensible one who wouldn't partake in consuming drugs, but when it does happen he becomes wild and fun. This again links in with the idea of contrasts and opposites that we want to create in the music video.


For the second male band members outfit we wanted to stray away from the similar colour scheme of blacks and browns but not too far away, as to still keep that mysterious and understated look. So for this outfit we wanted to have dark greens and blues, this strays away from the sophisticated and dressed up look, and fits in more with the casual, pedestrian attire. This allows us to create contrast within the beginning of the music video through the appearance and personalities of the band. And by changing costume after the drug trip, to symbolise that they have entered another world or dimension. These darker costumes could represent a dull, industrial world that people live in. Whereas later on, the bright colours and outfits can represent excitement and energy.

Media Questionnaire Results

In this chart, we gathered data on our audiences ages. As you can see the greatest proportion of our audiences were in the 15-18 age bracket.

We also looked at the majority gender in our audience and found that there was an equal split between male and female, although some put that the prefer not to say.

We thought that we should try to discover what platforms our audience consume their music on. We found out that most of our audience use Spotify, a free music streaming software.

We decided to ask our audience if they are regular listeners of the house music genre. This is to find out how popular it is. We found that most of the people we asked were a fan of the house music genre.

This is an important question as we wanted to deconstruct a song to find out what component is most important to our target audience. We discovered that the majority of our target audience will listen to a song because of the artist who is on the track.

We asked, on a scale of one to ten, how important the narrative aspect of a music video is to our target audience. The common number given was 8, showing that narrative is quite an important part of a music video.

Another important aspect of music video is voyeurism. This can include anything from notions of looking to sexually explicit imagery of females and in some cases males. From our target audience most people had no preference or opinion on sexually explicit imagery in music videos. Meaning that it isn't quite sought after in the 15-18 age bracket.

We thought we should ask our audience if they would buy an album because of its album art. This is because as part of the coursework we have to create a digipack for our band. Most of our target audience did not think they would buy an album just because of the art on the cover.

Visual and special FX are an important part of the house music genre as many house music videos use colour correction and visual add ons. We asked our audience if they feel that a music video is better with these components. The majority of our focus group said they do enjoy a music video with special FX better.

Choreographed dancing is a huge part of music videos in the pop genre as they give it that extra entertainment factor. Whereas in the house genre it isn't as popular to have choreographed dance sequences, but rather one person dancing or break dancing. We wanted to find out if our target audience like to see choreographed dance moves in music videos and the majority answer was no.

Meeting #3 7/11/15

We realized that we needed to ask our audience what elements of both house music as well as music videos in general that we should include in our work. We felt that this would help us generate more focused ideas as this could assist with the creation of the main concept that we would like to communicate. Due to the boundaries and guidelines this sets us we can create a video that will be enjoyed by our audience. We also went over initial images for our storyboard and decided that we would develop these into shot lists that could help us create more final storyboards.    

Meeting #4 13/11/15

For this meeting we realized that we need to make further strides in the development for our idea. We sat down with our completed version 2.0 moodboard and while listening to the song on repeat we wrote down ideas that would work in our music video. Now we have wrote down and developed more ideas that we feel can be easily integrated into our project. We also added more to our blog deciding on using a GIF format to present sequences we wanted to take inspiration from this adds to the amount of variety in presentation of our ideas and influences. In this meeting we also decided to go out location scouting over the next weekend in order to find location that may help us generate more ideas through location shots that will influence our moodboard.

Music Video Inspiration (GD and T.O.P Zutter)

When developing the star image for our music video we decided upon as well as using a female star as our main "star" we were missing out on a crucial part of how the conventions of our genre are communicated to it's fans. the DJ or in our case DJ's we decided upon this as we took a lot of inspiration from the idea of a duo as Daft Punk ( being one of the most famous names in house and electronic music) is thought of as a duo and this helps to add to their uniqueness as a group. From research into house and EDM we also discovered that the DJ is typically seen in their music video as the fans consider them to be as much of a star as whoever is the featured singer.
Similar to how we decided to use Go Crazy - 2pm we wanted to look further into K pop and Korean music in general as it is known for using what would be considered out of the ordinary images and narratives in it's music videos. Zutter - GD & TOP, is one of the music videos we would like to use for inspiration as it has a semi-broken/non linear narrative that we would also like to create. It also shows the partnership and relationship between G-Dragon and T.O.P and we would like to give this impression with our DJ duo in our music video as well. This is a selection of images that we would like to use as reference for framing and shots that we will try to create in our music video. I decided to present them as a compilation as they have similarities and i feel that it illustrates the idea of what we are trying to accomplish with out work in terms of cinematography.

