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'.