Final Music Video

Here is (hopefully) the final version of my music video!!

 

Initial storyboarding and changes

I recently found these drawings in an old folder. They are my initial storyboards from the beginning of the process, which detail how I originally thought the plot line and the movie itself would turn out.

In the end, the majority of this storyboard was changed so it is somewhat obsolete, but I thought it may be beneficial to upload it so the massive changes between the start of the process and the ending point are apparent.

The major differences are the form and the amount of information left in the piece.

Originally, the 'trip' sections were going to be wholly segregated from the awake sections, and there was going to be multiple awake and tripping parts, but the feedback I got showed that the beginning scene wasn't capturing enough - it was too boring and left nothing to the imagination. From this feedback, I decided to partly merge the tripping and the awake section together, but still have a discernible difference between the two: in the awake part, there is a central 'plot line' of the girl arguing with her friend, then taking the drug, then going to sleep, whereas in the 'trip' section, there is no plot and it is completely abstract.

Also, a lot of the plot had to be cut due to not being able to film enough footage for each section. For the film I have got, there is hours worth of raw footage, so by doubling the length - like the original was planned - it would just be far too excessive.

Genre Case Study

Emperor's new clothes from Sam Glover

Afrika Shox Case Study

Afrika shox case study from Sam Glover

Note to self

Having reviewed my footage, I have decided to condense the dream sequence down into one drop, as opposed to having multiple with different content; this therefore makes the singular dream start as a happy, pleasurable one, and end up turning into a nightmare.
It still explores ecstasy vs. fear, just no longer are they separate.

I have also been advised by my teacher to take out the drug use, as they believe that keeping it ambiguous will avoid clichés and leave it open to interpretation. I, in a way, agree - granted it makes it more open, and potentially something to discuss. Having explained my original concept and showing it to other people, the feedback I have got is that the lack of explicit references to drug use make it confusing.
I will try getting more feedback from people who do not know the original concept of the video, and see what their interpretations are, and whether I need to clarify.

Prop List, Costume, Mise-En-Scene

Costume:

White dress - The colour white has connotations of purity, innocence, wholeness and completion.
The reason I chose said colour, is because when the protagonist is in her dream-like state, she doesn't need to put up a guard;
the rebelliousness which she demonstrates in her real world life, is only a reflection of her lack of happiness. In the dream world she can be happy without judgement, and escape her stresses and fears.



Dark blue denim jacket - Denim jackets have been a working class staple since the late 1800s - they have never been 'stop the runway' fashionable, but they never seem to have been out-of-fashion.
'As the 20th century progressed, the denim jacket wrenched itself away from western wear and became something rebellious and pop-culture-worthy, as worn by Beat poets, punk guitarists, and hip-hop's best and brightest. Really, the point was that the denim jacket was so not formal; anyone who wanted to openly rebel against the ironed suits of the Establishment threw a denim jacket on. Think The Clash in faded denim with the sleeves pushed up, or Tupac in a denim suit-coat. However you wore it, it was clear you weren't headed for law school.'
The connotation of rebelliousness is what I mainly want to focus on when it comes to my use of a denim jacket in my music video.

Torn, acid wash black jean short-shorts - Denim also; has similar connotations to the jacket.

Blue Beanie

Black tights

Black top

To me, this is somewhat similar to various 'goth/grunge/punk rock' fashion styles, which is exactly what I was going for.
Stereotypically, people which comply with this subculture's style are emotionally troubled. The majority dark clothing connotes negative emotions i.e. depressiveness etc.
These fashion cliques all connote a certain sense of anti-establishment / anti-majority, which is often seen amongst various neotribes. The desire to stand out is what separates them, but the innate need to fit in is what draws people to one another. This complies somewhat with Hebdige's theories of youth's resistance to mainstream culture and it's relation to style/fashion taste.

Prop list:

Pink paint - poured onto the protagonist; the colour pink has connotations of compassion and love. The fact that this has become a physical object in her dream shows that although she acts otherwise in the real world, she does have a desire to be accepted and loved.

