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.
