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As music videos are relatively short, many conform to an unrestricted narrative, including ours. We wanted Robyn and Arthur's relationship to be clear, emphasising the innocence of the pair and fitting with the atmosphere of our song, "Build A Boat".

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Yoli and I chose to use anachronic narrative within our music video as it worked well with our initial concept of a developing relationship between childhood sweethearts as they grow up; having flashbacks and fashforwards shown on screen, all being as important as the other. Though not often seen in music videos (it's classed as an unusual narrative), I think it helps our music video make sense, giving it an overall photo-album or montage style effect.

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Goodwin's analysis of music videos helped Yoli and I come up with ideas for developing our product, so our music video definitely conforms to many of his thoughts. We conformed to his tea of 'star persona', focusing most of our shots on Robyn and being sure to include our artist in the first 30 seconds of the song. We conformed to linking lyrics with visuals, for example, having Arthur hold apples over his eyes for the lyrics "apple eyes". We explored intertextual references, specifically relating to childhood, linking the concept of romance and boats to the poem, "The Owl and the Pussycat", and the lyrics "come and climb to me boy" to the fairytale 'Rapunzel'. Although the audience may feel like they are there within the scene, unbeknownst to the characters, we made sure to keep our characters unsexualised and innocent, so I don't believe it conforms to Goodwin's idea of voyeuristic images.

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Altman - Semantic and Syntactic Elements

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Altman - Semantic and Syntactic Elements

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These elements can be seen across all kinds of media texts establishing its genre, it's simply a case of analysing a piece to find them. Semantic elements are things that are obvious and identifiable within a text, such as props and music, where as syntactic elements are more subtle, such as themes or props. Our music immediately sets the tone, being an upbeat, romantic-lyric-filled song, establishing its (indie-)pop genre. Props such as highlighters, paper, apples and mega jenga bricks all help connote to our syntactic theme of childhood and school.

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As discovered through my analysis of Beyonce's "Hold Up" music video and the exploration of Gauntlett's idea of 'expectations of gender', the theme of "girl power" is encouraged and often successful within the music industry. Inspired by this, Yoli and I tried to create a narrative where Arthur didn't save Robyn, rather she saved herself. Mulvey analysed that women were often used simply as an accessory to a male character - we contradicted this due to Gauntlett's recognition of ever-expanding ideas of identity and gender, having Robyn be her own character, and Arthur, if not his own character too, being an accessory of Robyn. As our focus was on the romance portrayed between the two, we still contrasted them accordingly, however, without the toxic binary stereotypes often seen in the media (we showed Arthur as caring, wearing 'feminine' colours, and Robyn with minimal make up, often seen in colours more 'masculine'.)

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The costume designing of our cast wasn't simply built to destruct sexualisation of our characters, but also to break stigma around gender expectations. Angela McRobbie identified particular traits were shown in men, and often opposite traits to be shown in women. For example, men would be considered angry, where women are considered caring. Women shown as emotional, whereas men are expected not to cry. Men may be seen as bosses, whereas women are shown to be mothers. The feminist movement, in recent years, has made efforts to emphasise how important it is for men to talk about their physical and mental health. In order to aid and represent this campaign within youth, Yoli and I tried to entwine characteristics of it to be analysed within our media product. We tried to portray Arthur in a soft light, having him wear colours such as orange and pink not only to show him as angelic, but as gentle - a characteristic not often listed as masculine.

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A huge problem in media is the sexualisation of women, recognised by Laura Mulvey as the "Male Gaze", though commonly referred now only as to "Gaze Theory", as in contemporary media, it's common for the sexualisation of men to be seen as well. Yoli and I wanted to represent something pure - yes, passionate, but innocent too. With the risk of falling into the trap of the "Virgin/Whore dichotomy", Yoli and I had to be incredibly careful when designing our artist, making her relatable and an icon. In the end, the pair are just kids - why as directors, we have to worry about the sexualisation of our cast shows how ridiculous representation in contemporary media has become.

In order to 'purify' our characters, we made sure they wore and were surrounded by bright colours (representing childhood), were covered up in terms of costume (no thighs or cleavage on show), and limited affection shown on screen - the subtleness adding to the atmosphere of a childhood crush, and making the whole relationship appear modest.