Cigarettes - a metaphor for substance abuse

Pink petals - used in the final shot. The meaning is open to interpretation, but the way I see it is that it blurs the lines between reality and her dream / trip - since the colour has not turned back to black and white like previous, the audience is unsure as to whether she has woken up.

Sparklers

Locations:

For the falling paint shots,  I specifically wanted a blank white background, as the falling paint has intertextual links to splatter paintings, and the wall behind is acting as my 'canvas'.

Another inspiration for this shot was the music video for 'Egospect' by Sheep, Dog and Wolf, and in that video the background is entirely plain and concrete coloured.





A lot of the scenic shots where taken in my back garden; the roses, the cobwebs, the apple etc.
I chose this location because of it's filming potential - there are many types of flowers and plants and the area is very wild and unkempt, which I think is a nice reflection of the protagonist herself.





The lamppost at which the character engages in the phone call and smokes her cigarette.

For the bedroom scenes, I wanted to leave the bedroom as plain as it could be, hence the lack of shots of the room itself. Mainly, those scenes consist solely of the girl, the futon, and the surrounding floor.

I wanted the ambiguity of the room she is in to be assumed to be squalid and cell-like; devoid of luxury and comfort.

The gravestones are found in the Earlham cemetery; I took these shots in the summer as stock footage, but it turns out it was completely useful for my video. When the trip starts to turn negative, imagery of death is implemented into the film; the gravestones are the main metaphor of this.

The bathroom is somewhere I also wanted to come across as entirely plain, as in a dream, one generally remembers the action, as opposed to the setting.

Ill Manors Youth Representation

How are young people represented in the Ill Manors music video?

In my opinion, youth are represented as violently reactionary. The stereotypes which are imposed upon them by the media, are what they have learned to perpetuate, to “feed the fear, that’s what we’ve learned, fuel the fire, let them burn”. ‘Stereotype threat’ is the fear of fulfilling a negative stereotype about ones social group; the youth in ‘Ill Manors’ do the opposite by deliberately complying with the generalisations.

This is done in multiple ways throughout the video. The first shot opens with a view of a sprawling London council estate - smoke rises from some of the buildings, connoting an image of the riots. The fact that the smoke is rising from the council estate implies that this area was the epicentre of the anarchy. Another similar shot shows Plan B smoking a cigarette in front of a similar backdrop - to me represents how he contributed to the riots, and shows his consumption and participation in said violent activities.

The smoking council estate acts as a macrocosm for the rest of London - the smoke is billowing only from the poorer areas, whereas the richer areas in the distance are immaculate; showing how the class divide only negatively effects the less fortunate people.

The audience positioning is interesting, for the most part we are on the side of the youth / rioters etc. but there are moments where we are on the other side, for example, around 2:22, a group of people throw bricks at a piece of glass which we are behind. To me this is a threat, that unless you’re on their side, you’re in their way, and you don’t want that.

Another stereotype that the media imposes upon that particular social is that they all are hoodies. This is also deliberately perpetuated by the youth in the video - the majority of them have their heads covered; either by hoodies, snapbacks or beanies. A lot of them also wear balaclavas. Balaclavas are associated with violence and terrorism, this is overall how youth are presented in this video.

Michel Maffesoli coined the term urban tribe; “urban tribes are micro groups of people who share common interests in urban areas. The members of these relatively small groups tend to have similar world views, dress styles and behavioural patterns.” The fact that such a large population of the youth of London act like this shows that it is not simply a violent minority anomaly which is sparking the unrest in the lower classes; it is the class divide and how poorly they are treated by and perceived by the well-off people.

Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy, and this theory may be applied to hoodie culture’s perpetuation of their own media perpetrated stereotype. For example; people which consume the kind of media which may slander the lower classes (likely the richer people) are likely to consume more of said media, if hoodies are acting like the media says they will.

