These are glasses that are stereotypically associated to 'geeks', academics which are quiet in areas of study but often have eccentric personalities around friends and outside of classes. This relates well to some of the lyrics 'At school, Mariella didn't have many friends, yeah, the girls there, they looked at her and thought she was quite strange'.We decided this would suit our music video as we wanted to create the character 'Mariella' which the lyrics are based around, she is a troubled girl who is trying to rebel against her mother. By using this item, it complies to the stereotypical image the audience will have of a 'geek' therefore meeting their expectations throughout. We have chosen this as it is an effective prop as it is the first thing you see on Alex's face, therefore attracting the audiences attention and giving them enigma from the beginning of the music video. It will also fit into the rest of the costume provided, creating a believable character for the audience as they will 'buy into' the music video due to this iconography. We also decided to make our character (Alex) have frizzy hair, whilst wearing no make-up. This shows Mariella does not care about her appearance, something that is stereotypically associated with females. This, therefore makes the music video more interesting as it goes against society's expectations of women wearing make up and we have chosen to do this too fit into the characters personality that we are trying to show during filming.
During filming, a black dress is used to show how Alex's personality as she does not want lots of attention in school, however rebels at home in her own environment. This is in sync with the lyrics 'She marched to her wardrobe and threw away the colour, because wearing black looks mysterious, but it didn't impress her mother.' This shows how the image on screen will be in sync with the lyrics. We have chosen to do this because it represents her simple thoughts, whilst being filmed effectively on a white background or surrounding bright colours.
We chose to use a colourful outfit as part of the costume during our filming, as changing outfits keeps up with the fast pace of a music video whilst keeping the audience interested. It also represents her childlike personality and immaturity, as Alex is wearing a multi coloured flower printed skirt with a red top to show her simple thoughts. She also wears a different multi - coloured print dress during a scene inside a house. This is in keeping with the rest of the music video showing how her personality is eccentric and we are trying to portray this to the audience. This is also filmed in a park to portray this idea clearly to the audience, the lyrics also suggest this idea would be well suited to our music video. 'But Mariella just smiled as she skipped down the road because she knew all the secrets in her world.'
During filming the scene in the park, we decided to position Alex on a slope near the lake and get her to blow bubbles when birds were in the water behind her. We decided to do this because it creates a good, unusual effect and back drop which we can use, and the prop is associated with children. Luckily for us, the location was perfect for representing a immature, childlike figure and the birds in the background are often associated with children as children like to feed the birds at the park. We decided to use 'colourful bubbles' as they looked more effective on film when the sunlight reflected on them, as the colours could be seen. They also had a brightly coloured bottle which we felt would help our filming. Therefore, due to this, we disregarded our original idea of normal bubbles as we felt these would be more effective.
One of our props was a pritt stick, as we needed this to have the image on screen relates to the lyrics. The image of Alex with pritt stick will be in sync with the lyrics 'She got some pritt stick and she glued her lips together'. We have decided to use this as a prop as it relates to the lyrics and we can show this to the audience, it will also attract the audiences attention by using brand recognition and keep them interested in our music video. Due to these lyrics being quite unusual it fits the genre of this music video well.
Another prop we decided to use was alphabet letters, this links to the running theme of childlike behaviour and development throughout the music video. It also links to the lyrics 'And she could do the alphabet backwards without making any mistakes'. As we show this happening on screen, this is because we have the alphabet spelt backwards on a fridge door and you can see Alex putting the last few letters on. We feel this is an effective decision because the bright colours will give aesthetically pleasing image to the audience.
During filming a scene at school, we needed to link the lyrics to the images on screen, therefore we decided to film Alex sitting on her own, reading a book when the lyrics are 'At school Mariella didn't have many friends'. This shows Mariella (Alex) being isolated by an area that is always busy. This prop is significant to our film production as it gives the audience an assumption about Mariellas personality, which may change throughout the film. This keeps the audience interested as they will have an idea in their mind which may change as the film production develops.