For the shot of our star falling we wanted to find as much reference as possible as this would make the creating easier. When going through Zutter we realized that it has a shot that is used to communicate a very similar message to what we want to portray from falling. We felt that using a GIF  would make it easy to view on the move as we may not have access to the video when filming or would have to cope with the inefficiency of rewinding the video for reference

Music Video inspiration (2pm Go Crazy)

We decided upon looking for music videos from other countries as we felt limited by seeing the same conventions used by many of the western music videos we watched. When looking for music videos we looked into videos tat had a lot of visual appeal that we could take inspiration from and use to help develop ideas for our own music videos. We used 2pm Go Crazy as it has a very similar theme to our own song encouraging the idea of "letting loose" and forgetting societies boundaries to give everyone that "rush" we all love. We also decided that we would like to look for specific uses of camera, lighting and mise en scene to help create our music videos.

 We wanted to create a transition in our music video that shows our singer falling over to their side but also wanted to make it visually appealing and create a large juxtaposition between the falling and fallen shots. In this music video this is accomplished and it also shows a movement in time not just location. We have decided to mimic this shot in our own piece to create a similar effect and possibly communicate the line "Take me to another dimension" 
In which the idea of moving in time and space will match he lyrics to the visuals. We may also want to take further inspiration from the video and match it to a point where the audio is or could be lowered or cut so that there is a clear stop in the song giving this transition more prevalence among the rest. This gif illustrates how we would like to frame, shoot and cut this short sequence we felt this format shows how we are going to create a similar sequence.

We would also like to imitate the lighting that is used in this sequence as it the juxtaposition between red and blue communicates a complete change in atmosphere and theme in the music video.

Lyrics Deconstruction - Gecko Overdrive

In order to gain a greater understanding of our choice of song we decided to create this post to illustrate a deeper more thought out understanding of the lyrics to our song

"Take a moment for yourself"

take a brief period of time (implied but can be longer due to ambiguous nature of song lyrics) to enjoy your own company

- could be imply a holiday/vacation

- me time

- something that relaxes an individual

- In the original music video this was communicated through a relation between lyric and image showing a man meditating connoting a relaxed environment typically associated with self reflection

"Get close with the lights down low"

"Get close" - Implies a sexual encounter, intimacy between multiple people

"Lights down low" - Signal for an oncoming romantic event 

"You and I and no one else"

Involved in a relationship with someone or something. Doesn't have to be a person could be something else that one could be devoted to

- addiction

- drugs or alcohol

- something inanimate or out of the ordinary

"Take me to another dimension"

Wanting to be taken away from reality, Into a dream / alternate universe could be communicated by

- a change of locations

- scenery swapping

- use of colour

- character in shot being switched

- use of VFX trough green screen

"I've got a feeling that I wanna explode"

Could be reference to any climatic event or imagery

- sexual

- violent

- dynamic use of camera could work to communicate this line

- explosive or destructive imagery

- scary imagery, something that scares performer or audience (jump scare)

- anything that gives the idea of a release of tension

 "Hands up"
Typically used the communicate the idea of people putting their hands up in celebration of an event or in cheer
- could be in reference to police arrest 
- in original context (Her heart is racing & beating like a bass drum as she puts her arms up so he can take of her shirt)

"Only you"
Could be in relation to her addiction or to someone she has strong feelings for gives the impression of commitment

"Baby"
Implying relationship through words of interment"

"Hands to the ceiling"
A state of ecstasy in which anybody invloved can become excited

  

