Preparing to film.

With filming a music video, comes a responsibility. Organisation is key, making sure all your dates are marked down, and the actors know when the filming is being done. Also exaggerate your time, if you think it will take two hours of your time, say it might take two and half or three hours, then they can work their day around that time.
Make sure you have all the equipment you need: Camera(s), Tripod(s), lights, set and actors. Be sure to double check everything you need is working and take an extra battery or a charger in case your camera dies.
Have everything planned out, have your storyboard on hand, even if you stray from it slightly, keep it for your structure. Film the scenes in order, it will make editing much easier.

Make sure your actors know what they're doing. Give them the lyrics/script in advance so they can learn the words. Let them know if they need to do anything that they might never have done before (dancing, acting). Make sure they know where they are supposed to be on the day of filming, and what they are going to be wearing (hair, makeup ect...) this will take the pressure off you if they already know what they are doing.

Make sure you have booked anything to you need, for example for my music video I wanted a plain white background that was large enough for me to walk around in, so we could get full body shots. In order for us to do that we had to search local places that will let us use a space like that. My filming partner, Rachael rang up different studio to enquire about using their space. We managed to book a studio in Barlow, just outside our local town.
Being organised and making sure things like this are booked in advance is vital, especially if you have a deadline.

Storyboarding

This is our storyboard for our music video which will be being filmed in a few weeks.

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Pitch Video

Our pitch, we presented to 'Frank Moloney Moloney Jr.' (aka Mr Welch).
We presented our ideas for our music video to 'Control' By Halsey.

Starting to build our Website

On the run up to start filming, I have decided to start looking at designs for the website, obviously a lot of the work cant be done until after filming, like adding pictures and the finished music video, but information such as Tour Dates, Pre-Ordering the album, Merchandise ect, can be started.

To start I have chosen a design which I can change later if I want to, also the picture in the back will be change to one of our own to make it original. I picked this design because I  like the simplistic font. I think it looks professional and will help with the marketing and selling of the product, also its easy to read and clear that it is the single, the audience will not get confused. If we don't get any good photos whilst shooting the music video then the picture of the clouds will do as they represent her mind set in a way.

Next I chose the layout of the website and started to edit the text. The finished video will be where the video slot is. Information about Halsey is next to it, a box where you can enter your email and subscribe and get all information about Halsey before anyone else. In the recent news box I will add tour dates, album release date and the single release date. I will also add social media links so fans can access her directly and follow her and see what she's up to.

 

 

Identifying our audience.

For our music video we have decided to do 'Control' by HALSEY. This is a song about mental illness and running from your inner demons which try to overcome you.
Her audience is mainly teenagers with a female dominance. Although her songs are gender friendly, she attracts more of a female attention because of her sound and image, whereas males tend to prefer a more masculine sound, and relating to the 'Male Gaze Theory' males tend to like her because of her image and they way she looks.

But for our music video we want to attract all types of people, fans of HALSEY and especially those who suffer with a mental illness because we feel that they would really understand the song, its meaning and the video to go with it.
HALSEY suffers with bipolar and she wrote the song to express how she is coping and dealing with and how it has suffocated her, her whole life.
She wants to raise awareness for people and say that its okay to have a mental disorder and her song 'control' is about taking control of her body after her mental illness has made her life hell.

As fans of her music, we respect her and we want to support her ideas and with this song we want to help raise awareness about mental health as we believe it is a major issue. We want to portray her feelings within the music video accurately and we will do this through the use of colour and editing, the colours show her feelings, for example black will represent her feeling trapped in this mental state, and white will represent her feeling false to everyone else as they don't see what she sees in her mind. Editing will show the ghostly and trippy effect the mental illness has on her and we want to use this to our advantage.

Richard Dyer's 'Star theory' applied to HALSEY

The star theory suggests that, as the audience we only see the performers as their stage personas. For example 'HALSEY' is a stage name for Ashley Frangipane, a normal 21 year old singer from Washington, New Jersey. She created HALSEY as an alter ego for performing, which is common with most stars.

"Stars are constructed, artificial images, even if they are represented as being "real people", experiencing real emotions etc." meaning that we don't see celebrities as themselves, we only see this image that they have created for the media, stage and television.

"A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines etc as well as films [music])."

This is HALSEY's star image and this how we identify her now that she has become a star, where as before she had long dark curly hair, and didn't wear a lot of make up. this shows that stardom creates a different character and distracts you from your heritage.

This is an original picture that Ashley Frangipane took of herself before her career took off.

Planning for our Music Video.

Our music video will be to Halsey's control, which is a new song from her debut album BADLANDS, which came out 28th august 2015. the song portrays Halsey's struggle with mental illness which is what we are planning to show in the video. Our idea is to have a dark, dirty workshop setting to show the inside of the characters mind which is where she is dealing with her mental illness, but to then have another setting of a pure white background to show her outside, which is what everyone else see's. it shows the contrast between what we see and what she see's.



