Mental Health Research

One of the underlying themes of my music video is mental health, and my protagonists struggle with her 'inner demons'. In order to understand how to portray this character I did some research into mental health and some illnesses that our video could reflect.

"Pyschosis" - a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.

In my video I am keen to explore the break between reality and fantasy, as our protagonist is unable to function in reality (the home/school scenes) so she escapes to a fantasy she creates (forest scenes).

Originally I was going to explore Multiple Personality Disorder

"Multiple Personality Disorder" - characterized by the appearance of at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personality states that alternately control a person's behaviour.

To explore this I was going to have our character change costumes depending on which personality she is, because it's a music video it would've been hard to portray the change without any verbal speech. However we decided against this idea, as we felt it wasn't an accurate representation of this particular mental illness and might make it seem a little 'cheesy'. Instead, I decided to represent is through colour symbolism.

Filming Day Two

Collage Research

This is a picture of the collage I made for my music video. I wanted to use the collage to portray the female characters confused mindset. I included pictures of Barbie and magazine covers to show her self-esteem issues in relation to the lyric "aint youth meant to be beautiful?" and to challenge societies pressure to be perfect. I made sure to use lots of pictures focused on the human body - from a skeleton to Vesalius' diagram of the human anatomy. I did this to really accentuate the theme of decay and death. I also included some war imagery and references to suicide to show her confusion.

Lyrics In Video?

I was watching some music videos to get some inspiration and I watched Issues by Julia Michaels lyric music video and I really liked the idea of having the song lyrics on the screen. But after thinking about it, I decided that I didn't want all the lyrics in the video, instead, just a select few words that I could use to emphasize the message of my music video. 

Filming Day One

Today I started to film for my music video. I think it went quite successful despite facing a couple hurdles along the way so I made a vlog about how the day went:

 

What is a digipak?

As one of the ancillary tasks, we have been asked to produce a digipak for our artists album. A digipak is a form of packaging for CDs and DVDs. As opposed to the traditional jewel case, as shown, digipaks are made from 300gsm card with matte or gloss varnish - allowing them to be shatterproof. There are little to no restrictions on the size of a digipak. It can easily be increased from 4 to 6 or 8, which allows more information to be displayed. This is more appealing to artists as it is more information to persuade the customer to buy their album. Digipaks are beneficial because its cardboard and it will not snap. Even the plastic CD holder can be made from cardboard as a pose to plastic. It being made from cardboard means its more sustainable than plastic. But on the other hand, it could rip and if it gets wet, can become soggy.
I think the advantages clearly over weigh the disadvantages as can be resolved by layering a thin plastic film to make it some-what waterproof.

Filming Day Reschedule

Today I scheduled to start shooting my music video but it inconveniently began to snow. The section I planned to film was in the Hilly Fields woods and I can not do the shots with the snow so I decided to reschedule that to next Sunday. To make up for the lost time I decided to start filming the indoor shots and get those finished.

Location 2

My second location is the characters bedroom. The bedroom I will film in is mine. I took all pictures and objects in the mise-en-scene down to leave it quite plain and generic. I didn't want her to have a room that didn't suit her character. The character wouldnt have bright walls and pictures of her friends everywhere so I made sure to remove all that to ensure the mise-en-scene is just right. I wanted the room to reflect how vulnerable and lonesome she is.

Location 1

My first location is Hilly Fields where I plan to shoot the overhead shots of my character lying on the floor and just looking around. This picture shows exactly where I decided to shoot. I shot here because this particular spot had a lot of dry leaves where I could lie without getting dirty. One of my shots is a POV shot of where she is looking around and this spot had the sun shine nicely on it and has the potential to create a really nice shot.

Shooting Schedule

Today in lesson I've been planning my shooting schedule for the days that I want to film.
DAY 1: Sunday 10th December
Location in Hilly Fields Forest.
Floor/Sky shots.
Bring tripod, camera, flip camera and SD card.
No props.
Outfit - Black fishnet top and leather jacket... any trousers (they won't be seen).
Dark makeup.

DAY 2: Monday 11th December
Location in my house.
Bathroom/Mirror shots - cosmetic surgery lines.
Tripod, camera, flip, SD card and charger.
Use eyeliner pencil for surgery lines.
Outfit - Large green top and shorts// messy hair.
Little/too no makeup.

DAY 3: Thursday 21st December
Location in school.
Hallway shots.
Tripod, camera, SD card and charger.
Outfit - Black dress and leather jacket??// braided hair.
Dark makeup.

Location in my house.
Bedroom shots - newspaper collage on wall/lying under the bed.
Tripod, camera, SD card and charger.
Outfit - Baggy black top// messy hair.
Little/to no makeup.

DAY 4: Thursday 11 January
Any other shots/ reshooting shots if necessary