Props

Props are used to add to the mise en scen of the music video and we are planning on using a piano prop for one of are scenes in the music video as one of the main prop, we will have additional props but have yet to decide fully on which ones will be used.
Props Used:
Keyboard

Chair

Soft drink to act as 'beer'

Case for Lillian to throw on the floor in anger

Sugar packets for stop motion

Lemon to draw on

These have helped enhance the video.

Shot List

In order to differ our music video to it’s original version, we came up with a range of camera shots, which would allow us to portray the message we are trying to get across. As we may already know, the Kate Nash music video has a narrative theme, which allows it to be as interesting, succesful as it is. As a group we choose to adapt the same technique however, we also choose to focus on the perfomance to make it a lot more entertaining and affective to our audience.

For the time being here is what we have came up with as our shot list and why it’s we choose to use this:

Shot 1:Long shot
Long shot of the female sat on the piano, playing the 1st note of the song.
Shot 2:Over the shoulder shot
showing the female’s body structure and a closer view of the instrument while playing the piano.
Shot 3:Close up
close up of hands to create realism as the female artist is playing the piano.
Shot 4:Mid-long shot

Shot of the female sat on the piano, playing the song.

Shot 5:Close up

Characters face looking down at the piano, playing the song.

Shot 6:Extreme close up

Characters hand on piano, playing the song.

Shot 7:Close up

Female character miming the lyrics of the song

Shot 8:Long shot

Long shot of the female character walking in the park.
Shot 9:Close up
Close up of the female’s face to her reveal emotions.
Shot 10:Long shot

Male character walking past in the park.
Shot 11:Close up
Close up of the male character to reveal his happy smile / evoking contrast
Shot 12:Static long shot
This is when both female and male character walk past each other in the park.
Shot 13:Shot reverse shot
Shot reverse shot of the two character whilst seating down in a fast food shop/ café .
Shot 13a:Mid-shot

Female character miming the song.

Shot 13b:Mid-shot

Male character showing his emotions; can't be bothered.

Shot 13c:Close up

Female characters face.

Shot 13d:Close up

Male characters face.

Shot 14:Long shot
Long shot of the female on the swing in the park.

Shot 15:Low angle shot / point of view shot
Point of view of showing the happy facial expression of the female character as the male character looks down to her (low angle shot)

Shot 16:High angle shot/ point of view shot
Point of view shot showing the sad facial expression of the male character as the female character looks up to him (high angle shot).

Production Treatment

THE MUSIC VIDEO
The music video we decided to do is ‘Foundations’ by Kate Nash. We decided on this song because we thought that it was a simple song with an upbeat tone. We therefore thought that it would be fun to play around with the different ways of going about the video and how we could portray the narrative of the song.

DURATION

The duration of the song is 4 minutes long so this will work well to fit the criteria of the brief.

AUDIENCE
The audience that the song will be aimed at female teens aged 14-25. This is because of the genre of the music as its very upbeat and catchy. However, this music may not be the taste of all 14-25 year old females.

RESUME
The narrative of the video is that Kate Nash is getting annoyed with her boyfriend by all the little things he does, such as being sick on her trainers, therefore because of all these things, she does things to him to get back to him, like not turning on the heating so he gets cold to get back at him. The song goes back and forth and illustrates a fight of some sort where they are both making digs at each other. The sort of genre of the song that we are looking at is pop as it is a broad genre to work with. We have therefore decided to interpret the music with disjunction as well as performance and narrative. The audience should expect to see the relationship between the 2 people and see that just like the video its at times has disjunction but not all the time.

SUGGESTED ELEMENTS
We have planned to do a mixture of things for the performance. As mentioned, it will use a narrative as well as disjunction and will alternate between the two. Consequently, the performance will consist of 2 people and will help narrate the story behind the song.

