Our music does not really follow a narrative direction. It follow a non-linear narrative direction in the sense there is no apparent story line or context. The whole idea of the video is a young girl being chased through a forest for no reason. The viewers find out half way through the video that it was all just a video that this guy had been watching. He then goes on to mimic some of the features of the video he was watching such as chasing people. The main inspiration for this idea was the very much controversial film Human Centipede 2 which is about this guy who recreates Human Centipede 1 after watching it. This also relates back to the exam topic of moral panics and how games/films can affect viewers' minds. We felt adding this aspect to the video would help us through the exam as we'd have first hand experience working with this in our video.
Taking the music out of the music video and the video would be typical of the horror movie genre as the cliche theme of getting chased by a monster-like entity is very horror based.
A lot of our shots despite the chase scene were focused on the artists.
This is an example of the star theory by Richard Dyer. Mostly adhering to "stars as contructions" Our artists are representations of stereotypes, cultures and values. They were not representative of real people . This was evidenced by the extravagant attire and props. Despite Chloerayne being the star Max and I both get screentime where our face is clearly in shot. Though its not clear on camera we wanted it to look like the boilerman, Max and me were all in the same band. This was us mirroring the conventions of numerous music videos through mise-en-scene as they'd feature a narrative scene with performance based scenes
A good example of this is Paramore and their Decoded video which was one of the main videos off of the Twilight soundtrack
both screenshots showcase the mixture of narrative and performance shots, which we recreated in our music video. In addition we were referencing Goodwin's theory of music analysis and making the most out of inter textual references..
The inspiration for this shot was taken from Paramore's Decoded.
Chloeyrane's attire inspiration was derived from a scene from schindler's list where the
The meaning of the red dress girl in the Schindler's list is that she is standing out form the masses. This underlying theme was apparent in our video as Chloerayne running away from her pursuers shows she's trying to break away from confinement.
The inter-textual link between Spitfire and Schindler's list is war. Schindler's list was set in WWII and spitfire references the same war. In addition, the mise-en-scene such as gas mask were used to accentuate the war-themed lyrics.
This above image is from the 2006 movie Dead Man's Shoes in which the main character is seen wearing a gas mask. When drafting out the original costume ideas, this was one of the main inspirations for Max's character. You can clearly see how similar they are.
The shot
Throughout the video Chloerayne is seen as the victim. This was also one of the main reasons we chose her to star in our music video, she has a vunerable aura to her because of her slight frame. If we had chosen a taller, stronger girl the effect would not be the same. This is a trait in many music of the type.
In many of Paramore's videos it features Hailey Williams as the front with male characters as backup artists. The is an instance of Richard Dyer's star theory and how the record labels demand the directors focus on the star as they in effect sell the records, rather than the actual music. We thought about this and it's clear that Chloerayne is the "star" in our video. She is the main feautre of the CD Cover for this very reason.
An attractive young girl that teenage girls look up to would increase sales of records on her own, that is the reason a few rock bands decide to have a female as their lead signer. If this was a real music video of The Prodigy Chloerayne would have been played by a music video model or famous actress.
We also applied the Mulvey's gaze theory to the shot above, the camera panning across her hands in a seductive fashion. The juxtaposition between the sharp, dangerous nature of the mirror and the soft feminine nature of her hands. Not only does the video adhere to the theme of voyeurism as the audience is basically watching this young girl running through the forest, it's adheres to the principle satisfying the target audience and record label.
The frantic panning shot is one that we saw was consistently used in music videos of the alternative rock/punk rock genre. The frantic panning shot is usually used in conjunction with a frantic part of the song
The relationship between the song and the lyrics is portrayed through the tribal paint that was used on me. Fire being used as the keyword as the strong imagery sets the tone for the video, evidence with such colours as red.
Overall the what I think went well was how we mirrored the conventions of the atypical music videos of the punk rock genre. This is conveyed through our use of camera angles, mise-en-scene and costumes. What I think we could have improved on was the differing away from the usual conventions of the genre. In hindsight we probably took upon too many inspirations and resulting in maybe too much intertextuality.
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