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Yoli and I tried to avoid conforming to Propp's character theory. He believes you need particular characters in order to move the narrative along - I suppose if you were to assign characters to our music video, you may choose 'Hero' (Arthur) and 'Princess' (Robyn). However, although Arthur may appear to 'save' Robyn, he is actually the cause of her distraction. We tried to portray Robyn being in love, but not going out of her way to 'earn' Arthur's affection. Instead, we chose to portray the pair as equals, shown excellently in the transition where the childhood couple are running in the field and Robyn is leading, to the present day couple, running across the bridge with Arthur leading. We used eye-level shots for the both of them, as both hold a vulnerability and both are relatable to the audience.

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Within music videos, Andrew Goodwin recognised that artists often feature within most shots, this known as the 'star persona'. Yoli and I conformed to this, ensuring Robyn was in most shots, and central or conforming to the rule of thirds when in them. Robyn and Arthur are often shown close together, emphasising their relationship and bond of a lifetime.

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In many upbeat, happy, pop videos, the lighting is usually high key and the colours fairly saturated (in correlation with the tone). Yoli and I conformed with this, as it suits our music's atmosphere. We saturated and colour graded shots, to create a gentle, romantic feel across our video.

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When thinking about the facial expressions and body language within the final productions it is clear to utilise specific facial expressions for the audience to connect to the artist. Therefore we decided to take the use of close ups and enhance them through the body language for example, when there is the transition between the flashback and present day couple it is important to acknowledge that by using the same body language it develops synergy and familiarity to expand the narrative. For this reason it is important to how that we not only use stereotypical conventions but they helped to develop the narrative structure between the lyrics and the performance.

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We wanted our artist to be relatable and we wanted to challenge Mulvey's 'male gaze', so we kept Robyn's make up naturalistic and to a minimum. We used denim to link our characters throughout, as this is a timeless fashionable piece and often seen in indie videos.

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We conformed with an urban, city location, often seen in pop music videos, filming in different areas of London such as Camden and Little Venice. We conformed to the use of props, using the following: highlighters, paper, apples, mega jenga blocks, revision cards, post-its, binoculars, boardgames, calendar, storybooks, globe, lock and key, all creating a theme of childhood, helping define our narrative.

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Our editing skills developed greatly over the year of our advanced coursework, as we used programmes such as Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro for the first time. Although our music was fairly upbeat, we used long cuts to familiarise the audience with our characters, so that our narrative was more relatable and comfortable. I added filters, light leaks and colour corrected shots to create a “vintage”, “home-made” video effect, to contrast the past and present day. I experimented with layering the same shot at different times, colouring each layer differently (cyan, magenta and yellow), to create a glitch effect, and although it didn’t fit atmospherically with our genre, it was beneficial in adding glam to my own projects. I also worked with animation in my video, similar to styles seen in Bruno Mars’ “That’s What I Like”, video. We included a fade out towards the end of our video to establish the ending of the music, but faded in with the last shot of Arthur and Robyn, suggesting there is more to them behind the video than we let on. We mostly used straight cutting within our video to show realism and relatability. We also included a stop-motion title sequence to establish a childlike theme straight away.

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Yoli and I took inspiration from videos such as Sabrina Carpenter’s “Why”, or Oh Wonder’s “All We Do”, where they include dialogue within their video, separate to the music it’s been made for. Oh Wonder asked a number of people “What does it mean to be human”, adding personality and added meaning to the song – Yoli and I thought this was a brilliant idea, and created our own questions that could add uniqueness to our own video. As our song revolves around love, Yoli and I asked about first crushes and current romances, and we tried to include different sexualities to be representative of the LGBTQ+ community. We included this in our video, non-diegetic to our characters, but those being asked being shown on screen through use of green-screen.

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Within our coursework, Yoli and I included a range of shots to engage with our audience. Keeping Andrew Goodwin’s ‘Star Persona’ in mind, we made sure our artist, Robyn, was central in most shots, using a mixture of close up shots and mid shots, ensuring a feeling of familiarity and friendship. We included establishing shots of areas we were based, including Camden Lock, London. We tracked our cast as they ran off into the distance, creating a transition of time-passing in our narrative. We used a pull focus in a shot of a fish-shaped lock and characters Arthur and Robyn in the background, relating their affection to being safe, under lock and key in each other’s hearts.