Planning Pitch

In this post, I am presenting our group's initial planning pitch regarding the genre of our song, the star image and the animatic storyboard. This pitch will make our plans and ideas for the music video clearer and to be able to present it to an audience and get some feedback, suggestions and reactions.

Planning Pitch: Monster by Imagine Dragons from Thenz801

By using Adobe Photoshop and Windows Movie Maker, I have created the animatic storyboard, presenting our synopsis and idea in the form of a video.

(PLANNING PITCH: ADELAIDE & KAWSAR

STORYBOARD: ATHENA)

Initial Focus Group

(ATHENA)

Final Music Video Synopsis

In this post, I have presented our group's final music video synopsis.

The narrative revolves around a confused and disoriented guy. He feels like he does not fit in with rest of society and he feels different from others and he doe not want that. The only thing that is keeping him from running away and letting go of his "unique" self is his love interest. She is the only one that is keeping him human.

The group had in involved several intertextual references from:
DRACULA: The vampire theme
TWILIGHT: "The Cold Ones", Vampire Eyes
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: Painting references to reflect the main protagonist's transformation

P.S. Hover over the buttons to reveal annotations.




(ATHENA)

Audience Profile

This is the audience profile of a typical target audience of the song Monster by Imagine Dragons, or people that are interested and passionate in the indie industry.

Indie Lovers are creative and independent people. They love music and usually play various instruments such as electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass or drums.

In Annie Clarke's profile, her creativity is shown as she is in the art industry and she really likes and passionate about drawing. Playing the guitar is also a creative insight to her personality.

(ATHENA)

Moodboard for Music Video

This is the moodboard I created to inspire our music video "Monster" by Imagine Dragons.

In this moodboard, I focus on the low key lighting, impressions of vampires and Dracula in the modern media, Gothic and dark themes and luminescent eyes. I also focused on the colour scheme of black, bright red and bright blue which is common on vampire and Dracula films and intermedia references.

(ATHENA)

Monster by Imagine Dragons Lyric Annotation

This is my annotations for the music video were are going to create. I included important linguistic and structural features which are key terms in helping us focus on out theme. I also jotted down ideas that I would help us edit the scenes later on.

(ATHENA)

Moster by Imagine Dragons (Lyrics)

This is the lyrics for our task:

(ATHENA)

Treatment of Ideas

(ATHENA)

Three Potential Songs and Final Chosen Song

“Holy Ground” by Taylor Swift

Idea:

The narrative of a story is about a happy couple. We see the girl being happy in love with her boyfriend. However, we noticed that the lyrics of the song are all in past tense (“I was reminiscing just the other day”, “And darling, it was good, never looking down/ And right there where we stood was holy ground”). This gave us the idea that what if all this happy moments are all just imaginary. In the bridge part (“Tonight I'm gonna dance, like you were in this room/ But I don't wanna dance, if I'm not dancing with you”), it is revealed that the girl is all alone and the boyfriend is a ghost. AT the end, we see her walking towards a graveyard and toating a glass of champagne to the grave.

Pros	Cons
-          It will be easy to get the characters that will play the part of the lovers. We could just get the members of our group to act the part. -          The rhythm of the song is both slow and fast-paced. The editing will be very efficient as it’s a mixture of long and short takes.	-          The story line of the story is too cliché. It is too common.

“Monster” by Imagine Dragons

Idea:

In this song, we plan to make an intertextual reference to the epistolary novel of Bram Stokes and the movie coming out this year “Dracula”. The narrative centres on a male character, in which he is confused and struggling to “fit” in the world (“Everything inside of me/ Just wanted to fit in”). Then, we present a love interest to make him feel more human. At the end, the character cannot resists and transforms into a vampire. The love interest confides with him, told her to stay away but ignores this. (“If I told you what I was/ Would you turn your back on me?/ And if I seem dangerous/ Would you be scared?”)She then becomes the first victim and become a vampire as well.

Pros	Cons
-          It will be relatively easy to create different ideas with all the vampire films coming out such as Twilight Saga, Dracula Untold, Dracula (1998), Dracula novel. It will be accessible to get inspirations from other forms of media.	-          The main theme of this video is death. It will be very difficult to represent death, as no one has an absolute idea what it is. Also, we will use a lot of ambient setting but we need a low key lighting in this video.

“Youth” by Daughter

Idea:

The narrative that we plan to do in this song is about a dying old woman, looking at her pictures in her past. Then it backtracks to her past when she was still young, having fun, falling in love, falling out of love, being hurt, succeeding, failing and just living. At the end, we see her being left alone by a man, as she passes away with all those memories being burned – with the pictures accidentally falling out her hand and landing in a fire place.

We also had an alternative idea in which we compare lives of the old people when they were young and fast forwards to the present and how it is different now to the young people living their lives.

Pros	Cons
-          The advantage of this is creating a binary opposition – Old VS Young. It will also benefit our exam questions as the controversy of young and old is already present in the media industry.	-          It will difficult to find a person who is willing to play the part of the dying.

(ATHENA)

"Girlfriend" Textual Analysis (Gender)

Girlfriend Gender Analysis from Thenz801

NOTES

Mise-en-scene	Cinematography	Editing
Lighting: High Key Lighting/ Ambient Lighting Setting: The music video was set in an arcade and a stage which has the colour scheme of black and pink. This is to show the artist is passive (pink – stereotypically a feminine colour) and aggressive (black – stereotypically a masculine colour). Props: Guitars, microphone – performance wise Eye glasses – represents intelligence. It is usually a signal of the “unpopular” and “geeky” characters. Costume: Male and black-haired girl has the same black and white combination, pink dress 2 costume changes from Lavigne – White tee white dark blue short and blue shirt white a dark green shorts and fish nets. Blue costume emphasises her body more, especially the chest area as it is fitted. Make-Up: Lavigne and her punk character wears a thick eye liner whilst her nerd character is wearing a light make up Target audience: Female (teenagers)	High angle shot – shows her submissiveness. Reinforces what the lyrics shows – which she wants to be the “girlfriend” material. Her target audience is young females which are showing that she is seducing but to set an “example” for the young women to be like her. Low angle shot – shows her body, looking down shows that even though she’s submissive, she still a strong, superior woman who can have her way. Medium Shot and close up shot – to show her facial expression; establish a more intimate relationship with her audience Long shot/ wide shot – show her performance and the band *Voyeurism – through a mirror and a camera booth	Short takes – performance Long Takes – narrative Shallow focus on high angle shot

(ATHENA)