Bat for Lashes - Music Video

Bat for Lashes - What's a Girl To Do

Natasha Khan (Bat for Lashes) is an English Singer/songwriter, whose music video 'Whats a Girl to do'  has features which link well with Goodwin's theory, making it a perfect peace to analyse.
The first important feature of all is the use of intertextual references to media texts, in this case the masks link to both 'Donnie Darko' and 'The Wicker Man'. In 'Donnie Darko' a large bunny symbolises the protagonist's madness and represents his separation from reality as well as true human contact. In 'What's a Girl To Do' the only other characters on stage apart from Natasha are supernatural beings, this  links to her own distancing from reality. The fact that there are many masked creatures on either side of her shows that she is torn between emotions and that each creature symbolises one of her faults, emotions or issues. The reference to 'The Wicker Man' is once again based around the masks. In 'The Wicker Man' the members of a remote island village believe that sacrificing a policeman from the main land will cause their crops to grow once more. The villagers wear animal masks near the end of the film in order to hide their identities and become closer to their religion and beliefs. This link could be made in the sense that she is hiding her true self from others and that the animals could symbolise her beliefs and aspirations concerning her love.

The next reference to Goodwin's theory is the idea that Lyrics and Visuals must be linked in a successful music video. Although our music video is without lyrics, the links between the genre and the video are still important and must be considered if our own music video is to appeal to our audience. The lyrics reference 'Dreams' throughout the track whilst linking to imagery of the supernatural, this creates the link between the video and the track giving it purpose and allowing the audience to understand the relevance of the scenes.

The video also demonstrated characteristics of the Genre which is key to Goodwin's theory. In 'Whats a Girl To Do' the genre is primarily electronica which is known best for linking to bright lights, in this music video the bikes each have a light attached, this links to the discos and clubs that electronica is played. Another reason is that the bike lights bring the attention to the masked creatures and create the sense that they can clearly see what others can't.

Bat for Lashes - Music Video

Bat for Lashes - What's a Girl To Do

Natasha Khan (Bat for Lashes) is an English Singer/songwriter, whose music video 'Whats a Girl to do'  has features which link well with Goodwin's theory, making it a perfect peace to analyse.
The first important feature of all is the use of intertextual references to media texts, in this case the masks link to both 'Donnie Darko' and 'The Wicker Man'. In 'Donnie Darko' a large bunny symbolises the protagonist's madness and represents his separation from reality as well as true human contact. In 'What's a Girl To Do' the only other characters on stage apart from Natasha are supernatural beings, this  links to her own distancing from reality. The fact that there are many masked creatures on either side of her shows that she is torn between emotions and that each creature symbolises one of her faults, emotions or issues. The reference to 'The Wicker Man' is once again based around the masks. In 'The Wicker Man' the members of a remote island village believe that sacrificing a policeman from the main land will cause their crops to grow once more. The villagers wear animal masks near the end of the film in order to hide their identities and become closer to their religion and beliefs. This link could be made in the sense that she is hiding her true self from others and that the animals could symbolise her beliefs and aspirations concerning her love.

The next reference to Goodwin's theory is the idea that Lyrics and Visuals must be linked in a successful music video. Although our music video is without lyrics, the links between the genre and the video are still important and must be considered if our own music video is to appeal to our audience. The lyrics reference 'Dreams' throughout the track whilst linking to imagery of the supernatural, this creates the link between the video and the track giving it purpose and allowing the audience to understand the relevance of the scenes.

The video also demonstrated characteristics of the Genre which is key to Goodwin's theory. In 'Whats a Girl To Do' the genre is primarily electronica which is known best for linking to bright lights, in this music video the bikes each have a light attached, this links to the discos and clubs that electronica is played. Another reason is that the bike lights bring the attention to the masked creatures and create the sense that they can clearly see what others can't.