I believe that the video challenges the ideology of capitalism; it is documenting how radical the effect of poverty has become upon youth in London, and blaming the rich, conservative politicians such as David Cameron for putting them in said position. The video indirectly is promoting socialism, by saying that everyone should be on the same level, and politicians should not be being payed as much as they are for doing equal, if not less work than some poorer people.

Intertextual References From Other Music Videos

(Slide show content is the same as the content below)

Drug Use and Depression

Drug use is often shown to be a method of escapism, and the character in my film fulfils this stereotype. Her depressive tendencies are what she is running from, and intoxication is her way of doing this.

Todd Terje - Inspector Norse.
My interpretation of this music video would be that it follows someone who is trapped somewhere that he is sick of being in. Music and homemade drugs are escape, and he has lost the will to care about what people think of him. 
We can assume that he hates the place he is living in, through this quote; "I was planning to leave this place... But then my dad got sick"; and how he begins to cry while he is high.
His substance abuse is a way of getting away from a place which he doesn't want to have to call home, in the same way that my protagonist's is a way of getting away from an emotion which she wishes she never had to feel.
Another music video with a similar theme to this is Tove Lo - Habits (Stay High), which is also where I got some of the inspiration to my video.

Tripping/Dreaming Sections

My inspiration for this came from the music video for Marijuana by Chrome Sparks.

It is faced paced and somewhat random seeming, with repeated motifs throughout. Lots of filters are applied to the footage, with some parts flashing an array of different colours, and sometimes multiple layers playing over the top of each other.

Baths

They are used regularly in music videos to either;

amplify how exposed the person in the bath (artist or actor) is, and/or sexualise the person in the bath - usually a naked female. 

Baths have connotations of suicide and drowning, which make the viewer create a subconscious link between the two and makes for an overall eerier experience. This is seen in Rihanna's music video for Stay (ft. Mikky Ekko).

The video consists of back and forth shots between (presumably) a couple in the process of breaking up.

Rihanna is in a bath, being sad because of the aforementioned reason, and Mikky Ekko is milling around the same house also looking depressive.

Two interpretations of this video that I can see is that she has had to leave for somewhere, hence the shots of Ekko looking longingly into the bath which she has been in. Or, she has drowned her self, and he is mourning her death.

The whole video uses heavy noire influence, with single-point light sources casting huge shadows across the artists' faces.

Representation wise, this video is interesting; it could be argued that the point is to show how vulnerable both Rihanna and Mikky Ekko are after their 'breakup', yet the only naked one is the black female. This is a form of sexualisation, in which the woman is objectified by creating a divide between the two genders - in this case, clothing or lack thereof. But on the other hand, the nudity is a metaphor for her feeling exposed during her breakup period.
August Brown of the Los Angeles Times commented on the video saying, "solitary, locked-off shots that feel more intimate than exploitative. She looks amazing, but the focus isn't so much on her body as the look of constant devastation on her face. Appropriately minimalist. A beautiful video that broaden's Rihanna's emotional-musical palette."


Since the second dream / trip section in my music video is an exploration of fear, the bath in my video relates to the fear of exposure, and also shows the actor in her most vulnerable form.
She is fully clothed, as I did not want sexualisation to play any part in my music video.

There are several shots in which she either submerges by herself (more references to suicide), or she is forced under by a faceless second (and only other) character. This links to paranoia, and a horror movie complex which we all have, which makes us assume that any creak in our house is a murderer coming to get us.

Another interpretation of this series of shots would be that the man in the video is a physical being, collated of her depressive tendencies.
It could show how, although she may seem alright on the outside, she is still sinking, hence her secretive drug use, and self destructive nature.

Rough Edit of Video So far

This is what I have of the video so far.

0.00-0.24; presently far too long, and more content is needed here to cutaway and set the scene.

• More close ups of setting
• More direction needed for the actor, so as to show her emotional range. (Miss Barton has questioned my choice of actor, but I have assured her that Molly is the most talented actress I know, it is simply down to other factors that this may not yet have come across).

