Idea Moodboard / Inspiration

As I have decided to base my music video on someone with some kind of illness I began research on music videos that are already popular based on this topic. It was the editing in Eminem's music video to 3 a.m. which intrigued me as I felt it strongly reflected the mental illness that the main character in the video had. The jumpcuts and transitions between shots convey the characters unsettling thoughts and feelings. Obviously I won't be able to mirror this effect exactly in my music video as this song is of a much faster tempo and it therefore works well, however I can still think about making the editing mirror the characteristics of my character. An idea that I could expand and develop is making the shots longer when the character is feeling weak and tired as it would demonstrate her slow nature. 

 Two shots within the music video that I found interesting can be seen to the left. The first shot inspired me to think about the locations in my own music video. I plan to make a part-performance based music video and, much like Eminem's music video, I want to convey entrapment and isolation with the location of this part of the music video. A forest setting would be ideal because the trees can act as physical and metaphorical barriers - demonstrating my character's battle with the illness she has. Conversely, I could choose to shoot this part of the music video in a small enclosed space such as a brick corridor or a small room. Both of these locations would indicate isolation to the audience.
The second shot that interested me was an out of focus shot of a knife. The composition of the shot has inspired me to think about props that I could use to convey my character's illness and how I could set the shot up to convey this. For example, the fact that this shot is out of focus could be interpreted as the mental illness distorting the main character's view on his own actions. This is because we typically associate blurred vision with someone who is unwell or ill-sighted.

I have previously analysed this music video by P!nk but I feel it's a good narrative example of someone with a mental illness. I thought the narrative in this video was particularly strong - the way that Todorov's narrative structure is followed. The video begins with equilibrium as the main character is shown, it then leads to disequilibrium when the audience learn about her life struggles and finally returns of equilibrium when she gets better.

Two shots that I found particularly inspiring in this music video are to the right. The first is a close up shot of the young girls face. I found this shot interesting because of the filter that's been used in the editing process which gives the video and yellow-ish tint to convey that this happened in the past and that the girl isn't happy. In my video I could experiment with hues and filters to convey a certain emotion - for example using a blue filter to create a sad atmosphere and convey my character's struggle with an illness.
The second shot that I liked was P!nk's performance shot where the video is being projected onto the wall behind her. This was demonstrative of the notion of looking and this is something I really want to include in my music video as it is has appeared in many of the music videos I have studied. What's more, the performance part of this music video is something I want to incorporate into my own music video - meaning I shall cast someone to be Emily Denton to perform along to parts of the song.

Aerosmith's music video to Janie's Got A Gun was different to the other music videos that I have studied for inspiration because the narrative wasn't explicitly focusing on an illness. However, the music video gave me inspiration for shots and also how to balance out the performance with the narrative. I feel that this video was evenly split with around half of it being the narrative and half being the performance. With my music video I think I would like to have slightly less focus on performance due to the fact that some of the song's lyrics do repeat themselves and I don't want to repeat the same shots over and over.

Two shots that I was inspired by in this music video can be seen to the left. The shot of the hand on the floor with the back lighting stood out as it revealed a lot about the narrative in such a short shot. The blue filter on the shot gave a cold and lifeless feel to it which connoted death and sadness. The back lighting placed focus upon the hand and could be seen as a symbol of the life being removed from the person. I'd like to recreate a shot like this within my video as I think it can be applied to almost any illness to convey a weakness within the character.

The second shot is a silhouette of a male's figure. This music video used lighting in a way to portray mystery and darkness  in a way that has inspired me to use lighting in a similar way. The silhouette shots not only convey to the audience that the character is hiding something but they can indicate that they are empty and have lost their identity - something an illness can do to a person.

Next I will begin to plan my music video in more depth thinking about:

• Mise-en-scene - locations, props, lighting etc
• Camera shots and movements
• Editing
• Sounds - not so much this as the sound track I have is already nearly 4 minutes and it will be difficult to continue the narrative for much longer than this time.