Question One: In what way does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media texts?
Real Media Texts
Films-
Unbreakable
Limitless
Silver Linings Playbook
Fight club
The Artist
Trance
The Artist
Music-
Not afraid - Eminem
Coldplay- Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall
Beautiful- Eminem
Slim Shady
The research of other mediums occurred during the pre-production stage just after we had chosen our song and after we had scripted our music video. The research was based on other media products which we felt had similar conventions and elements to our own music video. We then came back together as a group and listed down the conventions and elements that we felt would better our own project.
My music video was about a man with bipolar and a slight form of SPD (schizoid personality disorder), he is depressed with his life. He hates his job, he takes pills to combat the depression and he is isolated and this all leads to him trying to commit suicide. The music video is a flashback of the character's life and the build up to his attempted suicide. This is all playing along to the song 'Beautiful' by Eminem. It is a song in which Eminem feels he has hit rock bottom and has lost hope, he feels that he has to be someone who he is no longer, the song is him coming to terms with the fact that he has matured and accepting who he is. Eminem says the song is for anybody who is in dark place and says that they can get out of it.
My research consisted of watching the official music video for the song 'beautiful' performed by the songs artist on YouTube. This came as inspiration and we tried to develop some of the shots within the music video. Namely the shots in which we see groups of people staring at the camera as the chorus is playing to suggest that all people should accept that they are beautiful just the way they are and they should love what God gave them. We developed this idea by having shots of groups of people while they were lip-syncing some of the lyrics within the song. Unfortunately we didn't use this in our music video as we felt itt would take away from the overall tone of the music video
I also looked into some of my old work from last year and checked some of the narrative theories as our music video were narrative based. I felt we developed Todrov's theory of equilibrium, in our own media project instead of starting with equilibrium our narrative begins with disequilibrium this is brought on due to the protagonists depression, he is at a low point in his life and as the video continues we unravel the protagonists tale and we start to understand why he is attempting suicide by the end our character has found a new equilibrium and that is due to his self acceptance I felt that narrative also challenge Levi-Strauss theory, although our music video is heavily influenced by the beliefs and values of our culture, we did not incorporate the use of binary opposites. Everything in our character world is grey, there is no black and white in his world and therefore there is no contrast, however there is a slight contrast within the characters two personalities as one is bright and perky the other is dark and menacing.
As well as looking at narrative theory I also looked at, previous theorists work on music video's. I realized that our music video challenged quite a few of the theories. For instance although our main target audience are teenage males we did not adhere to Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory. There are no females represented within our music video as we wanted our character to seem isolated and alone so we centered the whole video on the protagonist and his struggle we also didn't feel that using women in a heavily sexualised fashion would really fit the tone an lyrics of the song and the video as a whole . I felt that we did use a lot of Andrew Goodwin's theory within our own music video, such as matching the visuals with the lyrics for e.g. the scene in which we show the clowns face and the lyrics say 'I just hide behind the tears of a clown'. However we did not have our artist in the video which is very conventional to Hip-Hop music videos. We felt that this was better as we could focus more on the video's narrative rather than the artist of the video.
In looking at Eminem’s other projects I realized that he also uses surrealism within his own music that comes alive due to the fact that it is contrasted so well with the gritty realism within the song’s lyrics, we tried to incorporate this within our music video through the use of showing what goes on inside the mind of our character and how his illness effects his being. Eminem’s uses this same technique within in his music videos such as space bound in which we see Eminem as the protagonist who watches his past self deal with a relationship that is going downhill, the split screen in this music video inspired part of our own music video in which we see a split screen of Tyrell's character as he tries to call and get through to the man protagonist and stop him from hurting himself this played alongside one of the earlier shot in the video in which we see the main character walking to his the edge of the bridge, to his death, I felt this was a very effective shot as they both contrasted really well and showed the narrative in real time.
Another Eminem video which uses surrealism is 'Not afraid' we developed the opening shot of the music video in which Eminem is standing upon the edge of a roof in Newmark, New Jersey, we as the audience get a view of the amazing city skyline unfortunately we couldn't replicate the rooftop scene due to legal reasons and also not being able to find one right in the centre of London however we decided to film this scene on a bridge over the A10 motorway. This was as aesthetically pleasing as a rooftop however it did have a higher sense of danger and tension within its mis-enscene and this helped better the music video as a whole. Our music video also challenges this music video as the rooftop scene in Eminem’s music video is one of hope, it symbolizes Eminem rising up beyond his depression and coming out of a low point in his life. However in our music video, our protagonist is standing upon the edge of a bridge and is about to jump off. Our character has allowed depression to engulf him and he has decided to end his life.
The rooftop scene was also inspired by Neil Burger's 2011 film Limitless in which a failed writer finds a pill that allows him to access 100% of his brain. In the opening credits of this film we as the audience see the main protagonist portrayed by Bradley Cooper about jump off the balcony of his pent house apartment, the film then flashes back to the events leading to this. We decided to use this within our own music video as the bridge scene would take place during the intro and outro of the song and then the verses and chorus of the song are all flashbacks of events leading to the characters final choice. Limitless helped us with our narrative structure and we felt that using this structure would grip the audiences intrigue from the outset of the music video as they would be wondering why our character is about to commit suicide and then we would slowly feed our audiences curiosity with the answer.