The last prop we used was teddy bears for the tea party scene, this was significant as it shows her childlike personality compared to her age, as she is drinking tea which many children don't like. We felt this would be an extremely strong scene in our music video, as it is so different it may go against the audiences expectations. 'You can have your friends 'round and they can stay for tea. Won't you just try to fit in please, do this for me.' Is the lyrics we will be using when showing this scene, throwing a different style of image from what the audience would usually expect from the lyrics.
Lake Meadows park We chose to film here as this is suitable location for our music video as it fits the pop genre with brightly coloured surroundings, such as bright red and pink flowers. It also relates to the childlike theme we are trying to put across to our audience as a park is usually assoicated with children. The picture below shows an area where we filmed in Lake Meadows, we used the birds in the background as part of the scene where Alex was blowing colourful bubbles.
Shenfield High School
We needed to go back to the high school in order to film the scene where the lyrics are 'At school Mariella didn't have many friends, yeah the girls they all looked at her and thought she was quiet strange. And boys, there not really into girls at that age, and the teachers just thought Mariella was going through a phrase'. This wouldn't be suited to any other location apart from a school due to the nature of the lyrics. Approaching Shenfield school to film was simple to do as we chose to film when the school wasn't busy so we could time manage our filming project efficiently. This worked well however we had to reshoot some footage as there was issues with continuity. Also, our intended audience are teenagers and young adults, so they will recongise the location immediately and be able to relate to our music video.
My House We had to film in my house as my extention has large plain white walls which would be a suitable back drop for the beginning of our film as Alex is wearing a black dress. These two colours work together to create a strong opening to our music video, as it is unusual. We also used my bedroom for 'she marched to her wardrobe and threw away the colour, because wearing black looked mysterious but it didn't impress her mother she wanted to dress her baby in patterns and flowers but Mariella just crossed her arms and so she cried for hours'.
Garden We decided to film in my garden as its large and created a natural enviroment to a music video, as we filmed 'never had to speak never had to speak never had to speak, people used to say shes as quiet as a mouse she didn't make a peep' as a mouse is an animal we tried to get this as a suitable environment.
Field We considered filming this in a field, however a garden is easier as there is less risk and interruptions from the general public. It also means that props etc wouldn't get ruined if the weather changed quickly.
Public footpaths We also filmed in public footpaths to link to the lyrics 'But Mariella just smiled as she skipped down the road' and we chose to do this as it created a different style of environment for our music video.
Day 1 – Monday 17th October 2011 at 1.15pm, meeting on the benches at school. We decided to film the school scenes in the two hours we had free that afternoon. We wanted to film the scene with Alex looking isolated at school while the others laugh at her, a scene where the boys are running past Alex for the line saying ‘the boys aren’t really into girls at that age’.
Day 2 – Monday 24nd October 2011 at 9.05am, meeting outside school after signing out. We planned to film as much as we could for the house scenes. We are going to use Mary’s house for this as she lives within walking distance of the school. The scenes inside the house include the first verse, the verse where the song describes Mariella throwing all of the colour out of her wardrobe and a scene in the garden when she glues her lips together.
Day 3 – Friday 28th October 2011 at 9.05am, meeting outside school after signing out. We planned to film the rest of the scenes in the house that we did not finish the day before and also to go to Billericay to film the scenes in the park. This would include the scenes that say ‘she skipped down the road’, we decided to film in Billericay as the path there was very good for that line as it was straight and the trees looked effective on the camera.
Day 4 – Friday 4th November 2011 at 10am, meeting outside school after first lesson. This day we decided to film the rest that we hadn’t yet. This included the rest of the school scenes and anything else that needed finishing inside the house. This is hopefully the last day we are going to film.
