Daleen has suggested we film at her house, as we want our main character Nic, to look like he lives in a place that is a little bit run-down and daggy, and Daleen seems to think that her house, “looks like shit so it’s perfect.” The house screams 70s vibes with plenty of exposed brick and patterned tiles in the kitchen, so I agree in thinking that our main character will fit in.

I have a feeling the neon lights are going to look amazing against the brick and will give the place a really moody, grungy feel – which will hopefully translate through our music video with the type of electrifying disposition we are trying to achieve.

In Tuesday’s class, we went through lighting basics with Rohan. I took some pictures on a Canon 5D, though because I am such an amateur when it comes to photography, I didn’t know what settings to use so that the camera would best be able to handle the dramatic lighting.

I am particularly interested in the idea of using a dedo light underneath our doll’s chin to give the effect of evil/demonic/mysterious lighting at some point during the music video shoot – likely just as she is about to attack Nic.

Unknown photographer

On Thursday night, I went to Spice Market (magical place) and was re-introduced to neon lighting. It made me realise just how much I think having neon lights would add to our music video and the concept that we are working with, as it is a cheap and easy way to add some theatricality into our production. 

Dawn Shadforth’s cinematic and emotive ‘Lights’ music video serves as great inspiration to our project, as we are hoping to draw from the neon lighting concept and surreal energy of the video.

Darcy has 5m long strip lights that can change colours and strobe, which we are planning to use no matter what happens in our music video. Ideally, the goal is to focus our music video around the lighting concept and what is going to be really visually appealing in the video, then let some sort of narrative or event fall into that.

While I would never normally stray outside of my close circle of friends and discuss Harry Styles elsewhere, I happen to love his new music video and I don’t mind talking about it here. As the prime age for One Direction’s rise in the industry, I have followed Harry’s journey from boy band star to master of indie/rock music. His new music video for the song ‘Kiwi’ makes little sense in the context of the song lyrics, which are about a very adult-sounding woman (“Hard liquor mixed with a bit of intellect”) and possibly groupie claiming to be pregnant with Styles’ child. Yet, the meaning of the music video, to me, is subtle but great.

There are kids dressed up in Gucci suits, bringing in so many baked goods they can be stacked at the centre of the gym. There is a full-blown food fight between the children, until Harry Styles walks in (supposedly as the teacher) carrying plenty of puppies. Then, an ending scene that looks like a school photograph. Theoretically, you could read this video as being an exercise in wish fulfilment. Kids in a food fight, no adult supervision, puppies for all, and in the closing shot, the kids are mussed up and have cake smeared all over their faces but the school photo is going ahead anyway.

This is the sort of music video that is so visually entertaining, you hardly mind that it doesn’t make much sense. I would love to have this sort of concept come to life in our music video, where there might not necessarily be a straightforward narrative, but it will be enjoyable to watch anyway.

We are currently trying to decide whether our music video needs a full and logical narrative, or whether we just film a certain scenario that includes a bunch of visually appealing shots that stand on their own whilst emphasising colour and movement.

In this week’s reading from Carol Varnallis’ ‘Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context’ (2004), she notes almost immediately within the first chapter why more often than not, music videos are anti narrative and abstract. One of the reasons that she describes is that, “videos follow the song’s form, which tends to be cyclical and episodic rather than sequentially directed… If the intent of a music-video image lies in drawing attention to the music… it makes sense that the image ought not to carry a story or a plot in the way that a film might.”

We definitely want to take this into account and instead of over-shadowing the music with a complex narrative, we wish to compliment the song so that it works together with the video in harmony. This may include abstract, interesting shots that suit the upbeat and fun nature of the song, or a simple story line to keep the video flowing, as the song does work in a sort of story-like format, in that it seems to have an introduction, climax and conclusion.

One thing that we do know is that we don’t want the band playing or singing at any point during the music video, we would prefer to stay away from breaking the fourth wall and having the audience realise that it is a music video production with a band on set, and instead more of an artistic representation of the song.