Music Festivals

Music Festivals

Over the last few years Music Festivals have increased in popularity, the key reason behind this is the fact that they have become social events for Target Audiences. There are several reasons behind the rising popularity of Music Festivals, A main reason would be the the mass media and the influential TV stations and websites that display a large range of Music Videos. There is also Facebook and other social networking sites are used to trend Music Videos as well as people being able to communicate with others that appreciate the same genres.

Festivals recreate the social aspects of Social Networking sites like Facebook and twitter and offers a sense of belonging. This is one of the reasons why Festivals are becoming steadily more popular. Festivals also have the holiday aspect to them and this makes them seem more desirable than gigs due to the length of time and greater possibility to interact with the people around.

Green Man Festival

The Green Man Festival audience relates more to the target audience of our own music video. The promotional poster shown on the left gives a very natural acoustic vibe and the colour pallet of Orange, yellow and  green helps to strengthen the genre.
The list of artists attending is layed out in order to create the atmosphere of a gathering or social experience, this is effective because it helps appeal both the genre and the sub cultures surrounding the genre.
The artists and Bands are not exactly mainstream and this shows that the festival is for a niche audience to appreciate and that the poster tries only to appeal towards their target audience and no one more.

Latitude Festival

The Promotional poster for Latitude varies greatly from the Green Man's poster. The use of Greens and Blues helps create a healthy desirable location and the poster is set out like an invitation in order to confirm the sense of belonging.
The band and Artists names are in Bold and only the most important bands are mentioned, this shows that latitude are appealing for a much more mainstream audience and that the niche bands are not the reason for attending.
Unlike the Green Man's poster, Latitude's poster shows the location. Selling the location links to the idea that the festival is more of a social event than a musical event. Latitude's poster does not conform to any specific genres but instead confirms the most popular artists and bands of the era.

Download Festival

The poster for Download Festival contrasts with Latitudes and links well with that of The Green Man. The poster confirms genre and advertises the music rather than the events taking place. The music is specific to its target audience and the poster is set out in order to appeal to that audience.

The posters Gothic Fonts and underlying black background links it to its audience of metal fans. The poster sells to this audience through the typical fonts and colour palest.

Our Music Video's Target Audience

This mood board is centred around the style of our target audience, the audience is very indie and unique, the clothes reflect the clothes worn by the artists in the acoustic genre and the influence the genre has on its audience is very strong.

The shop shown in the bottom left is a Vintage clothes shop. Our Audience, who are influenced by the genre, wear vintage yet fashionable clothes, This relates to the artists they admire and the effect that the music video's of the genre have on their audience. An example of the Artist's fashion being influential is with Bob Dylan. His clothes matched his genre whilst mainly being outdated or 'vintage' clothing.

Our target audience would, as well as enjoy listening to the music of the genre, also likely play their own instrument and enjoy making their own music in this genre. This means that the audience would appreciate a video that reflects the mood of the genre.

The age of our Target audience is hard to determine, many people appreciate the genre because of Bob Dylan and whilst an older generation would of been influenced by Woody Guthrie, who was Bob Dylan's idol. This means that our target audience covers many different generations but mainly the younger generations will be able to see our music video due to social networking and its attraction to the younger generations.

Location Shots

Our Music video has three major locations:

The main location is 'Wonderland', these scenes will be shot in Norwich's 'Plantation Gardens'.

In this scene our Protaganist wakes up after opening Pandora's Box. She is followed by strange masked men. The scene ends with the Protaganist crossing a bridge into the next scene.

The next location is a bustling city with low angle shots of tall buildigs and a much darker mise-en-scene.

The Juxtaposition between the two locations creates a depressing atmosphere which helps the audience relate to how lost the protaginist is in this new industrialised world. The final scene is 'reality', which in many ways is less realistic than the new worlds she imagines, this could relate to the idea of perfection being infected by political and economical issues of today, and that the evil in pandora's box is modern society.

This puts a spin on the 'Alice in Wonderland' tale and relates to our niche target audience that may dislike modern society and dream of their own 'Wonderland'.

