Risk Assessment: Coldplay- Clocks

New Video- Mise-en-Scene- Locations & WHY

Having changed our video idea, we now have new locations for the new video.

As the main feature of our film will be performance, we have concentrated on filming our actor (Jeff Leyland) miming the song in order for us to use this throughout our video. He was filmed in college, on the stage. We kept the curtains closed behind him so as to have a plain backdrop.We also filmed another of our actors (Emma Claydon) in the hall too, Emma however, was playing the grand piano in the centre of the hall. We decided that we wanted our performer, to be singing on a stage. We wanted it to look like he was almost performing but in an abstract way.

The walls in the hall we chose to use were GREEN presenting a number of colour connotations. I liked the natural connotations, and the connotations of harmony; as they fitted with both the song's sound and the genre well. I also thought that the natural connotations fitted with the calm and tranquility of Coldplay.

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

  Green

Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money.

Green has great healing power. It is the most restful color for the human eye; it can improve vision. Green suggests stability and endurance. Sometimes green denotes lack of experience; for example, a 'greenhorn' is a novice. In heraldry, green indicates growth and hope. Green, as opposed to red, means safety; it is the color of free passage in road traffic.

Use green to indicate safety when advertising drugs and medical products. Green is directly related to nature, so you can use it to promote 'green' products. Dull, darker green is commonly associated with money, the financial world, banking, and Wall Street.

Dark green is associated with ambition, greed, and jealousy.
Yellow-green can indicate sickness, cowardice, discord, and jealousy.
Aqua is associated with emotional healing and protection.
Olive green is the traditional color of peace.

http://green-colors.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/green-common-connotations.html

Monday, July 16, 2012

Green Common Connotations

nature, growth, grass, hope, youth, inexperience, sickness, health, Islam, spring, Saint Patrick's Day, money (US), greed, and envy

http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-f=1_3389585&N-fa=427474&N-p=25991881&N-play=0&N-s=1_3389585&N-u=1_33733

The Curtain on the stage we chose was a deep shade of RED. We also felt that the connotations of this colour fitted well. We liked the idea of strength, supporting our protagonist through his state of sadness, power, determination, passion and desire also fitted with this. It also added the idea of lust or love, suggesting that maybe there is alternative motives to his commitment and desire.

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

  Red

Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.

Red is a very emotionally intense color. It enhances human metabolism, increases respiration rate, and raises blood pressure. It has very high visibility, which is why stop signs, stoplights, and fire equipment are usually painted red. In heraldry, red is used to indicate courage. It is a color found in many national flags.

Red brings text and images to the foreground. Use it as an accent color to stimulate people to make quick decisions; it is a perfect color for 'Buy Now' or 'Click Here' buttons on Internet banners and websites. In advertising, red is often used to evoke erotic feelings (red lips, red nails, red-light districts, 'Lady in Red', etc). Red is widely used to indicate danger (high voltage signs, traffic lights). This color is also commonly associated with energy, so you can use it when promoting energy drinks, games, cars, items related to sports and high physical activity.

Light red represents joy, sexuality, passion, sensitivity, and love.
Pink signifies romance, love, and friendship. It denotes feminine qualities and passiveness.
Dark red is associated with vigor, willpower, rage, anger, leadership, courage, longing, malice, and wrath.
Brown suggests stability and denotes masculine qualities.
Reddish-brown is associated with harvest and fall.

http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-f=1_3389585&N-fa=427474&N-p=25991881&N-play=0&N-s=1_3389585&N-u=1_33733

Although we liked both of these colours and their connotations, we did not want them to be linked too strongly with our characters- in order for our audience to create their own storyline. Therefore, we liked the idea of keeping these colours in our location, and the shots without being too central to the mise-en-scene.

Coldplay- Clocks: Characters

There are only two characters in our video;

Jeff Leyland- 18
     male, brown hair, tall.

Jeff is our main actor, he is going to be featured as the singer of the band. We have filmed him numerous times miming the lyrics to our song. We chose to use Jeff as he had a good physique- hence would be desirable for the young, female, target audience of the indie genre. This, also made him appear very stereotypically masculine- highlighting the strength of his emotions as they opposed his stereotypes.



Emma Claydon- 18
     female, black hair, tall.

Emma is the second of our actors and is featured playing the grand piano. We decided to fit this into our piece, syncing it with the music. Various shots were taken of Emma playing the piano, she is not however, featured in the video in any other way.

