For our music video we intend to tell a fairly conventional love story of two people going through a hard time in a relationship, but with a bit of a twist. We intend to make these two people mime artists, to create an alternative tale to the conventions portrayed in mainstream media, whilst making it comply to the indie genre by being 'different'. Our initial inspiration for this idea came from the film 'Paris Je T'aime' which is a French film featuring a variety love stories in Paris. One of the stories told is about two mime artists and the clip is embedded below.
Definition and history
A 'mime artist' is someone who uses mime as a theatrical medium and uses mime and body motion instead of speech. Mime is established through silent comedy, and in the nineteenth century in Paris, Jean-Gaspard Deburau established the mime character that is well known in modern society: the white faced mime. The twentieth century bought motion picture, a new medium for mime artists. Due to the lack of technology in the early twentieth century, minimal speech could be used in filming therefore mime became a popular platform. Charlie Chaplin became a famous silent film comedian, and became one of the most documented mimes in history.
Although this clip is not the exact mime character we are aiming to establish in our music video, the old film style and general mise-en-scene is similar, as well as other features such as the actors over-dramatic facical expression and bodily language to demonstrate emotion. This clip is in monochrome due to the early period in which is was filmed, and also there are very basic shots used, ranging mostly between two-shots and mid shots. These are kept constant in order to keep the portrayal of the actors emotion simple and understandable for the reader, as in the time this was filmed post production effects and camera techniques utilised in modern technology weren't really established. We aim to replicate this era in our music video to give it an individual and interesting feel, whilst contradicting the polished and perfect look portreyed in mainstream music videos. This old fashioned film style occured in early film from around the 1910's onwards. These films were influencial towards other media platforms in the future, and therefore in the 1940's, the 'Soundies' were born.
The Soundies
The soundies were an early version of music video, which were produced in places such as Hollywood, New York and Chicago in the 1940's. They were played on jukeboxes called panorams or scopitones and played in bars, pubs and clubs. Soundies covered all types of music, from big band swing to patriotic songs. Popular artists of that time such as Doris Day, Lawrence Welk, Gale Storm, Kay Starr and many more made Soundies.
This film style again features the monochrome film grain look which we are aiming to achieve in our music video. Also similarly to the Charlie Chaplin clip, this video features fairly basic shots, made up of mostly mid shots and wide shots to show the dancers clearly. As opposed to the average music video nowadays which will usually feature around 250 shots whereas this particular video only features around 20. This is due to the technology at the time, as they would not have had the facilities to create fast paced and effective continuity editing like in modern videos. In our music video we are going to take inspiration from these clips in the sense of creating an old fashioned film look, however we are going to feature a more varied range of shots to keep it modern and interesting. We feel that these influences in our video will help the video correspond with the indie genre and appeal to the demographic of our target audience as it would oppose the polished images portrayed in mainstream modern videos.
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