The sort of costume that we will need would be that the girl will be in colourful dresses and the guy would be in black and white, showing mute colours. This will show the contrasting personalities and the way that clash. This shows the relationship between the 2 characters and how different they are to ach other.
The sort of lighting we will be using will be bright and clear. This would help show the happy tone. The performance will mainly be in a local park and around college and will show a love hate relationship between the 2 characters.

So far, we have decided that very little special effects will be needed as the ideas we have will not need it. The only sort of SFX we will be using will be during the editing, such as split screens and colour saturation etc.

The key locations we have decided to use are the local park and college grounds. We thought that these places were fitting to the genre and narrative of the song and helps change up the original music video as it was based in a house. We have therefore turned this on its head and opted for the opposite to make it different. More so, even though we will be using college grounds, we will be using areas that aren’t obvious to people that it is in the college.

RECORDING DAYS
So far we have worked out that we will need about 6 days for the current locations that we have ideas with. We will be spending about 2 days on each location. However this may change due to the fact that we have no definite plan as of yet. Also, we have to take into consideration that the weather will be nice for us to film in, as well as the fact that the locations are free for us to film in as the park could be occupied with members of the public and the college grounds, the piano room in particular, could have students in there practicing. The time for the editing will be about 3 weeks as we will be editing as we go along with our filming and blogging.

Kate Nash - Foundations

Song Lyrics

These are the song lyrics. We have looked at these lyrics to help us narrate the song and how we will go about illustrating the meaning of the song and its purpose.

Thursday night, everything's fine, except you've got that look in your eye
when I'm tellin' a story and you find it boring,
you're thinking of something to say.
You'll go along with it then drop it and humiliate me in front of our friends.

Then I'll use that voice that you find annoyin' and say something like
"yeah, intelligent input, darlin', why don't you just have another beer then?"

Then you'll call me a *****
and everyone we're with will be embarrassed,
and I wont give a ****.

My fingertips are holding onto the cracks in our foundation,
and I know that I should let go,
but I can't.
And every time we fight I know it's not right,
every time that you're upset and I smile.
I know I should forget, but I can't.

You said I must eat so many lemons
'cause I am so bitter.
I said
"I'd rather be with your friends mate 'cause they are much fitter."

Yes, it was childish and you got aggressive,
and I must admit that I was a bit scared,
but it gives me thrills to wind you up.

My fingertips are holding on to the cracks in our foundation,
and I know that I should let go,
but I can't.
And every time we fight I know it's not right,
every time that you're upset and I smile.
I know I should forget, but I can't.

Your face is pasty 'cause you've gone and got so wasted, what a surprise.
Don't want to look at your face 'cause it's makin' me sick.
You've gone and got sick on my trainers,
I only got these yesterday.
Oh, my gosh, I cannot be bothered with this.

Well, I'll leave you there 'till the mornin',
and I purposely wont turn the heating on
and dear God, I hope I'm not stuck with this one.

My fingertips are holding onto the cracks in our foundation,
and I know that I should let go,
but I can't.
And every time we fight I know it's not right,
every time that you're upset and I smile.
I know I should forget, but I can't.

And every time we fight I know it's not right,
every time that you're upset and I smile.
I know I should forget, but I can't.
x2

Video Analysis

We have chosen Alfie by Lily Allen for our detailed analysis, we chose Lily, as she is quite a similar artist Kate Nash. This is because they both use a similar singing style that has been described as “mockney” – a fake cockney accent.

This video is based on performance, as there is a great deal of lip-synching throughout. It is also an illustrative video as there are aspects of the video that is acted out by the two characters, along with the lyrics of the song.

Due to the video having references to sex it is more than likely targeted at older teenagers or a young adult audience, but this video is not typical of a generic pop music video. This is because of the strong reference to cartoons throughout the video, which are typically used in connection with children. These are contrasting attributes that are noted subtly during the video.

