Planning colour and lighting - Miss Georgiou

Lighting and colour

A variety of lighting styles and colours are essential within a music video because they can be used to highlight the most important aspects of the video and to make a video more realistic, especially natural lighting, due to the fact that the video will look like what the audience would expect to see if they were there, which may make them feel more involved in the video. Also, the lighting and colour will change depending on the setting, for example, if the scene is outdoors the lighting is more likely to be natural, which helps to give a more realistic feel to the video. Furthermore, the use of a variety of lighting styles and colours may make the video more interesting to watch because it will help us to change the mood of the video, for example, the darker the lighting will suggest a more emotional, sadder mood, which may make the video feel more personal as the audience are being shown how the artist is feeling. The lighting styles and colours will change depending on the narrative, which could be used to foreshadow events that happen towards the end of the video, for example, the use of low key lighting in the goodbye scene may foreshadow the death of the male character.

We have planned to use low key lighting in our music video towards the end of our music video when the artist receives a phone call telling her that the male character has died. The use of low key lighting is conventional to the indie genre due to the fact that the lyrics of indie songs are often emotional as they have a deeper meaning to them, which could be down to the songs often being based on real life experiences that an artist wants to share with their fans. The use of low key lighting will help an artist to create a sad looking atmosphere, therefore it could be suggested that the use of lighting could represent the emotions of the song and to show the audience how the artist is feeling without them having to use words which may disrupt the rhythm of the song. The use of low key lighting may help an artist to be represented as more realistic due to the fact that artists are often perceived as being wealthy and as having perfect lives because they make so much money and are loved by thousands of people, which sets a high lifestyle standard that most people cannot live up to and will not be able to relate to. The use of low key lighting may also help the song to feel more personal because the audience may feel as though they are getting to know more about the artist who is sharing a personal story with them as if they were fiends, which is conventional to the genre as indie songs are often based on real life experiences. This will help us to represent the artist as being more relatable because it destroys the idea that she has the perfect life and that nothing sad ever happens to her, therefore she comes across as being more of a human being and not just a product of the music industry.

We plan on using natural lighting throughout the majority of our music video, for example, natural lighting will be seen at the beginning of the video when the two characters meet for the first time at the park, and during the performance element where the audience will see the artist walking through a 'cornfield'. The use of natural lighting is conventional to the indie genre because indie does not fit into the mainstream, therefore it is likely that indie music will only appeal to a niche target audience which means an indie artist will not make the biggest of profits through selling there music and will therefore have a lower budget to spend on creating a music video. Furthermore, indie artists are often perceived as being more focused on sharing their music as opposed to creating fancy, expensive music videos, therefore it will be easier for the artist to be associated with the indie genre. The use of natural lighting when filming in everyday, easily accessible locations, for example, in a park or at a train station, may help an artist to appear more relatable due to the fact that they are seen in places that the audience may go to, therefore they can be viewed more as an everyday person, rather than just a famous artist.

We have planned to use special effects, specifically saturation and orange and brown colour tints to add onto the footage that we collect, which will be seen in our video during the performance sections and throughout most of the flashback section. The use of saturation and orange and brown colour tints on the footage will help our group to make the video appear older, which is conventional to the indie genre due to the fact that the genre is often perceived as being old fashioned, and therefore the special effects will give the video more of a vintage feel. The use of these special effects may cause the audience to feel as though the footage is more of a memory that the artist is having, rather than something that has been filmed just for the purpose of the music video, which therefore makes the video feel more personal as if the artist is sharing a private story with them as if they were close friends. This arguably links in with Goodwin's theory and the idea that an artist must be absent due to the fact that not knowing everything there is to know about an artist helps to keep the audience interested because they will feel as though there are still things to learn about the artist. The use of these special effects helps us to represent the artist as being more suited to the indie genre and we hope will help the audience to associate and recognise the artist and video as being part of the indie genre, which is typically seen as more old fashioned and different, which means the video does not fit into the mainstream like the pop and rap genres do.

Another lighting technique that we potentially plan on using in the video is high key lighting, for example, towards the beginning of the video during the montage section when the two characters are watching television together. We are going to use the lighting that we have available to us, which is arguably conventional to the indie genre due to the fact that the genre does not fit into the mainstream, therefore indie artists will have a cheaper budget to spend on music videos and will have to work with what they have available to them. The use of high key lighting represents the artist as being the most important aspect of the scene due to the fact that the lighting will cause the audience to focus on her character and what she is doing, which is unconventional to the indie genre in the sense that indie artists often want their music to be viewed as the most important thing, rather than themselves. However, there is the possibility that we are not going to use high key lighting due to the fact that we may not include the television scene in the montage if it does not compliment the other scenes within the video.

In conclusion, we have decided to use these specific colours and lighting styles in order to make the artist appear more relatable, especially through the use of natural lighting because the audience will be able to see that the video has not been staged, which means what they can see is how the audience could expect to see it if they were there, which could make them feel more involved in the video. The use of low key lighting will help us to add to the emotion of the song which is conventional because the indie genre is often perceived as being sad and emotional, due to the songs being based on real life experiences about love and relationships. Also, due to the fact that colours and lighting are often used to show the audience how an artist is feeling, the video may feel more personal because the audience may feel as though they are getting to know more about the artist, which could also make them feel as though the artist views their fans more as friends. The audience may forget that there are potentially thousands of other people watching the same video as them and will feel as though it is just them and the artist, which also helps to make the music video feel more personal.