The indie genre and masks

After deciding to use costumes throughout our music video, we then researched various other videos that feature costumes and masks.
We found them to be popular, especially within the 'indie' genre.

Indie videos tend to be cut to the beat and have performances which focus on the music and instruments used. They are also usually quite low budget and so they have simple backgrounds but are also usually colourful as they are quite light-hearted.

We researched some indie videos and found many features masks and fancy dress as part of the mise en scene as it emphasises the light-hearted music and overall atmosphere. Here are a few that we found:

Canterbury- More Than Know

This video is a great example of how we analysed typical indie genre videos and moulded our concept so that it would appeal to the target audience. Masks, the setting of woods, a mixture of performance and concept and the use of split screen are all featured in this video as well as in ours. However, we are going for a more light-hearted feel and that is why we will include a narrative and various settings and extras which coincides with the lyrics and beat.

Bat For Lashes- What's A Girl To Do

This video is similar to our concept of the lead singer being followed by masked people. It also conforms to the conventions of indie genre videos as it goes with the beat of the song and is low budget as there is one simple location. However, by only having one shot, it does not conform to regular music video conventions, and we decided that we would like to have various shots of performance and narrative in our video.

Panic! At The Disco- Nine In The Afternoon

 

This is a good example of the use of the band in masks to add to the innocent fantasy-like atmosphere that is commonly used with 'indie' music. This video is also very colourful, with varying shots, and so it conforms to music video conventions in this way and so we will take inspiration from this when making our video.

Panic! At The Disco- It's Almost Halloween

We like the 'gimmicky' feel of this music video, and although it focuses specifically on Halloween, we will take influence from the bands use of fancy dress costumes and masks and the performance shots for our own music video.


We also found music videos from different genres that also use masks and costumes. Here are some that we found particularly interesting:


Deadmau5 ft. Rob Swire- Ghosts N Stuff

The Beatles- I Am The Walrus

Even thoght these videos are not the same genre as our chosen song we have still looked at them as inspiration and as research. In particular 'Ghosts N Stuff' use the idea of a sheet to make a ghost which is one of our ideas.

Preliminary costume ideas for music video

Our idea for the ghost in our music video. whom will be the main "haunting"

We thought that for the ghost costume we would use something cheap and simple to support the indie genre as it can be seen as retro as it is related to old video games such as Pacman played in the 1980's. It is also quirky to give the music video a light hearted and happy feel.

Our idea for what our band members will dress like during the performance section

This is what we envision the band members during the performance to look like as this is a typical "indie kid" which matches the genre of the song and also our target audience.

This is the idea we had for all the other members of the haunting, they would all be wearing masks but be in normal everyday clothes. 

Inspiration

Refused - New Noise

This video gave us lots of insipration. This video contains lots of the things we wanted to include in our video. For example it has performance shots and it has people dressed with masks on. However this video is designed to be more creepy and more serious, whereas our video is going to use the masks for a different effect. The angle we want to come from is a more light hearted and querky feel. This video is dark and sinister, but we are going to use sun light. The performance shots in this video are very good because they use very good lighting to match the song. Unfortunately we don't have the professional lighting which they used, so we will include lighting but we'll have to do it on a budget. The idea of the performance shots just being in a random place is what we are also going for in our music video. We are using my garage and so we need the lighting to make it seem more of a performance area.

Overall, after viewing this video we got a lot of ideas of shots we could use, how we could portray the people in the masks and clever shots we could use for the masked people shots and for the performance shots.

In this video an effect is used which we could use in our video. When the persons face mask changes really quickly all the way to the giraffe, using short clips and quick cuts, we feel like we could use this idea, but with halloween masks. This is again a preliminary idea, we are just gathering inspiration and ideas with research.

Preliminary mask ideas

Here are some pictures of masks. These are just preliminary ideas of some of the masks we could use. These masks are just the ones which I have already, we also plan to buy some more for our actual video and use some of these.

Dr Evil

Michael Jackson

Prince Charles

One of the Jonas brothers

Nelson Mandela

Mike Myers

Hot Club De Paris: research

Hot Club De Paris are a band from Liverpool, England and are signed to Moshi Moshi Records which is a London based record company that has signed other indie artists such as Florence and the Machine and Bloc Party.
They were formed in 2004 and consist of two brothers (Alasdair Smith who plays the drums and sings; Matthew Smith who plays guitars and sings)  and a mutual friend (Paul Rafferty who plays bass, baritone guitar and sings).
Though quite unknown, they are quite a successful band, touring extensively and playing in places such as: India, Scandinavia, Europe, The United Kingdom and The United States.
They have also played alongside and supported artists of a similar genre such as:
Joan of Arc, Battles, Jamie T and The Who.
Since 2004, they have released two albums (Drop It 'til It pops, 2006 and Live at Dead Lake, 2008), released a string of 7" singles (with the song 'My Little Haunting' that we're making a music video for being one of them) and in 2010 alone released two six song EP's called 'With Days Like This As Cheap As Chewing Gum, Why Would Anyone Want To Work?' and 'The Rise And Inevitable Fall Of The High School Suicide Cluster Band' which were later combined -among other songs- to make an album called 'Free the Pterodactyl Three' and released in late 2010 in Europe and North America.
Though Hot Club De Paris are unknown to mainstream music listeners, as an indie band they have had great success and worked among lots of other good artists, making many good songs long the way.

Hot Club De Paris

Our chosen song: My Little Haunting by Hot Club De Paris

Why we chose the song:
We chose the song because we had strong ideas for it and it is also in the indie genre so we could be more creative with it, and our ideas seemed more achievable.

Concept:
The singer is going to be the lead character and people will keep appearing wearing costumes. He will be seen in many different settings, singing the lyrics and there will always be performance aspects that will split up the clips of the 'hauntings'.
The leader of the people will be dressed up as a ghost in a white sheet and by the end, the lead singer will be chased and caught by the 'little hauntings'. A white sheet is then placed over the singer, and the two ghosts become a couple.

Mise en Scene:
We are going to use white sheets for the ghosts and other Halloween costumes for example different masks. The settings will vary and be in different costumes for example as it will follow the main character it may go from his house to the shops and walk down the road and maybe end in a woods/park. Also we would have a location for the band to play at and this would possibly be the park.
The band and lead character will be wearing casual clothes for example jeans and a t-shirt however overall we would like it to be quite colourful as we think that would represent this genre of music very well.

Camera Shots and Angles and Editing:
We will use a mixture of wide shots and close ups of various band members for the performance section, which will cutaway to the main narrative. There will be many p.o.v shots from the 'ghost' so that the camera can see the outline of the eye holes, and also p.o.v shots from the main protagonist. There will also be long and mid shots of the protagonist as he goes about his daily routine, and we will edit in some sped up and slowed down sections in order to add interest and to emphasise the 'hauntings' and their affect on the lead singer.

Feedback:
We should film in London rather than locally and recruit people to be in the video.