With the band shots that we used in our music video i think we automatically broke away from Andrew Goodwin's star theory as the main character was the drummer at the back and there was no lead or main singer at the front during the band shots. This tends to symbolize that every member is important in a band and sometimes the lead person in the group should step back and let the other members get involved more. That is another reason why we as a group did all the shooting and acting ourselves but just dressed up as different characters every time as this also symbolizes that we did it differently than normal music videos and we worked as a team letting everyone be in the spot light not just the main character. The notion of our group all needing each other to function is brought to light with our front cover monster idea as we all are split up to make up a completely different person to give the representation that we rely on each other do get things done.
We also used fake instruments all the way through our music video in different locations and we re used them every time just like we re used our selves for different characters in our music video to show that you can't judge things at face value as they may have many talents and with the instruments in the fact that a card board box can be many things to different people and may be used for different things.
With the camera work that we had planned it was similar to other music videos for example mid shots and close up of band shots as seen in other music videos such as Blink 182 "I miss you" .We used this as it was part of what the audience wanted, but we also challenged realism as we speeded up some shots as well as reversing them. This manipulation of time within our music video might suggest that the characters in the music video have no control over what is happening within the realm of the storyline. But we did try to keep to basic requirements from a music video as a quote from Steve Archer explains "But it is the lip-sync close up and the miming of playing instruments that remains at the heart of music videos, as if to assure us that the band can really kick it."
When we were editing our music video we also thought about how to make this narrative element more accessible to the audience as we brought alive the storyline with strong characters such as the vicar or 'champagne' the prostitute as well as special effects and green screening. These all helped to support the genre of music video which has been abstracted from other media art forms like Laurel and Hardy for example. I chose Laurel and Hardy because their movements have often been speeded up and we chose to speed up sections of our music video.
We purposely used inter textually to try and convey the message of the creation of characters to tell the story using members of the band. We also used idea from "Flight of the Concords" to build on our existing ideas and it has strong links into our work for example using band members to make the music videos and using some instrument ideas for our music video.
We also took all means of inspiration from cinema, art and photography as well as fashion to come up with costume ideas then remake them in our own way. This was done with one of a characters for example 'champagne' the prostitute as we did not use a girl for this character as we thought it would be better and more challenging to our audience if we used a boy as we did not want to discredit any girl that took part. Also by doing this it adds comic value that has been used in pantomimes for many years. We also took our locations into different parts to make the difference between each shot seem drastically changed for example from an urban environment to a rural setting which makes a strong contrast between the two.
We also used the convention that has been used in the past with children for example 'Pokemon' cards as they were designed to be traded and all packs contained different cards. We used this convention and developed on it as we made playing cards with our characters on but were going to only have one or two in each Digipak so when a customer bought the Digipak they had no idea what cards were inside and with this we purposely made some cards more rare than others as well as special gold cards that could bring value over time to the fans that buy the product. This links things to the golden ticket to Roald Dahl's "Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory" as well as a number of successful promotion campaigns.
With the collection of these special cards that we would use as a give away item we would help give possible value to the completed sets so that the bigger the fan will receive better rewards for having a bigger and complete set.As a group we have also challenged a particular aspect which most music videos have and that is we have given our music video a completely linear timeline but in most cases narrative songs in poetry for example are fragmented and this also apply s to music promos. This tends to mean that the story-lines can offer complex fragments in a non linear order that leave the audience wanting to know more of whats happened.
We also realized with music videos we can offer a different experience to the audience compared to a concert as the audience in a concert can not get as intimate as they could to a music video and with this we could offer humorous intimacy.
With the Mise en scene we challenged what is normally expected behavior of a band when playing music in a normal place as we decided it would be a good idea to film in a river then wash our instruments down the river for the sake of our music video. We also used what we had available and at the time was cardboard and a few good rural and urban settings that we used to our advantage to get the best abstract approach in using those locations.
