Star Persona for music video

The star persona of our artist is going to be similar to the artist of Ellie Goulding the performer and writer of the song ‘Fly’.

She is marketed as a singer songwriter, her music being about music not the materialistic side to selling pop music hence her more alternative pop style.  Her music seems to be aimed at a younger audience and people her own age, as the subject matter seems quiet personal to her. Her music is sold on the quirkiness of her music and appearance, as it is different to more conventional artists who all try to conform to the ideal, whereas Ellie Goulding has the image of being herself and more like the audience she is selling to.

We similarly want to take this persona for our own star as it suits the music and the idea for our video. In the video the video will show her everyday world when she then goes into her dream world.  This expresses how the artist see things which sell the quirky personality side aimed at our target audience (people of the same age who can relate to being different).

 

There are other artists who have similar star personas to Ellie Goulding.  Kate Nash is a good example as like Ellie Goulding her voice and diction is distinct and different from many conventional pop artists. Kate Nash is a singer song writer who writes in a quirky style about herself.  I feel we can take influence with the use of stop motion in foundation (making everyday objects come to life in her world).

The Kate Nash video ‘Pumpkin Soup’ mixes animation with live actions to make it playful. The colours are bright and vibrant which is supposed to reflect her personality as an artist. This is something we want to reciprocate in our video to create the same kind of effect about the star’s persona.

Camera work

Here is a previous students work that inspired us, and we thought about doing something similar to them with the stop motion for example the zoom in and out shots. So we don't have to physically move the camera so we make bigger versions of the print outs that we are going to use in our video. This is easier because we don't have to move the camera around which could change our allingement

Music video analysis

We were told to look at and take notes of these music videos, as to gives ideas for our own.

Chemical Brothers- Let forever be                                                                                                              There is dance choreography for the girl character. The narrative of the song is following this girl. Despite it being band and having a male vocal, the members only have a minor appearance (and they are playing their instruments). This suits a band typically because they do want to associate selling the selves. Bands generally give of the idea of being for the music which differs from single artists.  The special effects were used to duplicate the girl on screen doing different movements. This makes the video more visually interesting without having to hire a whole dance crew.

Beck – deadweight                                                                                                                                              This is more of a serial video, having the singer in do actions in contradictory environments such as office work at the beach and sunbed in the office. It is quite a down beat video and quirky which suits the indie music, which is more unconventional. The non-linear editing of the narrations adds the confusion to the audience of what the narrative is supposed to be. This is a more creative way of interpreting the lyrics of the song as the visuals are not literal. This gives a quirky feel and makes the audience have to think more about the reasoning of the video.

 

Gotye – Easy way out                                                                                                                                      There is stop animation mixed with live action in this video.  The mise- en – scene is a fairly cartoonish set of a rundown house, and various other indoor space like a tube train.  The camera pans 180 degrees to show all of the sets, the character (the artist) moving between them all. I think that it is a good way to represent a normal everyday life but in a quirky and interesting way.  It also suits the artist because the music is slightly different from mainstream.

 

Ok  Go – Skyscrapers

The narrative of this video is simple but effective. There is a man and a woman doing a choreographed dance routine (might be a type of tango dance) across the screen. The colours of their clothing change with the background. (This is something we are similarly doing in our video at one point). The effect of this keeps it visually interesting and engaging to the audience, despite there being no change in camera angles and lengths.

Gotye-  Somebody that I used to know

Voyaism is used on the artist at the beginning when we see the camera panning up the body.  There is a mixture of stop motion and live action. (Live action for the lip syncing, making it slightly more conventional) The lines move to correspond with the beat of the music. The mise-en-scene is that he body make up will eventually blend into the background or submerge out of it using stop motion.  This suits the genre because it is indie pop, so it is slightly different from conventional pop hence the stop motion but still sells the artist with close ups and lip syncing. The visuals of this video does match the lyrics just in a more abstracted way.

 

Lighting

Because our idea is stop motion we do not have to be be concered with lighing the backgorund or creating depth by separating the person from the background. Since we have decided to use photographs of the actress instead of film, we have to think abpout how we are going to light her before we take the pictures. From our lesson on lighting I have think we should conventinal lighting as we are trying to sell our aritist. This means that the face has to be well lit to make very clear. We have decided that for parts of the song the actress will be in black and white where as her clothes will still be coloured. For this I feel the lighting should cast a lot of shadows on her face, to create more depth and detail in her face.

Promo package for our video

For our cd cover I am going to use blank cd cover images that I found on the internet and then using photoshop ad my own images on to the cover to make it look like it was a real promo package produced for our music video. In the cover I thought of including mainly the artist or the main character that is goign to be appearing in the video and some iamges, shots or props from the video itself on the cover.



Some existing CD and album covers:

All of these CD/album covers have some kind of image representing the main song of the album or the artist, for example Ellie Goulding lights CD cover is black and only the letters are in white. This keeps it mysterious simple and attractive, and I think something quite similar could suit our CD and album cover as well. These are the blank CD and album covers that I am going to use on photoshop to add my own images or photographs;























Because our music video is bright and has a happy mood therefore the album cover is going to be of light and probably bright colors also images form the song itself for example the clouds which would represent the "dream" shot.

Stop motion.

Today we have come up with the idea of using photographs instead of actual people. The photographs will be of the actor walking, but we will cut them out and alternate between them to give the illlusion she is walking. This makes it easier to film so we do not have to use the green screen, it can all be stop motion.
Here is an example of what it would look like.

Inspirations

Video Analysis – inspiration for idea

‘Countdown’ by Beyoncé demonstrates the rapid changing colour of the shirt whilst the artist stays the same. This is done on the beat to correspond with the speed and movement of the music. We similarly want to do this our opening section of our music video. It will show the star persona as it will be focused on the artist and give a quirky feel, which expresses the personality of our artist.  To achieve this we will use the green screen and for the artist to wear a green jumper so we can change the colour through editing.

‘Foundations’ by Kate Nash was also has given me ideas on how to mix stop animation and live action. As the artist in the video will be live action to make the two blend together and give a quirky feel we could motion stop the artist.  This demonstrated by Kate Nash in this video at times at 1.24 minutes. There is also use of inmate objects like a pair of socks to reflect the lyrics in the song. I think whether it is drawings or objects, we could reflect the lyrics such as ‘fly, fly’ with birds.  The use of close ups of the Kate Nash’s face reaffirm in the video that she is the singer song writer. I feel that her star persona is similar to that of Ellie Golding and therefore our star. Kate Nash is known to be a quirky, different and young English pop star and sing with an accent. Ellie Golding is similar as she has a very distinctive tone to her voice. These artists bring a more alterative pop to main stream, hence the convention of selling the artist in the video. We will do this similarly in our video and digi pack.

All though this is not from a music video it certainly gives ideas for how the music video could look. The opening credits from the movie ‘Juno’ use the titular character walking in a drawn world to the song ‘All I want is you’ by Louis Polisar. I think by doing this we can get a sense of who the character is just by her walking to song, as if she is in her own world. This very personal feel we want to portray in our video. We are having are artist walking, from the side of the screen, with characters and backgrounds behind her. I feel we would also want to recreate the jerky, walking movement the actress has in this video to suit with the animation.  As for the look of the animation in this clip, it is quite simple and in block colours, this makes it look very hand drawn which is more personal, as we want for our video as it is the artist supposed dream world, and more practically easier to recreate due to time restrictions, equipment and ability (as we are not professional artists or animators).