The costumes we have decided to have is a black, baggy t shirt that comes to her knees, it will be covered in dirt and ripped in several places to show the fights and battles she has been through in her mind.
The other costume will be a white t shirt to show that no one realises her struggles and she just seems normal and innocent to everyone else, this shows her outside in comparison to her inside.

Our locations are the dirty workshop which shows her inside and her mind where are of her demons are, and where she is fighting her mental illness.
The other location is a white background which will be simply used for lip syncing, but this also represents her outside and how she appears to everyone else.
Also we have decided to film on a road, we haven't decided whether to film in daytime or night time but we want to use this show her trying to escape.

Textual Analysis of the Male Gaze Theory

The male gaze theory is a theory that suggests that the representation of women in music video is as a sexual fantasy from a heterosexual male's point of view. Women are seen as an image and men are the controlling subjects, aka men do the looking and women are there to be looked at. But in a feminists point of view this would be seen as unfair, because that's not women serve as their purpose. But in most music videos women are sexualised and made to look vulnerable and sexy.

A few examples of music videos that sexualise women are listed below.

 

Robin thicke's 'Blurred lines' this is the clean version, although the unrated version is far worse.

 

Miley cyrus 's 'We can't stop' & 'Wrecking ball'

 

Eric Prydz' 'call on me'

 

All of these music videos contain women dancing or in minimal clothing which supports the idea of the male gaze theory.

Most famous music videos and CD covers of all time.

According to the website NME.com the best music video of all time is 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash released in 2002. It says 'the montage shots of Cash served a poignant purpose at the time; after Johnny 's death seven months later it became even more powerful. A fitting audiovisual epitaph.'

 

A music video that got into the top 20 at #17 was Lady Gaga and Beyonce 's infamous music video for 'telephone' which was a weird and wonderful music video with Lady Gaga 's strange tape outfit and cigarette sunglasses. Released in 2010, and directed by Jonas Åkerlund.

A music video that got the #31 spot was a strange music video, the verve 's 'Bittersweet symphony' released in 1997, even though it just one long shot of Richard Ashcroft walking down a busy street, ignoring everything he sees, still in the top 40 for best music videos.

According to ranker.com 'Dark Side of the Moon' by Pink Floyd is the greatest CD cover,

 #2 is 'Abbey Road' by the Beatles

 #3 is another by the Beatles, 'Sgt. Peppers lonely hearts club band'.

 

Hannah Lux-Davis and her style of music videos.

Maintaining such fresh ideas within pop music videos is no small task, but Hannah Lux-Davis, one of the pop music industries biggest music video director manages to accomplish time and time again. She has worked with many famous pop artists such as Jessie J, Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus, Lil Wayne and many more. She has created videos that act as vibrant, conceptual mission statements for some of the most famous artists in the industry today.

She likes to create the music videos around the artist and their personalities, I found watching 'Bang Bang' by Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj.

Summary of Q magazines 'VIDEO GAMES' article.

In September of 2015, Q magazine created an article on the controversy of Rihanna 's 'Bitch better have my money' music video and how it wasn't much of a music video but more of a mini - movie.
The article states that Rihanna created the video to get attention, she hadn't been getting much press time recently and her controversial video got her just the amount of attention she needed to make a good comeback. The article states that in the video 'Rihanna want to be seen as a no - fuck - giving badass but comes off as somewhat desperate' which I completely agree with. The idea of having a mini movie as a video can also be a good idea as we saw in Kendrick Lamar's video for 'alright' which contained brilliant camera shots and a relatable video. Rihanna 's video, contained a lot of nudity and drug use, also related to the song but she could've come off with a different idea than kidnapping and humiliating an innocent woman.

Applying genre theories to a music video. (textual analysis)

I have chosen to analyse 5 Seconds of Summer's 'She's kinda hot' music video.


The genre I would associate this music video with is a hybrid genre of 'punk pop'. The band started out with more of a pop/boy band image when they released their first single 'She looks so perfect' in 2014, whereas now their sound has matured along with them, now a year later they have released more of a rockier, punk sound, along with a great video.


The video shows the four boys with their instruments on a float roaming the streets of a quiet neighbourhood singing lyrics such as 'We are the Kings and the Queens of the New Broken Scene' which suggests their new rebellion as a band, showing their transition from pop to punk pop.


The Mis-en-scene shows their style and their genre which they are representing, wearing darker colours and punk brands such as 'Drop Dead Clothing' and other punk band t-shirts showing their alternative look which is influenced by other bands, showing their desire to be different from their old image of being a 'boy band' to their new, mature image.
The scenes on the float show the rebellion and revolution of the New Broken Scene with the contrast of the darkness of the night time and the bright lights on the float which suggests that they're the light for the revolution.


Hodge and Kress (1988) tell us that genres 'control the behaviour of producers of such texts, and the expectations of potential consumers' I don't believe that this applies to this video as this their revolution for their new sound, they have changed their image to get rid of their reputation in the 'pop/boy band' genre which goes against what Hodge and Kress suggest.