Story board for our new music video.

New Ideas And Changes

Originally, I was in a group of four. We were falling behind with our music video so our teacher suggested splitting into two groups with the hope that we'd work better in smaller groups. Because of this, we had to choose a new music video to remake. Below, I will explain the new idea that me and my partner are planning to do.

We already had a rough idea of what we wanted our music video to be about. We didn't want another typical love story.

A big and ongoing issue in todays society is how young women are pressured to look a certain way. Everywhere you turn you see reminders that you need to try harder to look better. Television, magazines and all sorts of media outlets are constantly praising people for their good looks and people, especially young women, feel the need to follow the trend or keep up.  There are advertisements everywhere for different diet programs and companies that portray people who have lost weight, which signals to young people that they must be a certain weight to be accepted in society. There are airbrushed pictures of models in every magazine and tabloid that portray "beauty". People see these and compare their looks to the models, and then are discouraged and believe they aren't as attractive. Media exploits portray what society believes to be acceptable as far as beauty goes, and this puts pressure on everyday people to look like the unrealistic, airbrushed models the media portrays

So, after analysing the lyrics of this song and talking to my partner about this issue, we both agreed that not only would doing a video about a young girl battling with society and media pressurizing her to look a certain way be fitting to the song. But we also hoped that it would help other young women that are going through a similar situation as it should be a relate-able video.

Here are 3 main lines that i think are vital to the meaning of our song:

"Yeah, we're all wonderful, wonderful people" - Reminding us that we are all wonderful and there is no need to be insecure.

"Maybe we're a little different, there's no need to be ashamed, you've got the light to fight the shadows, so stop hiding it away" - Everyone is beautiful in their own way. Just because you may not look like a model, you have other beautiful things within yourself, don't hide those qualities. Be confident

"I'm not afraid" - Don't be insecure, Don't be afraid to show the world who you really are.

First draft of our chosen song.

Originally we were going to do Trey Song'z song Heart attack and this was our trial but then it didn't work out then we decided to do Emeli Sande's Read All About It.

Diary Entry for Heart Attack

Tuesday 26th November 15:00-17:00 Male Protagonists House (Cowley)

Today we filmed the first part of our music video with our male protagonist. The location we used was his house because this was where he was going to receive the bad news that his girlfriend was cheating on him. We had planned before hand to have the colour of the room red and black as these colours denote love and danger. Tuesday was the the right day for all of us as we did not have anything planned for after school and also our location was very near which was highly beneficial as we didn't have to waste a lot of our filming time. 

What we achieved in the shoot?
We had all of our props and costumes planned before hand, for example, the red bedsheets and the male protagonists costume so we were able to quickly head for the filming part. We had planned out every single shot we needed of the male protagonist as it would have been hard to get hold of him again. We also took a range of shots of the same thing just in case the camera position wasn't straight or the camera work was shaky. We decided to use many mid shots as these shots show some part of the subject in more detail, whilst still showing enough for the audience to feel as if they were looking at the whole subject. These shots worked really well because as well as being a comfortable, emotionally neutral shot, the mid shot allows room for hand gestures and a bit of movement. As our male protagonist was going to be using his phone as he receives the bad news it fitted in really well in showing the audience what is happening in the mis en scene.

Overall, this shoot was really successful as we got a various amount of frames done within two hours. As we had a range of shots, editing was fairly easy because we could adjust wrong camera movements. A difficulty during this shoot was that the lighting wasn't quite right due to the poor weather. For next time we have organised to bring an extra light so our frames wont look poor in lighting quality. However a strength of todays filming was the male protagonists acting and the various shots and angles we were able to film.

What we need to achieve next time?

