Music Video: Raw Footage

Characters and Costumes

Music Video: Filming Schedule

Music Video Inspirations - Music and Other Videos

La Dispute

    La Dispute are a post-hardcore band from Michigan who formed in 2004, their second studio album 'Wildlife' - released in 2011 on the independent label No Sleep Records- being a particular inspiration for my music video. The album features lyrical themes that focus on personal loss, anger, and despair and, in the vision of the band, is a collection of unpublished "short stories" from a hypothetical author. The tracks on 'Wildlife' address a number of contemporary issues such as mental illness, gang shootings and the effects of a child's death on parents. Although It isn't exploring Dissociative Identity Disorder, 'Edward Benz, 27 Times' tells a fathers story of the effect of schizophrenia on his son - with devastating consequences. This acts as inspiration for my video with the idea of giving more exposure to the issue of mental illness, and the subsequent effects it can have on both the individual suffering and those surrounding them.

Vocaloid

       I used 'Rugrats Theory' - a song inspired by a fan-made Creepypasta theory on the childrens show 'Rugrats' using the Vocaloid software- as an inspiration for my video. The music in the song has a creepy, child-like quality - due to the inspiration for the song itself- which creates a fairly unnerving and nightmarish feel, of which I would like to translate o my own production. It also explores the idea of mental health issues effecting young people and children, much like another track created using the Vocaloid software called 'Calalini' about Jani Schofield, who is a young girl that has been diagnosed with a very severe case of schizophrenia.  She sees over 200 hallucinations and they come from her hallucinated island "Calalini", the song made to promote awareness for Jani's condition. These both link to the use of young people - also both female- suffering with the issue of mental illness, of which I am also portraying in my own music video.

LeATHERMOUTH

      I used LeATHERMOUTH's music video for their track 'Bodysnatchers 4 Ever' as inspiration for my music video due to the use of macabre imagery that helps to create a dark and nightmarish feel, of which is edited in a montage style - and possibly the idea of putting these shots in black and white/dulled colour to help differentiate between fantasy and reality. This is similar for what I want to do with the shots of what the girl in my narrative see's inside her head, and is also quite similar to the opening credits of 'American Horror Story' and 'American Horror Story: Asylum' of which I included as an inspiration for my music video in a previous post.

Music Video: Shot List

Music Video Inspirations - Film/Books

Fight Club

    Fight Club -based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk- is an inspiration for my video as it has a running theme of mental illness, exploring Schizophrenia, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), Insomnia and Depression through a number of the characters featured. The main character (unnamed but sometimes referred to as 'Jack' or The narrator') suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, with his dissociative identity being the complete opposite and representing everything that he isn't, and the book presents a very idiosyncratic version of DID in which the identity manifests itself either conterminous to the multiple (as an audio-visual hallucination) or as a more realistic version that manifests while the protagonist believes he is sleeping. This inspired my video in the overruling theme of dissociative identity and presenting the binary opposition of the two personalities, as well as the use of flashing contrasting imagery throughout the video.





Chuck Palahniuk's 'Fight Club'
(1996)



                        David Fincher's 'Fight Club' (1999)

Sucker Punch

    Sucker Punch is an inspiration for my music video due to the running idea of an individual creating a different world in their head - in this case as a coping mechanism to deal with the stressful situation the girls in the narrative are dealing with, as made clear at the end of the clip below. The idea of a fabricated world within one's head and trying to differentiate that from actual reality is an idea I wish to carry over  into my own production, and is also set within a mental institution so fits in with my theme of mental illness (DID).



    Zack Snyder's 'Sucker Punch' (2011)

MPD Psycho

    MPD Psycho is an on-going manga series written by Eiji Ōtsuka and illustrated by Shou Tajima, with the first volume published in 1997. The series follows a police detective suffering from - as it was then titled- Multiple Personality Disorder, and the killer whose case he is on identifies him as a 'fellow psychopath'. This text acts as in inspiration for my production as I wanted to add a sense of ambiguity with the stance of the girl in the narrative, in regards to if she herself - aside from her dissociative identity- has dark and malicious intent. With this, I hope to reinforce a dark and eerie mise en scene, creating a sinister and nightmarish feel. 

   

MPD Psycho: Vol. 1



The Bell Jar

     The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiographical -and the only- novel written by Sylvia Plath, originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963.  The protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression, with Plath later committing suicide a month after its first UK publication. I used this text as inspiration as it deals with a young woman suffering from mental illness much like the character in the narrative of my music video, the state of which declining as the novel develops - although it also explores the idea of treatment and progression, this will not be evident within my production. I also used this as an inspiration as it has a strong sense of realism - especially considering the contextual factors and Plath's later suicide- which reinforces the fact that the person in this situation could be anyone, and that mental illness is still a very contemporary and malevolent issue that many people have to struggle with.


Sylvia Plath's 'The Bell Jar'



 

Music Video: Storyboards

Music Video Inspirations - TV

Criminal Minds

    One inspiration for my ideas for my music video is 'Criminal Minds' in which quite a few episodes revolve around mental illness, including ones specifically focusing on Dissociative identity disorder. One of these is an episode called 'Revelations' (S2,Ep15) where one of the profilers are kidnapped by religious fanatic serial killer Tobias Hankle. The team learns Tobias was systematically abused by his Bible-obsessed father Charles, killed the fiend but developed a split personality, including his father's abusive one as Raphael, an angel of violent 'divine' vengeance. Similar to Psycho's Norman Bates, Tobias developed dissociative identity disorder due to mistreatment and subsequent murder of a parent.