Day 5 - Monday 14th November 2011 at 9.05am, meeting outside school after signing out. We have decided to try and get the rest of the filming done. We have the first verse, one chorus and 3 lines to film left. This shouldn't take too long to film which is why we are using 3 hours to film. If we do not get everything we would like finished then we hope to film on Friday for two hours.
Day 6 - Wednesday 23rd November 2011 at 9.05am, meeting outside school after form. We want to film anything else that we haven't already and try to make this the last filming day. We only have the first chorus and the school scene left to film. We are going to use the whole day to film as we want to get it finished and edited before the deadline.
Day 7 - Friday 25th November 2011 at 1.15pm, meeting in class after form. Today we wanted to film the school scenes as we did not get to film this the last time we filmed. This shouldn't take too long as it only consists of two lines.
Day 8 - Monday 28th November 2011 at 1.15pm, meeting in the editing suit after form. We decided to film today as we wanted to insert an extra scene with Alex's glittery lips to fasten the editing pace and link the album cover to the music video.
Today we wanted to film a few scenes from the school section of the song. The main problem we had was that we didn’t actually film anything. This is because we were about to film and started discussing different shots we could do, from doing this we wasted 2 hours. On the other hand, from this experience we have planned the other days we want to film a lot better and thought about the shots we want to use to save time. Also, we were not very well organised as we only brought the camera and not the correct props with us.
Day 2 – Monday 24th October 2011 at 9.05am.
Today we wanted to film as much as we could inside the house. We honestly didn’t have many problems with this day of filming; one thing that could have gone better is that we used our time more effectively. Also, the camera battery kept dying, this could not have been stopped as the camera was fully charged at the beginning of the day, it was just the amount of filming we did. To avoid wasting anymore time, while we had lunch we left the camera plugged into the laptop to charge. This charged the camera for around an hour more, but we had to keep having 10 minute breaks waiting for the camera to charge. On the plus side, we filmed a lot! We got really good scenes that we are both happy with and thought of more and better ideas whilst filming that we had not thought of before. We also did a few different shots so we have a choice when editing to see which one looks better. Alex changed outfits twice during filming. The first outfit was a colourful dress to show the girls immaturity and fun side. The second was a black dress as this ties into the lyrics where it says she threw all the colour away. Alex also wore glasses as we wanted the audience to find out more of the girls personality through her outfit.
Day 3 – Friday 28th October 2011 at 9.05am.
Today we wanted to film in Billericay for the line that says ‘she skipped down the road’ and ‘in her own world’. Again, not a lot went wrong for this day of filming. The only thing that could have gone better was using our time effectively as when we got a lift to Billericay we went straight to our location, we then had to go to a toy shop where we bought a packet of multi-coloured magnetic alphabet and bubbles which was the other side of the high street. We then had to walk all the way back down to the station to get the train back to Mary’s house. This could have been stopped by thinking what we needed when we were that side of the high street instead of wasting time that we could have spent filming. Surprisingly, quite a lot went right for us. We found very good locations in Billericay we used for scenes that we didn’t have many ideas for, including a duck pond which looked extremely good when we filmed and all the ducks came over. The props we used for this day of filming were multi-coloured alphabet letters and bubbles we purchased that day, glasses and different outfits.
Day 4 – Friday 4th November 2011 at 10am.
Today we wanted to finish the last of all the filming. We filmed the rest of the scenes from the school as I had a different outfit on that was smarter which would be perfect for a school scene. There was one problem we had which was that Alex forgot the ‘geek’ glasses so every scene we wanted to film ended up being an over-the-shoulder shot or from the back so the audience will not notice that we didn’t have the glasses. We filmed the scene where it says ‘the girls there, they looked at her and thought she was quite strange’ in the song. For this, we filmed a close up of Alex’s face with 3 girls sitting on a bench in the background pointing and laughing at her. Another scene we filmed today was with the crosswords where it says ‘she always got the crossword puzzles right everyday’. For this we filled a table up of already done crosswords and filmed Alex filling in the last one to show that Mariella does them daily. We did not use any props on this day as we couldn't film much anyway. Alex's dress was the only outfit we used that day.