-We need to film our female protagonists single shots like we did today

-We need to improve the lighting of the room by bringing in an extra light
-We need to plan a time when both our female protagonist and male protagonist are able to film together 
-We need to have a more balanced low angle, possible balancing the camera on the floor instead of holding it in our hands.
-Re-film some shots

Tuesday 3rd December 15:00-16:00 Male Protagonists House (Cowley)

Today was our second day filming.We were eager to get on with it because our last shoot went really well. The shoot today was based on re-filming existing shots and playing around with colourcombinations and lighting. From our feedback from our media teacher we were advised to have our male protagonist in more professional costume and instead of having red and black bedding we should have more neutral colours for e.g brown the reason for this was because the colour brown is a serious, down-to-earth colour signifying stability, structure and support. We choose this colour because it relates to our male protagonist being stable and comfortable at home. 

WE DID NOT CARRY ON WITH THIS PROJECT SO THERE ARE NO MORE DIARY ENTRIES.

Lyric analysis for heart attack.

Feminist interpretations of music videos, 2012-2013

In this modern day, women are portrayed as objects. they are not seen as humans. They could be compared to material things such as cars, jewellery, money and etc. This is shown in a lot of media texts such as music videos, films and magazines.

The male gaze is a theory which was  developed  by Laura Mulvey to highlight the power imbalance between men and women analysing the way men look at women and the way women view themselves and other women. The theory suggests that we as an audience are forced to view the women from the perspective of a heterosexual male, media such as films and music videos constantly focus on women’s curves and events that happen to them are normally portrayed at a male angle. Mulvey believes that people are encouraged to gaze at women in media such as adverts that sexualizes a woman's body even when the woman's body is unrelated to the advertised product. She also suggests that the audience view media such as films in two ways: voyeuristically and fetishistically. As audiences watch films without being watched by the characters they become onlookers of their lives. Therefore they become voyeurs of the people on screen. This can lead to objectification of the characters. Voyeurism involves turning the represented figure into a fetish so it becomes increasingly beautiful but more objectified.

Media texts such as music videos and mainstream films highlight how women are viewed and sexually objectified by the public and the the women themselves. Music videos such as 'Cant stop' by Miley Cyrus, 'Work' by Britney Spears, 'Hard out here' by Lilly Allen and 'Blurred Lines' by Robin Thicke. In all these videos all the women have been sexually objectified. They are shown as sex objects and eye candy mainly for the men's satisfaction.

In Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, the music video shows women as sexual objects. The women are dressed in minimal clothing, and they show a great deal of flesh which is obviously for the satisfaction of  men. Although the girls are represented as eye candy and sex objects. One could argue that the girls actually sort of have an influence on the guys because they are making them work hard to get the girl and also we could argue that the girls are sort of dominating the guys and the guys are submissive to the girls.

Lyric wise, the song contains verses such as 'i know you want it' and 'coz you're a good girl'. This lyrics focus on the fact that the girls could be innocent but they are not because the male characters are insinuating that the girls want them.

Pitch for our music video

Our music video pitch will sketch a rough idea of what our music video will be about.

A couple in modern day Britain reminisce on the past and how they met through looking at pictures that were taken on a phone.

We thought of this as our pitch, as it clearly illustrates our music video narrative. We thought of an ordinary storyline where a young couple remember the past through flashbacks. They meet at a bus stop and from then on start to date.

One problem with this pitch though, was that it doesn't have a conflict, and thus seemed dull.We thought to include a conflict where the girl breaks up with the boy. We thought of different conflicts, where the boy falls ill and so the girl takes care of him. Originally this was our first shot and then the flashbacks would come on.

final pitch.

Two ordinary teenagers meet. They start dating. Fall in love. But every love story has its own twist. 

This pitch provides an interesting and short synopsis of our narrative. 

Changes to our narrative:

Re-thinking our narrative, we thought of the girl getting with another boy, giving the previous boy a 'heart attack'. This can be shown by the boy throwing a tantrum, or pushing a chair. Because of this, the start of the video would show the teenage boy on the bed by himself looking through images on his phone of him and his girlfriend. 

We decided to include match on match action at the end of the music video. This would happen when the boy sees his girlfriend with another boy.