Criminal Minds 'Revelations' (S2 Ep15)

      Another example is seen in the episode 'Conflicted' (S4,Ep20) with the character of Adam Jackson. Adam's mother, Rosemary, died when he was five, causing Adam's stepfather, Mark Harrison, who had been abusive towards Rosemary, to begin channelling his aggression towards Adam. Mark would beat Adam, force him to wear girl's clothes, and possibly molested him. To cope with the abuse, Adam developed Dissociative identity disorder, creating an alternate female personality that referred to itself as Amanda, and took the abuse for Adam. Years later, Adam -as his alternate personality 'Amanda'-begins killing and raping males who he sees as substitutes for his step-dad.

Criminal Minds 'Conflicted' (S4 Ep20)

Teen Wolf

    In the second half of season 3 (3b) of 'Teen Wolf', the primary antagonist is a nogitsune who possesses one of the main protagonist characters in the series. The Nogitsune is developed from the Japanese mythology of the Kitsune - Fox spirits who are depicted in stories as intelligent beings and as possessing magical abilities that increase with their age and wisdom. Foremost among these is the ability to assume human form. While some folktales speak of kitsune employing this ability to trick others—as foxes in folklore often do—other stories portray them as faithful guardians. In the series, the nogitsune is a very vengeful creature who uses the character of Stiles to conceal himself, and during the series there are shots where we see what is going on inside Stile's head and see him conversing with the spirit in its actual form. Not only did this inspire me in the idea of having the character in my narrative trapped in her own head and her physical body being used by her dissociative identity, but also the fact that once Stiles is freed from the possession the nogitsune takes his form inspired the idea of having the visuals of both of my characters in the forest making the theme clear and creating parallelisms.

 

Nogitsune Stiles and Stiles Clip From 'Teen Wolf'

  American Horror Story

'American Horror Story' is a horror anthology series with each series focusing on a different story. Not only did the content of the first and second series inspire the idea to use creepy imagery as insert shots for what the girl sees in her own head to create a nightmarish and sinister feel, but the opening credits of both 'American Horror Story' and 'American Horror Story: Asylum' inspired the idea to have these clips edited as almost a montage running along side the narrative and exterior shots in my video, and the use of flicking between one image to another - possibly to be used for when the audience sees the girl and her dissociative identity.

'American Horror Story' Opening Credits

   

'American Horror Story: Asylum' Opening Credits

Music Video Locations

Forest

I chose this location as it's similar to the setting of the French horror film 'Ils', which has a large amount of the scenes where the 'victims' are being chased/'hunted down' by the aggressors taken place in a isolated forest in a secluded part of the town, reinforcing the predatory feel. As in my narrative I am having the girl preyed on by her dissociative identity, I thought this would be a very fitting location. also much like within the forest scene in the film 'The Piano', the forest acts like a web, snaring and entrapping the girl, acting as almost a character in itself as it can take on different moods and can appear - in this case- very menacing. This creates a great contrast -reflecting Claude Levi-Strauss' theory of binary opposition driving the narrative- to the interior location of a darkened room/house, acting as an extension of the girls mind in which she is trapped. This also links to the Brothers Grimm's 19th-century fairytales, such as Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood of which utilize the forest setting, thus reinforcing the sense of despair and anxiety felt by the character in my narrative, also possibly acting as a catalyst for the surreal feel i wish to create in my video through the edit. I also chose this location as it is fairly local and therefore would be easy to access and enables convenient re-shoots if necessary.

                                                                     Clip from 'The Piano'



House/cellar

      I want to use images of a large, haunting house and it's cellar to represent what the character sees in her own head. I want to use this location as to invoking a sense of unease with the audience as the cellar would be a claustrophobic dark space, with claustrophobia being a common fear amongst people - therefore eliciting a personal,emotional response from the audience. This is because they maybe able to identify with the character and feel sympathetic towards her. This may be similar to the setting of My Chemical Romance's 'Vampires will never hurt you'. 

Music Video Pitch

Music Video Pitch

Lyrics to 'Paint' by Cast of Lions

'What lies ahead of me, all good things go bad
Strip naked energy, that this used to have
I painted you by numbers, then watched the colour dry
Hated how easy I could tear you apart and hardly try
Artist inside of me don’t you turn to dust
You must of lied to me to make me believe i was good enough
Got your head in a pimblic sheen
All the wholes like starry stream
Safe and sound in a world you made
Not a song in the world could say how
I painted you by numbers, then watched the colour dry
Hated how easy I could tear you apart and hardly try
When I feel whole
All the colours change
Like an open stone
Couldn’t feel further from same
within your force field
All the seasons change
Like an open stone
There’s always someone else to blame
Taste like it feels
Watch when they heal
Got your head in a pimblic sheen
All the wholes like starry stream
Safe and sound in a world you made
Not a song in the world could say
I painted you by numbers, then watched the colour dry
Hated how easy I could tear you apart and hardly try'

    In 'Paint' it alludes to the idea of a transition or change, which could be visually represented with my exterior location of a forest, highlighted by the line 'seasons change' as nature constantly changes throughout the year. The idea of a change, along with lines such as 'hated how easy I could tear you apart and hardly try' ', 'Safe and sound in a world you made' and 'There’s always someone else to blame' have a link to my running theme of mental illness and Dissociative Identity Disorder as I decided for my video I would interpret the lyrics as being directed to another part of ones self rather than being directed to another person entirely. This reflects Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding model of the relationship between text and audience- the text is encoded by those who produced it and is then decoded by the reader, arising the possibility of major differences between one person's reading/interpretation of the same text as another individual's. I think having themes such as these would make for very interesting visuals, and would enable me to follow aspects of Goodwin's theory such as portraying a strong link between the lyrics and the visuals on screen.