Evaluation - Question 1 script

When creating a music video, there are rules to follow and rules you can bend to fit your creative viewpoint. A music video must be representative of the mood conveyed by the song you are creating it around, and tell a story influenced by the lyrics. This story can be told very literally by linking certain words to images onscreen (insert clips of girli/tdcc) or it can have a more metaphorical kind of feel and tell a story that may only loosely link to the actual lyrics.

 Our video took a fairly literal approach in some aspects, with certain words linking to the lyrics, and some key phrases from the song being shown in the background (insert clips). This aspect of our video was influenced by the theories of Carol Vernallis, who said a key element of a music video was to link the lyrics to the images shown. However, on the most part, our video is more conceptual than literal, with our main goal being to create a visual that matched the sound and feel of the song rather than a full narrative.

During planning for our video, we watched a lot of music videos which each provided us with some kind of inspiration, whether it be colour scheme, certain shots or editing techniques.

Alongside multiple indie-rock artists, we took a lot of inspiration from the punk-rock duo Slaves, particularly from the video for their song “The Hunter”.        We took note of the heightened colours, grainy feel and the confrontational, almost aggressive way in which they perform, and applied this to our video. Reflecting Slaves, we decided to base the characterisation off of their performances, filming a lot of close-ups with intense eye-contact and a slightly deranged energy.

We had the idea to use a kaleidoscope effect in the very first shot to establish our video as colourful and psychedelic, which is also shown in Gerard Way’s video for his song “No Shows”. Similarly, to Slaves, this video uses a grainy effect to create a vintage aesthetic.

A shot we tried to replicate was a transition shot in King Krule’s video for Half Man Half Shark – the camera is shown to focus on an object then pan down quickly, almost like it was being dropped – we really liked how seamlessly this lead one shot to another and felt a little bit more chaotic as opposed to your average fade or jump-cut transition.  (compare shots – 1.07 of the KK video, blowing glitter of CS video).

Another video which inspired some shots, editing style and the set itself was the video for Season 2 Episode 3 by Glass Animals – this video shows a girl lounging on a sofa in a messy living room, covered in various miscellaneous objects – this includes food, cigarettes, cacti and clothes. We created our own version of this set which we felt suited the slightly edgier character of Coco, but used the same basis of it being a messy room with the sofa as the central focus. I threw some lighters, CDs, magazines and wrappers on the floor and took various side-panning shots of those. In terms of editing, I used the same quick cuts between shots of Phoebe, or Coco, eating, drinking and generally lounging about.

For Lucy’s scenes, we watched a lot of videos where a girl is the main performer, so this included Wolf Alice’s Yuk Foo video, Kill V Maim by Grimes and Black Honey’s live videos. Black Honey are the actual band behind our song, so we found it really helpful watching how their singer, Izzy B Philips performed the song herself.

In terms of shots, we drew inspiration from two door cinema club and slaves again, due to the very close-up shots of the main artist. We also originally wanted to use a go-pro for Lucy’s scenes to get the same kind of fish-eye lens effect, but decided to just use a normal DLSR camera instead.

We decided to keep to some of the conventions of the stereotypical “indie” video and do live performance scenes throughout the video – this is shown in videos such as Kathleen by catfish and the bottlemen, yuk foo by wolf alice and out getting ribs by king krule.

(insert clips from slaves, grimes, s2 ep3, Gerard way with comparative shots alongside). While we consider our video to be quite unique in terms of the narrative and mise en scene, it definitely fits very well into the indie category of videos and doesn’t challenge conventions very much at all. The same goes for our digipak and website, which both follow a clear brand image and display the pink, bold, kaleidoscopic imagery shown throughout all our ancillary texts. Our website has a simple structure and uses photos and colours to fit in with our themes, as does the digipak which links directly into the music video by using photos from the filming sets, bright colours and a vintage-style television on the front cover.