The opening of this video bares a strong reference to Warner Brothers, with the use of the opening graphics and an iris shot that were both used in early production of films and cartoons alike. This is an example of intertextuality as the video has been directly influenced by outside factors. This theme is carried out throughout the video by continuous cartoon references, such as the mouse hole seen behind Alfie towards the end of the video. This can be seen to be creating a direct link to Tom and Jerry, which is also in fact a Warner Brothers cartoon.

For example, the small door to her brothers’ room, this can be seen as a connection to ‘Alice in Wonderland’ by the juxtaposition of a normal size Lily and the comically small door. The cartoon theme is also highlighted by the use if bold bright colours and high key lighting that express the cheerful mood that is implied by the beat of the song. However, it also clashes with the lyrics of the song as Lily is singing about her lazy problematic brother.

The music video is performance based, this is clear throughout the video as both performers act according to the songs’ lyrics, for example, the scene where Alfie is giving Lily a rude hand gesture along with the lyrics, “Now, now there’s no need to swear...” this provides further evidence of the intended target audience being older teenagers and young adults.

Alfie the puppet is dressed as a stereotypical teenager in a hooded jacket and cap. This stereotypically view of teenagers is reinforced by many of the things Lily sings about, such as suggesting, “Surely there’s some walls out there that you can go and spray.” This also shows how openly teenagers are discriminated against in society today.

The shots in this video are used to create a contrast between the two characters such as many of the times when both Lily and Alfie are in shot, Lily has had to either crouch down or sit in order for them both to fit. This also links back to the Alice in Wonderland theme as it shows how awkward the size difference is between the brother and sister. The contrast between the two between the two characters is also expressed through their actions. Lily is seen doing housework, whilst Alfie is in his room playing video games. This could also be seen as a contrast between good and evil, as the negativity around Alfie’s character is also expressed through the low key lighting in his room, which is a direct contrast to the high key lighting in the areas around Lily.

Close up’s are often used in this video to express the difference between the miniature objects around the house and the size of Lily. They are also used to show the different emotions on the characters faces throughout the course of the video.

Cross cutting between the characters is also changing between the illustrative and performance aspects as Lily is fulfilling the performance through lip-synching, and Alfie fulfils the illustrative as the lyrics are about his actions.

This video is effective in its promotion of the song as it uses humour to deal with issues in society regarding the stereotypical teenager. The use if cartoon references ensure that the interest of the viewers is held by the video as well as through the lyrics of the song and the cheerful beat.

Initial Planning Meeting

During our first few lessons we have debated about what song we want to choose for our music video. We are finding this stage of research the most difficult because we as a group have a large range of interests; we looked at artist ranging from Lupe Fiasco to Abba. After looking at the different possibilities for each genre we have decided that we are going to do a song from the pop genre. We think that using the pop genre will allow us to incorporate our own ideas into our music video as opposed to going off just what is mentioned in the song. The artists we’ve looked at in depth so far are Kate Nash and Owl City. We are not yet sure on which of these artist to choose, so we are going to look into different songs and their lyrics then apply this to what we could possibly create for our music video.

We decided to choose Foundations by Kate Nash as it is a simple song that we can mold our ideas with to create an interesting and different music video. Also as there is no set narrative we can decide whether we want to use and illustrative or a disjunctured approach to the video.

We have decided that our roles in the group should be as follows:
Caroline – Performance and blogging
Chris – Image design and camera work
Nina – Editing and blogging
Lillian – Performance and camera work

We have specifically chosen to film a piano sequence for the opening of the video, to make use of our talents collectively as a group. We have so far decided that we are going to highlight the difference in attitude between the two characters by using a play on colours. We could also show this by the use of a split screen in the post-production.

We have looked at the Kate Nash video, it very much tells the story of the lyrics and illustrates what she is thinking and feeling. It is set in an apartment somewhere, where we assume that they are living together there.

Costume - Female: Quirky, geeky look. Dresses.

Hair: messy wavy style.
Costume - Male: Black and white. T-shirts and jeans.

Loctions: Alexandra Park, college grounds, café