Props & costumes

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.