Our final location is 'Reality', this location is in a garden up against a fence, our protagonist is sitting up against a red table staring into Pandora's Box. This location is an effective choice because it links to the first ever colour film and this creates an exciting intertextual reference for our audience.

The music video begins in 'reality', then when out main character opens Pandora's Box she is transported to Wonderland. After being chased by masked men she crosses a bridge into a large City where she feels trapped and alone, she then rushes back to Wonderland in order to escape her fears.

First Shoot

This is our First Shoot, this is raw footage and teaches us what we need to do in order to improve for the

next shoot. We had too many mid shots and to capture the genre perfectly we will need to use more low angles and shoot in more areas, for example Shop Fronts and more of the Industrial Architecture in order

to create binary opposites.

Intertextual References -

The first intertextual reference that stuck us when planning our Music video was the links between our imagery and the 'Tenniel illustrations for Alice in Wonderland'. From this we decided to link another intertextual reference which would be the idea of Alice becoming smaller as she enters Wonderland, perhaps having an item like the shrinking potion which creates the Gateway between Reality and Wonderland.
The dress worn by Alice in this image links to the costume worn by our own main character, this is a link between the purity and youth of both characters.

Another Intertextual reference comes from the original 1903 film of "Alice and Wonderland", The masked bunny shown at the beginning of the video relates to the creatures that haunt our main Character, the idea that this dreamland is more of a nightmare becomes clearer as the Creatures become closer and consequently more haunting.
Shown in the beginning of this
clip we see that the Masked Bunny crosses between Alice's dream world and reality, This is shown when the bunny climbs through a hole. We decided that this could be shown in our own video by having the masked creatures escape the dreamworld and capture the main character as she sleeps.

A third intertextual reference comes from Greek Mythology, Pandora's Box is the story of the first woman on earth and how she defies the Gods by opening a Box that should never be opened, inside the Box is all the evil within the world and Pandora allows these evils to escape. The link here is that in our own music video our main character opens a box only to release the masked creatures upon the world. The Box is also potentially the gateway between our main characters Reality and her Dreams.

The forth and final Intertextual reference comes from 'The Wicker Man'. The masked characters within The Wicker Man symbolise the different culture and the different norms that this culture has. This is an interesting link because the norms of the masked creatures in 'The Wicker Man' involve burning a man alive for faith, this could relate to the evil that possesses the masked creatures in our Music Video and the fact that nothing stops them once they have escaped their box.

Story and Mood Boards

Mood Board by Lyndsey Wise - Original ideas and intertextual references within our music video.

Character Costumes

 This costume will be worn at the begining of the music video by Lyndsey who will be playing the main character of the video. We related the costume to both Alice's from 'Alice in Wonderland' and Dorothy from 'The Wizard of Oz'.

We made this intertextual reference because all three characters are stolen from reality in some form.

The shoes worn to by our main character are very important features of the costume, the white and black colours link to the Black and White colour scheme used throughout "Alice in Wonderland with the Playing Cards" and the magical shoes warn by Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz"

The masked creatures will be played by
Robin and Lyndsey. The masked animals were modelled around small Toys that Lyndsey's character finds and the masks worn by the cast of "The Wicker Man". This is a strong intertextual reference because the instruments used in "The Wicker Man" soundtrack are the same as those used in our own soundtrack "Antiques", as well as this the masks relate to the plot of The Wicker Man where the main character is captured far from their natural environment.

Finished shot list - Still needing to be edited a bit.

Shot one: The music Video opens in black and White with the generic opening shot to a silent film (A telescopic shot) The miss-en-scene shows a girl sitting at a table looking at a Box.

This relates to Alice in Wonderland, Pandoras Box and the earliest footage for a colour film.

Shot two: We see the girl open the box from a high angle shot, this confirms her original status within the video, as she opens the box colour returns to the shot, she removes several animal toys and begins to play with them. This shot ends with the colour increasing until the screen is white and nothing can be seen.

Shot three: Dissolve back into a point of view shot from the girl, The girl is now in a large field and she is looking up at a large Human Bunny (This relates to the toys she was playing with before). She gets up and runs from the Bunny.

Shot four: Cut between tracking shots of the girl running through the fields and shots of the animal masked men appearing from the earth to follow her. (This relates to the evil that exists within Pandoras Box and that once the Box is opened there is no true escape)

Shot five: The girl, now dressed differently to show her changing status is shot at a low angle as she starts to run through a forest. The animals still follow her in the distance and are shown to have more control over their limbs as each shot passes.

Shot six: The forest comes out onto a bridge and the girls costume has once again changed, she is now walking into the city which shows her changing environment and the idea that the true evil that escaped from the Box was social control.

Shot seven: the girl is shot from low angle shots with large tower blocks and industrial buildings behind her, this shows that she is trying to over power the new world. The creatures are shot from high angles now to show their power weakening outside the forests. The city is shown to be a second evil to escape the Box and the girl is torn between two worlds.

Shot eight: The Masked men are slowly approaching the table where the girl is located sleeping, cut between the girl running back across the bridge and the animals approaching the girl.

Shot nine: The girl tries to undo what she has done by opening the Box and attempts to awaken from her sleep by returning to the field. We start once again to see colour fade from the shots

Shot ten: The girl runs back through the forest and into the field, the shots are becoming dimmer and dimmer as she does so. We dissolve between the girl running and the masked creatures lowering a mask onto the sleeping girls face.

Shot eleven: The girl is shot standing in a field wearing a mask, the shot slowly turns to colour as the bunny from the first shot walks over to her. The two grasp hands and the bunny leads the Masked girl forwards.

Shot twelve: the mood has lifted and the shot pans out from the image of the bunny and the girl lying happily together in the field. The shot fades out and when it fades in we see the doll of a small girl being lowered inside the box, the lid of the box is then closed and a Bunny mask is slowly lowered on top of the lid. The shot dissolves into black and the video ends.

Africa Shox

'Africa Shox' by Left Field

The first thing we notice is the bands name, Left Field, this instantly connotes to their political position and the idea that they are part of the left wing parties. The video shows that the band believe racism and inequalities are far too prominent in the US and that New York is in  fact the opposite of the Utopia  it is usually portrayed as.

The opening shots show many large metallic buildings, this represents the depression and the idea of New York being an un-natural environment that is hard to survive in. The buildings also create the sense of being oppressed, the strict grey colours link directly to the idea of New York being a Dystopia.

From the beginning of the video we see the genre (Electronica) shining through, in the first shots we see a police car with its sirens blazing, this could represent the strobe lighting effect used in most clubs and connotes again to the culture behind the music.

The main character is a homeless black man who is isolated from everybody within society, the confusion on his face and the stiff gestures of his body language show that he is new to the environment and that he is suppressed more than the other members of this society. The atmosphere created seems like hell and throughout the video the further he walks to more he begins to die, being literally shattered by society.

The use of a black actor relates to the slave trade and the poem 'Limbo' which references the Slaves being packed on top of each other in small gaps when boarding the slave ships. The word limbo also relates to being between Heaven and Hell and once again relates to the political spectrum with the idea of one political route being Heaven whilst the other is Hell.

As the video progresses the main character steeps even lower within society, we see this when the main characters arm is broken off by a random pedestrian. This connotes two things, firstly the idea that the chains of slavery were removed but that the black community is still treated with the same lack of respect. The second being the idea of his soul being broken by the white community in New York and that anything which goes against the Norms of the city should be removed.

Near the end of the video (once the main character has had most of his limbs broken off) we see an underground car-park with three white middle aged men break dancing. This shows that LeftField is aimed at a small proportion of the population and that the audience for the video is a small sophisticated niche group.

The idea that the black man shatters throughout the video relates to the idea that black culture is falling apart and the idea that the black man trips and shatters into hundreds of pieces connotes to the idea that the suppression on the black community is increasing throughout new york.

