Planning setting and iconography

Setting

A setting is the geographical location in which a story is set. Setting is a key element of mise-en-scene as it is what the audience see in the background. Setting can be used to influence an audience’s emotions or simply help them understand the narrative more clearly.

The first setting my group and I chose to include within our music video was London. This setting will feature right at the beginning of our music video and throughout until the boys arrive home. We chose to use London for many reasons. One of the first being, it is the capital city of England, a very well-known, large city which is very busy. We will use this to our advantage, as the reputation for how big and busy London is will help us highlight to the audience how confused the boys must be feeling waking up in such a big busy which is such a long way from home and hopefully will help the characters and audience build a relationship as the audience will only be able to imagine how weird t must feel to woken up on a bench surrounded by strangers! We also felt that the busyness of the city would help us as we wanted the boys to wake up in a public place, by doing this scene in       London we were able to easily get the public setting we needed plus we were able to catch all the strange looks the public were giving the boys, this helped us make our narrative more realistic as the audience will be able to tell that the public generally are surprised at the boys waking up on a bench. Another reason we chose London was because we felt it was quite conventional to our genre, because of the fast paced lifestyle up London we were able to convey to the audience how quickly life passes by and how quickly the boys are growing up. This also helped us follow one of the points from Goodwin’s theory of the lyrics matching the visuals as the lyrics say ‘when I'm wiser and I'm older’ as it conveys how fast they are getting older and how fast life is passing them by ‘life will pass me by’, whilst contrasting their life to the busy adult life they will experience in the future when getting a job in the city ect. 

The second setting we believed was essential to include within our music video was a party. The party scene prominently follows the conventions of the dance genre. Party’s/concerts or having fun in general are very common within dance music video’s as the genre is all about dancing, having fun with friends and being happy. We also felt that the party scene could help us symbolize stereotypical teenage life, as it involves lots of partying and drinking irresponsibly (which is then portrayed when they wake up in London). Through portraying this lifestyle the audience may get better understanding of the concept of our music video as it is about finding who you really are and learning from silly mistakes you may make as you grown up. Our audience would also be able to relate to this representation as they themselves are teens or at the age where they are still partying and sorting out what they want to do with their life. 

The next setting we will briefly use in our music video is a train station and train. We will only use this setting briefly as we only intend on it helping our audience understand the fact that the boys are making their way home and it is quite far as they have to get a train. We did not want to use the setting for a long while as it would not help us build a relationship between the audience and characters and also does not follow the conventions of dance. 

The next setting we will also use briefly will be the streets which Jake and George walk down to get home after getting off the train. We decided to film them walking down quitter more open roads to distinguish the difference between London and their home town to make the audience think about how far they must have gone and how drunk they must have been to end up in a big city like London! Also it helped our music video appear more continuous as we did not just want the boys to be home straight after they got off the train as it would make it seem unrealistic. This setting is unconventional to our dance genre and does not really help build a relationship with our target audience however was necessary for our narrative to flow smoothly and come across realistic. 

The last two locations we decided to use where Jake and Georges homes. We combined two shots of Jake and George both opening their front doors in order to manipulate the audience into comparing both of the boy’s homes. Jake went home to a house which had been converted into flat that was very messy whereas George went home to a clean and cosy family house. We all decided on differentiating Jake and Georges homes as we wanted the audience to think about what family life was about as well as their social life, as teens are stereotypically known for going out with friends all the time and not spending time with their family. Jakes home represented him as being lonely when it got to his family life which is why he enjoyed going out so much and Georges represented his family life as something he looked forward to coming back to. This enhances our concept and hopefully will remind our target audience to remember what’s important in life when finding yourself, growing older, and wiser. 

Iconography
Iconography is the use of props within media. The use of iconography is usually used to represent a more significant meaning, or perhaps used in order to make a narrative more realistic and understandable. It is important for my group to use iconography within my music video for these same purposes. We especially thought iconography was important as the style of our music video is narrative therefore the audience will only be able to understand the artist and narrative through what they see and hear from the lyrics, unlike a film where they would know exactly what was going on.

The first piece of iconography which appears in our video is a beer can held my Jake. The beer can has the infinity logo on to promote the group as it is George and Jakes logo when they DJ in real life, we have attached their logo to a beer can as alcohol and getting drunk represent having fun amongst teens as many teens go out partying and get drunk. This makes the beer can very conventional to the dance genre as alcohol is associated with party’s and socialising and having fun which is what dance connotes. The beer can also shows the audience that Jake is asleep as it is spilling on the flour between his legs. 

I will also use a bench in the same scene, we thought it would be a good idea for Jake and George to wake up on a bench as it would make people stare, leading our music video to be more realistic. The bench is not conventional to the dance genre however it will assist us in making our music video more realistic.

The next prop we decided to use was a phone. The purpose of the phone was to show how the boys where remembering the night before by looking through their phone as they couldn't remember much. I feel our target audience would be able to relate to this and laugh at Jake and George for doing this as it is always funny to look at pictures you had taken or text sent the night before whist drunk. The phone is also not conventional however still important as it helped us show the audience that the flash backs where of the night before and their memory of it was slowly coming back on their way home. 

Flashing lights, speaker, DJ set up ect were the other conventional iconography we used. As we wanted to film at a party we decided that we wanted to film at a party where all this would be present rather than just a house party where there would be no flashing lights and just a stereo. We felt this made our party scene look even better as it was a REAL party with all the set up to go with it. The audience would be able to relate to this as they probably would imagine the party to be good and want to party with Jake and George (if they actually where famous DJ’s). The iconography we used was very conventional to the dance genre as it is seen in a lot of other dance music videos and very common to have at party’s.