Early Photo's for Print Productions

Select Actors

Main character- Emily Harvey 
Antagonist- Bella Nunn
Singer-Natasha Ball
The Couple- Georgia and Jake 
Preppy Character- Sam Fisher
Other subsequent characters- Cecilia, Rubi, Megan, Emily, Alec 

Our character list is not as long as we had originally planned for in our planning but we realised that having less characters may make our music video slightly more manageable for us whilst still maintaining an environment that is relevant to our genre and specific to our party. Although we didn't have as many characters as initially planned We thought simplified our idea and realised that we only needed the main characters and a select few others who would enable us to maintain our original narrative even if it was a less complicated one.

We picked Emily to be our main character as she possessed the correct Mise en scene such as the shoes and the coat that are featured in the music video. She also volunteered to be the main character as our group were indifferent about what characters we each portrayed. Although as a group we were indifferent about the characters we portrayed we based each of the characters that we played off of ourselves as well as the people who helped us film and be apart of the music video. We based our characters on who would fit which role best and who we felt could accurately portray them whilst developing the narrative through the music video.

Our antagonist was played by Bella and although she wasn't a stereotypical antagonist, the audience perceive her as childish and troubling. This is shown by Bella's mannerisms throughout the video but also what happens to her at the climax of our video in which she is found to be passed out presumably from obtaining alcohol or drugs. This reinforces our initial ideas of raising the awareness of alcohol and drugs which is contrasting our song lyrics. In our video we have subverted the song lyrics to have a different interpretation through the means of our music video and the narrative that is told throughout it.  Bella also had the correct Mise en scene to play the antagonist which can be shown through the dress she wears and the heels which stereo-typically are linked to mean girls in films.

Sam volunteered to be the preppy character in our video because of the Mise en scene relating to his thriller last year which we used as an inter-textual reference as it allowed for our video to have more depth as well as allowing it to be developed.

We thought that we had to feature other characters who may not necessarily add anything to the narrative but would help to develop the main characters. Each of our subsequent characters were chosen as they were different to each other. We thought that each of the different actors could bring a different perspective on their character allowing for us to develop them further than what we had originally planned.This allowed for us to develop them further than what we had originally planned and allow the allow for them to become more involved in our narrative such as the ping pong ball scene which most of our characters feature in.. Some of the actors that we feature in our music video were of an opportunity sample and were involved because they could be at the last minute if we had had people drop out. 

Unfortunately when selecting our characters we struggled to maintain actors as quite a few had a change of plan last minute or understandably had their own work to do. This left us with very few actors meaning that we had to simplify our idea or have people act more than once if they had the correct mise en scene costume wise.  

Although we faced difficulties when selecting the correct actors who would fit wit our idea for our music video, eventually we had to use people who were available and adapt our idea to the actors we had which in our opinion worked slightly better than we had originally planned for.  

  

Unfortunately, we were not able to gather pictures of our actors as we were too focused on filming and gathering sufficient footage for our music video that we could then use in our edit.

Print productions Case Study 1-Marina and the Diamonds- EDITED AS OF 29/03/17

How is Representation Created in Sia's Music video for The Greatest-EDITED AS OF 18/03/17

Sia is an Australian singer song writer who has been in the industry since 1993. Since her early days in the industry she has since produced no 1 hits such as Chandelier, The Greatest and Elastic Heart. Although Sia has been in the industry since 1993, she has only recently become more mainstream in the past couple of years due to collaborations with other artists such as Sean Paul and David Guetta who are predominantly known to be mainstream artists.
Sia's recent album This is Acting has sold over 68,000 copies worldwide which includes her recent single The Greatest and Cheap Thrills featuring Sean Paul. Her song The Greatest was written in aid of the Orlando shootings in the Gay nightclub Pulse which is now being turned into a memorial site  for the victims of that fatal night. The music video for the song was also made in mind of those shootings that night so has inferences to different things from that night. Representation is created through camera angles and mise en scene throughout the video. 