"When we're crashing, let's have have passion"
Even though everything is going wrong we should still try to enjoy it or each others company  
- gives the impression of going "down with the ship"
- "When we're" gives the impression that it's predetermined that everything will go wrong getting self into situation despite the obvious consequences 

"Overdrive,"
Repetition of overdrive main theme of the song needs to do more than typically will/can 

we felt that these lyrics are the ones that best communicated the theme and ideas of the song and are the ones we would like to focus on as we believe they can best be communicated in our work through a use of Goodwin's Theory

Story Board Meeting #2

In this meeting we looked over the second draft and more developed storyboard. This one shows a narrative rather than concepts and ideas that the last one did, we have started to create shot compositions but are not completely confident. We decided to use shots from music videos we liked and would like to use as inspiration. To develop our idea further we need to draw out and list every shot we are planning to use. Doing this will allow us to cross off shots that we have completed as well as move shots around if needed or make it easier to rearrange shots and scene we would like to go back to in order to establish the variety of locations and shots commonly used in music videos.

1st Mood board

In this mood board we collected some images which we thought we could gain inspiration from, These are a collection of images related to mise-en-scene. We have a few ideas for locations such as hallways in a building, this is because it seems quite haunting and enigmatic. A kids play could be a good area to shoot in as it is colorful and suggests themes of innocence and fun. We have also included an image of a garden in the mood board as we thought an open space with lots of greenery can represent freedom and a connection with nature. Finally we have an image of a man blowing smoke, this is because we wanted to have a blank empty room where we can shoot scenes using a mix of lighting effects and actors blowing smoke. This will create an amazing shoot that looks artistic and can be interpreted in many ways.

We have also chosen some colorful pictures of geometric shaped as we thought we could use some green screen effects as it fits in with the idea for our narrative, a drug trip. The colorful spiral also represents a drug trip. This is effect is visually appealing and gives meaning to the video.

Finally, we have a few images of clothing. We thought that this could give us some inspiration of how the characters in our music video are going to be dressed. This is also fitting with the house genre as many of the men like to look smart and the women are dressed quite casually.

Storyboard Meeting #1

In this meeting we have started to generate shots for our music video. We are in the middle of creating a first draft of a story board for our music video which will contain several shots, camera angles and special effects that will be used. We are doing this by drawing on post-it notes as it will be easier to re-arrange shots if we feel that some are not working.We have generated more ideas and have come up with a narrative that takes place in an undecided area. Three people decide to break into the area at night and find a drug which sends them on a weird trip. The students will be played by the actors of our fake 'band' as the music video will also be trying to promote and sell the artist and not just a great narrative.
To develop our story board we will re-draw shots to make them look more realistic and communicate more in frame as well as moving the images to post-it notes as this will allow us to easily move shots around when we need to.

Media: Music Video Questionnaire

This questionnaire is geared towards an audience for the House music genre. The goal of it is to discover how the audience consumes the product and what they enjoy about the genre so that we can apply these answers and information to our own music video to make it fit into the genre of house as much as possible so that it resembles something typically enjoyed by our target audience.

What age are you?

 11 – 14 □          15 – 18 □          19 – 22 □          23 – 26 □          27 – 30 □          30+ □

What gender do you identify as?

Male □          Female □          Other □          Prefer not to say □

What is your occupation?

_________________________________________________________________________________

How do you consume music?

ITunes □          YouTube □          Spotify □          Sound cloud □          Apple Music □           Other □

Do you listen to House music regularly?

Yes □          No □

Out of these, what is your favourite part about music?

The beat □          The lyrics □          The music video □          The artist □

Who is your favourite House music artist?

_________________________________________________________________________________

What is your favourite thing about the artist?

How important do you think narrative is in a house music video?

(Not important) 1          2          3          4          5          6          7          8          9          10 (really important)

Do you prefer to see sexually explicit imagery used in a music video?

Yes □          No □          No preference □

Would you buy an album because of its album art?

Yes □          No □

                                                                                     

Do you enjoy music videos with visual effects and SFX?

Yes □          No □        

Do you like choreographed dances in a music video?

Yes □          No □