Mise-en-scene

Mise-en-scene plays a huge part in our music video. Lady Gaga's video's are always very different to other music video's of the pop genre. Her costumes, hair and make up and the location are always very extravagant. It was important to us to do her justice and create our video with all of these aspects in mind. We discussed possible locations such as a manor house, but quickly realised that this would not be possible and so started thinking of realistic locations and settings for our video. As we have decided to use the theme of an old fashioned horror film, we thought of locations to correspond with that idea. As it was not possible to use a manor house we decided that a normal house had the potential to work just as well. We are going to experiment with shots inside a house and try out shadows in the style of Nosferatu for Dracula, on the wall of the staircase. We also found a small forest area in Lewes that we are going to use for some of our shooting. We decided that this would be a good location choice because it is in keeping with the horror theme, given that one of our monsters is a werewolf. We researched horror films that have monsters similar to those we plan to use for our music video. The photo on the right is a still from the film The Wolfman. We liked the mise-en-scene of this shot and hope to recreate something similar in our video. As Lady Gaga has such a wide target audience, we wanted to make sure that we stuck to the usual conventions of her music videos. Her videos often follow the storyline created by the lyrics of the song. This is something that viewers have come to expect of her. Often she will have some footage before the song actually starts, so this is something we have tried to take into consideration. This is where the first location is used. It allows the audience to see her walking down a dark alley alone and sets the horror tone for the rest of the video. All of the locations we have chosen to use are locations we feel will add to the old fashioned horror element that we want for our music video. We have looked at videos by other pop artists such as Michael Jackson's Thriller. We looked at this video for inspiration as it is in the pop genre and follows a storyline in the way that Lady Gaga often does with her music videos. It is also a horror music video and so found inspiration in this for our music video, so that we were staying within our music genre and maintaining the interest of our target audience. In terms of props for our music video, we have decided not use many. We have a phone for Lady Gaga to use, but we have not yet decided whether we will keep this idea in our final music video. We wanted to keep it simple as Lady Gaga does not often have a huge number of props in her music videos. Her videos are about the costumes and the storyline. So for this reason we decided that we wouldn't use lots of props as we didn't want to over complicate our video and we wanted it to remain similar to Lady Gaga's own music videos. We decided that we want to have the majority of our video in black and white. We want to try adding a film grain effect to it to make it seem more like an old fashioned horror film. The beginning of the video will be in colour to show her in her normal life. It will then change into black and white to show her in the horror film. We felt it could have more of a film noir effect as well if we changed it to black and white. We wanted there to be a sense of horror carried throughout the music video. Black and white enabled us to bring out the darker elements of the video and constantly remind the audience that it is a horror video. Lady Gaga has some surreal elements to her videos. We want to try and keep this up in ours as this is something that attracts the target audience and something characteristic of Lady Gaga's music videos. In Lady Gaga's video Alejandro, there are some dance sections that are filmed in black and white. though she does not use it as a way to make her video dark it works as a means of making her dance sequence look sexy. This is something else we wanted to get across in our choice of colour. Lady Gaga often uses sex appeal as a way to attract her target audience. This is why we have decided to change the video into black and white and add a film grain effect to it.

We have also looked at costume and makeup for our video. We have chosen to use a vampire costume for Dracula as we want it to be clear which monster is which. We also want it to be like an old fashioned horror film so we have decided that it will be more aesthetically pleasing to have Dracula in a costume. The werewolf, on the other hand, we have discussed having in normal clothing. The reason for this is that she sings about him being a wolf in disguise. In order to make the costume tie in with the lyrics and storyline, we have decided that it might work better to have the wolf in wolf make up but in normal clothing. We once again looked at monster horror films in order to get some good ideas for the kind of costume we could use for Lady Gaga. Her costume was the most important as her dress sense is something that she is famed for. It is also something that attracts a large majority of her target audience. The photograph on the left is a still from the film The Wolfman. Though we were unable to get a costume quite as extravagant as the one in the photo, we did like the idea of having Lady Gaga in black. We have decided to have her in a black lace dress as this is something that we thought Lady Gaga would wear and it is also appropriate for the music video we are making. As Lady Gaga's costume and make up are always very over the top, it was important to us that the other characters costume and make up told the story well. Though we want the exaggerated character that Lady Gaga provides, it is still necessary for the target audience to understand the storyline. This is why we went for very self explanatory costumes for the monsters. However, we have decided that we still want to keep Lady Gaga's make up larger than life. We have opted to have her in bright red lipstick, with dark eyes and big false lashes. The reason for this is that she often does her make up in this was and it is as much a part of her look as her costume. We want to ensure that we are still attracting the same target audience for the right reasons. This is why we have made the decision to stay true the the typical conventions of a Lady Gaga music video.