On Tuesday, we ditched class and instead went to Daleen’s house to set up the lights and generally arrange the space, ready for filming on Friday.

The strip lights look great – they don’t quite fill the space with as much coloured light as I expected but that may be because it was quite bright outside which was interfering with the lighting. I believe that with a dedo lighting kit as well, the light within the space will be just perfect and help create that vivid and slightly gaudy look we are going for.

Our music video is intending to be a creative experiment in shot construction and lighting with a simplistic narrative as a driving force, one that positions the music video within a particular feminist view. However, our music video for ‘Electrical Ways’, at this stage of planning, is only just scraping the surface of the female experience in the 21st Century.

One of our inspirations comes from ‘Love Actually’, in scenes where Bill Nighy’s character, Billy Mack, is performing in his music video for ‘Christmas Is All Around’. He is surrounded by female performers who are clearly there to include sexually exploitive material – wearing very little and suggestively licking their lips. We are aiming to create a similar sort of scenario where the lead singer thinks he is a ‘sex god’ rockstar, however, the female in our video – the blow up doll – is uncomfortable with it all. The female doll in our music video is included to provoke particular questions about femininity and what it means for women to be objectified as sex objects, intentionally being used to represent the all too real experience of many women.

In ‘Music Video and the Politics of Representation’ buy Diane Railton and Paul Watson, Pink’s ‘Stupid Girls’ music video is aligned with much of recent feminist academic work on music video in that “it is concerned, on the one hand, to identify and critique images in which women are variously misrepresented, falsely represented, negatively represented, or simply not represented at all, and, on the other, to celebrate positive images of women.” (pg 18). Our music video is hoping to follow this example by showing how women are negatively represented and treated in a critiquing manner, whilst also addressing positive images of women – if you accept the blow up dolls deciding to fight back and murder their misogynistic boyfriend in the end as a positive representation.

As is also addressed in the reading, we are trying to touch on the fact that these images of women may not simply be either positive or negative, and that women may be a whole range of things without being labelled as one or the other – bad or good. We are trying to allude to the fact that these blow up dolls may accept rubbish treatment from their boyfriend, and they may decide to kill him, but either way it is their choice and they cannot be reduced to one ideology of what a female should be or do.

Luckily, after days of lengthy discussion and indecision, we now have a general narrative/theme/concept that will be running throughout our music video. The main goal is to create something visually enticing and fun, which has us experimenting with the neon lights and quirky filming spaces.

The story sees our main character, Nic, who is the lead singer of the band, walking down a suburban street with his girlfriend within the first verse, only to leave her outside, and enter the house. Once inside the house, he is faced with another, new girlfriend, giving the impression that he is a bit of a womaniser. However, instead of using two female actors to portray the girlfriends, we are using life-sized blow up dolls, blatantly demonstrating that the main actor sees women as sex objects and not real people, though they are meant to represent real people.

With the second girlfriend, we will use shots of Nic and the doll having fun amongst the interesting neon lights, taking part in mundane activities like eating ice cream, dancing and having Nic play the guitar to her. However, in a new scene with a vast change of mood; to Nic’s shock, they are joined by the first girlfriend, and before he knows it, they have both risen up against him to take him down for seeing women in the derogatory way that is displayed throughout the music video.

Progress has been made on the music video assignment front, in that we have decided on a song. Our music video will be made for a band that Darcy knows personally, called The Constables. They are a funk/alternative/rock group from Melbourne with their Spotify page noting their musical inspirations include the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Harts, The Delta Riggs and Confidence Man. The song we are using is called ‘Electrical Ways’, and when I listen to it, I imagine bright colours that pop off the screen, violent actions or dancing, and for some reason, a slow motion food fight.

I think it will be a truly fun music video to film and see come to life as the song is upbeat and catchy with lots of potential to be paired with interesting shot progressions.