Day 5 - Monday 14th November at 9.05am. We were supposed to film most of the scenes that we had left, which was the first verse and a few lines in the middle. We didn't get to film today as Mary was not well and did not attend school which meant we could not film. We are going to re-schedule a date for us to finish filming.
Day 6 - Wednesday 23rd November at 9.05am. Today we filmed everything at Mary's house, this included the first verse, chorus. We didn't film the school scene as we ran out of time and thought we could do that another time as their was no rush for this scene. The part that we did film went extremely well and we were finished by 2.30pm. The only problem we had on this day of filming is that Alex forgot the tripod. This seemed like a problem than thought. Instead we just used books and propped the camera on tables to keep it still. Considering we didn't have a tripod the filming went very well.
Day 7 - Friday 25th November at 1.15pm. Today's filming went very well. As we only had two scenes to film, it only took us around an hour to film. We filmed the line 'the they're not really into girls at that age' and 'the teachers they thought Mariella was just going through a phase'. Everything went to plan. Mary went home after the first scene as she was ill, but Alex's friend pressed record and knew what we were doing.
We decided to conduct a focus group aimed at our target market in order to receive feedback aboutthe audiences expectations. Here are the questions below that we asked
This picture influenced our film production, as we came across it by accident but found it interesting and different. We wanted to incorporate the bright colours and eccentric style within our music video to make it unusual. Luckily, we could use the colours to represent Mariella's personality and due to the time we filmed the colour of the grass was still a bright green as it was at the end of summer, this became a strong advantage for us filming early.
We wanted to recreate this image in a modern way. Here, we decided to use teddy bears as part of a tea party setting to show her real age against her maturity age, this was based on the image shown above from a children's novel. This strongly influenced our choices and inspired us to create different modern scenes.
This video inspired us as it features Disney characters in a modern video, it puts a unique spin on a children's novel. The artists lyrics itself also show how she is a mature woman but singing about children's novels. Her video is based around love and fighting, with a overall theme of relationships which is different to our music video. However, this has given us some inspiration about how we can present Mariella as a child, and influenced our video as it shows how a music video can be made different to what is typically expected.
This music video is a influence as it fits the musical genre of 'pop' that we are using in our music video, with a narrative throughout. This makes the music video more interesting throughout, as it interacts with the performance aspect of the video and creates enigma as the audience want to know what happens next. It also includes the artist instead of actors throughout the video, even in areas which aren't performance. This video is popular as it shows Katy Perry as a teenager, and the video represents this as it is not serious, with bold colours used and aspects of comedy in the video.
This video genre is also pop, therefore in this video we looked at the idea of using a variety of different locations. Ellie Goulding's video 'the writer' is focused mainly on performance instead of narrative, she has used a variety of locations, such as a blank backdrop, a field and stairs. In this particular video it always goes back to Ellie Goulding performing against a white backdrop, suggesting this is the main focus for the video. They have also used the same location in different ways, for example Ellie Goulding is walking through a field then the audience see a lighthouse, however it is in the same place. This creates an unexpected change for the audience keeping them interested.
In this video, a variety of shots are used from mid-shots to aerial shots there are also close ups and long takes. This will keep the audience interested as they are seeing the artist in a variety of shots and angles.
I was also inspired by the personality of Lady Gaga, a famous artist from America. She shows her personality through her outfit choices, as you can see from the pictures above she can dress in a simple fashion with blacks and whites, or use bold colours and props such as the bright blue dress and teddy bear key rings. This could also be representational of her mood. With our music video Kate Nash - Mariella she is shy at school and goes back to a childlike state of immaturity when she is at home, we therefore decided this could be shown through her behaviour as part of the narrative, and costume.
