Mise en Scene - Costume Ideas

I decided to include this lookbook video on my blog as the clothing company (Drop Dead) will be used by a few of the people in my music video. It will be used by some of the band in the performance scenes and our protagonist will also be wearing Drop Dead a some point I feel. Drop Dead is a very popular alternative clothing range with a shop in London and one due to open in Sheffield. Lots of bands including You Me At Six, Bring Me The Horizon and Don Broco wear Drop Dead and as they are rock bands and my genre of music video is rock I feel it fits the costume for the band to wear very well.

Another idea for costume is from a clothing line known as Become Antique which is another alternative clothing line worn by rock bands such as You Me At Six and Kids In Glass Houses. Same as before because of my genre of my genre I have chosen to recreate in video format this will work well for the band to wear or for the extras in the video to also wear.

Theorists...

Levi Strauss:

Strauss’ theory of binary opposites talks about the difference between the protagonist and antagonist within a media text. He argues that in every media text you can clearly see a difference between good and bad or girl and boy therefore creating an opposite. This helps us develop narrative as you already have expectation of what’s about to happen within the media text.  For example in a superhero film like Batman you will always expect to see the protagonist of Batman and the antagonist of The Joker or Bane. However in recent years this could be challenged as in some films and TV series. For example films such as Alien vs Predator or Freddy vs Jason have no clear protagonist or antagonist. This theory applies to my video because we have a clear protagonist and antagonist. Our protagonist has all black clothes on with the antagonist wearing all white clothes showing the contrast between the two.

Richard Dyer:

The representation looks at how media texts represent themselves to society and an audience. He closely studied the ideological and historical significance of film stars but also looked at media in general. “How we are seen determines how we are treated. How we treat others is based on how we see them.” Dyer looked at different areas including, what sense of the world is it making? So for example watching the news we see stories of crime and scandal on a day to day basis which leads us to believe that this type of behaviour is normal however is it really normal? He also looked at what does this imply? So again watching the news does it imply that everyone in the world is committing these crimes when most of the world is just getting on with their everyday things. However we like to see the unusual things that happen in this world as we don’t often see that in the everyday world in person but on the news that seems like all we see. He also asks if it’s typical of the world or deviant well again with the news it isn’t typical because a very small minority of the population commit these crimes. However the way it’s reported makes us think that these things are typical when really they aren’t. Who is it speaking to? With the news it is speaking to a huge audience of the general public as most of them will watch the news. People of all ages will watch the news so could take different opinions of the things that are reported. For example a story about Miley Cryus’ new video could be reported in a negative way. An older middle class person perhaps would agree and think it’s disgusting, while a younger audience may think she’s brilliant and completely disagree with the story. This leads onto the last thing Dyer looks at of how we respond to the representation. Again depending on the type of person, there will be different responses. You can look at the London riots of 2011 for this and link Stan Cohen’s moral panic and folk devils study to this. The media created a folk devil of young people around the time which made some people (mainly older people) terrified of young people. However some young people could completely see why these acts happened and again could completely disagree with the way the riots were reported.

Tim O’Sullivan:

Ideology is once mechanism by which a ruling group tries to deceive and control the ruled. If you look at two different artists and how their ideology is different. For example Miley Cryus’ new video for “Wrecking Ball” is her all about growing up and moving into a new image. Something that Brittany Spears or Christina Aguilera did when they were trying to get rid of their good girl image after being on a kids programme. If you compare this to REM “Shiny Happy People” which is about everyone fitting in and acceptance as everyone is included within the video. The type of cinematography in the two is very different. With Miley’s video there are lots of close ups of body parts such as her breasts and bum. However with REM there are quite a few long shots showing the entire band and therefore showing the bands togetherness rather than showing them as individuals. O’Sullivan argues that all media texts tell us some kind of story through careful mediation. Media texts offer us a way of telling stories about ourselves. This is not usually our own personal stories but the story of us as a culture. For example this theory could apply my music video as the main protagonist is a bit of a recluse and keeps himself to himself. There are lots of people in our society like that who don’t like to socialise with people and may feel trapped. A media text reflects the ideology of the culture it’s made by. So a lot of British television is about crime and deviance which is something that British society is full of and therefore reflecting our society.