Mise en Scene

 We decided to develop the convention of typical rock music videos in which we dressed each of the band members in dark black clothes which is usually the case for most rock music videos such as Green Day’s song ‘Holiday’ and My Chemical Romance’s ‘Black Parade’ which incorporated key rock conventions in a band as their costumes were mainly all black, gritty and rugged. Most rock bands tend to always dress in dark clothes for both music videos and live performances to keep their band image within the boundaries of the conventional rock genre. This would also help the audience identify what genre the music video or live performance is part of. In this case the rock genre is very easy to identify even without the music playing as you can tell by the outfits worn by both the band members along with the audience as there is a tendency that fans will dress in a similar manner to the band members as they idolise their favourite bands.

We also decided to keep the lighting of the band scenes dimly lit with a dark back ground to stick with the convention of a dark, gritty rock music video. A key music video example of this is the Kings of Leon music video ‘Someone like you’ where the band members have their backs facing a dimly lit wall.

The pictures we took for our digital package were taken in a wood where the light filtered through some areas of the trees giving it a unique lighting style which added to the grittiness of the band image which is a key convention of rock band imagery. An example of this convention is from Blink 182’s music video ‘I miss you’ where we got our inspiration to take the band shots as the music video is partially set in a wood which I thought fitted the rock convention perfectly.

The location for our story line footage that we shot around the lake grounds which is a local recreational area, we shot our narrative footage during the a bright day which combined the dark lighting of the interior shots of the band with bright exterior natural light of the narrative section of the music video which challenges the convention of a music video as standard rock genre music videos usually consist of dark shots with a small narrative such as the music video from Bullet from my Valentine ‘Sun rise will never come’ Concerning ‘mise en scene’ in the narrative side of the music video I wanted to make sure the two characters Sam and Tash were dressed accordingly to the rock genre so dark punk costumes were required of them. We were originally going to have Olly (the lead singer) as the main character in the narrative as most rock genre music videos convenitally do but he decided he didn’t want to so he ended up helping me with the camera shots. 

In conclusion I believe that we have created an equal balance between challenging and developing forms of conventions. I also believe our music video settles in well with its specific genre of music as it has developed all the typical conventions which it has to offer along with a few extra aspects involving some unconventional camera shots which I was able to capture with my GO-PRO camera.