Fantasy vs Reality

With our idea of boy meets girl, falls in love but doesn't get girl, we decided to go against the typical 'romcom' idea and portray real life events, and show our viewers that they are infact not alone in this situation.

Most music videos/films portray a fairy tale type story, of boy meets girl, they fall in love with eachother and end up happily ever after. However, this is not the case, and despite it being harsh, we wanted the audience to see real life events and get a taste of teenage life and hardships.

Instead of doing a 'Cinderella' type story, we have put our own twist on it to show the viewers the reality of being in your teens and the hardships that come with it. We decided this because we wanted to be honest, rather than giving the audience false hope or false 'dreams' to aspire over.

As well as this, the fairy tale type of story is very common, and we wanted to put our own twist on it to get the audience intrigued, rather than being bored of the same story and highlighting the unrequinted love.


This links to our target audience who enjoy watching rom coms, as it is the similar style.

Costumes

We have come up with outfits for each of our characters in our final music video piece.


Our main actor, the artist, will be wearing a plain white t-shirt that we will splatter with paint. This will portray his hard work and effort that has gone into the painting of the girl indicating his affection for her. This plain attire will also portray to the audience how he is very ordinary, and very relatable to the audience as just an "average joe".

We decided to go on the website 'Asos' because it is extremely popular with our target audience, making it very realistic and relatable.

Additionally, for our main girl actress, we decided to pursue our theme of 'the girl next door' and choose a casual outfit. This is to predominately express her features and express more of her facial features rather than her clothing. We also didn't want to portray a materialistic outlook in our video, so we chose something cute and casual. Our inspiration is Taylor Swift, who has the girl next door very casual and light hearted look.

For the main girl's boyfriend, we wanted to express that he was much more sophisticated than the painter. We decided this due to the fact we wanted to illustrate some form of superiority, and masculinity. Therefore we chose outfits that were much more classy, sophisticated and charming.

Key concepts of a music video

Star Image

The star image is Richard Dyer's theory for the grouping of materials that establish a star;

'a star is an image constructed from a range of materials'

This closely shows the relationship between products that affects the selling of a product. This can include lyrical themes in songs, album covers, media coverage of the artist, live performances, and music videos.

In particular, music videos often change directors between each one but still contain elements and successful ideas that were used in the previous video. This reinforces the existing 'star image' and sometimes furthers this to expand the image by including new talents, etc.

Voyeurism

Voyeurism is the idea of the males gaze in music videos, which is usually done by including a female within the music video and manipulating the camera to meet the desires of the male gaze. Theorists such as Goodwin suggest that female performers will become the target of the male gaze by using camerawork and editing to get close up shots of the body and showing a sexual treatment of the star. This can also be reinforced by the use of dancers in male artists videos in order to show the attraction to the performer.

In female artists videos, the idea of voyeurism when the male body is shown is confusing as it raises questions about how the female viewer will interpret and respond to the images shown. In some female artists videos, they do use this gaze to show that they are independent and that they can be sexually provocative and in control of the situation.

In music videos, voyeurism is shown through the use of split screens showing characters watching the video or CCTV or webcams. This style has become frequently used in music videos by RnB and Pop genres which focus on the 'star image' of an artist.

Intertextuality

The intertextuality of music videos often includes soundtracks to films and television programs which include a story line linked to the plot in the film - and often using clips and characters.

John Stewart suggests that the references in music videos through intertextuality usually come through from cinema, fashion and photography. This can include catwalk references and news with the use of supermodels and mannequin style females which also present and support the stereotype views shown in the media and in some songs.

The sources of intertextuality will grow with the changes in technology. John Stewart also suggests that video games will begin to influence the contents of music videos in terms of editing and graphics to aim at a larger audience.

Narrative and Performance

Music Videos often have an incomplete story line so the clips are broken and separated to show a potential narrative to the video. These clips can sometimes be re-arranged and placed in incoherent orders to make a substantial plot hard to discover and make sense. This often reinforces the idea of a multiple viewing in order to understand the video and all its parts.

Steve Archer suggests that there is a formulae to making videos.

"Often, music videos will cut between a narrative and a performance of the song by the band. Additionally, a carefully choreographed dance might be a part of the artist's performance or an extra aspect of the video designed to aid visualization and the 'repeatability' factor. Sometimes, the artist (especially the singer) will be a part of the story, acting as a narrator and participant at the same time. But it is the lip-synch close-up and the miming of playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band really can kick it."

By using these shots, it allows shots to establish eye contact with the audience and provide an intimacy which would not be otherwise available at a live event given by the band. This can be applied into my music video, where we used the cuts between establishing shots and a performance of the song as well as including a band member in the establishing shots.

Often the mise-en-scene, can affect the impression given by the music video and give a sense of authenticity with the stage performances in a music video. This is also important when using intertextuality within the music video with references to film - as doing a performance on the same set can create the link needed to link the two together.

Music video tips

Our teacher gave us some useful tips on how to make a successful music video:

- The essential idea of what we are doing is a manufacturing an artist for a song, and this will be that artists first release, and it is our job to make the video successful.

- We wil start with the image of the band, ensuring that their style is fit for the style of the song and that they know how to lip sync so their miming will be realistic. This means we can then create a concept for the video that will blend with the music.

- The artist we are creating has no fanbase at present, so it is up to us to get them out there via various marketing techniques and digipacks.

- The best type of music video contains three different narrative strands, a performance element, which the label think is vital as it acts as a fail save. A lip sync element, just simply singing in a situation with very few props. Lastly, a narrative element, the story, which will be led by genre and style. The music video will then consist of constant cutting between these narrative strands, this keeps the video exciting and interesting, and the audience entertained.

We were advised to make a 'mood film' or prezi which involves a set of images or a simple video to create short film to demonstrate the ideas for the final product. This helps clarify the idea, and helps identify potential problems.

Audience Questionnaire

To get a diverse range of opinions on music videos, I went round asking some of my peers questions on what they thought about music videos.

Here are the questions we asked:

"What music do you like?"

"what do you look for in a music video?"

"How important is the presentation of the artist in the video?"

"To what extent do you think the look of their artist will help the music video?"

"What makes a music video unique?"

"How important is the music video in the selling of a song?"

"Why do you watch music videos?"

"What do you like about music videos?"

"What do you dislike about music videos?"

From the responses to these questions from a range of 15-18 year olds, we gained a clear sense of what people wanted to see in a music video. We told them we'd be making a video for a pop artist who'd be similar to Ed Sheeran. They responded that it'd be equally important to see a mixture of a narrative and him singing to keep them entertained. Also to make him relatable and approachable as they didn't want someone who was out of reach. Therefore we have decided that we are going to make him a character who is unlucky in love so the audience can sympathise with him. Our target now is to look at ways that we can portray him as relatable to the audience

Aspects to a good music video

After lots of research, I have come up with several different ideas that all make a good music video.

See my results below.

Target Audience

Due to our song being by a synthetic artist, we have chosen a particular teenage target audience from ages 12 - 20. This is because the song we have chosen, 'Love Is Easy' by Mcfly, is about love.

Our idea to contradict the song came to us because we didn't want the same old 'lovey dovey' girl meets boy and falls in love. We wanted to show the audience the true reality and hardships of love. We have selected 12 - 20 year olds because that is the time when people start to become interested in the oppostite sex, and start to experience relationships. We wanted to portray the reality of love and all the baggage that comes with it.

We did this because we wanted to have a twist on it, and do something different, and, as stated before, not do the typical boy meets girl story.