Fortunes – Justin Beiber

Concept

The video opens with introductory shots of a pool party, lots of people and bright colours. This cuts to the lead singer of the band, Conor, walking down the street at midday as the song starts. Conor goes to cluttered $2 stores to shop for party supplies including streamers, plastic cups, party poppers and other classic party essentials. This is intercut with Conor singing and dancing in his own style in the store.

Returning home, Conor begins to set up for the pool party, decorating the space and trying on outfits, this will be edited using fast-paced cuts and close ups.

Finally Conor is seen floating in the pool on an inflatable pool toy, alone. It seems no one will actually arrive and he has set up this party for himself only.

The band, Fortunes, are an established Melbourne duo whose musical genre is best described as RnB electronica. Their aesthetic style matches this genre, a heavy emphasis on urban streetwear, often dressed in Adidas hoodies, Nike sneakers, buckets hats, etc. As clothing is such an expressionistic element within this music genre the video will showcase particular styles Conor dresses in. This particular style is experiencing a steady rise and is evident in other bands such as MØ, ALTA, Habits and more popular celebrities such as Miley Cyrus.

Production

The film clip is basically divided into three sections; The Introduction, Part 1, 2, and 3. The Introduction will occur before the clip begins and shows a number of people splashing about a pool and taking part in a pool party with Conor at the centre of it all. Part 1 features Conor walking to the shops to purchase party items as well as playing around with these items within the store. Part 2 will show Conor setting up for the party and Part 3 shows Conor floating in the pool by himself as it becomes apparent that the party he is throwing is just for himself.

Locations

Each section of the clip has its own location. The Introduction and Part 3 are set in a private home pool. We’ve already received permission from a family friend to use their pool in Yarraville for these scenes. Part 1 will require us to gain permission from one or two $2 stores around our filming location in Footscray/Yarraville and Part 2 will be filmed inside Conor’s house as well as around the pool.

Inspiration/Similar Style

The concept for the video was partly a leftover idea from a previous music video concept and partly brainstorming with the client to create a tailored idea for their particular song. As this was the primary method of development there was no major inspiration as such. However we developed some aesthetic ideas on how to film various locations from other music videos, such as Banoffee’s With Her and Lorde’s Yellow Flicker Beat for the pool scene, ALTA’s Stay Awhile for the urban scene’s and Jungle Giants’ Any Kind Of Way for the party scene. These video’s all in some way express a similar style that we would like to achieve. We also looked into other music video’s that involve pools and parties and discovered style’s that we wanted to avoid, such as Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry.