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.