The music video for 'The Greatest' has several inferences to the shootings in Orlando within the mise en scene but also the actions that the dancers take in the music video as well as the lyrics which somewhat relate to each other. An example of the mise en scene inferring the shootings is by having the dancers wearing pride flag make up on their faces which refers to the sexuality of the main demographic who were killed in the nightclub. Although sexuality isn't externally presented in the actual music video, the music video is focused on the sexuality of the victims therefore presenting the element of sexuality and making it a popular topic to talk about with her fans. The lyrics relate to this part of the mise en scene due to them talking about not giving up in which the majority of Homosexual people in America were being forced to do due to people struggling with change and their religion forbidding any type of relationship other than heterosexual. There could be two interpretations of the lyrics of  'The greatest' in which they were about the victims of the shootings or it could also be direct address to them and the survivors of the shootings. By having the gay Pride flags featured in the music video it shows how the song is aimed towards an open audience who share the common interest of raising awareness about this event but it also allows for Sia's fans to learn about something that she is passionate about and this brings the fans and her closer but it could perhaps make this a topic for them to talk about and raise the awareness to them. This also creates the representation that the victims were strong people who had fought hard for their rights.

The Music video for 'The Greatest' shows predominantly all able children who are seen to be dancing around an abandoned house but the song is about people who may have suffered a disability or even worst died from the event, this is two contrasting things that although disability isn't actually present in the video the event that the song was inspired by caused many people to have disabilities even of it is mental disability like post traumatic disorder. The ability is shown by having children act as the victims of the shootings which represents how able they mentally and physically are. This creates a representation of ability and it connotes that everyone is able to have freedom of speech and expression. This is shown in the video but has a wider context in that the people who were shot lost their freedom or speech and expression.

The greatest video  has the greatest representation of age within the music video. Although the main age within  the music video is 12-13  years old if not younger it does feature some older teenagers to represent how freedom has no age limitations but also fully represent childhood and it makes the audience see the victims as children in which to the victim's parents they were. This allows for the audience to view the song in a different way by knowing the context  behind it but also by viewing the children as adults. This is a similar concept to Bugsy Malone in which the children act as adults and provide an alternative, more comedic version of a fictional reality in the 20's. The age is represented by having them as a collective group such as at 0:14 which emphasises their youth but it is also shown by having the young dancer isolated at 0:45 as well as showing copious amounts of emotion such as crying like a child. Their age is also represented through the gay pride flags and the dirt that they are covered in. The dirt has connotations of childhood but also childish mannerisms such as playing in the mud which is viewed as a childish game /action to take part in. As well as this, the way that they apply the pride flag could be seen as a childish mannerism due to the flag being paint which is normally associated with young children but they just wipe it down their face to produce the flag which has connotations of younger children playing with paint in primary school. This represents children as being careless and complacent with them selves as well as the items that they play with. This also creates the representation that children have Just as much to live for as adults and that they are equal which is shown by the children playing adults. At the beginning of the music video there is the hashtag #Weareyourchildren which shows how Sia wanted the actual children to represent adults and reiterate how the people who died in Orlando were somebody's child. This also shows how children are flexible in the roles that they play but also how they can be seen as the equivalent to an adult and how adults and children aren't so different apart from the age difference. The video doesn't show adults at all  in the whole video as it is based on children but it does make the adults the minority this could show how children are rebellious when young but adult are seen to conform in daily life.

Story board EDITED AS OF 21/04/17

shooting schedule

Intertextual references- EDITED AS OF 21/04/17

In our music video idea we have taken many different influences from a variety of music videos.
This extends to our choice of camerawork as well as our mise scene which includes the different characters costumes. For our choice of camera work we took influence from Tove lo's music video for habits. In our music video we plan on having a recurring pov of shot throughout the aforementioned to allow the audience to experience everything that our main character will experience but it also allows for them to have different perception of the events that happen in the music video as we plan to have different point of view shots from each character and then seeing whose point of view is most important and contains the most information about the events of the party setting. After filming and editing our music video we eventually chose to have one specific pov which is the protagonist's played by Emily Harvey.


