Mise-en-Scene Research

This is a more detailed look into what will be be needed on stage and the visuals seen in the music video.


Obviously I have mentioned the use of old jazz style microphones which is an important indicator to the era of music.

We have only sourced one microphone at this point in time and it has been very difficult to source two more due to the expense of such a piece of equipment, I have all intention to use three of the microphones to conform to regularities in presentation. I also believe that this style of microphone looks a lot nicer than the school's microphones and adds that extra special element of professionalism as they are above standard kit.
Below I have drawn an simple picture of how the microphones should be set up to conform to the previous conventions found and the also agreed idea which Max and I came up with:

This formation allows the women with the lead vocals to stand out for the aesthetics of the video but also as the back up singers are either side of the lead it allows them to appear as an equal group.










I have also looked at other music videos of different genres such as Biffy Clyro, Girls Aloud, Foo Fighters, Outkast and found that the instruments do not have wires leading from them to a power source, obviously as our band will not be playing live for the video, the wires are not necessary, and so I believe the stage presentation can be dramatically increased if the wires are not actually plugged in. It will make the stage look bigger and less cramped and all the equipment will look fairly close together. It will also prevent any potential risk of cast/ crew members tripping up.
Evidence of the lack of wires can be seen in Biffy Clyro 'Bubbles' video:

The picture is dark but if you saw the video you can see that the lead guitarist has no wire leading from his guitar.








We can also see clear evidence in Outkast 'Hey Ya':

Although there is one wire from one of the guitars, the keyboard is seemingly not plugged in and neither are backup singers microphones and I believe the stage layout of this video to be clean and simple which is something I wish to emulate and is portrays professionalism whereas wires trailing everywhere suggests that they are not bothered about presentation.












In Biffy Clyro 'Bubbles' and some other videos (Girls Aloud - The Promise) the Amps are clearly visible and even in DreamGirls at some points the amps on stage are seen and so I believe these are key stage additions as it portrays the idea that they are playing live to the audience watching the video. The layout of the Amps is key for example:

This shows a set up where I think the amp location is a good placing whereas the rest of the set up looks quite messy (although this set up is more than likely for an actual gig rather than a music video).
And I also like that the front amps are all the same size, which allows symmetry to the visuals.
The front amps however may not be necessary and can take away some of the screen space of the lead girls, for example, in terms of framing a shot for filming, I look at it from a photographer's point of view and I would rate a picture negatively if legs were covered by an object in a long shot. As we would expect to see the full body in a long shot, I would perhaps encourage the idea of not using front amps, and can allow the singers to appear more open to the audience as oposed to being away from them and covered slightly.

I think this shot demonstrates how the singers can appear closer to the audience as there are no objects in the way. I also have to consider this due to out cameras being at slight low angle due to the stage being raised and so they could be covered up more because of the angle whereas it would be less of a hindrance if the cameras were at the same height as the stage and the singers.








I dont think there is a need for any other additional props such as a lava lamp (only an example) whereas some artists like Lady Gaga would have weird and wonderful ornaments or random items on stage, it would clearly be inappropriate for our band's appearance and era representation.

 Background - 22.1.11

I was unable to sort out the fabric for the background so I had to come up with a new solution which was getting the band name projected onto the back of the stage.

I knew the other group using the stage were going to project their name as well so luckily I didn't need to arrange getting a projector for Sunday.

As I didn't have Photoshop on my laptop at home, I used paint:

Firstly, I downloaded the font and installed it onto my laptop so I would be able to use it in programs such as Paint, Word etc. This would save the trouble of trying to edit a print screen from a font website.

The following print screen shows the 3 simple steps it took to create the background.

Basically, I had three different layers of text and overlapped them slightly off set which created a shadow effect. I did experiment with just 2 layers of grey and black however I thought it looked a little dull and added the white layer. I had to ensure the transparent button was pressed in order to show the bottom layers. Overall this took about 10 minutes to create as I had to start over again each time I developed the idea as the undo button wouldn't undo enough.