Here's a drawing of our two protagonists, with annotations around them describing their traits. We made them both quite similar to show that they are well suited and at first seem 'perfect for each other', as we want to portray the idealistic relationship in the beginning of our video.
We thought very carefully about who we wanted to play these characters as we want them to be believable. At first, we thought about using a couple of our friends who we know are confident and wouldn't be shy on camera. However, we decided it might be better to use two people who are actually going out, as there is a natural chemistry between them which would come across on film. We are going to use Hannah and Steve as we feel they fit the description of our characters well.
This music video directed by Melina Matsoukas presents Rihanna's relationship with her boyfriend as being very destructive and like a drug. Their addiction to each other results in her leaving her boyfriend because of his possessive nature. The video received a mixed response from critics, with some praising its cinematic feel, whilst others criticized some of the explicit material featured.
Visually this song has great significance as it has faded blue, brown and green tones at times - something that we want to experiment with. There are many jump cuts and this highlights that we are on track with our editing ideas.
Relating back to the previous comment about this video holding a cinematic feel, we would really like to create this with our video. The beginning of the video does not feature the song 'We Found Love' but a monologue with a piano backtrack. Me and Rach have been thinking about doing something similar to this (possibly having childhood videos with an atmospheric backtrack?) and this video is evidence that having a 'story'/opening sequence before the music video itself can be successful as this particular video has 19 million views in just under two weeks on youtube!
Below are some screen shots that me and Rach found to be inspiring:
This is one of my favourite songs and when I watched the music video, I found some similar qualites to what I've been inspired by for my music video, eg. natural lighting. The beach location is something which I'd love to use, especially with the sunset; it creates a very mystical atmosphere. This would be good for my video, as it would feel quite magical, mirroring the love that the characters feel. The slow editing fits with the pace of the song and creates quite a dreamy effect, particularly with the use of natural lighting. I really like the close up of the boy's eyes at the end because it makes you feel a connection with the character. There's a scene in my music video where the girl first sees the boy in which we will also have a close up of her eyes. I can use this video as inspiration for that particularly shot.
I took my camera with me when I went for a walk around the village where I live and took some photos of some places I think would make great locations for our video. The sun was nearly setting creating beautiful lighting, which gave the photos lovely golden tones. I think the Autumnal feel would really work in our video, particularly in the fast-paced montage scenes. By filming footage in Autumn when the bright coloured leaves are falling from the trees and in Winter when everything seems quite bare, we will be able to show that time has passed, and the contrast between Autumn and Winter can reflect the change in the relationship as time goes on. Here's a slideshow of some of the images which I uploaded to Photobucket:
I think it's relevant to explore how my audience would consume our music video. Given that the 21st century is brimming with new technological advances, my audience would most likely consume our video online, through sites such as youtube One of my target audience memebers (Rachel Beaney) said this is how she watches and keeps up to date with new releases
I found this insightful youtube video called 'Social Media Statistics & Facts 2011' which highlights the power and popularity of social media.
"Nearly 2 hours of video is uploaded to youtube every every second" - This really stood out to me because it shows how easy and popular it is to be a producer of media as well as a consumer. One can then share their work, or others' work using other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and this can lead to a worldwide phenomenon.
Another thing I find interesting is that the video is made in Australia so it is very biased, especially when it labels Australia as the number 1 prolific user of social media in the world.
It surprised me to realise that Myspace is no longer popular, with users "cutting ties and fleeing to other social sites" such as Facebook and Twitter. I decided to do further research to find out why this is the case and found this really interesting article - 3 Reasons why Myspace has lost popularity
Twitter has become a huge phenomena. It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. Twitter rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with 200 million users as of 2011, generating over 200 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Daily user estimates vary as the company does not publish statistics on active accounts. As a user of Twitter myself, I find that I do not use it as much as Facebook and I think many of my friends would agree. A lot of people my age that I know prefer to use Facebook and some don't even have Twitter accounts.
I found a article on the Gaurdian Business Blog that explores the "increase in number of hours public spends watching TV, playing video games and using the internet" - The Gaurdian - Article
The pie chart below shows what online sites are most popular for sharing information, such as music videos.
If I was creating my music video for a company, I would create many pages on social networking sites, such as a fan page on facebook, and this would most likely increase the popularity of my music video.