Creating masks

Lyndsey and I decided to use masks in our music video. Due to the lack of vocals on our track we has the possibility to create a small story. We decided to show the escapades of a young girl opening up a small wooden box and finding toys inside, as the girl studied and played with the toys life size models of the toys came to life. This is a link to pandoras box and adds to the back dated theme we intended to set.


Animal masks seemed like the best idea and we decided to mould our own masks on the masks used in the 1973 film 'The Wicker Man.'
We decided to make several
masks, so that we had a variation in animals.


The Bunny, Cat, Mouse and Pig were chosen due to the fact that my younger sister has some small toys that would work well for the toys inside the box.

The intertextual references between our music video and 'The Wicker Man' do not stop there, when working on the climax of the video we realised that the masks could be worn by anybody and that the video could end with the Small girl putting one of the masks on. This links to the idea of the policeman in 'The Wicker Man' being stolen away by primitive people and the temptations that surround Pandora's Box.

Potential plot.

- A young girl dressed in a out dated (vintage) costume (dress) is stationed in a large field completely alone.

-She takes toys out of a small wooden box and begins to play with them in the grass. (This will be a close up shot of her hands and will quickly cut to an overshoulder shot.)

- Cut to a split screen with the young girl dominating most of the screen whilst two ( of the four in total) masked men (dressed with animal masks to look like human versions of the girls animal toys) are appearing from the taller grass in the other two sections of the split screen.

-Cut between several different shots showing the escapades of the masked men as they recreate the actions the girl is creating with the toys.

The shots included in this particular scene will be:

-Extreme close ups

- low angle tilts

-high angle shots

-close ups

-tracking shots

-panning in and out shots

- The cuts between each shot become shorter and shorter as the toys (masked men) proceed to get closer to the girl

- A split screen will be used as the masked men reach the girl and pull her from the shot

The shots included in this particular scene will be:

-birdseye view of the girl

-close up tilt of masks

-tracking shot of the hands of the masked men as they reach towards the girl

- The previous scene fades out for 2 seconds and fades into a close up of the feet of one of the masked men. The camera then pans up to the torso and head of the masked men to reveal the wooden toy box in the one of the mens hands. A toy of the girl is placed inside the box and the lid is closed.

- End on a shot of the toys returning to their orignal locations in the field

Inspirational music videos

Beirut - Elephant Gun

This Music Video is very interesting because of the way it utilises old camera techniques within a more modern scenario, this is shown in the opening scene where the shot dissolves out from one central shot. This is used in many early 20th century  films like "The poor little rich Girl" and most of Charlie Chaplin's work. This is effectively implies to the audience the Era in which the music video is set. 

This instantly leads to an image of a Ukulele being played, this helps to conform the genre of the track. The shot then tracks across some alcohol to the singer, this implies that the events in the video might be imaginary due to how drunk he is. 

Another interesting feature is the controversial use of Goodwin's theory that voyeurism is used to attract the audience. In this video the cast are seen dancing provocatively but instead of the women being objectified both genders dance in the same manner whilst wearing very unattractive clothes. This is an interesting effect because it notices the classic use of voyeurism but choses to turn it on its head instead of use it in its plainest form.

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Bubble

Another video that interested me was Bubble by King Creosote and Jon Hopkins. I felt that the mood of this piece was similar to the mood I intended to recreate in my own video. The tranquil mood is created through the use of certain colours. In this video light blues and light browns are used through out to create the right atmosphere. The colour pallet used sets the video in late winter or after some kind of disaster in the town. The dogs mood is shown less in his actions and more in the environment he has found himself in. Another Director who uses very limited pallets is Wes Anderson, the use of mustards and turquoises can be seen across each of his films and they always adapt the mood of each scene to fit the genre.

Antiques

This is the chosen track for our media music video, he chose a track without lyrics because it would be more challenging but offer the opportunity of creating a more in-depth short story.

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