Representation of Characters

From my focus group my teacher asked about representation which I did not include in my focus group, therefore I have decided to add a blog post about how I have considered representation in my music video, so the representation of mothers and young males.

The Mother

In my music video I will not focus much on the mother due to the fact she is playing a small part to help bring her sons back together, her role is to be a supportive mother therefore I will be representing her as a sympathetic and understanding woman, this will be shown through her reactions on the phone call scene which she will appear in, she will be someone that other mothers will look up to, although she will roughly be in the video for 10 seconds she will be the reason why the brothers return to each other, I will be asking the person that will act as the mother to have a variety of upset and disappointed faces along with her body language showing she is not happy and by having her put her hand on her face to show she is tired of the situation and wants everything to go back to how it used to be. Not many mothers are shown in music videos which is why I wanted to bring this role into the video not just because the video references "I'm sorry mother" but to be able to show something different in my video, when mothers are shown in music videos they are never shown as a villain of some sort which is why I wanted to go for the aim of keeping her as more of a "hero".

The Lover

In my music video the lover is shown for around 8 seconds, she again does not play a long part in the video as it is focused on the brother's relationship rather than having too many other characters involved in the video as I feel like it would make the narrative more difficult to plan and film and could go off the aim if the mother and lover were to play bigger parts in the video. The lover is firstly shown in the music video as one of the brothers wakes up and turn over to look at a photograph of them together, in the photo she is wearing a pink jacket with a lace peplum top, her costume is very girly and her facial expression is happy which shows how things used to be before it went down hill with the idea of partying taking over the brothers lives which led to mistakes. The lover's aim in the video is to try to help the brother to help himself get better hence why she "appears" at the train station, however at this scene she looks much different, her hair is cut short (typically these days many say that once a girl changes her hair that means she is over the relationship and is ready for something new) which was taken into account when planning, her clothing style is slightly different as it is not as girly anymore as the colours of her costume in the photograph are pink and white whilst in the next scene where she is shown physically she wears beige, black and white which shows that not only has her hair changed but also her whole look as her costume is different and so is make up as in the photograph she does not wear much however in the next scene she wears more which shows she has moved one. Her body language and facial expression change from the photo to her physical appearance, in the photo she is happy and leaning towards the brother, however in person she stands confident with a blank expression to show her lack of interest. My aim was to represent her more of a typical female in a video without being too flirtatious looking as I do want to show she is independent now. Typically in music videos if an ex partner is shown they are shown as jealous or upset which is why I wanted to make my narrative video different and go in the opposite direction of a typical narrative.

The Brothers/Guitarist and Drummer

Stereotypically males are represented as strong, sometimes aggressive and dependable in music videos. However in my music video I will be challenging the stereotype as I will be representing my brothers differently, there is one calmer brother which has found his anchor which is his lover, this can be perceived as him being unstable as he is going down the wrong path after the break up, the second brother is closer to being the stereotype as he is alone and independent which makes him look strong, the idea of showing alcohol in the video can also be interpreted as him being perhaps aggressive (although it is not shown in the video). However again his calm side is shown once he gets hold of his mother on this phone which again breaks the stereotype, his brother towards the end of the video will also show his softer side. Their costumes are stereotypical as I did want to match the codes and conventions of the genre, however what I have done is made the brothers have different styles but they still both fit into the genre. Brother one's costume is more casual, what makes his costume fit the genre is the colours which are mainly black with a bit of red, whilst brother two's costume is more typical indie as many indie bands have a cool and unusual style hence why I chose for my character to wear such a different jacket which makes his whole costume stand out. Whilst in the performance their costumes change to something more simple, I would say that their costumes fit into a whole stereotype of any band as they both wear black and white as they are musicians so the aim is to give more attention to the lead singer. What I also did with the brother's performance costume is to try to represent each other than themselves, I asked the calm brother to wear a top with a lion on it which represents power, whilst for the more "out there" brother I asked him to wear a slogan top saying "introvert" which means they are a shy person, this was to try to change the look and make the band look unique and to add a bit of humour by showing their connection. The brothers in my music video also show binary opposites (Levi Strauss' theory) due to the brother which plays the guitar drinking irresponsibly and not having a care in the world, whilst the other brother which plays the drums takes action and tries to fix his mistakes, due to this the video also follows the theory of "men act, woman appear" as the males in my video are the ones taking lead and the only two females in my video are not lead roles but are more used to understand the narrative than to have a strong role in the video.

Lead Singer

Russ is your stereotypical indie lead singer, he is represented as the star image (Richard Dyer's theory), my aim was to make him the centre of attention each time my video had the performance shown, this was done due to the idea of the "male gaze" theory by Laura Mulvey in which I have used in the opposite way, I may have not have made him look like he is being watched as much as in a voyeuristic way as the true male gaze does however I have put thought into it whilst filming and editing. My aim for his look was to be full indie, I started off with planning for my lead singer to have extremely messy hair as many indie artists (mainly male in this situation) do not style their hair properly but seem to have it all over the place, next I decided to add on a prop which were his glasses, I believe that it makes him look different from most bands as it adds something distinctive about him. His costume is where it gets into the codes and conventions of the genre as I went for a distressed black denim jacket. His costume also consists of a nude sweatshirt, this may not seem "typically" indie however I was also trying to stick to the latest fashion trends at the same time to make it relevant, he also wears black ripped jeans and black trainers. For accessories I asked Russ to bring some of his jewellery so I could choose the most unique pieces to style together to match the genre, but to also not stand out too much but give him that sort of "edge" which is why he wears a heavy looking watch and rings to add to the unique distinctive look I was going for.