As our chosen song is of the independent genre, costume and style convention is vital. Artists of that genre form their style that is similar to their audience, to covey this idea of a close relationship between audience and identity. Common brands such as Carhartt, Dickies and Burberry are often seen within this genre; so we made sure to exemplify this convention within our music video. Indie clothing often consists of vintage and work wear, brands such as Dickies have been taken from hegemony and work wear and implemented within the Indie style, as displayed in the screenshot. In terms of bands from the genre that we have taken influence from, the band Moose Blood gave us several ideas, for example the big winter coats and shirts, as shown in the screenshot.
Screenshot of 'The Neighbourhood'
In addition, one particular bands gave us heavy influence, The Neighbourhood, whom produce Indie Rock style music often addressing emotional issues, much like Choose Wisely, the artist of our choice. The clothing and style of the Neighbourhood is something we reflected within our piece, the use of long sleeve buttoned up shirts and dark trousers. As you can see from both pictures, colour isn't a huge feature in either of the brands clothing, so in terms of colour for our male character its very limited, using mainly on the dark browns and light browns. As you can see we have taken many influences into our characters clothing and costume as we feel it's essential to the indie genre, to create an identity for the artist.
Male Actor
Our male actor is too be wearing a long sleeve Burberry style shirt, conforming with the brand identity of the genre and the intertextuality of wearing a shirt. Combined with this he shall be wearing Dickies 874 Work Pants in order to conform to the conventions of the Indie Genre. This outfit while simply a shirt and trousers conforms heavily to the genre and will make the audience connect more and relate more to the story line, characters and message of the song.
Female Actor
Chef trousers, as worn by our female actor
For our female actor we wanted to correlate to Indie conventions as much as possible, we wanted to ensure an unorthodox costume to coincide with the genres demands. Firstly, she is set to wear Chef trousers, this compliments this idea of independent and individuality, taken from a hegemonic culture of work and applied to a musical sub culture.
For this task, we are tasked with the assignment of rehearsing editing techniques prior to planning our music video. This will aide our video as we will be experts in that particular skill.
Eye-Line Match - This involved cohesively matching up shots to ensure our subject, Thor, was looking at his subject, Connor, and this involved collecting a series of shots and gluing them together in Premiere Pro. This is something which will help us 'shoot for the edit' as we create a plan of action before the shoot in order to aid and benefit our post production process.
It was important we gained experience of editing techniques to exemplify our work. Furthermore, reflecting on our AS Thriller, we didn't do the aforementioned and we lacked a definitive structure of how we would approach the production or post production piece, so on reflection, we are producing a more in depth and decisive plan before shooting.
Match-on-action - This process is something particularly crucial in the production of a cohesive music video. This is the technique whereby continuity is obliged and, for example, if a character is seen picking up a mug, the next shot is them drinking from the mug.
Our attempt demonstrates this is a skill we can achieve in post production. To reflect, this was a brilliantly rehearsed and executed attempt at match on action, but we did suffer difficulties. For example, originally, the shot was shot from an angle 180 degrees in the opposing direction, but we had to battle with shadows of our camera operator in order to create a shot without continuity error.
These series of shots required thorough planning and this is something I enjoyed shooting and will only bode well for our music video. On reflection, I feel the second shot of the sequence is perhaps not cut away from sooner, but it's better to be making these mistakes during this process as oppose to in our music video.
Jump Cuts - This technique is something adopted by music videos and horror films in an attempt to make the subject of the shot fly across the frame for effect.
Our attempt involved our subject cutting from one side of the pathway to another, but, on reflection, the cut isn't clean or smooth and appears jagged and messy. This means our piece is detracted in quality for this attempt.
Fortunately, our genre for our video, Indie, doesn't adopt jump cuts all too often, so we should be able to avoid them, however, it was a good experience to learn from and broaden our knowledge of post production techniques.
Slow Motion - Perhaps our most successful post production technique of them all. Shot using a Go Pro and a Go Pro stabiliser, we managed to produce a smooth piece of slow motion footage. This involved increasing the frames per second count to double (120 fps) and slowing down the footage in Premiere Pro to create a smooth shot.
This allowed us to shoot a series of exquisite shots in slow motion as it demonstrates our ability to do this excellently. If adopted in our music video, this would exemplify our work and is something as a group, we've decided to explore the possibility of using this technique in our work.