I also researched music videos from other genres that I felt had conventions which may be applicable to our own music video, this led me to the 2011 music video for 'Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall' by the band Coldplay, it is a performance based music video in which we see the band performing their song with an urban are covered with graffiti. The music video uses stop motion throughout however we decided to replicate the shots in which we see the see the drummer and his drum kit moving from area in the video to another using the technique of jump cuts. We used similar technique within our music video however we had our character walking down a long and winding pathway. We used jump cuts to show our characters gradual progression along the pathway and away from the camera. I felt this gave the character a disorientated feel as if the protagonist life is broken and out of sync. We also did this as we felt it would match the beat of the song and also our video has a lot of the character walking from location to location (much like the original video) almost as if he is on a journey of self discovery and we felt that this would help with the pace of the music video as a whole.
My music video is about a young man with bipolar and SPD as he tries to deal with his illness and the daily routines of life however he becomes overwhelmed and falls into depression.
I felt we gained inspiration from the 2012 David O. Russell film, Silver Linings Playbook in which two main protagonists both have bipolar. The characters are very temperamental and sometimes lash out at the environment around them. I decided to further look int this by looking up documentaries about people with the bipolar illness and i saw that this way of acting was similar throughout the different forms of medium. This is similar to our own protagonist who has two angry outbursts and becomes emotionally distressed due to his illness. The first is when we see our character violently throwing his medication to the floor; the other is when he becomes over stressed at work and throws a pile of papers off of his desk to the ground.
I also drew some inspiration from Edward Norton's portrayal of 'The Narrator' in David Fincher's 1999 film, Fight Club. The narrator is an 'everyman' who is suffering from insomnia, he has tried to fit into society and be the normal man but it doesn't quite satisfy him. Throughout the beginning of the film we see the narrator as depressed and dissatisfied and this was where we drew some inspiration for our protagonist. He also has a split personality disorder and this is slightly similar to our own character that has an alter ego.
Another film that we drew inspiration from was the 2002 Peter Jackson film, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The film features a character named Gollum. He was previously a hobbit named Sméagol who was corrupted by a magical ring. His corruption has deformed him and driven him to obsession. In his mental instability he formed a new persona named Gollum. he has gained a habit of shifting between his two personality's, Sméagol and Gollum.
There is a scene in the film in which we see Gollum shifting between his two personalities as they both argue about whether to kill the hobbits they are escorting and steal the ring that one of them carries. The camera operator first uses the 180 degree rule as he pans around Gollum to show him shift from Sméagol to Gollum. the camera operator then cuts to just using jump cuts in order to show that Sméagol and Gollum are no longer the same person but are two separate entities. This really highlights the characters' mental illness. We decided to develop this by cutting out the use of the 180 degree rule and instead just use the jump cutting between our character's two personalities while he sits upon a park bench. The use of dual personalities is something replicated within our artist Eminem who has two personalities, one being Marshall Mather’s is Eminem and who he really is, the other being slim shady is own creation from a figment of his imagination who is no holds bars. The album from which our song comes from is about Eminem relapsing and returning to his old ways of slim shady, much like our character reverting to his depressing and menacing personality.
The art direction for our music video was influenced by the 2000 M. Night Shymalan film Unbreakable. The film is a about a man who finds that he has super powers after he survives a train crash. There is a scene in the film in which the films protagonist walks into a train station the colours are all bland and grey apart from significant characters who having committed some sort of evil act, these characters where bright colours which stand out, such as yellow or orange. We decide to develop this by taking the colour out of the video during the editing process, only certain colours standout such as blue and red to connote the characters emotions at the time, such as red for anger or blue for depression. I felt this was effective as it really helped set the tone for the video and gave our video a more professional look overall.
In one of our final scenes within our music video we use a technique called fast cutting in which we see brief images flash before the screen of events that have previously occurred in our video. This use of editing reflects our character as he looks back at all the depression in his life and finally decides to commit suicide. We developed this idea from the 2004 film Saw by James Wan and also the 2013 film Trance by Danny Boyle in both films this fast cutting technique is used as the protagonist of the film comes to a realization The clips start off slow but they gradually increase as the long to build up the tension within the scene as we come closer to the final realization however within our own music video the clips start at the same pace and don't go any faster as we did not want to create tension but rather create something like the characters life flashing before his eyes.
Finally at the end of our music video the video goes from being bleached of color to going back in color we did this to show that our character has finally reached an acceptance of his own self. We developed a similar technique that was used in a 2011 Michel Hazanavicuss film 'The Artist' about a silent film star who becomes irrelevant when films with sound become popular. The film is a silent film and the protagonist does not talk throughout not until the end of the film when the protagonist finds his place in the new film industry. We do a similar thing but instead of using sound as a way of connoting change, we use color I felt this was very effective as it showed the characters emotion throughout the video.
