My Performance Inspiration

When preparing to film my scenes as Bea, I mainly referred to this video of Black Honey performing Spinning Wheel, the song we use for our video. I found this really helpful in characterizing myself as Bea as watching the way Izzy Philips (the real singer) lip-syncs and moves around provided the inspiration I needed to create the slightly wild and very intense character I intended to portray.

Ellie Rowsell (lead singer of Wolf Alice) in the music video for "Yuk Foo" also provided as an inspiration for my performance - Yuk Foo has an infinitely more angry vibe than Spinning Wheel, which I tried to incorporate into my characterization as I wanted Bea to feel like someone who could essentially kick off at any moment - this linked directly to how the screams throughout Spinning Wheel come as a shock and juxtapose the Western feel of the song.

Performance Research

In order to properly prepare for our performances as our characters Bea and Coco in our music video, me and Phoebe watched some other music videos and took inspiration from the artists shown.

A key part of a music video is the singer's performance, which can make or break the whole thing. A boring performance would not be attention-grabbing enough to maintain the audience's interest, therefore the artists must make sure they perform in an exciting manner.





An example of good performances is this music video from the band Slaves - like our band, they are also indie-rock, and their style is almost aggressive, often coming very close to the camera and shouting the lyrics.





Indie artist Grimes also provided a lot of inspiration, particularly for my music video persona. Her own character has a slightly deranged feel, and like Slaves, she also gets quite aggressive, moving close to the camera with sharp movements.




However, my main inspiration came from Black Honey themselves - particularly the lead singer, Izzy B Philips. She herself has an image reminiscent of Debbie Harry, glaring at the crowd moodily and keeping that sullen persona throughout the slower parts of the song, switching into a wilder version of herself during the chorus.

Digipak genre research

Digipak genre research from LucyHocart

Timeline of availability

Set Description - Living Room

MEADGATE AVENUE

LUCY'S LIVING ROOM

This location included normal living room furniture ( sofa, chairs, bookshelf), and for added dramatic effect, an old fashioned TV, plates and food waste, clothes and shoes, lighters, alcohol bottles, large stacks of magazines and cacti scattered across the floor. Again, this location worked really well, as due to the small size of the room, the camera was able to get in the whole set and allowed for a big variety of shots to be taken. 
It was easier to create the set for this as we were aiming for a realistically messy, lived-in feel, and already had all the components necessary to create this in the house.

Set Description - Green Screen Room

GREAT BADDOW HIGH SCHOOL,
GREEN SCREEN ROOM

This location included a pink sequin background draping round the whole room, with magazine cutouts and lyric cut outs stuck on the pink fabric. For our lighting, we used a large stage light, as we wanted a very glaring, spotlight feel for the scenes shot in the green screen room.

This location worked well for the singing scene, giving the intended feel of a glaring spotlight. The location was small enough for the camera to easily get the whole backdrop and the singer (me) in the shot with no green edges of the walls being shown. Due to its small size, we were able to get multiple different camera angle shots of the backdrop and show all the different aspects (the cutouts and quotes) with no green being shown. 
As the room is so small and had the door shut, there is no light or sound (although the on-set audio was removed during editing) pollution from outside sources, which made it easier to film what we needed in quick time without worrying about other people or objects getting into the frame unnoticed.

Class Feedback

	Strengths	Weaknesses	Suggestions
MUSIC VIDEO TEASER	Pretty, Psychedelic, good colours, unique, original look, links to colour theme of the band, trippy, suits genre, good kaleidoscope effect.	Swearing, Where is it going? long shots, too much kaleidoscope effect.	Is it too trippy? Is the artist accessible? Use more variety of shots? Use less kaleidoscope -  Maybe add some other effects (i.e. Noise) to add a crackly feel.
WEBSITE	Good background image, good colour scheme, good merch, clear that it is the band, links clearly with band image.	Do you want Lucy on the homepage?, too much kaleidoscope imagery, possibly more artist information added, quite dark.	Put interviews on too, possibly add a small biography, make the links stand out more to make it easier for the user to navigate.
DIGIPAK	Nice synergy, good trippy photos, clear unity, strong band image.	Too much kaleidoscope, quite dark images.	Think about including normal pictures as well, digitally lighten some pictures to make the digipak more colourful.
BRAND IMAGE, NAME, STAGE PRESENCE	Interesting ideas for name backgrounds, well thought out, clear image, logo links well, catchy/unique name, strong female characters, recognisable.	Don’t alienate too many people, are the band member images too similar?	Singer/producer is confusing, clear link between members, maybe give members more individuality.
TARGET AUDIENCE	Clear TA, clear marketing for audience, influenced from similar artists, good social media for TA.	Think about how to grab their interest, mainly targeting females?, could it be expanded?, how could people outside of TA be attracted?