Perhaps less 'glam'-ish than in this shot. Slightly more masculine.
again, not quite as camp and 80s as in this image:
The Songs:
A very loose, typical film-noir style narrative. The actual storyline of this hypothetical 'film' is largely irrelevant. The impression is that the video shows only extracts from a longer, imaginary film alongside the performance (note: it is not suggested that this is a real film being used, it is definately specially shot for the music video). There shall be very powerful aesthetics (good if filming later in the year as well, or even if weather is hot and sunny there is no danger of it never getting dark outside). The conventional film-noir imagery and signifiers (costume- makeup- shot in black and white- detective and femme fatale characters). The main focus is on the female character.
Starting shot (of the narrative) could a big close up, so big that you can only see her lips or eyes, for example: this would be very enigmatic but also very scopophilic, providing almost sensual/sexual pleasure to the male audience. This sexuality of the character would also be conventional to the film noir genre. We would then follow her through the narrative as she meets with a detective or some such down a dark alleyway/ in a car (more difficult as would have to shoot it carefully as to not show that it was being shot in 20th century, if we wanted to make it look authentic) or even a cafe or bench [would fit with lyrics 'thankyou for coming here' at beginning]. The performance would be intercut with the narrative.
We later see her possibly sitting in a cafe but definately looking out of a window (cue typical genre signifiers- theres lots of this window business in film noir and detective films) , smoking a cigarette, looking almost sad. This is new depth to the character- she is vulnerable or unhappy, which fits with the general powerful 'inspirational' lyrics and melody of the song e.g. 'you are gold' 'always believe in your soul' 'You've got the power to know, you're indestructible'. (Almost as if the band/singer cares about her and is singing to her; will be like when you're feeling a bit down and pretend the singer of a song is singing about you to drive you on).
The detective can be the man who the lyrics 'the main with the suit and the face, remember he was there on the case, now he's in love with you, he's in love with you' are concerning. There can be shots of him maybe doing the typical film-noir thing of trying to get through to the femme fatale to admit she loves him or to 'let him in' (open up emotionally to him). He could be (silently to us, obviously) saying: tell me, tell me etc (or shaking her in that sort of way against a wall so we get the gist), and we see her mouth the words 'no, i don't' or 'i dont love you' in quite a cold way. he leaves her right away, clearly heartbroken. She is alone in the room, we see the door close in the background, and she falls to the ground crying or such.
Performance:
In a room very dark except for the quite low-key lighting, so we have some striking shadows (not ridiculously low-key with ghastly huge, detective-story shadows, just enough to be atmospheric and have aesthetic impact, and also partially to fit in with the narrative: i.e. link the narrative visually to the performance). It could be black and white, also, for these reasons. I think this idea is strong and interesting enough to captivate the audience's attention in black and white.
Some images of what I sort of mean:
(for more, go to http://images.google.com/images?ndsp=20&um=1&hl=en&rls=HPNN,HPNN:2006-30,HPNN:en&q=+site:www.newwavephotos.com+duran+duran for a search result that had alot of appropriate images)
There would be alot more powerful, direct address of the camera in close ups by the frontman, and I think James (who I believe we as a group agreed would be one of the lead singers in our other ideas as he (and also Luke) are good at performance and lip-synching) would look very good in the role.
He would be looking at the camera quite... seriously (though mostly for dramatic effect so not in a cold way).
A bit similar to the shots at '0.17' and '0.47' of this Franz Ferdinand video for 'take me out':
Target audience: I think this band could be quite comparable to Franz Ferdinand, who have quite a new wave feel which was different at the time. They had a wide target audience due to the appeal of their music, which was catchy and accessible. This is certainly similar to Spandau Ballet.
I think this song would be very good as it has alot of variation in pace and tune and rhythm, and I also think the lyrics and atmosphere tie in well with the visual idea.
I think the idea would be quite possible to do, as the performance should not be difficult, and will hopefully be possible to make effective, but I think it will be. The narrative shots, though more difficult, I definately believe to be possible. We can also build upon our prior knowledge of this genre of film that we have from our thriller project as AS level.
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Feedback on the idea:
Hi Angelastart with the group blog 1st please. you will find a posting from me on there. I suggest as a group you sit down and read it together, then think about moving forward. the spandau ballet sound is problematic as it is so well known and any form of lip synching would be impossible. Ms B
Response: I do think that the lip-synching would be possible. There is already a video for the song in which they do alot of lip-synching (but it was made in the 80s and is very different to our idea so this wouldn't be a problem). We could also cut to the 'narrative' during very difficult vocal pieces.
Here is the video:
I also think that as we will be targetting a different age group (the contemporary teen-20s market) it wont matter that the sound is well known. Most of my peers I spoke to had not even heard the song or the band.
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EDIT: 18th July
Ahh, I think I may have misunderstood Miss Bs concerns regarding the casting/performance part of the idea a little. She raised the good point that James could have potentially been unconvincing as the lead singer as the voice may not convincingly come out of him, as he is only 17 and the lead singer in Spandau Ballet has a very big, rich, mature voice. For this reason we needed to do a test shoot (see group blog) to ascertain whether he would in fact work in the part- if he had not then it could have led to a huge reduction in the quality of the video.
Following the test shoot it was decided by all that, fortunately, it was a convincing casting for the performance. Phew!
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