Pitch for my ideas

We have split our music videos into 3 sections to make it easier to film, the dance scenes, the narrative scenes and scenes against a white backdrop.

When our audience watch our music video we want them to understand the narrative clearly, without being confused about the concept after watching it. As the song we are using, Miley Cyrus – Wrecking Ball, is about a relationship break up, we wanted to show the aftermath of a breakup rather than showing the actual break up itself. To do this we decided not to have a whole continuing narrative cut up and inserted into the music video but instead have individual different scenes of the aftermath edited in through-out the music video. This means that for the narrative scenes the actor will not be in the same set or environment every time. For example, for one of the scenes she will be dragging pictures off of a bedroom wall and burning them and in another she will be walking down a lane/alleyway alone. We think this would be the best way to get the narrative across to the audience so they understand the concept.

Another one of our settings will be against a white backdrop. We will film our actor in a variety of shots, singing the song directly to the camera. We have seen many other pop artists do this including Miley Cyrus herself. In this scene the actor will be wearing dark clothing as we believe this will contrast against the white background and go with the emotion behind the actual song. We will also have minimal make up and no jewellery on the actor as we want these scenes to come across as more emotional.

In the last setting we will have the actor in the dance studio. Here, the actor will dance to the music and we will cut and edit the scenes in. The actor will be dressed in a black leotard and leggings. We have seen this done in many more music videos too and think it is an effective way of representing an idea depending on how the actor dances. For example, in Cheryl Cole’s music video for parachute, she dances in a way that links with her idea of a ‘parachute’ as she falls on the male dancer and relies on him to hold her up, just as you would expect a parachute too. This idea vaguely links to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of making the lyrics literal. We hope to graft choreography that we can interpret to link with the song and show the loneliness and passion the actor may be feeling using these scenes.

Feedback from the target audience -

‘The idea needs to be more creative as at the moment it is very cliché, it needs to be exciting and original rather than the same music videos that we always see, especially in the narrative areas. For example when you say she reads over her old texts from her boyfriend, it is something that the audience would expect. I think that the whole concept of the video will be clear to the audience but at the moment the idea is not original.’

‘I like the idea of costume, as an all black costume is representative of the character’s feeling in this song. I also like the fact that there are a lot of different settings used, this way I guess it won’t be boring. I also like how you are using a white rose and tinting it with black paint, showing that things in the relationship are going wrong. I hope to see the finished music video soon.’