1:06-1:18; Miss Barton has suggested that I cut this section as she believes the ingestion of a pill is too obvious. Personally I disagree with cutting the entire thing, since it is justifiable within context, and from my intertextual references. I think that removing the drug use makes the following drop too random. A worry is that it may be difficult to understand,  but all of my audience that I have shown the video to so far has understood what is happening, and been able to feedback on it.

1:19-1:57; after my initial first edit of the video, I got some people to feedback on the video and tell me what I needed to improve on; their feedback was mainly that I needed the drop to be more fast paced, to reinforce the idea that she is tripping. I have started to work on this, as shown from 1:19-1:26. This is the speed of editing that I want for the entirety of those sections, just at the moment, since the shoot is incomplete, I need to leave space for the rest of the content to fit.

For the first drop all I need now is to film the fireworks, sparklers and smoke bomb section.

1:26-1:57 is so far, just the stills between the main motifs. The stills have intertextual references, linking to the garden of eden, but that will be explained in a separate post.

2:13-2:23; very rough start to the second drop. This drop is an exploration of fear, hence the drowning in the bath, and gravestones - links to death and the afterlife (juxtaposing garden of eden in drop 1).

For the completion of this section I have a bit more to film; use of blood as opposed to pink paint to contrast with the positivity of the previous section (more links to death and an intertextual link to Carrie), being tangles in a black, translucent fabric, and arms pulling her backward into darkness.

"Magnetic" (Annabel Jones & A.O. Beats); the Relationship Between Lyrics and Visuals

'1) Could you please explain how you are illustrating, amplifying or contradicting.'

The first part of my video mainly illustrates the lyrics - hence the references to drug use, and her using it in the video. The drop sections are very happy sounding, and the visuals of the first one amplify this; bright colours, pretty images etc.

The images in the second drop greatly contradict the positive sound; the references to death, fear etc.

Music For Music Video

The song that I have chosen as the music for my video is Magnetic (AOBeats Remix) - Annabel Jones.
I feel it will fit my concept, as it is dancey and upbeat, yet the piano accompaniment and occasional nostalgic sections of the piece allow room for slower parts and smoother editing.
Overall, the piece has space for numerous ideas and concepts - the perfect blank canvas for the creation of a video.

Blood on blood back to back

Magic’s only really accumulated

Fear will always find a way to prey

Upon the open and the pure

Calls me up at 4 am tells me she’s been

Walking a lot lately

Baby I gotta let go

The drugs that you’ve taken are killing you so

Your body is morphing, distorting, I just don’t get it

I don’t get it

It’s so black and blue how I’m drawn into you

Magnetic, you’re magnetic

These lyrics have helped shape the entire plot of my music video.

Video Inspiration

The reason I like this video is because of the filters applied to each bit of footage - the trippy colours alluding well to the title of the song; Marijuana.


This again is a piece which aims to mimic the feeling of smoking marijuana. The trippy backwards vocals mimicked by the slow motion editing. The regular jump cuts every 4 / 8 bars, juxtaposed with subtle zooming.
Once the music drops, the girls in the video are wearing masks. Masks and hidden identity is something I may want to explore in my video.

This video is comprised of 3 shots. The first of the boy in the video running towards the camera, with the sun rising gradually behind him.
The next shot; a birds eye view of him naked, lying in a groove in the floor, trying desperately to stay in the shade behind a rock.
And finally; the boy stands and faces into the sunlight - wind in his hair, crying and getting a nosebleed.
I like this video because it is so surreal. I also want my video to come across as dreamy, with odd abstract images blending together.


The paint in this video make it seem like an art piece - another thing I may want to try using.

The main problem with my concept, is that it may rely fairly heavily upon camera work. Being an amateur filmmaker, I do not have access to £3,000 cameras, so will have to make do with whatever I can get.
Marijuana and Egospect - although are high quality - aren't professional standard, as the first is made up of found footage, and the last relies on concept.

Potential tracks for music video

G'day

Hey! My name is Sam Glover and welcome to my A2 Media blog.