As we have decided to cut the song, the first 4 shots will not be needed anymore. We have chosen to cut the song by 1 minute and 14 seconds as the song begins to liven up then. Also, shot 17 and 19 are not going to be shot anymore, as we do not have enough time or money for this to happen. Instead we have used bubbles and posters which have become more effective.
This was the original story board that we made. It helped us through every scene which we needed to shoot. Unfortunately, we could not film the last scene as we did not have enough time to find a venue and enough people to fill up the space to have a concert feel to the video. Also, hiring a venue for an hour would cost money and we couldn't find a venue that would let us film inside with other people. Also, finding reliable people was extremely hard. Instead of doing this, we decided to have posters of 'ever ever ever'. This relates to Goodwin's theory of linking the lyrics with the visuals.
Abraham Maslow is an American psychologist who created the 'Hierachy Of Needs'. He believes we all have different 'layers' of needs and we need to satisfy one before we can move onto the next stage as everyone starts at the bottom. Maslow argues many people stop at certain levels and only a few reach 'self-actualisation.'By being on the first stage - physiological needs, this is having your basic needs. This includes food and shelter. The second stage is safety needs, this is financial safety and being comfortable with money. Third is social needs, which is having a sense of belonging within a community. Fourthly is esteem needs, this is having self-esteem. The last stage is self-actualisation which basically means you have everything you've ever wanted. A lot of people have disagreed with this theory as someone may have self-esteem but not have safety needs. This is a huge downfall in Maslow's creation. Most music videos aim to give people self-esteem which is fourth on Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs. I believe that our music video will give our audience self-esteem as well but may not have achieved certain stages before this one as our audience may still be relying on their parents/careers.
These are the results from our questionnaire. From this information it is clear to see what our target audience would like from our music video. Also, from completing a questionnaire we can see what males and females like in a music video. We have also found out where the best place is to promote our final product from the results of where they most likely watch music videos. This information is vital to ensure our music video fits our target audience.
We decided to make a questionnaire to find out what our audience wanted from a music video. We thought that all of these questions would be beneficial to help making our music video the best it possibily can and that it will fit our target audience perfectly.
After looking at the advantages and disadvantages of each research option that we considered for our music video, we decided that a questionnaire, focus group and quota sampling were most suitable. This is because it allows us to get an in dept insight into various aspect our intended audience like or think need improving within our music video. We feel choosing these methods will give us the overall best result whilst being a better representation of the market when it is spread across three separate research methods.
We have predicted that we are likely to have more positive results from our questionnaire, rather than our focus group and quota sampling. This is due to our focus group and quota sampling being more in dept and time consuming than a questionnaire which can be filled out quickly.
It enables us to ask in depth questions and get a response from our intended audience.
We may not receive accurate answers if people want to answer the questionnaire quickly.
Focus group
We can get a group together and they can let us know what they like and dislike about our music video.
The views of the focus group do not represent everyone in that age group.
Survey
It is easy to collect a large amount of data in a shorter period of time.
The answer choices provided on various surveys may not represent the participant’s actual views.
Internet
It is easily accessible, whilst allowing us to access a wide variety of information.
The data on the Internet may not be accurate or may be out of date; it may also be difficult to find out who has written it.
Books
This is classical research, allowing us to study independent theories related to our media work.
They may be out-dated, or the theories within the books may have changed since the book was written.
Random sampling
This research method usually proves representative results.
However, some people may not have the required experience or knowledge to answer questions.
Quota sampling
This is good because it allows you to choose the people that would like and be interested in your music video.
However, this sample whilst suiting our needs will not be representational of everyone in that specific group.
Volunteer sampling
This is good because people who put themselves forward will be interested in your music video and will offer constructive criticism.
However, the people who put themselves forward may not be suitable or in the age group of our intended audience.
Interviews
This allows an independent talk one to one with people who are interested in our music video; it would also allow us to improve by getting honest feedback.
If people in the interviews are not interested in our media product, we may not receive honest feedback as they want to leave.