Coldplay- Mise-en-Scene- Male Performer's Costume

We decided to dress our male performer in black and white in our music video to remain simple but also to match colour connotations

Black has connotations that we wanted to portray in our video. http://maisieheskethmedia-advanced.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/connotations-of-colour-black.html

White also has contrasting connotations.
http://maisieheskethmedia-advanced.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/connotations-of-colour-white.html

We decided to use a mixture of black and white to contrast with the female character, but also to draw in aspects of both colours' connotations. Henceforth breaking some conventions but sticking to others.

He is going to wear a fitted top to show his phisique, making him stereotypically desirable and iconic for teenage girls particularly- a stereotype of fame and musicians. Jeans portray a casual and masculine imagine, but converse return to make the outfit more casual.



Below are the photos of the actual items Jeff wore. However, due to the photographs being such bad quality- due to unavailability of adequate equipment, I have also downloaded some good quality photos of replica items.

Coldplay- Mise-en-Scene- Female Performer's Costume

We decided to dress our female performer fully in black in our music video as it is a non-stereotypically feminine colour- which is a stereotype of "Indie-girls" (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Indie%20Girl) obviously matching the indie-genre of our chosen song.

Black also has connotations that we wanted to portray in our video. http://maisieheskethmedia-advanced.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/connotations-of-colour-black.html

She is going to wear a floaty top to show femininity, jeans to portray a casual and almost masculine imagine, and long boots to suggest sophistication.

Costumes- Coldplay

In our production, we are going to be dressing our characters and musicians in basic colours and simple clothing so we didn't draw attention away from other things happening in the video, but also to fit with stereotypes of the genre. As we saw on the guardian music blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/sep/01/gender-stereotypes-indie-music) it is stereotypical of the genre for "the boundaries and differences between masculine and feminine stereotypes" to be "blurred".

Black and white were the colours we chose to dress the people in our video in to keep it simple, and not to distract from any of the other things happening in the music video.

Connotations of the colour black:
http://maisieheskethmedia-advanced.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/connotations-of-colour-black.html

Connotations of the colour white:
http://maisieheskethmedia-advanced.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/connotations-of-colour-white.html

Permissions to Use the Song- Coldplay, Clocks

In order to use the song we have chosen (Clocks- Coldplay) we needed to begin by requesting permission from the record company who own the rights to the song.

Lyric annotations: Clocks- Coldplay

The lyrics to our song (Clocks by Coldplay) with annotations for what we planned to do in our final version of our music video:

In planning, I suggested using varied shots of the same thing to make things more interesting but to keep with the simplicity of a storyline-narrative:

In production, we amended the shots, but chose to use this idea with both the male performer:

...and the piano:

Clocks- Coldplay: Planning/Brainstorming

When we chose the song, we sat down and listened to the song on repeat three or four times. Whilst the song played, each of us had paper and a pen and we brainstormed anything that came to mind in which we felt was appropriate, could be used, or could be built on.

From this we came up with various ideas and put them all together to create the idea behind our video.

We wanted our video to be quite abstract and very simple, in order to follow the genre.

Immediately, the idea of clocks triggered time- and so all three of us wrote down the word 'clocks.' From this we decided that a clock would definitely be featured in our video.We then developed this to the idea of creating a time lapse. The clock would continually appear throughout the video and different stages of its cycle showing a passage of time, we wanted to speed the movement up so it created a time lapse. I set up the camera and filmed a clock for 10 hours in order to create this effect in the most effective way possible.

From this, Brogan particularly imaged a character trapped. And the trapped character needs to be free and needs to escape. However they are unable to do so, all the character can therefore think about is the idea of time. The fact that time is passing, time is being wasted and time is running out. We liked this idea a lot and thought it was versatile enough for us to work around when filming our video. We felt that it could be incorporated into our performance element and we could also use the clock idea alongside this to make the idea stronger.

Tiffany felt that the idea of using candles, or flames would be appropriate and fitting with the genre as they were not ever lasting, but almost an aid in a trapped situation.
Personally, I felt that the video would be most appropriate and effective simply using shots of the performance- the piano and the singer. We therefore, incorporated all of our ideas together and created our final idea.

We then discussed the ending of the song; should it be uplifting or not? We thought it could go either way, the lyrics of the song are not very positive and the idea behind our video was not leading us more towards a negative ending wherein the character doesn't escape being enclosed. Or we also considered an uplifting ending where the character finds freedom before 'his time runs out.'

Coldplay- Clocks: Brainstorm

After brainstorming we went on to the internet and created a mood-board type brainstorm to help visualise our ideas: