Another important stage of our planning was to find appropriate costumes to depict the fairytale characters in our music video. We wanted to create a form of chaos in our video, and felt that the correct costume would be key to portraying this. Fortunately, Alice in Wonderland is a previous school production and so we have been given accessibility to some of the costume and props used within the school play. We arranged to visit the site where these props are stored, and we went through the variety of items available to us which we felt would be effective within our music video. We photographed some of the costumes and props we felt would be useful to us when it comes to filming our music video.
These are a variety of the props and costumes that we feel will be useful within our music video. We felt that the masks would be particularly useful, as they are very professional looking, and would give a much more professional finish to our video.
We decided that we would take the characters mentioned in the lyrics as it would work effectively as a visual. I feel that these costume choices will be very successful in our video, as these professional costumes will successfully show which fairytale characters we are trying to portray and will enhance the fairytale theme. Whilst selecting our costumes and props, we kept in mind that some of these may be too garish and could create a more comical scene within our video, and so we were careful to choose clothes and props that would be effective in our video.
Representation: Having done a variety of research into representation, we felt that it was very important for us to consider how we wanted our characters to be represented in our music video (thinking back to how Britney Spears had portrayed herself as more of a sex object within her videos), we did not want to appear overly explicit, and still wanted to be identifiable as fairytale characters, however these characters are no longer appropriate for children, as seen in the disney fairytales. We chose our costumes based around the well known disney costumes for the characters, however by using shorter outfits makes these costumes slightly more adult. We therefore have considered how women are portrayed in a more sexual way by what they wear, however we ensured that it was not overly explicit within our video, as it would be inappropriate to use costumes like this as part of our media coursework.
We first considered where we would like to shoot our music video. We felt that to create the fairytale 'look' we would need to find a seemingly dreamy location which we could then convey how everything goes wrong, and felt that a forest would be a good place to start.
We found this large open space which we felt could be an effective location as we would be able to set up our scenes at many different angles, and we felt that this could be a good location for parts of our fairytale sections within our video. In our storyboarding, we decided that we wanted to create an eerie atmosphere, to show that everything is going wrong in the world of Wonderland, and we decided that a location that we could use was a darkroom. Within the darkroom, we will use lights which we will flash on our faces. The darkness will evoke fear and mystery, but we also want to convey the idea of being trapped and almost depict the characters going crazy, which we think will be effective when filming in the darkroom.
We created this simple animatics video, positioning the storyboard images alongside the song. This has given us a rough idea of the timing and overall sequence of our own music video.
We first began with storyboarding what we imagined our music video to look like. After much group discussion, we began to plan out our individual shots, discussing locations and costumes whilst planning.
This is our storyboard, in which we planned important considerations, such as timing, shots and who would be at camera at what point in the song. It was important for us to understand which scenes would fit with the lyrics, and we used our storyboard to discuss factors such as where close up shots would be appropriate, all the time taking into consideration what the meaning we were trying to convey and making sure that these early decisions fit with our theme.
This is some footage of us discussing and planning the end section of our storyboard, planning who would be in shot and talking about what we felt would look effective to improving our ideas. A2 Media discussion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8JQnmd1MrQ (We have attempted to upload our video onto our blogs, however it appears that we cannot upload more than one from the same account)
Having researched many music videos, we had decided that we were going to create a music video for the song 'Wonderland' by Natalia Kills. We chose to use this song, as it would allow us to be very creative with the visuals for our video. The lyrics focus on the idea of how fairytales don't exist, and nothing has a happy ending. Therefore, considering the lyrics we found we could recreate the Alice In Wonderland style, with the theme of a fairytale that goes wrong and how happy endings just don't happen. When planning this, we had many things to consider, such as location and setting and how costume and props could convey this chaotic atmosphere we envisioned to create in our music video. We began by focusing on the overall atmosphere that we were wanting to create, and as a group we started to plan what we felt would look effective in our music video. We considered aspects such as costume and props, lighting, setting and make up, all of which we felt would be very important in order to give us the appearance we most wanted.