In Tove Lo's music video for Habits throughout the video the most frequent shot was an eye level shot but this mostly exhibited the actual singer who was the subject of the video instead of what she was seeing but throughout the video it also exhibits her perception of her surroundings and allows for the audience to almost see what she is seeing and exhibit her experience of her life and the events that happen within it. Although this music video does not use the exact camera shots that we want to use it did give us the inspiration to use point of view shots in our video as we thought that this would be an efficient way to involve the audience with what is happening in our video whilst still distancing them from the events. By having some mid shots and high angle shots this shows a variety of camerawork instead of having a constant point of view shot as we want to be able to show that when we have a different characters point of view it has subtly changed but that the audience has noticed it isn't the same persons point of view it could be another bystander's view. With this in mind the video that showed us that point of view shots were capable within a music video was by The Prodigy called 'smack my b**** up' which was the only video that we could locate that uses point of view shots effectively whilst still keeping the audience interested and conveying the story. Although we didn't end up with as many point of view shots as we had originally planned for we did still have them quite frequently throughout the music video to make it obvious to the audience that the characters perspective has changed. We wanted to have Point of View shots as we thought that this would make the piece more individual and original compared to a previous music video for the song we picked. Tove lo's music video uses frequent eye level shots effectively which allow the audience to see the main character and her reaction to the party.

Picture 1

Another inter-textual reference that we included in our music video was a reference to a the film Mean Girls. This reference was made in our character choice, Bella's character, who we decided to base off of the character Regina George. In our music video this character wasn't stereo-typically wearing pink, she is in fact wearing black as we felt that this was more appropriate to our initial grand narrative. But her characters body language and attitude towards the main character depicted that she wasn't necessarily the nicest of people towards any characters apart from her close friends. We decided to base one of our characters off of a mean Girls character as it allowed us to have variance in each of our characters that an audience would instantaneously recognize. As well as this it would also be a character that the audience could relate to which opposes our main character who is completely indifferent to the situation that happens around her as well as being completely pulled in by these characters who encourage her to take part in their activities. This is similar to the character Regina George's actions as in the film she has a way of persuading Cady and the others to become similar to her.  The character Regina George stands for people who are higher class and not as ambitious which helps for a wider audience to relate to her and the entire music video.

As well as our Mean Girls inter-textual reference being included in most of the scenes in our music video as well as being part of the catalyst of our music video. We included references to Miley Cyrus's We Can't stop music video. This is shown by our use of the red plastic cups which although are a typical stereotype of American house parties, they are also featured in Miley's music video for Can't stop. The red plastic cups generally have connotations of parties and people having fun they are  normally a recognizable sign for parties. We decided to use red plastic cups as they are instantaneously recognizable to teenagers. Although this is generally known as an American tendency for parties we thought that it would allow for us to broaden our target audience demographics and make it more relatable to a wider audience of teenagers. Although Miley Cyrus' music video isn't the most appropriate video and is aimed at a slightly older audience we took this element from it to make Red a significant colour in our music video as the majority of it is very monotone colours, the red stands out and makes it memorable to the audience.

Lastly, we used The Breakfast Club as an inter-textual reference due to us originally planning to have different stereotypes in our music video. This was to make it appear more interesting and to widen our target audience and the different types of teenagers that could relate to our music video. The Breakfast club is a great example as they use this effectively through the clothing choices which for the main character, John allows him to rebel against dominant ideologies of education and authority. The directors choice to portray stereotypes in the main characters allows for the film to easily develop the characters and to make them more identifiable. In the planning stages of our music video we had similar stereotypes as The Breakfast club as it made it easier for the audience to identify each character, but when filming these stereotypes ended up changing due to costume issues and our original ideas changing. There were a variety of different characters in which although we struggled to accumulate actors we managed to develop the characters and make them individual whilst still ticking to our genre conventions for our characters.

This shows that there are inter-textual references throughout our music video even if they aren't the most obvious or displayed how people would expect them to be. It also shows how the inter-textual references that we include, stick to our genre conventions.

Audience Profiling-EDITED AS OF 21/04/17