Narrative Breakdown

We decided that from the information gathered from the focus group and questionnaire that our music video should be half performance and half narrative. We decided that the performance should be spontaneous and not planned out in any way as this is what we did when we filmed the year ten band last month. However whilst the performance aspect can be spontaneous the narrative needs to be planned out thoroughly so when we come to film it everyone knows what they are doing. Originally we had a few ideas with what we could do with the narrative and many of them included members of the band travelling, for example one of our first ideas that we mused upon was the idea of colour manipulation where the whole world was black and white and each member of the band was assigned a colour and every time they walked past something it restored colour to that area. This idea incorporated travelling as each band member would have been at a different place and then travelled to one final destination where a performance would take place and the destination would have its full colour restored, possibly even saturated. Another idea that we though about was the use of satire in the music industry and how it can be applied to the Indie music scene, we thought that the band could be stereotypically Indie whilst the singer would be presented as a mainstream Pop artist. You would be able to tell that the singer is a Pop artist because we would use stereotypical conventions that you expect to see from Pop music videos such as the common beauty shot. We eventually decided not to use this idea because we took preference to our final idea and we thought that more could be done with it.

Our final narrative that we are going to film involves the notion of travelling and links with many aspects of the performance. The basis of our idea is to have the lead singer travel in a lift, as this links with the songs title "Space Elevator," and then get off at different locations where different members of the band will be. Each member of the band will have a theme and it will be shown through the use of misé-en-scene, each band members theme will be incorporated into the final performance where each member will retain their original costume. As the lead singer picks up different band members their costumes will change to suit the environment that they will end up in. We initially came up with three locations, the first one being a prop room where the drummer resides and is wearing a variety of different props with many more scattered about on the floor, the drummer will also have a short comical romance with a mop which is also decorated in an assortment of props. When the singer stumbles into the room his costume will also change to match the assortment of props that the drummer is wearing. The hectic misé-en-scene relates to the musical stereotype of drummers being  insane, portrayed by many characters most notably the puppet "Animal" from the Muppets. The second location that we decided upon was somewhere sophisticated and classical such as a mansion, this location is where the bass player will be situated and we decided that he should be wearing a suit or something smart to fit in with the surrounding area. When the drummer and singer arrive out of the elevator they too will also be in suits or smart clothing to create synergy between all the band members. The sophisticated nature of the bassist' area completely contrasts  that of the drummers and they are at complete opposite ends of the class spectrum which means we would be appealing to a wider audience. The final location is the most interesting as we decided it should be themed around a chess board, this location is where the rest of the band meet up with the guitarist. We came up with the concept that the guitarist will be on a giant chess board playing a game of chess by himself or with another band member when they arrive. Once all the members of the band are collected they will then make their way to the performance location.

We plan on having a dynamic video that includes both performance and narrative in a non linear fashion to keep the audience engaged at all times whilst watching the video. We came up with the idea that we should reveal each member in the performance when they are revealed in the the narrative, however this contrasts our ideology of the band being represented as a unit rather than individuals as some members will get more screen time than others.