We decided that we wanted our video to begin with quite a calm and blissful atmosphere to inforce the idea of the fairytale theme. We looked at images such as these to take inspiration when planning things such as lighting, make up and costume. We felt that the use of pale, neutral colours along with bright lighting gave the image both a clean look but also a slight dreaminess, which is what we want to achieve in our music video. Having looked at this, we then went on to consider how we wanted the costume change to represent a darker side to the characters in our music video, to convey the message that fairytales don't always have their happy ending. We found images such as these which we felt strongly portrayed how we wanted our characters to look, with the use of dark blacks and blues, a creepier and more eerie atmosphere is created, which we felt would be necessary in our video.
We began to plan our characters, and we wanted to include the fairytale princesses who are mentioned within the lyrics. We made notes on how we wanted the costumes to look, and how we could create a clear indication that they are these characters. We sketched out a rough idea of our costumes would look, and used magazines to identify how we wanted out make up to look. We felt that this was very helpful because it allowed us to visualise how we wanted our video to look and gave us clearer inspiration for our costumes and props.
On Friday the 19th of October we went on to present our ideas to our class. We produced a Powerpoint presentation showing all of our images that we had taken inspiration from and we explained our ideas for our music video, mentioning our ideas for simplistic costume and make up, and how we intended to create a darker and more mysterious atmosphere towards the end of the video. Presenting our ideas to the class was useful because it made our ideas clearer and we were able to discuss our options and how we wanted to create both a fantasy and horror theme in one. It also proved to be helpful as we gained feedback from our peers, who liked our ideas so far. However, they warned us that we should be careful as the merging of genres could create scenes that might appear comical rather than scary. We took all of this feedback on board, and began to re-evaluate some of our ideas.
At the time when music videos were first introduced, the only method of editing was in the form of linear editing. This involved literally cutting the tape and pasting it back together. It was simplistic and easy to understand, and it wasn't until the 1990's that non linear editing was introduced, which created a whole new dimension in editing. Non linear editing works with modern digital technology and with the rapid development of modern technology it soon became a popular method of editing. By the 21st Century, linear editing became out of date, and is very rarely used now. Non linear editing became the more popular form of editing, however there are still editors who fight the advantages of using linear editing, such as its simplicity and that it is inexpensive. Within our own music video, we will be using non linear editing. This is because it will allow us to film in our different locations at different times, and it will accommodate to our project in a more successful way. We have access to facilities and technology which allows us to edit in a non linear fashion and use the equipment flexibly to fit to our filming schedule.
Another important stage of our planning was to find appropriate costumes to depict the fairytale characters in our music video. We wanted to create a form of chaos in our video, and felt that the correct costume would be key to portraying this. Fortunately, Alice in Wonderland is a previous school production and so we have been given accessibility to some of the costume and props used within the school play. We arranged to visit the site where these props are stored, and we went through the variety of items available to us which we felt would be effective within our music video. We photographed some of the costumes and props we felt would be useful to us when it comes to filming our music video.
We decided that we would take the characters mentioned in the lyrics as it would work effectively as a visual. I feel that these costume choices will be very successful in our video, as these professional costumes will successfully show which fairytale characters we are trying to portray and will enhance the fairytale theme. Whilst selecting our costumes and props, we kept in mind that some of these may be too garish and could create a more comical scene within our video, and so we were careful to choose clothes and props that would be effective in our video.
Representation: Having done a variety of research into representation, we felt that it was very important for us to consider how we wanted our characters to be represented in our music video (thinking back to how Britney Spears had portrayed herself as more of a sex object within her videos), we did not want to appear overly explicit, and still wanted to be identifiable as fairytale characters, however these characters are no longer appropriate for children, as seen in the disney fairytales. We chose our costumes based around the well known disney costumes for the characters, however by using shorter outfits makes these costumes slightly more adult. We therefore have considered how women are portrayed in a more sexual way by what they wear, however we ensured that it was not overly explicit within our video, as it would be inappropriate to use costumes like this as part of our media coursework.
